Shown above is a promotion for Stride Right Star wars sneakers from back in the day! And it seems that the great recession has hit The Force™ yet again as Payless ShoeSource and Stride Rite stores will be introducing a Star Wars show line in June or July. According to this article the line will feature Darth Vader and other characters (both cartoon and live action) from the George Lucas universe. If you buy the footwear at Stride Rite they’ll run from $35 to $55, but if you want to go to a lower budget Payless shoes will only be $15 to $20.

I was tempted to write the headline for this story as Captain Picard giving his views on today’s tech scene but that wouldn’t be fair: What’s interesting is that Stewart finds Twitter limiting to express himself (well he is a Shakespearian actor after all!) yet he seems to almost be doing a commercial for Apple. It’s funny to hear that he avoids videogames for fear of not being able to quit. Stewart will be appearing on PBS in both Macbeth and Hamlet in April, and this interview was from Frontline.

This is the prologue to the original opening of Star Trek as it was shown in Japan. The funny thing about this version is that the Japanese voice actor for Spock seems to be slightly more emotional in tone than Nimoy (although I could be reading into this). And in case you were wondering what McCoy sounds like here is another clip:

Jerry Robinson is best known as the comic book artist who helped to put Batman on the map along with Bob Kane — and credit for creating the Joker belongs to him. However sadly his other work is overlooked and that’s why I’m glad that Dark Horse is doing a proper reprint of Jet Scott. This wonderful science fiction themed newspaper strip debuted on September 28, 1953 in The New York Herald-Tribune.

Now by science fiction you shouldn’t get the idea that is space opera — instead the strip takes place in the near future. In fact I’d have to say that Jet Scott was a forerunner for what you’d later see in Jonny Quest or a James Bond film. In addition to the story by Sheldon Stark what’s remarkable about this comic is just how good Robinson’s draftsmanship was on a daily basis:

Here’s a Sunday color reprint I found of the strip (I’m not sure if its in the book) but it should give you a good flavor for Jerry Robinson’s artwork:

Volume 1 of this series comes out this Wednesday, February 10th, 2010.

I was pleasantly surprised to come across this Alfin Statue from Crusher Joe because I was convinced that I must be one of a handful of anime fanboys who still remember that amazing film. Yet sadly while most fans today know about Gundam or Yamato very few fans even know about Crusher Joe (クラッシャージョウ). So here’s why the film was important and worth getting your hands on:

1983 was an amazing year for anime fans: Up until that point anime had done well on television and a film would come out here and there, but that year three blockbuster feature length science fiction films came out which changed the entire industry. That year Final Yamato came out which was the last major chapter of a franchise that dominated the 70s. But two films represented something new: One one hand you had Genma Taisen which told the dark tale of demons who were set to conquer Earth — in many ways this film was the forerunner of shows like Bleach and Death Note. Yet the film that was the most fun of three that year was Crusher Joe.

Above: The opening scene from Crusher Joe — keep in mind that all of those spaceship were drawn by hand!

Up until that point anime felt very stiff: However Crusher Joe had the characters acting instead of reacting. While Final Yamato and Genma Taisen had a dark palette and dark themes Crusher Joe really reflected the era by combining light humor within a space opera plot line. Yet despite the humor in the film the characters seemed more real as you got to see the characters hanging out in bars and getting drunk or watch a futuristic version of a drive-in-movie. And the mecha in the film was A+ having been designed by Studio Nue.

Above: A model kit commercial for Crusher Joe — the film had some amazing mecha.

Joe went on to win the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1983 in addition to putting Sunrise International on the map. After this film Sunrise would go on to dominate the anime industry with hits like Mobile Suit Gundam, Dirty Pair, Patlabor, Inuyasha, Cowboy Bebop, Big O, Sgt. Frog, Code Geass and countless others. And while I realize that the animation of Joe may look low budget by the standards of today you can still see the influence of the film on every Sunrise production that has come out ever since.

