Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 31, 2009 in Star Wars
I wasn’t aware of this — but it seems that back 1989 at Tokyo Disneyland they had a Star Wars themed attraction called Mickey’s Space Fantasy. After some research I found out that the ride featured in this old advert is in fact Star Tours which was advertised as “The Ultimate Star Wars Adventure!” which was the direct result of Lucas working with Disney back in the 80s on several projects. But best of all, I found out that the ride is still running to this very day…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 31, 2009 in Star Trek
Kirk is the original, but I have to say that Sisko is pretty much the coolest commander that I’ve come across in every incarnation of Star Trek. Kirk is a bit of a hot head, Jean Luc Picard is just too damn mellow, Janeway was generic and Jonathan Archer was just a tad too lovable: And that leaves us with Benjamin Sisko! Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 30, 2009 in Videogames
Prototype is an interesting looking game which is set in NYC (it’s due out for the holiday season on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC) and what I’m seeing so far looks pretty amazing. The plot sort of reminds me of 28 Days Later with a slight bit of Men in Black: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 30, 2009 in Animation
Sadly not many animation fans know who he was, but today is the the 96th birthday of legendary Disney animator Marc Davis who was born on this day in 1913 (and passed away in 2000). Disney had a core of talented animators who were known as “Disney’s Nine Old Men” and Davis was a member of that dream team. His did character design work and animation on Thumper from Bambi (1942), Tinker Bell in Peter Pan (1953) and my favorite Cruella De Vil of 101 Dalmatians (1961). He was also involved in creating many characters for Disneyland rides including working on the costume design for the Pirates of the Caribbean. Here’s an amazing video profile of Marc from the Disney Family Album which will inspire any fanboy: Read more…
Just released this past week in Japan is an Ultraman themed soda which comes in two flavors and 12 different can designs (the flavor shown in the video is cider). But just I love the way this fanboy documented his purchase — not too dissimilar than a tech fanboy doing an unboxing video. By the way if you’re looking for an amazing collection of all things Ultraman check out this Flickr group.Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 28, 2009 in Animation
Not to date myself, but I grew up watching Lupin III episodes on VHS from Japan — my all time favorite episodes of the show were the ones directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki as we all known known is an animation genius, but when you put that together with Lupin there was a real sort of magic. Lupin III started life as a manga and the first episodes date back to the 60s, but when Miyazaki got his hands on the show it went from being a manga adaption to a place in television history. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 28, 2009 in Japanese TV
Shown above is a segment from the March 25th episode of AKBINGO! a variety show which features the J-Pop group AKB48 which includes some 46 divas (well they started with 48 young ladies but that was several years ago) divided into three teams. The group is unusual in that once a week they preform at their own theater which is located in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. Read more…
I’ve seen so many tin toy robot sin my day so it’s a nice break to see a retro plaything that’s based on War of the Worlds for a change. This Martian Invader tin wind-up toy is available from zerotoys.com and harkens back to yesteryear with a fanboy affordable price of $13.95. Found via nerdapproved.com.
