A Letter to the Creators of Piranha 3D
Posted by Gia Manry on Aug 21, 2010 in Cinema
Dear creators of Piranha 3D,
What the heck are you doing? Read more…
Egg Recall: Memories of a Bad Egg
Posted by Gia Manry on Aug 21, 2010 in Comic Books
If you’re the kind of person who buys groceries somewhere other than 7-11, then you’re already aware, but for the college kids out there: there’s a HUGE egg recall going on right now, which just expanded and now includes some 400 million eggs that may be contaminated with salmonella.
The whole affair reminds me of someone. Someone…from Garfield and Friends. Read more…
Jon Stewart: A Little Short for a Stormtrooper
Posted by Gia Manry on Aug 20, 2010 in Star Wars
Now that Daily Show host (“anchor”?) Jon Stewart has removed his ungodly facial hair and is once again clean-shaven, he can now pass for a clone of Jango Fett (genetically modified to be older, sharper-featured, shorter, and Jewish). By sheer coincidence, Stewart also just interviewed George Lucas at a giant Star Wars event. Read more…
Ch-Ch-Ch-Chip’n’Gadget! Creepy Cults! Ch-ch-ch–
Posted by Gia Manry on Aug 20, 2010 in Tech
Okay, okay, I’ll stop singing, but every time I see these photos of a Russian cult(/prank?) that supposedly worships Chip’n’Dale’s Rescue Rangers character Gadget Hackwrench, who is admittedly the cutest female cartoon mouse ever (suck it, Minnie). Read more…
From Punks to Pussycats: A Preview DC Comics for November
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 19, 2010 in Comic Books
I admit that I’m a manga fanboy at heart, but that doesn’t mean I’ll overlook a great cover illustration just because it’s published by DC Comics. My favorites are always the offbeat titles rather than the superheroes prancing around n their undies. So for your viewing pleasure I’ve gathered the six strongest starting with the above illustration by Simon Bisley for Hellblazer #273 which has a wonderful 80s sensibility to it. Read more…
Good Smile Serves Up Some Black Rock Curry
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Aug 19, 2010 in Animation, Hobbies and Collections
As far as Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid goes, Black Rock Shooter is still the craze in Japan. The popular franchise has been churning out everything from cosplay and figures, to a series of OVAs. No doubt as a result of their fortune, Good Smile Company has recently announced plans to open a cafe in Chiba. To celebrate the opening, they’ll be featuring a special Black Rock Shooter theme. Customers who attend will be receiving a Black Rock Shooter DVD, food mat, and tea coaster. The menu will also feature a special Black Rock Curry, which looks kind of scary but probably tastes amazing. To be honest, I’m just curious what they’ll be putting in it to make it so dark. For more details, and images, check out Danny Choo’s recent blog here. Read more…
Workspaces? Maybe Not So Otacool After All
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Aug 19, 2010 in Fandom
Danny Choo’s latest book entitled Otacool 3: Worldwide Workspaces has hit the shelves in Japan. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept of Otacool, it’s a book that basically details an aspect of otaku culture. The first volume dealt with otaku rooms/living areas, while the second book dealt exclusively with cosplay. This third volume, currently available via J-List, deals with — you guessed it — otaku workspaces. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some pretty awesome workspaces — the book has plenty of them, and some of them are pretty impressive — but honestly, I fail to grasp the concept of a workspace, otaku or otherwise, being cool. Read more…
Something to Carry Those Quatloos With
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Aug 18, 2010 in Star Trek
Are you fond of betting with fictional currencies because you have nothing to carry your cash with? That probably won’t be a problem for much longer — Star Trek Mighty Wallets are on the way. In case you you don’t know what those are, Mighty Wallets are basically seamless, seamless, stitch-less wallets constructed from high density polyethylene. That’s the same material used to create those nearly-indestructible tags you’ll find on mattresses. Of course, the wallets are slightly thicker. These specific wallets feature some amazing art from the original Gold Key Star Trek comics published during the ’60s and ’70s — making one a must have for anyone who loved those classics. They go on sale next month, but you can pre-order yours for a mere $15 here. There’s also a short trailer if you’d like a closer look.
