My favorite Paul Newman film is The Hustler from 1961, his acting in that role still brings that film to life with a raw power that you don’t see often today (of course a good screen play and the right director help too). Of course many fanboys and fangurls know Newman for so many of the other films that he brought to life — every role from a prisoner in Cool Hand Luke (1967) to a cowboy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Paul Leonard Newman we salute you:
“Paul Newman, who died yesterday at 83 of cancer, was a beautiful man who never seemed to notice his own beauty. He was at his worst when the camera did.
But far more often, he was at his best when he was too busy thinking to care about the looks he’d been given. He stood for an American archetype: he was the shrewd guy. Practical, tough, urban. He figured angles, calculated odds, charted courses, deployed distractions, maneuvered brilliantly. He wasn’t violent, he wasn’t a leader, he wasn’t Mr. Cool with the babes, he had limited gifts for comedy and highly-articulate, dialogue-driven set pieces. But nobody played shrewd better than Paul Newman. He became great playing shrewd.
You could see it in his eyes, and he probably didn’t care much whether they were blue or not. You’d see them narrow as he lapsed into concentration, then come alive again as they read cues, divined patterns, perceived dynamics, sniffed weaknesses. He figured it out with a gusto he sold to audiences brilliantly and you — with him — enjoyed his triumphant cerebration.”
Below: The famous scene from The Hustler between Eddie Falson (Paul Newman) and Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason):
History doesn’t repeat but sometimes it rhymes: The last time there was a total financial meltdown it was a good era for fanboys, in fact the 1930s was pretty much the birthplace of modern fandom itself. Here are my top ten examples why the last Great Depression was fanboy friendly:
Superman, Issue #1 (1938): The entire genre of caped superheroes can be traced to this comic book. The good and bad side of economic chaos is that it can make you look for a hero to save the day.
It’s amazing to think that Godzilla is over 50 years old, I wonder what fanboys will think of him when he hits 100 in the year 2054? Will fanboys cherish him as we do King Kong today or will they just see a silly rubber suit? Shown above is a package design from a model kit, my guess is that it’s from the 1960s.
It’s amazing when you think that the original Battlestar Galactica was just a made-for-TV-movie yet to be fair they put a ton of work into the production making sure that the mecha had that Star Wars feeling yet was unique enough. The Viper was one of the best designs of the show and now you can go old school with this model kit:
“Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the original Battlestar Galactica, this model kit has been updated for a new generation of fans. Newly tooled details, clear parts (if you’re cool enough to cram in our own lighting circuits), and an expanded decal sheet are just some of the bonuses Revell has packed into this kit. Time to relive the good old days – when your roommates went out on “dates” and you stayed home working on a model kit. They never knew how much fun they were missing.”
On a related note here’s a vintage commercial which shows you how to properly play with your Galactica toys (hint: using the garage as a space station is a great idea):
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 25, 2008 in Star Wars
My image of fanboy hell is listening to a second rate orchestra poorly play every known science fiction theme song from the 30’s to the 70’s — and Geoff Love made this horrific vision come true. But what I do love about this album is that the packaging is designed not to get the publisher sued, it’s ever so close to Star Wars but makes it a point of getting “creative” with the subject matter. The first thing you’ll notice is that they seem to take the actors from the TV show Buck Rogers and put them in place of Luke and Princess Leia:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 25, 2008 in Star Wars
I could never quite stand the rainbow palette that colored the ever so cute world of My Little Pony but seeing this fan modified horsie switch to the dark side makes me ever so happy inside!
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 24, 2008 in Animation
Above: The animated film Flighty directed by Leigh Hodgkinson.
I’ve seen a website here or there try to be the “YouTube of Animation” but frankly the efforts always fall short. So I have to admit that I have my doubts about the potential success of new site 4mations which was just launch this week by Channel 4 in England.
While the site features some very good content it’s a mixed bag, and the amount of animation only goes so deep. I also found the interface a bit clunky in terms of ease of use, for example the mechanism to go from one page to the next is hidden at the bottom of each screen. However on the plus side there will be a competition associated with the site so it may encourage some community. And the one thing i did like is that they did include an embed function to allow bloggers like myself to share the animations with others. Although my gut feeling is that I’d rather see organizations like Channel 4 team up with existing sits like YouTube rather than reinventing the wheel.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 24, 2008 in Videogames
This amazingly cool rubber band gun is based on the Konami PlayStation3 videogame Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. The gun is made out of stainless steel and includes a “precision laser pointer” for nailing your target. The gun was designed by a Japanese fan nd if you read Japanese you can find out more about it here.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 24, 2008 in Animation
Rrrrrrrr! I just love this vintage 70s animated sequence from Sesame Street, when you combine the super funky music with the groovy automobile theme it looks like something that might inspire a young Quentin Tarantino to grow up and direct Death Proof.
“Send normal lawn ornaments into orbit with artist Fred Conlon’s gnome-be-gone to the moon that, like his other sculptures, will bring just the right amount of mischief and mayhem to your yard. Handmade in Utah.”
“About half the stars in our celestial neighborhood may have traveled great distances through the Milky Way, according to a new study, which suggests our sun may be one of them. People have generally assumed that once a star forms inside a galactic disk, it stays in a more or less fixed orbit around the center of its galaxy, said lead study author Rok Roškar, a graduate student in astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 23, 2008 in Star Trek
Rod Roddneberry (the son of Gene Roddenberry) has been working on a documentary featuring the work of his dad relating to Star Trek for a few years now — at long last a trailer for the film is out and it looks pretty promising: Trek Nation.