This sneak preview of the upcoming Family Guy episode which features the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation looks pretty good. The episode airs Sunday night on Fox…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 27, 2009 in Animation
How can’t you be gonzo for the Great Gonzo? Shown above is a new Great Gonzo puppet replica based on the glory days of the Muppet Show. What I love about this Jim Henson creation is that Gonzo is an ugly creature, but yet it hard not to love him. He’s very proud just to be himself — and what’s interesting is that unlike the Muppets he’s not based on any known animal, so he’s a true freak. The other endearing quality about Gonzo is that he represents the eternal optimist in all of us: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 26, 2009 in Comic Books
Shown above is a nice gory detail from a cover illustration by Rob Guillory for the comic book Chew #1 which will be released on June by Image. But what makes this cover work so well for me is the sense of humor, which you only notice when your eye moves off this scene of carnage: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 26, 2009 in Animation
It’s amazing to me that Hollywood can do such a good job adapting American comic books to live action films, but when it comes to manga or anime they don’t always seem to know what they’re doing. A good case in point is this latest trailer for Dragonball Evolution which falls flat — and if the trailer doesn’t get you excited you know you’re in trouble! Fox is convinced that this film will indoctrinate a new generation of Dragonball fans, but it may have the opposite effect…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 26, 2009 in Science
You know it’s not quite as cool as a space station that you’d see in 2001: A Space Odyssey but on the whole now that the ISS is 80% done it doesn’t look too shabby! This footage was shot by the space shuttle before it heads home. Here’s an amazing photo from a space walk earlier in the mission: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 26, 2009 in Comic Books
It’s going to be hard to top Watchmen for movies based on comic books this year, but that said X-Men Origins: Wolverine isn’t looking too shabby. The film hits theaters on May 1st and if you’d like to decorate your desktop in anticipation here’s some wallpaper to get you started: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 25, 2009 in Videogames
To celebrate the 31st Anniversary of Space Invaders Taito is shipping this very cute replica of an original tabletop Space Invaders game. This cute collectable allows you play an actual game and its even is coin operated like the original — except for the fact that you’ll need Japanese coins to make it work.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 25, 2009 in Animation
This is a trailer for an potential upcoming anime series called Cat Shit One by studio anima. First off what makes this look so different is that it’s interesting to see a Japanese studio do their take on what CGI should look like — we’ve seen Pixar set the pace for years, but this series clearly has its own sensibilities. Which brings me to the next point: The subject matter of this show is war with the twist of featuring cute woodland creatures. The last time anyone has tried anything like this was the animated film Watership Down which while being an amazing film was never a huge commercial success. Read more…
Being on Twitter every day I’m always reminded of the web 2.0 mantra that software should always be in beta — so being creative I started to wonder “why not take this to the next level and turn a bug into a feature?” Having some game design experience I know that having fun negative payoff can be much more entertaining than actually winning a game sometimes. So I applied this logic to the now familiar “Something is Technically Wrong” illustration and have come up with a series of customized versions which I propose that Twitter adapt right away. Sadly knowing that Twitter is now mainstream I’ve designed these screens to appeal to original core audience of geeks who may feel abandoned as every brain dead TV presenter boasts of their account on the air:
Akira Kurosawa was born on this day in March 23rd, 1910: I think my favorite film of his is Yojimbo the samurai classic that he directed in 1961. Half of what I love about the film is the performance of Toshirō Mifune, but framing that performance is an amazing story which was deftly portrayed by Kurosawa on so many levels from the cinematography to musical score (which almost becomes its own character in the film). In a sense Yojimbo is a western film, but what makes it amazing is that it about an old world giving way to a new world where chivalry is dead. Watching that film you could taste the dust in your mouth:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 23, 2009 in Science
On March 23rd, 1965 the Gemini 3 launched into history — it was the first manned Gemini flight. The ship was manned by John W. Young (shown above) and Virgil I. Grissom (shown below). Grissom named the spacecraft the Molly Brown in reference to the Broadway show The Unsinkable Molly Brown as he was hoping not to duplicate his previous experience with the Liberty Bell 7. This mission was very much a test flight and this was the first time ever that an American spacecraft had a crew of two. NASA was still in catchup mode at this point as the USSR launched the Voskhod 1 in 1964 which had a crew of three. Read more…
On this day in 1993 Intel introduced the first set of Pentium chips which ran at 60 MHz. While that hardly sounds impressive today, back in the day this was a critical breakthrough for the first PCs that would support multimedia. Looking back at it Windows 3.1 seems primitive, but this was the first generation of PCs that started to feel more Mac like — the improved ease-of-use opened the doors of computing to a generation of users who were put off my the MS-DOS text interface that dominated screens until that point in time. Read more…
“The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?” It’s funny at the time I didn’t realize just how well Back to the Future captured the spirit of the 80s — a good example of this was the DeLorean featured in the trio of films. In a bit of irony you can keep in touch with your Back to the Future nostalgia with this cute Back to the Future II DeLorean Vehicle model which features actual working gull-wing doors: Read more…
As a Quentin Tarantino fanboy I love this fan made remake of Kill Bill (parts 1 and 2 no less). The credit goes to directors Joe Burgess, Rocco Sulkin and Will Tribble of the University of York Filmmaking Society. And on a related note here’s a Lego Batman version of Kill Bill which I also got a kick out of:Read more…