Metroid’s Samus Gives Us A Lesson In Bounty Hunting
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Aug 18, 2010 in Videogames
I have to admit that I’ve never taken the time to sit down and play Metroid. It’s not that I haven’t had opportunities over the years, but I’ve always wanted to start from the beginning in order to better understand the on-going plot. Fortunately, Nintendo has gone through the trouble of explaining history of the series for us with this interesting trailer for their upcoming title Metroid: Other M. While Samus Aran’s voice over might seem a bit stiff, she does a decent job of catching us up on the series. So far, I’m pretty excited about it. This latest game will feature a mixture of third and first person gameplay, and is currently set for release on August 31st. Read more…
Apple’s Japanese iPhone Ads Seem Familiar
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Aug 17, 2010 in Japanese TV, Tech
Generally, Japanese commercials tend to be a bit more outlandish than our own TV spots, so I was a bit surprised to learn that Apple hasn’t really done much to change the format of their recent iPhone 4 ads for an international market, aside from hiring Japanese actors of course. It would seem that Apple has focused almost entirely on their Face Time feature, hoping that live video chat would be enough to sell anyone on their reception-impaired smart phone. To be fair, a simple case can fix that, but why should there be a problem in the first place — right? Any ways, the commercials are still pretty cute. I just wonder if it’s enough to steal NTT Docomo’s loyal fan base.
Star Wars Finally Set For Blu-ray Release
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Aug 17, 2010 in Star Wars
There’s been plenty of news from last weekend’s Celebration V event floating around the net, but everyone seems to be talking about the upcoming Star Wars Blu-ray release, set for 2011. As you can imagine, I wasn’t too excited about the prospect of having to purchase yet another set of these films, no doubt remastered with more pointless and potentially annoying edits by George Lucas — let’s face it, Han shot first. Fortunately, I can justify the purchase as the discs will include never released deleted scenes. While the exact number or content of scenes have yet to be revealed, a short clip of Luke building his lightsaber in Return of the Jedi was shown during event. The clip was subsequently uploaded by fans to YouTube, but Lucasfilm was quick to have it removed from the site. If you’d like to try and catch a glimpse of it while you still can, you click here.
Is Android the Next Amiga?
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 17, 2010 in Tech
In the 80s the Amiga was eons ahead of everyone else in the PC market: They had everything from the ability to play full color animations to multitasking. However this amazing platform just never took off. Why? Because the user base took advantage of the first generation of floppy disks and BBSs to pirate pretty much every last bit of software that was written for the platform. Because of this Microsoft never created a version of Word for the Amiga and WordPerfect lost a great deal of money thanks to cheap users. In fact the only winner that came away from the Amiga was the NewTek Video Toaster which was pretty much dongle protected due to the hardware aspect of the product. Read more…
Cowboy Ninja Viking Still Riding High
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 17, 2010 in Comic Books
Yes I know the that the name of this book sounds like Image Comics talked to an SEO expert and took all of the top trends and baked them into a title: However if that was true they would have included the key words Vampires and Zombies as well! This series has impressed me since it came out and issue #8 which comes out this Wednesday is no disappointment as Riley Rossmo’s drawings keep you eye moving from panel to panel in the book. The minimal color palette is also a nice touch as it add just enough to the artwork without becoming too distracting — and the drawings in those panels remind me of Bill Sienkiewicz too: Read more…
Cool Cosplay Picks from the Past Week
Shown above is the coolest cosplay photo that I ran across this week on Twitter — and below are my other top nine picks: Read more…
Bing Badly Needs a Misspelling Checker
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 16, 2010 in Tech
I believe very strongly that Google has an unhealthy monopoly on the internet, so for the past week or so I’ve switched all of my browsers to use Bing as the default search engine. For the most part Microsoft has done an amazing job of going from nothing to something to create a great search engine in a short amount of time, however there are still a few things that they need to beat Google. Having been born with dyslexia one of the things I love about Google is that their spell checker is amazing — in fact often when using Microsoft Word I’ll pop out of the program when I can’t get the spelling of a more obscure word. And this is the very sort of feature that not only does Bing need badly, but something that should also be incorporated into the online version of Microsoft Office. Read more…
King City Still Reigns Supreme
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 16, 2010 in Comic Books
I’ve been really enjoying following the comic book King City which is by Brandon Graham and presented by Tokyopop. Issue #11 will be out this Wednesday and is well worth checking out. What I love about Brandon’s work is that his drawings have a highly animated feeling to them and have just a slight sense of surrealism that reminds me of Krazy Kat by George Herriman. The only thing I regret about this series is that they didn’t color it, although the black-and-white pages show off the artwork pretty well: Read more…
Why It’s Important That You See Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Tonight
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 15, 2010 in Cinema, Comic Books
Come Monday those in power in Hollywood will be looking at the box office from this weekend and the stakes are high. If Scott Pilgrim vs. The World does badly you can bet that Hollywood will never touch an indie comic book for many years to come — but on the other hand if it does well it may open the door for other indie comic books to be made info feature length films. Right now when Hollywood thinks of comic books they just see action adventure films with superheroes running around into their underwear, however if Scott Pilgrim can score stories that aren’t about “stuff blowing up” might have a fair chance at the screen. In return that would encourage more folks to read indie comics and then the big guys like Marvel and DC might take more chances. And the price for this? Just one movie ticket and a bucket of popcorn to change the world a little bit.
