The joy of New York City is that for a fanboy there are all sorts of unofficial landmarks that become special to you over the years — and as this is a city of change the heartbreak of this is that you realize that nothing can last forever. And over the years I’ve watched some of my favorite landmarks vanish like CBGBs where I spent my New Year’s Eve in 2000. Well sadly it looks like Love Saves the Day will be joining the ranks of lost fanboy destinations as they will be closing their doors in mid-January. Read more…
The most recent NASA soap opera started with administrator Michael Griffin giving the incoming Obama transition team a hard time — coming from an engineering background Griffin’s fear was that the Obama administration was going to gut the new moon rocket program. To be fair to Griffin the program was way over budget (so it looked like a good target) and early in the campaign trail Obama sent mixed signals on his support for manned exploration. The latest chapter was Griffin’s wife sending out a sad email pleading his case to keep his job (despite the fact that he is a Bush administration employee). Read more…
Back at Comic Con in 2008 Ralph Bakshi gave an amazing interview on how to survive in tough times. As a creative working person this inspires me a great deal, so I’d like to share some of my take away points from Bakshi’s insights. Read more…
Editor’s Note: This week we’re lucky to have film critic Joe Strike offers us his insights and first impressions of the films The Day the Earth Stood Still, Desperaux, and The Spirit.
I tell you, the synchronicity around here can really get to you sometimes. The other morning I went to see The Day the Earth Stood Still, or as us folks in a hurry like to call it, TDTESS (which is stupid since they’re all one-syllable words anyway). Weekend morning shows are $6.00 at my just-up-the-street cinema, I thank you from the bottom of my recession, AMC. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 1, 2009 in Cinema, Design
This is THE best unintentional anti-drug commercial I’ve ever seen hands down! In this clip Andy Warhol interviews Steven Spielberg while Bianca Jagger pretends that everything is “just normal”. What’s odd is that Spielberg seems so off the wall — this must have been what it was like to hang out at Studio 54 back in the day: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 1, 2009 in Japanese TV
This 1997 advert stars Japanese actress Takako Tokiwa (常盤貴子) in the role of Cinderella! My favorite bit is the short bit of then cutting edge 3D animation of her magic horse drawn carriage.
You’ll have to wait until January 22nd, but in the meantime here’s the trailer for the Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekidou (the DX Pack) dance game for the Wii. Anime fanboys and fangurls will be able to hop along with Haruhi Suzumiya — the official website is here (in Japanese) and you can purchase the game here. I can really see this game being a real hit with the cosplay crowd at anime conventions! Read more…
Year-after-year I’ve watched the usual suspects make their tech predictions, so this year I’ve decided as a fanboy that it was my right to make a fool of myself as much as the next guy. Most people are in a doom and gloom mindset right now, but I’ve always felt that there are opportunities when the going gets tough. In fact my one ambivalent prediction is that somewhere in 2009/2010 someone will start a new company which will become the next big thing. But here’s what I think will be happening with the current cast of characters in the tech scene: Read more…
To decorate your home in a fanboy style you just never want to settle for just average! One thing that I do every year to start things off properly is to order a calendar from Japan: The first cool thing is that you notice is that Japanese calendars tend to be oversized, in fact they’re more like posters with the dates thrown below. The other thing you notice is that the artwork and approach is just more creative — you tend not to see the same old image that’s associated with your favorite thing. But best of all you can find interesting off beat subject matter that you won’t find anywhere else, shown above is a good example from the Hibari Misora 2009 Calendar. So this year to share the love I’ve picked out my top nine crazy cool Japanese calendars that are worth checking out: Read more…
Going through my Flickr stream I came across an image titled Name That Anime Slot Machine so of course I knew I had an interesting challenge ahead of me! The slot machine was spotted in an Ohio antique mall —the only real clue I had was that it was based on a baseball manga or anime series. Now while there are tons of baseball manga (and all sorts of sports manga in Japan) I realized that it had to be from a show popular enough to merit an anime series. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 27, 2008 in Japanese TV
Shown above is a series of adverts from 2006 for the Japanese magazine B-ing which is aimed at recruiting professionals. The villains shown are the shocker soldiers from the live action Rider series (仮面ライダーシリーズ) from the 70s: Read more…
Recently I was talking about the topics of great films with a college bound liberal arts student and I made a shocking discovery: The student had never once seen Citizen Kane. It’s frankly shocking to me as an American citizen that in the United States of America that you can graduate from high school without having seen at least one viewing of this film. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 25, 2008 in Comic Books
It’s a Christmas gift to us fanboys from Fox! It seems that their copyright case against Warner Brothers has done the trick and this may cause the film not to open come March:
“A Los Angeles federal judge has ruled that 20th Century Fox owns the distribution rights to “Watchmen,” representing a setback for Warner Bros.’ plans to release the pic in March.