When I came across the above photo I was blown away: I’ve seen Metropolis and looked at so many stills — yet I never came across a image that represented so well the amazing amount of work that went into this film. So I set on a quest to locate other behind-the-scenes glimpses of the work that Fritz Lang did before he fled Germany in 1933:

This photo shows Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou in their Berlin apartment, 1923 or 1924. The two worked together a great deal during the 20s and wrote the script for Metropolis together. However they separated in 1931 and divorced in 1933 as Hitler came to power. Thea joined the Nazi party and continued writing scripts during the war — however Lang’s mother was Jewish and thus he was lucky enough to flee Germany.

This amazing photo shows Lang on the set of the flooded city of Metropolis.

Actress Brigitte Helm played Maria and the robot in Metropolis — like Lang she left Germany in 1935 and moved to Switzerland where she lived until the age of 88 in 1996. She retired from filmmaking but left behind an amazing legacy from the silent film era.

This is an Architectural drawing of Metropolis by the artist Erich Kettelhut (1893-1979). Kettelhut got his start as a stage-set painter and worked on quite a few of the expressionist silent films of the 20s including earlier collaborations with Lang on Dr. Mabuse der Spieler (1921) and Die Nibelungen (1924).

This drawing by Kettelhut was actually used as part of the opening sequence of Metropolis. It was created with a combination of dawring, oil pant and gouache on cardboard.

This was a preproduction sketch by Kettelhut which showed the city of Metropolis — this was the second sketch he did and you can see how he slowly evolved from a cityscape that looked like a Manhattan skyline to something had more of a science fiction flavor.

And here are carpenters at work making those preproduction drawings come to life. If you look at the center of the drawing you can see the left side of the central building of Metropolis which would inspire the film Blade Runner over fifty years later.

Frau Im Mond (Woman in the Moon) from 1929 was years ahead of its time in showing a journey to the moon. This photo shows them filming on the set of the moon which features a giant backdrop painting of a lunar landscape.

This is the model of the rocket used in Frau Im Mond which shows the amazing amount of detail that Lang would put into his films. In fact the rocket scientist Hermann Oberth was a technical advisor to Lang on the film which became very popular with Wernher von Braun’s circle. After World War II Oberth went to work for Wernher von Braun doing work for NASA and while he retired in 1962 he did witness the first moon launch of the Apollo 11.

This photo shows the master at work — on the far left is Fritz Lang instructing the cameraman on the set of Frau Im Mond. When Lang moved to America he did a great deal of work in Hollywood including many films that were westerns and film noir, but sadly he never returned to making science fiction films.

My special thanks to ectomo.com, projectrho.com, leninimports.com, and goldenagecomicbookstories.blogspot.com.

The irony of this Back to the Future Lights and Sound Mark I Delorean is that while it doesn’t have the ability to travel into the future just looking at the photo takes me back to 1985. And the strange thing about the 80s was that there was a very self aware consciousness that the decade had its own unique style and look — which I think that may be the real reason why they picked the DeLorean DMC-12 (1981–1982) as their time machine of choice. Of course to quote Dr. Emmett Brown in the film his reason was “The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style? “

For all of the advances with computer animation there’s something still charming about good old fashioned stop motion animation. This Honda advert from the year 2000 does a nice job of using candy to animate the typography for the ULTRA Step WGN. Although it should be noted that the candy in this spot isn’t mere decoration — it’s being used to emphasize both the range of colors the auto comes in and the fact that it’s a kid friendly mode of transportation.

My first reaction when looking at this Ralph McQuarrie Darth Vader Concept Helmet collectable was “this makes him look even more evil than the original”. In terms of the design I think the reason is that this early take on Darth Vader is much more angular and lean-and-mean — also the infamous mask has a slightly anime feel to it, and I think that’s because you can see the dark samurai side of McQuarrie’s influence:

No if you’re one of those lucky fanboys (or fangurls!) who likes to purchase these goodies a limited edition of the helmet will go sale this Monday, February 8th at 9am PDT: efxcollectibles.com is selling 250 of them and a down payment of $250 is required (and they even offer a payment plan too!). Here is the original iconic sketch and pre-production painting from Ralph McQuarrie:

I think the genius of George Lucas was to surround himself with some very talented folks: You can see this on the screen with an amazing actor like Sir Alec Guinness, but to me using an amazing artist like McQuarrie shows that Lucas knew how to pick his talent behind the scenes. What I also like about Lucas was that he wasn’t afraid to show all the work that went into the film, and quite a bit of the preproduction artwork was seen by the public at the time:

Found via GeekToMe.