One of the highlights of my fanboy Summer was exploring various Japanese ice cream flavors. My two favorites were the Nigamiga Oishii Maccha Bar (shown above) and the Uma-Kohcha Milk Bar (shown below). The Maccha Bar had a nice full green tea flavor while the Uma-Kohcha mostly tasted like cream with just a hint a tea flavor. Both treats are under the White Rose label and imported by JFC International in San Francisco.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 22, 2008 in Star Trek
If you’re a Star Trek fanboy (or fangurl) you owe a great deal to Joan Winston — she was one of a handful of people that invented the modern science fiction convention as we know it. Before 1972 there had been science fiction conventions going bak to the 30s, but these affairs were always focused on literary science fiction as the main show. In the 70s thanks to Star Trek this changed, and with it the audience for science fiction (and thus fandom) came in from the fringe to being a larger subculture that is now part of the mainstream of American society.
I was too young to get to those original Star Trek cons in the 70s (although I did talk my parents into a visit to the Star Trek Trading Post before it closed) but those cons served as a role model for the first generation of anime fans to take the bold leap into the larger world of conventions. In fact many of Joan Winston’s friends at the Lunarians played a critical role in allowing the first anime room at a science fiction convention in 1983.
“It was January 1972, and the first Star Trek convention was under way in a rented ballroom at the Statler Hilton in Manhattan. The organizers had expected a crowd of about 500. In the end, more than 3,000 fans turned up, so many that by the final day of the event registrars were issuing ID cards made from torn scraps of wrapping paper. For fans of the series, the convention marked the moment when a diaspora became a nation.
And it made a subculture celebrity of Joan Winston, who played a leading role in creating the event and went on to achieve a second-order fame as one of world’s most avid “Star Trek” fans. She died of Alzheimer’s disease on Sept. 11 at age 77, her cousin Steven Rosenfeld said. She lived in Manhattan.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 21, 2008 in Animation
It seems these days that everyone is obsessed with multi-million 3D animated epics, but I think what people forget is that animated cinema is about storytelling — and that it doesn’t require an epic production to touch your heart. To me Don Hertzfeldt serves an inspiration of the DIY work ethic in animation which I’d urge any of you with an interest in the industry to follow. Shown above is his first film Ah, L’Amour which was made in 1995 when he was just 19 year old. Below is his film Rejected which would earn Don Hertzfeldt a nomination for an Academy Award in 2001:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 20, 2008 in Animation
Ready to form Voltron! Shown above are the Voltron Lion Force Bookends which are currently in pre-production but available for pre-order. This limited edition goodie (only 1000 to be produced for die hard Voltron fanboys) features Voltron on the left and King Zarkon’s Robeast on the left — and my guess is that your manga collection is stuck in the middle of these well beloved 80s Anime warriors.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 20, 2008 in Comic Books
To be fair to Universal I’m never liked the idea of Tintin as a 3D animated film, and even then I’d trust Pixar to get that right but I’m not sure about Spielberg and Peter Jackson:
“Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson don’t hear “no” very often. But after they submitted a final budget of $130 million for their 3-D animated movie “Tintin,” based on the Belgian comic strip, to Universal Pictures, the studio balked. The decision has left the two powerful filmmakers scrambling to find another financial partner.
When even Spielberg and “The Lord of the Rings” director Jackson, who have made some of the biggest blockbusters in history, can’t get their movie made, you know something is up in Hollywood. Universal’s refusal to finance “Tintin” underscores how in today’s tough economic climate, bottom-line concerns trump once-inviolable relationships between studios and talent.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 20, 2008 in Science
Look at this damn rock shown above, the newly named Haumea isn’t even round! Yet she’s lumped in there with Pluto which has been sadly demoted from being a planet. Just to rub it in the mythological references for Haumea (Hawaiian goddess of childbirth and fertility) that I couldn’t find any authentic folk art drawings of her — yet she’s placed up there next to Pluto who sports his own Disney mascot: I tell you the International Astronomical Union have no respect:
“After years of dispute, the last unnamed dwarf planet in the solar system has finally gotten a name. It will be called Haumea, after the goddess of childbirth and fertility in Hawaiian mythology. The International Astronomical Union, which announced the new moniker on Wednesday, has struggled with naming the object, because two teams have laid claim to its discovery.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 19, 2008 in Videogames
I’ve always believed that if something is in a companies DNA that there isn’t any reason they can’t do that something well. In this case Apple use to be a major player in the gaming market — now I’ll grant you that was in the days of the Apple ][, but then again Steven Jobs was running the company at that point. Well it seems that the mainstream media is picking up on this too, here’s an article from MSNBC:
“Certainly Jobs’ announcement raised more questions than it answered. Should gaming behemoths Sony and Nintendo be shaking in their boots, like, for reals? If so, is Nintendo’s DS or Sony’s PSP more vulnerable to this new challenger? While answers to these questions sit perched on a distant hill somewhere, there is one thing that most involved in the games business do know – the iPhone is revolutionizing mobile gaming.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 19, 2008 in Star Trek
In this latest video below William Shatner pretty much calls J.J. Abrams a liar (in a kissy kind of Hollywood way). Now is the time to bring back Shat! Seriously how can you have Nimoy but not Shatner? Frankly if it weren’t for Shat you wouldn’t have 50 million fanboys waiting in line to see the next film in the first place. Forty years from now will Lost inspire a four spin off shows and a dozen movies? No I don’t think so Mr. hot shot director…
![the apple ][](http://www.fanboy.com/archive-images/apple2.jpg)
