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: Read more…
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: Read more…
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? ” Read more…
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. Read more…
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: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 6, 2010 in Japanese TV
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. Read more…
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. Read more…
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! Read more…
Having grown up watching science fiction shows you get the feeling that you’re not looking at a real spaceship crew unless there’s a lot of adrenaline being thrown about. However the reality is much different as real world astronauts are quite a cool quite group — more Spock than Kirk if you know what I mean. NASA produced these two short videos which give a nice glimpse at some of these unsung pioneers who deserve to be household names. Shown above is Eileen Marie Collins who was the first woman to pilot a space shuttle and below is Guion “Guy” Bluford, Jr. who was the the first African American in space back in 1983: Read more…
As every Evangelion fan knows Rei Ayanami, Asuka Langley and their friends all go to the Tokyo-3 First Municipal Middle School which requires blue and white school uniforms with a cute sassy red bow! Well now fangurls who want to take a cosplay shortcut can now sport the official Evangelion Trantrip School Uniform which also includes matching socks (I love those little details). Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 4, 2010 in Animation, Tech
It’s always the silly things that amuse me: In this case it’s an iPhone application that turns your icon set into a grinning Doraemon. Apparently this is a free set of applications from Yahoo! Japan — which include Doraemon manga as well! Here are screen shots and there are iTunes links on this Japanese page: Read more…
When everyone started talking about the cloud my first thought was “isn’t this a throw back to mainframe computers from a pre-PC era when dumb terminals always needed to dial in?” So I was blown away to watch this video of Vint Cerf (who has been credited as the father of the Internet) suddenly mention mainframe time-sharing in the middle of a chat on cloud-to-cloud operability. It’s also interesting to hear that Cerf feels that it will take about five years for real standards to occur that allow one cloud to share data with another. By the way it’s interesting to note that Google now employs Cerf which is quite a coup. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 4, 2010 in Animation
As an adult I appreciate Hanna-Barbera, but frankly it was my childhood dislike of limited animation that drove me to admire anime. So I was pretty amused to stumble across the above the above clip of Secret Squirrel from 2 Stupid Dogs with a Japanese soundtrack, and much to my amazement I realized that because I couldn’t understand what was being said that the entire clip seemed cooler somehow. Now the funny thing is that the Japanese voices are clearly being used to a comic effect, however they seem much more downplayed when put next to the original American voice acting which sounds much more over-the-top: Read more…
We always vilify poor Jabba the Hutt, but in doing so we overlook the amazing criminal genius that created the Slave Leia look which would infiltrate the minds of countless young impressionable Star Wars fanboys for several generations. However sadly this wanton space fantasy was endangered when anime maid collectables started being produced from Japan en masse — so George Lucas had to do something: And thus we have the Star Wars Slave Leia Animated Maquette shown above.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 3, 2010 in Comic Books
Thanks to the CB Radio craze of the 70s I have to admit that I had a cultural snottiness when it comes to any form of entertainment featuring truckers: So I have to admit that I was blown away by the sheer charm of the comic book Mesmo Delivery by Rafael Grampá and Marcus Penna. What I like about the look of this book is that the inking style has quite a bit of grit and texture, yet the character designs and poses almost have a charming if not slightly cute feeling to them. The result is that each page has the sort of warmth that you would see in folk art except that the draftsmanship is both exquisite and exhilarating to look at: Read more…
I’ve seen tons of iPod themed goodies on Etsy but as far as I can tell Google has beaten Apple to the punch in the urban toys market with this set of Android Mini Collectibles Series 01. Frankly the thing that find heart warming about the Android logo is that it’s so darn cute which makes it an ideal collectable, and mind you that this is something that Tux the penguin logo for Linux could never pull off (it was the far body and eyes that made it look so doofy). This set was designed by the artist Andrew Bell and there are a dozen different designs each of which stands at three inches tall and features a rotating head: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 2, 2010 in Comic Books
Being a manga fanboy the release of Devil #1 immediately caught my eye: “Manga artist Torajiro Kishi (Maka-Maka) and blockbuster anime studio Madhouse (Trigun, Paprika, Ninja Scroll) love comics. So much so that they’ve decided to publish an original, Western-style comic exclusively with Dark Horse! Enter Devil, a thrilling, sci-fi take on the vampire genre.” Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 2, 2010 in Japanese TV
It’s heartbreaking to watch the sad saga of Tommy Lee Jones in this 2006 Japanese commercial for boss coffee — I’m not even sure why he’s crying while watching the singer on TV, but it made me sad to think of an alternate universe where he exists as a Hollywood ex-pat collecting parking tickets in Tokyo. Of course I should feel sorry for myself: I love Boss coffee too, but at $2 for the small cans I’ve been cutting back due to the recession.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 1, 2010 in Comic Books
Up until this point I’ve been mostly looking at the licensed comic books that Boom! Studios has been producing and while for the most part they’re good, they’re always in the shadow of the television show or book that they’re based on. So I’ve been quite impressed looking at Kill Audio which is an original book that they’ve put out: Issue #5 comes out this week and the artwork of Sheldon Vella is quite entertaining! What I love about his book is that it has its own style and the limited pallet of red and black is quite charming: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 1, 2010 in Comic Books
The Jim Henson Company is starting to push Fraggle Rock a great deal — the first thing I spotted a while ago was an amazing remix of the music from the series and next they were releasing the entire original series on DVD. And now it seems that they’re also planning a limited edition comic book series which will come out in April (and available for pre-orders in February).
Everywhere you look everyone is talking about Apple iPads or Google Nexus phones, but sadly Microsoft seems to be off the radar with their mobile offerings of late. Well maybe just off the radar in the United States because as you can see in the video above in Korea they seem to be having fun getting their message out. I love how the Microsoft icons follow the couple on their date and aren’t afraid to shake it up on the dance floor. Read more…
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: Read more… 
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: 
