“The Hello Kitty USB-powered keyboard cleaner gets all the juice it needs from one of your lonely USB ports, and features two separate cleaning heads to get all the nitty gritty out from between your QWERTY keys. Furthermore, the cleaning utensil resides nicely on the back (photo after the jump) of an included Hello Kitty figurine when it’s not surveying the deep, dark crevice between the left and right bracket keys, but we highly doubt the bristles are machine washable. Per usual, we’ve no idea how much toy sellers plan on charging for this somewhat useful (but entirely de trop) keyboard sweeper, but we’re confident that the hardcore fans out there will find a way as they always do.”
“Dino De Laurentiis confirmed to Variety that he is planning a remake of the classic campy 1960s space opera Barbarella, which Peter Weber (Hannibal Rising) will direct. De Laurentiis describes the new film as “female James Bond in outer space.” The movie isn’t green-lighted yet. The original 1968 Barbarella, directed by Roger Vadim and based on a French comic book, made a star of a young Jane Fonda. ”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 4, 2007 in Comic Books
OK, so everyone is so sick of all the Civil War & 52 stuff. Don’t get me wrong I like both of them for different reasons I’ll start with 52 from DC. For those of you who don’t know here’s a quick background on 52 the huge mini-series. Years ago there was a great story called “Crisis on Infinite Earth’s” since at the time DC was still doing Silver Age & Modern stories together. They explained this by having multiple earth’s such as earth x, earth prime, earth 2, etc. Heroes from the JSA were in the golden age earth where world war 2 never seemed to end, but the JLA were on the modern day earth but they used to cross the borders of time and space all the time to do stories.
The problem was having all these earths we had all different versions of the heroes we had our Superman, we had classic Superman who was older with gray hair around the temples…well you get the point. So DC does this incredible story which blew up the whole universe and re-wrote history so only one of each hero or so we thought. The one glitch was that classic Superman & Lois Lane along with Superboy & Alexander Luthor all of different worlds, they were sealed in a pocket universe. Well Superboy being a little nuts now wanted out and talked Superman into helping bust out of their pocket prison, see at this point his Lois is very sick and close to the end of her life.
Well with Alexanders help they make a mad scientist machine that will bring back their earth which they think will fix everything…WRONG! Well I don’t want to tell everything go buy the story if you didn’t read it already. Well at the end of “Infinite Crisis” powers get jumbled heroes go missing such as Superman and others, well 52 is the story of the missing year. See now the title makes sense, huh? 52 is still going on but all the other titles never stopped they just jumped a year into the future. So 52 is a mini series that comes out every single week to try to explain what happened in that missing year.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 4, 2007 in Japanese TV
This new episode of “Tensai! Shimura Dobutsu-en” (aka Genius! Shimura Zoo) features baby Pandas yet again! Sadly Becky isn’t a host on this show, but it’s still ever-so-cute to watch:
“A man dressed as Chewbacca was arrested after police said the street performer head-butted a tour guide operator in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Frederick Evan Young, 44, of Los Angeles, California, was booked Thursday for investigation of misdemeanor battery, police Lt. Paul Vernon said. Police said the 6-foot-4 street performer was seen arguing Thursday afternoon with a tour guide who had expressed concern that the Star Wars wookie impersonator was “harassing and touching tourists” in violation of city law.”
…my favorite quote from this story was “You can’t tell this wookie what to do!” You have to admire an actor that stays in character!
I was just reading at ToyNews International that NECA toys has a released a new box set of Reservoir Dogs figurines, and of course being a Tarantino fan the story caught my fanboy eye right away! However went I went to take a look at the photo of the dogs (Mr. Brown, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Pink, Mr. Orange and Mr. White! ) I found myself being a bit let down. They seem to look so lifeless, yes they used the iconic poses from the opening titles of the film but alas the dogs seemed be stiff looking.
But then I realized why: Reservoir Dogs isn’t a comic book film with characters decked out in a caped costume, it’s classic film noir and more about what the characters do than how they look. If you think back to the film you think of the ear cutting scene or someone being thrown in the trunk of a car – or even character actors like Chris Penn as ‘Nice Guy Eddie’ or my favorite scene stealer Lawrence Tierney as Joe.
So I think NECA would have ben better off recreating scenes from the film even if they were a bit more silly looking. To me it’s about how the toy captures the spirit of a film, a classic example would be the Corgi car based on the James Bond film that had an ejector seat. The toy allows a child (or someone who is a child at heart) to relive what they enjoyed about the film.
