Posted by Michael Pinto on Jul 21, 2009 in Japanese TV
This new Japanese ad for Pizza-La features the J-pop act Buono! which is yet another side project associated with Hello! Project Kids and Berryz Kobo. Aside from the musical aspect of this I have to admit that the idea of a Camembert cheese pizza made me want to break my current diet. By the way what’s cool about this ad is that there is a version for each member of Buono!, shown below are the spots for Airi Suzuki, Miyabi Natsuyaki and the ever so cute Momoko Tsugunaga: Read more…
It was nothing less than a historic moment when director George Lucas decided to feature a trash compactor scene in Star Wars: Sure Stanley Kubrick broke ground in 2001: A Space Odyssey by showing a bathroom scene — but it look the bold vision of Lucas to take us dumpster diving into a space station the size of a planet (or small moon if you want to quibble). And that why the Franklin Mint, err Gentle Giant Products has decided to commemorate this milestone in cinematic history with the Star Wars Trash Compactor Bookends Statue. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jul 20, 2009 in Comic Books
At first I was struck by the fact that this cover for Runaways #12 had a bit of an anime flavor to it, you can tell right away with the look of the huge reflecting eyes and the high level of attention to the hair. Although the composition gives away that it isn’t Japanese, however I was still surprised to find out that the artist Sara Pichelli is in fact from Italy! So you’ve got a European illustrator influenced by Japanese manga working for a very mainstream American publisher like Marvel. If you step back this is amazing because twenty years ago in a pre-net era you would never have seen this — in fact my thinking is that more and more international borders will mean less and less in the world of comics. Read more…
Shown above is the latest commercial for the upcoming action videogame Senki Gundam for the Playstation3 and is due out on September 3rd, 2009. The developers behind this game also did the well remembered Dreamcast and Saturn games — so Gundam fanboys are pretty psyched about this. Below is a video from earlier in July which shows some actual gameplay: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jul 19, 2009 in Comic Books
The cover art from Gemini #4
In astrology Gemini is the sign of the twins, and in this case the comic Gemini #4 stays true to the symbolism of the sign. Firstly the comic is drawn by the team of Jon Sommariva and Fco Plascencia, and they do a good job of blending their talents in this book. But what really impressed me is that in most comic books you get the “bait-and-switch” routine where the cover art is brilliant and the interiors are average at best. In this case I found the cover to be underplayed, not bad but rather held back — and the interiors of the book were nothing short of amazing (thus my featuring of an interior page above). Sommariva and Plascencia have a fluid cartoony feel to their work with just a small dash of humor. The results make for a very animated comic book even though the layout is confined to traditional block panels: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jul 18, 2009 in Animation
The frustrating thing about Twitter is reading the tweets of all of my anime pals who are at Otakon this weekend: For me the highlights of these cons is to hear about all of the anime shows that are making their way into America. But the nice folks at FUNimation have actually taken their panel and uploaded it to YouTube. The good news is that it looks like they’ll be bring over Casshern Sins, Eden of the East, Daytime Drinking, more Case Closed movies. By the Daytime Drinking isn’t an anime series but is an award winning film by Korean director Young-seok Noh: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jul 18, 2009 in Animation
My favorite thing about this cartoon is that after our father-and-son dog team feel so guilty about trying to kill the poor mouse — that they in fact continue to spend the rest of the cartoon trying to still kill the mouse! Which also makes me realize that Good Mouse Keeping must be one of the few cartoons to feature a “dog vs. mouse” theme. This Hanna-Barbera cartoon was released on this day in 1952 and shows off the theatrical high quality work that that the animation studio was doing for MGM before they went off on their own for the low budget world of limited animation TV shows. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jul 18, 2009 in Cinema, Design
On this day in 1933 visual futurist Syd Mead was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He started his career in 1959 working for Ford Motor Company, but for us fanboys our love affair with his work really starts 70s when he started to make the jump from slick looking industrial design to science fiction. His early film work in Hollywood includes credits on the film Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 2010, Tron, Aliens and even the comedy Short Circuit (yes that was his robot design!). However his triumph for me was his preproduction work on Blade Runner: Read more…
If you love Gundam you may want to get your hands on The Gundam Big Face Encyclopedia which was just released in Japan. This soft covered book features 125 faces from various giant robots in the classic anime series which is now celebrating its 30th anniversary. Of course you just don’t get he faces, there are smaller full body shots of each mecha with commentary in Japanese. Here’s a preview of the book shot by an otaku for an Akihabara focused blog: Read more…
This is the second trailer for the upcoming Sherlock Holmes flick — normally I’d slag the mere notion of having to improve Holmes through cheap plot mechanisms like vampires (why not go all the way and have zombies too?) but I’ve got to say that the idea of teaming up high quality actors like Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock and Jude Law as Watson makes me think that this film might be a bit better than I’d expect. Read more…
