I usually avoid the holiday focused booths at the Toy Fair, but Rubie’s had these adorable Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock Halloween which captured my heart. The manufacturer also has a full line of Watchmen costumes for adults who like to cosplay.

The great thing about zombies being so in style is that you can write about then after Halloween without feeling guilty! So it’s with pleasure that I can share this Night Of The Living Kev Inaction Figure which captures director Kevin Smith who is sporting the Monroeville Zombies t-shirt as worn by Seth Rogan in Kevin’s film Zack & Miri Make a Porno:

Found via nerdapproved.com.

I was trying to figure out why this recent commercial for Tokyo Disneyland Disney Halloween looks so damn cool. I’m an anime fanboy so my thought was that anything with a Japanese voiceover would just seem cooler, but that’s not the case. Then it struck me: Mickey and Mini and decked out in Venetian costumes instead of the typical goth look associated with Halloween. The result is that our mouse suddenly takes on a magical European quality that I just doesn’t associate with Mickey who’s as American as you can get.

The other odd thing about the Venetian masks is that they’re worn for the Carnival of Venice which takes place in February! Although it turns out the misplaced date is fine as “Disney’s Halloween” runs from September 10 through November 3, 2009.

I admit it, I’m a furry. Admit it? Right now I’m feeling rather proud of it. I don’t know what you think furries are, you’ve probably been brainwashed by the Vanity Fair-CSI Complex. What we are is a bunch of people with varied but overlapping interests in anthropomorphic animal characters. Like the Democratic Party, we’re a ‘big tent’ fandom – if you’re into cartoon, comic strip or comic book ‘funny animals,’ if you’ve built a ‘fursuit’ so you can physically become your animal alter-ego, if you draw your own pictures or write your own stories about ‘anthro’ characters (also known, just like us, as ‘furries’), you’re in.

And we’re far from sparse in number: over the July 4^th weekend some 3800 of us migrated to Pittsburgh for the annual ‘AnthroCon’ convention, the world’s largest furry gathering.

First of all and contrary to popular belief, we weren’t all dressed up in animal costumes: only (’only’?) about 700 of us were there in fursuits. Of the remaining 3100, a good portion adorned their jeans with a tail and their heads with matching ears, but most of us were content wearing a T-shirt of our favorite animal or animal character. Non-anthro cosplay was welcome too: my pal Pete who’s a dead ringer for David Tennant was warmly welcomed and spent the weekend, sonic screwdriver in hand, as the tenth Doctor. (And why not? Anthro aliens pop up on the show quite regularly.)

Second of all, Furry Fandom isn’t just a fur-lined sex orgy. There’s gotta be some of that going on, but I’m still waiting to be invited to one; I guess I run with the wrong pack, I mean crowd. Besides which, it’s hot inside those suits – you’d quickly collapse from heat prostration if you tried to do the nasty dance with someone while suited up.

Walt Kelly's Pogo Cartoon

Of course there’s a healthy element of sensuality inherent in the fur scene. (Some might want to stick an ‘un’ in front of that adjective; let ‘em, I don’t care.) I mean, how could there not be? They’re animals for God’s sake, they run around naked most of the time and a first-rate furry artist is capable of blending their human and animal physical attributes in quite appealing (and often jaw-dropping) ways. Do a bit of browsing for ‘furry art’ & you’ll see what I mean.

The Trix Rabbit

Joe, a gentleman in his eighties was reportedly moved to tears by the enthusiastic greeting he received upon arrival, never dreaming that characters he created some 50 years ago had a loyal following. He shared mucho anecdotes about the good old days at his panel appearances (many of them repeated each time), but my personal takeaway was “if you don’t believe in the characters, they’re just drawings.”