It’s someone surreal to hear the Snuggle bear (renamed ファーファ Fāfa) speak Japanese from this 1988 advert. Introduced in 1983 there was always something very creepy about this fabric softener mascot: I think it indirectly reminded many of us of the many horror films that featured puppets gone back like Talking Tina from the Twilight Zone and later Chucky from the 1988 film Child’s Play. Although anime fans should note that the original voice of the Snuggle bear was none other than Corinne Orr who provided the voice Trixie in Speed Racer and Nova in the third seson of Star Blazers.

Recently while a good friend was telling me about the advantages of seeing Avatar in 3D IMAX over just plain 3D I couldn’t help but mention how much I hated “the plot” of the film. My friend then challenged me that while the twists-and-turns of the Na’vi may have been overly predictable that in fact the first Star Wars film was just as telegraphed.

And here’s why that just isn’t true: When George Lucas made Star Wars back in the 70s it was a highly unusual film in that it was so optimistic. Prior to that point most films of the late 60s and early 70s were in fact very cynical at heart as they reflected a jaded cultural reaction to Vietnam and Watergate. When you look at the science fiction films from that era they all have a touch of horror to them from Planet of the Apes in 1968 to Soylent Green in 1973. In fact even Logan’s Run which has a happy ending features a world where everyone above the age of 30 is killed. So the optimism of good-winning-over-evil was actually a breath of fresh air in 1977.

In fact the other thing I like about Lucas as a director is that in those early days he didn’t repeat himself: His first film THX 1138 (1971) was very different than Star Wars even though it as a science fiction film. And then you have American Graffiti (1973) which takes place in the 50s where you feel like you’re “just hanging out with the characters”: It’s an amazing film which is quite underrated because everyone still remembers Happy Days which owed so much to it. So when you think about the fact that the same George Lucas would next go on to make Star Wars it makes your mind spin at just how different that film was from anything that Lucas had done before.

Now to be fair to James Cameron Avatar is perhaps the 11th film that he’s directed since 1978 so he’s entitled to repeat himself after making films for over thirty years. However having watched so many of those films you got the feeling watching Avatar that you had seen most of it before. It’s not even a question of the plot of the evil corporation in outer space up to no good — but even the added little touches like having Sigourney Weaver awakening from suspended animation felt like they were directly recycled directly from Aliens. And then the never ending chase scene at the end of the film reminded me a bit too much of Titanic or Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

I also think that even as a producer Lucas has touched on a wider range of work. His portfolio includes everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Of course not everything that he touches is perfect, for example Howard the Duck was a complete disaster. However even the ability to do something different (even if it’s terrible) is a sign of originality to me. On the other hand Cameron plays it very safe — so his high budgets become a limitation in terms of the chances that he might otherwise take. So for me Lucas is more original than Cameron, neither of whom care much about the opinions of a mere fanboy.

Apple fanboys always love Jobs, however engineering fanboys will always love Woz. In this video Steve Wozniak recounts his creative process of bringing colors to personal computers. While I love the story what’s interesting to be as a videogame fanboy is hearing how he and Jobs were working on designing games at Atari. What’s fascinating is that Woz describes creating the games not as a software programming exercise but as a hardware project!

One of the things that I think has always made Apple different is that it’s both a hardware and a software company at heart: This is very different than Google or Microsoft whose DNA is pure software or the likes of Intel or a Dell which are true hardware operations. It’s that synthesis of the two sides that has been at the core of Apple all of these years from the original Apple II to the roll out of the iPad. In this way I think the only company that may be seen as a true peer of Apple might be Nintendo or Palm back in the day.

I should also note that today we give Apple and Microsoft a great deal of credit for the PC revolution — however my thinking is that we shouldn’t forget about the role that early companies like Atari, Commodore and yes even Tandy played in making the industry real. Back then a major selling point of many of the home computers was that they could also play games: With the introduction of the IBM PC and the popularity of VisiCalc productivity made the industry a tad more respectful although a slightly duller place to be. With Microsoft pushing the Xbox and the iPhone becoming a game platform we’re in fact seeing the industry return to their roots.