The fake iPhones from China are getting much better as time goes on! It should be noted that this is the second (or maybe third?) generation of iClones to hit the markets in China and each time they seem to get better. What’s impressive about this version is that not only does it sport an Apple logo (much improved without that pesky bite mark) but the touch interface looks like the real deal: Read more…
The film Fanboys looks like it’s going to be quite good, but at the rate all these clips are coming out I’m starting to feel like I’ve already seen the entire film… Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 26, 2009 in Star Trek
Permission to sing freely, sir? Granted! This is from a recent episode of Robot Chicken. As someone pointed out to me recently what made this film so good was that it didn’t depend on the Star Trek franchise as a crutch to the story.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 25, 2009 in Animation
As with most things in TV land our story begins in another medium — film! Back in the 50s THE designer who revolutionized opening credits was Saul Bass who favored a very graphic and illustrational approach to making opening titles an art form onto themselves. To me his masterpiece was Anatomy of a Murder in 1958 which matched a striking musical score by Duke Ellington to a simple yet powerful animation: Read more…
At first I had my doubts — but the one thing that won me over to the up and coming Star Trek film is the trailer — to be blunt it kicks ass! So as a fanboy who’s been following the show forever when I read that there was a comic book attached to the film (Star Trek Countdown) I was psyched. But then I glanced at the cover and I was in shock: The illustration looks like a bad tracing from a photo featuring some of the worst Photoshop coloring work I’ve ever seen in my life. I realize the cover is trying to match the posters for the film, but couldn’t they have put more than just ten minutes worth of work into it?Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 23, 2009 in Japanese TV
My guess is that this spot os from the 80s judging by the wear-and-tear of the video tape and the colorful art direction. The commercial is for Chinese styled Yakisoba fried noodles but what sells the spot is the rambunctious children singing along with the music.
I’ve been following the work of Chicago based indie comic artist Chris “Elio” Eliopoulos for some time now, so I got a real kick out of seeing his whimsical style brought to life in an animated short. In many ways his illustration work reminds a great deal of Jay Ward cartoons like Bullwinkle, but looking at this short I see a dollop of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat mixed in with just a dash of Godzilla for good measure. Here are two examples of his illustrations that show of his humorous but harmonious sense of chaos: Read more…
From time-to-time techies go through certain fads where a certain idea just seems right, so we often yearn for a solution to which there is no problem. A good example of this occuired in the 90s when many smart folks realized that while a PC with Windows 95, Netscape and a dialup modem were great — what if you could push this concept one step further and have a consumer friendly all-in-one unit? The answer was WebTV and the device was a resounding failure.Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 21, 2009 in Star Trek, Tech
I would be a liar if I said that I spent the past day thinking of about anything but the inauguration of President Barack Obama. One one level I was just overjoyed to hear Obama publicly re-embrace the ideas of science and ecology, which in a way strikes me as sad as being something that “we have to return to” in the first place. And of course the two central issues at hand today are the economy (or rather the lack there of) and ongoing asymmetrical warfare — yet underneath all of that chaos was a very positive echo of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. And in a sense part of the triumph of that struggle was an indirect result of a few bold visionaries who embraced the then very odd notion of the world growing smaller was a damn good thing.Read more…
Nearly a day goes by on Twitter without yet another social media “expert” choosing to stalk me. At first it started innocently — back in the day (about a year ago) various techie friends started to declare themselves social media gurus because they decided to hang out on Twitter and Facebook all day. And now an army of their offspring monitor Summize in search of human flesh. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 19, 2009 in Television
Danger Will Robinson! Any fanboy who has loved the 60s sci fi drama Lost in Space knows that one of the more interesting characters in the show was the Robot. Sadly the the man behind the robot just passed away — his name was Bob May. It should be noted that Bob didn’t give the robot his voice — that privilege belonged to Dick Tufeld. Although silent you could say that May was the man pulling the strings of the puppet and bringing him to life.
I love the clever industrial design of this Mickey Mouse Desk Light which is from Japan. The top light enclosure with the ears is a bit of an obvious concept although what I think makes the design so great is the added touch of making the base of the lamp have the buttons from Mickey’s pants. Read more…
The year is 1982 and Crazy Eddie (with prices so low he’s practically giving everything away) decides to hawk home computers like the Commodore VIC-20 and the Apple ][. Crazy Eddie was a retail chain that was started in Brooklyn in the early 70s and hit a high point in the 80s until the Feds shut them down for fraud charges. By the way the guy in the commercial isn’t the owner of the store who was busted — he’s Jerry Carroll who was an FM radio DJ at the time. Here is an example of his more creative work: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 16, 2009 in Television
In 1962 Sean Connery stars in Dr. No and the spy genre takes over the world of entertainment. Within ten short years several more Bond films follows and a host of second rates clones follow — from TV shows like The Saint to comedy films like Matt Helm. In the swinging 60s the two things that make the spy genre special are guns and go go girls: Bond has a license to kill and the spy genre wouldn’t be what it was without the sex and violence.
