Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 4, 2009 in Japanese TV
This 80s advert for Tess Tea has a soundtrack that either inspired by the Katrina and the Waves hit Walking on Sunshine — or — the earlier Clash single Hitsville U.K. Although the irony of this is that much of British new wave music from that era owed a great deal to a reggae dancehall rhythm. I couldn’t find out much about Tess Tea online other than the fact that it was a brand from Suntory that must have been popular in the 80s. Here’s another anglophile commercial for Tess Tea from 1984: Read more…
While this planet is about twice the size of Earth it’s amazing to think of the progress that astronomers have made in just the past few years. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next few years we discovered a solar system that’s similar to own own. This latest exoplanet was detected by looking for a drop in brightness of the parent star as the planet passed in front of the star: During this transit the planet appears as a tiny black dot. There’s some controversy to the exact size of the planet, but to me what’s exciting is that we’re getting better at spotting the small one.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 4, 2009 in Animation
Somehow over the last month I missed this trailer for the Imagi release of Iron Man 28 (Tetsujin 28): While I love the mecha in this trailer I hate just about everything else! By making the human characters look realistic they’ve lost the charm of the original character designs. Not only that but they’re not quite realistic enough so they look like a bad video game, except for the fact that they’re very stiff looking. Making matters worse the voice overs talent has no character to it and the sense of timing in the trailer seems off. A few days ago it came out that Imagi was having financial troubles and my first reaction was that it may prevent some bad films from being made – and sadly after this trailer I’m still of that opinion.
I just discovered that in Japan that you can get an illustration made out of the froth that they put into your cafe — shown above is an example from the Ghibli museum cafe which is based on Kiki’s Delivery Service (photographed by Misugi Yasunami). Below is a bunny cup of brew photographed by my Flickr friend Yasuko.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 3, 2009 in Animation
There’s something very haunting about some of the Russian animation that I’ve seen over the years, there’s a sense of surrealism but there’s something very unnerving underneath the surface. This animated film is from 1991 and is titled Frother (Потец) — it’s based upon a poem Alexander Vvedensky from 1937. The film’s director was Alexander Fedulov (1947 – 1996) and the other worldly art direction is by Vladimir Burkin. Here’s the second part of the film: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 3, 2009 in Japanese TV
There’s something slightly violent lurching under this ever so moe commercial for Sapporo Ichiban instant noodles. From my crude translation my understanding is that these instant bowls of wonder come in three varieties: ramen, miso and udon.
You don’t need money, don’t take fame, don’t need no credit cards to ride this train! But sadly recession struck fanboys like myself who grew up on Back to the Future can only dream about owning a vintage 80s DeLorean — however the next best thing may this official license plate replica being offered by ThinkGeek. Although if you do want to get closer to your childhood dream the next step up would be to go to Universal Studios of Japan where the Back to the Future: The Ride simulator currently resides.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 2, 2009 in Television
As a television series Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future was one of my favorite shows from the 80s. Of course the character of Max pre-dates that series — he got his start with a talk show in England in 1985 which in many ways inspired Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. When Coke launched their new formula they made the bold move of picking Max as their spokesperson using the tagline “Catch the Wave!” Folks loved Max but not the new Coke and the old Coke was bought back with the label “Classic Coke” (which was just recently dropped). Read more…
Update: We also had the trailers for Star Trek and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen but the legal department at Paramount had the trailers yanked from our YouTube source. In our humble opinion this was a dumb marketing move as many fanboys (and fangurls) might not want to watch an annual jock ritual.
Posted by Guest Author on Feb 1, 2009 in Animation
Editor’s Note: In this review film critic Joe Strike gives us a sneak preview into the upcoming film Coraline which comes out on February 6th.
The moment we left Disneyland in 2003 my son regretted not buying the hoodie that was on sale in the Nightmare Before Christmas gift shop in the park – so much so that once we were back home I phoned the park and mail-ordered it for him. He wore the damn thing to death, then cut Jack Skellington out and sewed him onto a new hoodie, which he also proceeded to wear to death.
I’ve just seen Coraline – and I want the hoodie. The movie’s the third feature from stop-motion director Henry Selick, who first blew peoples’ minds with his early short Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions: Read more…
