Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 13, 2012 in Animation
If you’re lucky enough to live near NYC this Thursday Joe Strike will be interviewing animation legend Fred Seibert at MoCCA: “After putting MTV on the map with a series of unforgettable, no-two-alike animated ID spots, he took over the creatively exhausted Hanna-Barbera studio and engineered a turnaround that brought some of the country’s most innovative young animators to its doors. Their creations – The Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo and others – put Cartoon Network on the map. Moving onto an association with Nickelodeon, Fred midwifed second batch of creator-driven cartoons including Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, Fanboy and Chum Chum and The Fairly Oddparents; Frederator Studios’ latest series, the surreal Adventure Time with Finn and Jake is a major Cartoon Network success.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 17, 2012 in Animation
It’s hard to believe but twenty years ago The Real World debuted on MTV and slowly the cable channel which was beloved by a generation went from from showing creative music videos to bland reality television. But before that there was a golden age of a cable channel which dared to be a bit artsy and take some chances. Even though the channel started out with small budgets from the early days they always had animated bumper spots that were just as entertaining as the music videos which were showcased. Here are a small selection of those spots which made a generation tell tell their parents that “I Want My MTV”: Read more…
If you’re not quite sure what you just saw — and I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t — it’s a trailer for Gucci’s upcoming fragrance, Gucci Guilty. I’m not even sure a fragrance would even need a trailer, but regardless of how you feel about Frank Miller, or Gucci for that matter, you have to admit that its stunning. From what I can tell, a full version is in the works which should debut at MTV’s Video Music Awards later this month. Keep your eye on the YouTube channel for more updates and behind-the-scenes content.
I was blown away to see that MTV 80s icons Blondie, Joan Jett and Cyndi Lauper have all been turned into Barbie dolls! Of course back in the 80s the animated TV series Jem gave Barbie a run for her money — while Barbie struck back with Barbie and the Rockers it was never quite cool as Jem. Too bad the licensing folks Mattel didn’t approach these 80s rock legends a bit sooner! Here’s Debbie Harry as Blondie doll which comes out in December: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 30, 2009 in Television
You can tell that this 1988 promotional spot for Florida TV station WBFS was done on a low budget, but it’s impressive that it features the voice of Pee-wee Herman who had defiantly gone big time at that point. I also love the added touches of the MTV graphics and the matching Madonna soundtrack. It’s funny to think back to a previous era when you’d enter a contest by sending an old school analog letter instead of an email or tweet…
With the passing of Michael Jackson everyone is focused on title “the king of pop” but to me his contribution was much more important in another area: The fine art of making music videos. This is important to me as I came of age in the 80s and while my taste in music was more on the new wave side than pop or R&B I was (and still am) bery much a hardcore fan of music videos. Yet even if you weren’t a Michael Jackson fan during that era if you were into music videos you couldn’t avoid his domination of the medium. In fact I think it would be fair to say that Jackson was one of the artists that made a network like MTV possible. Read more…
“MTV Networks is expected to announce on Thursday a deal to use songs by The Beatles in its popular “Rock Band” video game series, marking the band’s first major plunge into the digital music world. The Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd and Viacom Inc’s MTV Networks have been in talks for months. They issued media invitations to a teleconference on “a global music project” on Thursday, but did not give more details.”