Tokyo Star Wars Episode II: The Clone Dance
Any proper Star Wars geek (or Japanophile) knows Danny Choo, aka the Tokyo Stormtrooper. Choo famously shoots videos of himself in Stormtrooper attire dancing around Tokyo, including in geek-town Akihabara, on a Tokyo subway…you get the idea.
But now a few others have gotten into the act. Read more…
Hinako III: Our Top Ten Title Suggestions
Posted by Guest Author on Aug 13, 2010 in Animation
You can talk all you want about what you think is the biggest anime surprise to occur in the last year. For me, that debate starts and ends with the popularity of Hinako. Produced by Primastea and launched in the spring of 2009, Training with Hinako became a hit with fans for reasons I’ve chosen not to think about too much. A few months later the sequel, Sleeping with Hinako, became another surprise hit. It’s now being reported that the studio is going to strike while the iron is still hot and release a third Hinako feature for fans to enjoy privately. Read more…
This Kobato Figurine is soooo Kawaii
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 13, 2010 in Animation, Comic Books
If you’re a Clamp fan and are lucky enough to be in japan this August you may be able to get your hands on this very cute Kobato Hanato figurine from the manga (and anime) series Kobato (こばと。). Also included in the package is the blue stuffed dog Yogisanmo and a handy traveling bag which will set you back 1890 yen: Read more…
Fable 3 Won’t Be Reinventing the Wheel
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Aug 12, 2010 in Videogames
Or more specifically, I should say Peter Molyneux won’t. Known for his penchant for over-promising and under-delivering, Molyneux has gone on record to state that the next title in the popular Fable franchise will focus more on story, and balance, than introducing new features, and gameplay mechanics — a move clearly designed with casual gamers in mind. While I hardly consider myself a casual gamer, I actually welcome this news, as I’ve quickly grown tired of Molyneux’s incessant need to clutter his games with features that distract me from the point of the game itself.
A Designer iPhone Case Fit For an Otaku
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Aug 12, 2010 in Animation, Videogames
If you’re reading this, you probably own an iPhone, and if you pride yourself on being an otaku, there’s a good chance that you love Touhou Project too. If you’re not really sure what that is, don’t worry, I can explain. The Touhou Project is series of indie games developed in Japan that has immensely grown in popularity over the last decade. The series later evolved into a franchise with everything from light novels, to doujinshi. It’s primarily popular amongst Japanese otaku, making this iPhone case a must have accessory for those of you who want to show off to your otaku friends — that is, assuming your still own an iPhone 3G ,or 3GS.
Adidas Helps You Share Your Inner Wookie
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Aug 11, 2010 in Star Wars
Plan on visiting Hoth anytime soon? Can’t afford a Taun Taun? Don’t worry, Adidas has you covered. The latest addition to their Star Wars inspired Adidas Originals line happens to be a Wookie inspired jacket. I’m fairly certain that no Wookies were harmed in order to make these, but they definitely look warm enough. I just wonder if it actually comes with Chewie’s signature bandolier, as pictured above. Sure, it seemingly served no purpose, but you have to store your thermal detonators somewhere, right? The jacket will be available later this year, and while there’s no current price listed, expect to pay handsomely.
A Look at Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Aug 11, 2010 in Star Wars, Videogames
I, for one, never really cared for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The art aesthetic never really spoke to me, and I suppose I can understand why — it was being marketed to kids after all. To me, trying to sit through an episode is like having to experience Jar Jar, or the Ewoks, for extended period of time. My personal tastes aside, the series certainly has its fair share of fans, both young and old. Given the current climate of social networking and the subsequent move toward casual gaming, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to cash in. Read more…