Which is why I’m a furry – I believe in all of them, from Bugs to Bullwinkle, Donald to Droopy, and on and on and on…

Bob B. shared stories of his checkered path to cartoon success. (”I went to New York to be an illustrator, but mostly I was working as a bellman at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.”) Afterwards he told me I looked familiar, hadn’t we met before? (a psychic connection via my Wubbzy script?) Ben B. gave pointers on storyboarding that probably would’ve taken a semester to learn at CalArts. (For instance, beware of adjoining shots where successive characters are identically framed – you’ll confuse the audience into thinking the first just transformed into the second.)

We took over Pittsburgh for the weekend by the way; downtown is usually pretty dead on a summer weekend, but when we showed up restaurants and convenience stores normally locked tight stayed open for us. How could they not love us – we drop some $3 million into the local economy over 3-4 days. This was our fourth year in town – we completely outgrew our original Philadelphia location a while back. Pittsburgh’s reaction to us has evolved from ‘who are these people?’ to ‘hey, the furries are back!’ (Maybe it’s that $3 million.) Even a few of the high-I.Q. Mensa folks in town for their own convention came over to check us out. (I visited their hotel and discovered the Mensa version of a wild and crazy time: sitting in a basement meeting room playing board games and assembling banquet table-sized jigsaw puzzles; between you and me, I’d rather be a furry than a genius…)

But on Monday morning a seven-hour drive back to NYC and mundane reality awaited us. Oh, if only I had the $$$ to go to Further Confusion (San Jose), Midwest FurFest (Chicago) or Memphit Furmeet (Memphis) between now and next July. (Michael, how about sending me on an all-expenses-paid fact-finding tour?) Who knows, if I’m lucky maybe I’ll meet somebody who’ll let me try on their alligator suit, just for a little while…

Joe is an occasional animation scripter and freelance NYC writer covering animation and sci-fi/fantasy entertainment. His work has appeared in the NY Daily News, Newsday, the New York Press and, as they used to say on Rocky and Bullwinkle, ‘a host of others.’ He is a regular contributor to the animation industry website awn.com, but it’s much easier to visit joestrike.com to see what he’s been up to lately.

Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Waffle Whiffer for the Trix Rabbit button photo.

I’m just not sure how I overlooked The Perhapanauts which is published by Image, shown above is issue #6 which just came out. I have no clue why an issue that comes out in June has a Halloween theme, but that doesn’t matter — what does matter is that this book looks great inside and out. Most publishers pull the bait-and-switch cover routine, but I have to say that the draftsmanship and character designs within this book are A+.

Credit for the artwork goes to the team of Craig Rousseau (the leading artist), Jason Armstrong, Jamar Nicholas and Matt Pott. There’s something very whimsical and graceful about the art in this book helped along with an almost pastel palette. And the story by Todd Dezago isn’t the usual superheroes battling to the next issue, instead we see touching conversations between giant oafs and leading ladies. I really like why I see here:

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:

Chockfull of dream imagery and dream logic, it follows Robert Potemkin (portrayed by a live actor), in ‘real life’ tormented by evil, stop-motion conjoined twin girls. But when summoned to a ‘lower dimension’ (and transported there by a quintet of telekinetic lizards) he becomes ‘Slow Bob,’ an animated cut-out who saves a community of snapshot people from an invasion of flying scissors.

In his first feature, Nightmare Before Christmas, skeletal Jack Skellington of Halloween Town invades Christmas Town and makes a royal mess of Santa’s holiday before setting things straight. In his second James and the Giant Peach, a young boy crawls into the heart of said fruit, turning into a stop motion replica of himself to travel across the ocean with a band of sentient insects.

In Coraline a plucky young girl (is there any other kind in these sort of stories?) discovers a tiny doorway in the creepy old house she and her parents have moved into. She crawls through the strange, almost organic tunnel behind the door and emerges into a magical mirror world, far more wonderful than the one she left behind – except for those creepy button eyes everyone has…

Travelling to lower dimensions… visiting secret towns… crawling into the heart of a magical fruit, or through what might be a birth canal into an alternate world…

Are you seeing a pattern here? A series of Alices in not-quite Wonderlands?