But of course if your a true collector fanboy you have to own it because you are also a compleatest at heart (compleatest: the fanboy version of obsessive compulsive disorder) so if you must own everything Reservoir Dogs you can order the mini-statues from CornerStoreComics.com.
The funny thing is that in all of the coverage of the new giant Gundam robot I just assumed that you purchased it pre-assembled. But I guess half of the fun of owning a giant robot is knowing that you built it yourself!
Steamboat Willy has gone streampunk! Disney has licensed several of their characters for use as USB Flash Memory Drives. Buffalo Technology will put these devices on sale next month, but only as a limited edition. They also have Winnie the Pooh too!
“A day after the announcement that DreamWorks Animation and Aardman Studios would be ending their partnership, Aardman spokesperson Aaron Sheriff has stated that, “There is a project on the table right now” for Wallace and Gromit, the studio’s most famous stars. The characters will be done in Aardman’s trademark claymation rather than the CGI used for the recent Flushed Away.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 1, 2007 in Comic Books
The website for legendary comic book artist Will Eisener has been relaunched, and I have to say that it’s well worth a visit if you’re a true fanboy like myself! Eisner created the classic series ‘The Spirit’ which is being turned into both a new comic book series and movie. The revamped website includes a gallery and ‘the Eisnerpedia’ which is a wiki on all things Will Eisner.
“The cloak worn by Sir Alec Guinness in Star Wars, along with Madonna’s dresses from Evita and several of James Bond’s suits are to go under the hammer.Costumes from productions including the Indiana Jones films, Titanic and Doctor Who will also be auctioned on 6 March. Some 350 lots are being sold by London-based costume maker Angels. Bonhams auctioneers said the cloak was expected to surpass its £50,000 reserve price. Guinness, who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, died in 2000.”
“As many as nine suspicious packages found throughout the Boston area were part of a marketing campaign for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim program, “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” according to Turner Broadcasting. A statement from the company indicates that it is in talks with law enforcement officials to diffuse the situation.
The ‘packages’ in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger,” said the statement from Shirley Powell, senior vice president of corporate communications for Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
“They are part of an outdoor marketing campaign in 10 cities in support of Adult Swim’s animated television show ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force.’ They have been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco and Philadelphia. Parent company Turner Broadcasting is in contact with local and federal law enforcement on the exact locations of the billboards. We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger”.”
There’s no need to fear, Underdog action figures are here! BigBadToyStore.com has a new line of figures based upon the classic Underdog show created by Mezco. Included are classic characters Polly Purebread, Underdog, Simon Barsinister and of course Riff Raff.
“We don’t use any old hubs to bolster our USB connectivity. Good grief, no! We use ones shaped liked Doctor Who’s Tardis. Why? Well, for starters we love Doctor Who. But more than that we love the Tardis. This ingenious product of Time Lord technology is surely one of the most iconic objects in sci-fi history.”
“Some of the video game industry’s smartest minds thought that couch potatoes wanted richer graphics and more challenging virtual worlds. It turns out that a lot of potatoes simply wanted to get off the couch. That may be the best explanation for the growing popularity of the Nintendo Wii, the new video game system that has players jumping, punching and swinging, giving them an aerobic workout right in front of their television sets.
The Wii, which uses an innovative wireless controller to translate the players’ motions onto the screen, has upset the order of the video game world. In electronics stores and elsewhere, there are growing signs that the Wii has taken the lead in buzz and sales over another new console, the Sony PlayStation 3, which offers new superlatives in processing power and graphics.
The competitive picture became clearer on Tuesday, when Sony reported disappointing profits that industry analysts attributed largely to the expensive and shaky rollout of the PlayStation 3 and lukewarm demand for the complex machines. By contrast, Nintendo said last week that its own third-quarter sales were up 40 percent from a year earlier, buoyed by Wii sales.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 31, 2007 in Animation
Can you imagine the outcry today if they used animated cartoons to sell beer? In the golden age of television the sponsor was king as seen in this 1960 commercial for Carling Black label beer:
NECA is introducing a new series of Pee-Wee Herman figures. Included are figurines based on Cowboy Curtis, Ms Yvonne and of course Pee-Wee Herman. You can pre-order these figures now at BigBadToyStore.com.
“Stephen Colbert is the Emmy Award-winning host of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report . He will be at NYCC on behalf of Oni Press in support of his new 5-issue comic book miniseries, Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen , which will arrive in stores on March ’07. The series is written by John Layman and Tom Peyer with Jim Massey and illustrated by Scott Chantler with others. It is a full color, 32-page comic book that will retail for $3.99. Colbert will be autographing on Friday, February 23 at 4:30pm.”