During this era Patrick McGoohan was a successful actor as the star of Danger Man which ran as Secret Agent Man in the United States. But after a few years McGoohan grew tired of the show and was offered the chance to do something new by Lew Grade of ITC Entertainment. So McGoohan gave his pitch — and it was pure genius: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 15, 2009 in Star Trek
The year is 1982 and Star Trek is all but finished — the first Star Trek movie was a disaster of bland storytelling and had no life at all. Yet Paramount decides to take a chance and allows Nicholas Meyer to direct Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. To be blunt about it: The movie was so damn good that not only did it turn the film series into a franchise — but it’s now over 25 years later and there have been four additional series and a new set of films in the works.
A huge part of that is due to the screen performance of Ricardo Montalbán (November 25, 1920 – January 14, 2009). Firstly in 1982 to all of America he was known as Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island — and maybe lesser known for selling automobiles that featured “soft Corinthian leather”. Meyer could have cast anyone for the part, but the fanboy in him (and God bless him for doing it) made him go back to Montalbán. In fact it was Montalbán’s performance in the original 1967 episode of Space Seed that played a role in him coming up with the story in the first place. Read more…
In the good old days (a year ago) we’d somehow get our hands on a preproduction sketch from an upcoming film — and then within hours await for the lawyers to contact us. But in the modern world of viral marketing the smarter film folks actually stalk fanboy oriented websites and reach out to us fanboys via Twitter!
So it seems that the fanboy friendly folks behind Ghostbusters III are doing an outreach campaign to plug their film production. So far they have a Twitter account and a production blog setup which features footage from the field and even some production artwork.
Here’s a scene featuring panicked folks fleeing some unseen sort of CGI monster:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 12, 2009 in Japanese TV
This is latest sketch from one of my favorite Japanese comedians — Ken Shimura (志村けん)! What I love about his work is that even if you don’t speak Japanese his comedy is physical enough to get a sense of what’s going on while making you laugh in the process:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 11, 2009 in Animation
I had always falsely assumed that the animated Sugar Bear character was created just for commercials, but this isn’t the case as it turns out that he got his start on Saturday morning TV in 1963. He was featured in the cartoon Linus the Lionhearted which crossed the now unimaginable line of having advertising characters (pushing junk food no less) appear on regular cartoons aimed at kids. Also it turns out that Sugar Bear was based on Dean Martin which explains his demeanor — I guess I could see Sugar Bear drinking a martini and starring in a Matt Helm movie. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 10, 2009 in Japanese TV
This Pocari Sweat advert is clearly aimed at the fanboys! You’ve got a little of everything here: A sword welding lady in full battle armor, an exotic kitty cat, sphinx and some sort of 3D CGI alien creature mascot sidekick. What more could you ask for?
The history of tech is so ironic: Once upon a time in the early 90s Apple gave birth to the first real PDA — the Newton. I was at the first MacWorld in Boston when an army of eager developers got their hands on this gizmo, you could feel the magic in the air. In retrospect most people look at all of the flaws of the Newton (like a hand writing recognition) but people forget what a breakthrough it was at the time. Read more…
The Aérotrain sounds like a plot device from a steampunk novel — a rocket powered railroad car designed to travel on a monorail. This amazing retro tech project was lead by engineer Jean Bertin in France from 1965 until 1977. Sadly Bertin passed away in 1975, and his technology was passed over in favor of high speed trains that used high-powered electrical motors. Shown above is a working prototype from 1967 that was powered by Pratt & Whitney JT12 engine. Below is an early concept model which was created in 1962 which used compressed air: Read more…
The year is 1983 and as an art school student me and my buds are convinced that the era we were in was a low point for animation — except for Anime! Even though a generation has grown up loving He-Man we tested the dude, because his D&D routine wasn’t half as cool as Star Blazers or Mobile Suit Gundam. Looking back I still stand by my thesis of the lack of quality in Filmation productions, but now I can see how a generation of kids could look fondly back on this stuff. Read more…
For an entire decade you’ve given it your all — not just to turn around the company we love, but to make computing fun, sexy and exciting again. Read more…