Sure, Nightmare, Peach and Coraline are based on the works of others (Burton, Dahl and Gaiman), but when the same person is drawn to, and works and reworks similar material – you’re dealing with an artist. He might be spending tens of millions of dollars of other peoples’ money to work through his obsessions, but he’s an artist nonetheless.

Burton co-directed The Corpse Bride with one of Selick’s animators; that film too took a trip to an underworld, the land of the dead – but it just didn’t have the same swing, the same zing as Selick’s work.

Selick’s grabbed the latest technology to return to one of the earliest stop motion variations: ‘replacement animation,’ a technique made famous by animator/director George Pal (who deserves to be ten times better known than he is today). Pal carved a variety of heads for his wooden puppets, a different one for each expression and replaced them frame by frame, giving his early ‘puppetoons’ an uncanny 3D reality that went unmatched until Pixar arrived some 50 years later:

Warning: Be prepared for some embarrassingly racist stereotypes from back in the day.

Selick has the advantage of digital technology that does the sculpting for him and compositing tools that hide whatever seams might otherwise be showing – but all that’s stuff for the DVD commentary track and bonus features. Just see the damn film: the magical stuff is breath-taking, the scary stuff is super-creepy (it’s PG, but leave the youngest young’uns home). Coraline is 2009’s first animated feature, but for my money (if I’d paid to see it, which I will the next time) it already has a lock on one of next year’s animated feature Oscar noms.

Joe is an occasional animation scripter and freelance NYC writer covering animation and sci-fi/fantasy entertainment. His work has appeared in the NY Daily News, Newsday, the New York Press and, as they used to say on Rocky and Bullwinkle, ‘a host of others.’ He is a regular contributor to the animation industry website awn.com, but it’s much easier to visit joestrike.com to see what he’s been up to lately.

Digital archivist Steven Martin has put together an amazing collection of turn of the century photos entitled Halloween in the Time of Cholera. Most of the photos are from the 1910s — having grown up in the age of mass marketing what’s amazing to me is how homemade everything looks.

In the early 60s Dan Lawler was the star illustrator of Humpty Dumpty’s Magazine for Little Children. What I like about his style is that he manages to be interesting yet charming in a magical way. In the illustration above from 1964 I love the little touches like the crow in the corner and the feather on the hat. In the spot 1961 illustration below Lawler draws you into the picture with his simple yet theatrical staging:

Found via Glen Mullaly, check out his blog here and his Flickr account here.

This looks like a good low budget fanboy gift for Christmas or maybe Halloween:

Emily the Strange, Jones Soda Team Up

“Now you can get Emily the Strange in a bottle! Emily comic book publisher Dark Horse Comics has teamed up with Jones Soda Co. to launch a limited-edition line of Emily the Strange soda pops on www.myjones.com.

Dark Horse Comics is known for breaking tradition and bucking trends. It arranged the partnership with Jones Soda Co., part of Jones Limited, to provide comic and soda fans with a new way to enjoy some of Dark Horse’s most popular characters.

Six special-edition Emily art labels have been created for the sodas. And only 600 six-bottle packs of each of the six themes will be available, just in time for Halloween on October 14. These special-edition sodas, which come in Strawberry Lime, Pure Cane Cola, and Cream Soda, will only be available here. The other Dark Horse comic featured in the program will be Eric Powell’s The Goon, which will launch with the soda line.”

Neil Marshall Writer/Director of the Descent and Dog Soldiers returns to the big screen with Doomsday. In 2008 the Reaper virus lays siege to Scotland, killing people by the thousands. In response the British government puts up a 30 foot wall around Scotland, separating it from the rest of the world and trapping those infected within. Anarchy ensues as people rape, loot and kill in a lawless land while the rest of the world looks on.

Fast forward thirty years. The rest of the world has turned their back on England, London has become a third world haven for the downtrodden who live on the streets because they can’t afford to live anywhere else. It is among the masses that victims of the returning Reaper Virus are found. Martial Law is declared by Prime Minister Hatcher (Alexander Siddig a.k.a Dr. Bashir from Star Trek:Deep Space 9) and a plan is drawn up to find out why some people survived within the quarantine zone of Scotland and to find the cure for the Reaper virus.

Eden Sinclair played by Rhona Mitra ( Shooter, The Number 23, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans ) is chosen to lead a team back into the wasteland to find a survivor and the cure. The team, of course, is filled with throw away good guys who’s only job is to get slaughtered and make Eden look all the more bad ass.

The one exception to the team (and the one with the coolest death scene) was Sean Pertwee (Dog Soldiers, Event Horizon ) one of the scientists sent to find the cure. Everyone else was fodder.

Once across the wall the movie really picks up and becomes a cross between The Road Warrior and Excalibur. Action, gore and an amazing chase scene featuring a Bentley right out of a James Bond movie all add to the film and give it that over the top action feel.

The fact that the movie is filled with borrowed plot ideas really doesn’t detract from the overall enjoyment of the film. Malcom McDowell (Halloween (2007), Star Trek Generations, A Clockwork Orange) and Bob Hoskins (Unleashed, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) appear in prominent roles within the movie and makes it all the more enjoyable.

If you enjoy a good end of the world story or appreciate the writing and directing of Neil Marshall then Doomsday is well worth the price of admission.

Below: The trailer for Doomsday.

Richard Carroll is an avid movie viewer and all around fanboy. You can probably find him at his computer playing Guild Wars when not watching,writing, reading or roleplaying something (Oh and then there’s the real world and work). Check out some of his written works at www.ficofthedead.com. A website in need of a webmaster to ensure it gets updated. (Any takers? Anyone? *grins*)

Tomorrow marks the start of the Chinese New Year, so we’re exploring fanboy themes relating the Year of the Rat. Rat Patrol was a TV series that ran from 1966 until 1968 which featured the exploits of four Allied soldiers (three American and one Brit) during World War II whose mission was “to attack, harass and wreak havoc on Field Marshal Rommel’s vaunted Afrika Korps”.

Rat Patrol was one of many shows in the late 60s based on World War II — other shows from that era included Combat!, 12 O’clock High and the comedy classic Hogan’s Heroes. The show inspired a great deal of merchandise, everything from toys to a Halloween costume (which I owned briefly as a child at one point). Here’s the opening to the show:

…me thinks they’re pretty clean cut for a renegade squad hanging out in the dessert, no?

Every day Ian Stone starts his life, at some point during that day Ian dies a terrible death only to find himself in a new life with an unsettling feeling that he’s been through something horrific. Thus the plot setup for the Deaths of Ian Stone for the best movie to come out of Horrorfest in 2007.

Mike Vogel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, Poseidon and the upcoming Cloverfield) plays Ian Stone, a hockey playing nice guy with a beautiful girlfriend and a good life. After dropping his girlfriend off at her home he is assaulted and murdered by a shadowy figure. He awakens to a find himself in an office building with the same woman who has no memory of ever dating him. She becomes the one constant through the movie as Ian dies over and over again, killed in several different and grizzly ways, each worse then the last. He begins to piece together what is happening to him and why and with each step he gets to coming closer to the truth the quicker he is killed in an attempt to force him to forget.

Overall The Deaths of Ian Stone is a wonderfully original and fun action film that will gain cult status with it’s release onto DVD with the other 8 Movies to Die For. Not a true ‘horror’ film, Ian Stone has more of a Terminator or Aliens feel to it than say Halloween. The movie stands on it’s own however and scores points for originality, something sorely lacking in Hollywood these days.

Here’s the trailer for The Deaths of Ian Stone:

Richard Carroll is an avid movie viewer and all around fanboy. You can probably find him at his computer playing Guild Wars when not watching,writing, reading or roleplaying something (Oh and then there’s the real world and work). Check out some of his written works at www.ficofthedead.com. A website in need of a webmaster to ensure it gets updated. (Any takers? Anyone? *grins*)