“Fox owns a copyright interest consisting of, at the very least, the right to distribute the ‘Watchmen’ motion picture,” the ruling said. Judge Gary Allen Feess issued the surprise ruling Wednesday — a week after setting a Jan. 20 trial date for Fox’s suit — and indicated he would issue a more detailed ruling soon.”
“As Apollo 8 nosed its way back from the far side of the Moon for the fourth time, it was Frank Borman who first spotted the view by chance from a window, his reaction captured by the on board tape recorder. “Oh, my God! Look at that picture over there!” he exclaimed. “Isn’t that something…” After a quick joke about the fact that it was not in their flight plan to photograph it, the crew abandoned protocol and scrambled to get a snap of the occasion with their stills camera. The Hasselblad only had a black and white film magazine in, resulting in the image above – the first photograph of Earthrise taken by a human as he watched it happen.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 23, 2008 in Science
In January the Mars rover program will turn five years old — it’s quite amazing to think how much we’ve learned about the red planet in such a short amount of time. To me this program is yet another argument why we should focus on a manned trip to Mars rather than returning to the moon.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 23, 2008 in Star Wars
There’s this part of George Lucas that I love who does this great work, and then there is the dark side of the source: You know what I’m talking about — it’s that greedy guy who for the sake of a buck will let bad idea slip through like the Ewoks or Jar Jar just to rake in a few marketing bucks. Well George the greedy is back and Star Wars: A Musical Journey is set to hit the stage in London on April 10th, 2009. Amongst the featured travesties will be a kick line of Stormtroopers and singing Wookiees ruining the work of John Williams.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 22, 2008 in Japanese TV
The above cute clip of costumed cats is from the Japanese TV program Amazing Animals (どうぶつ奇想天外！) which runs on TBS. The segment features cats from an upcoming calendar including the well known chubby kitty Pia-kun.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 22, 2008 in Animation
Warner Bothers is ripping off Arthur Rankin who was half the team behind so many of those great Rankin/Bass cartoons from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to ThunderCats. Due to an “accounting error” Warner Brothers claims that it’s too late to pay Mr. Rankin in a dispute that now goes back over twenty years: Read more…
What do you want for Christmas? The Ronco Pottery Wheel of course! The Ronco commercials hit their hight in the 70s and was often parodied in Saturday Night Live sketches during that era.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 20, 2008 in Animation
Hey! Hey! Hey! It’s 1977 and the Cosby Kids are celebrating Christmas — what’s funny is when I was a kid watching this show I had no clue that Bill Cosby was doing so many voices of the characters. I also had no clue that the show was based on a comedy routine that Cosby had put together in 1967 based upon his childhood experiences of growing up in Philadelphia. When the show was on the air I thought of it as a sort of animated sitcom and I was never able to quite see beyond the low budget Filmation animation — but looking back at it one is sort of amazed that Cosby was able to get a animated series about African Americans on the air that was educational! Keep in mind that what was shown on Saturday morning TV was about as far as you could get from PBS.
Relive the golden age of Cold War sci fi films: If you’re a fanboy like me you know that any high budget remake will never quite match the glory of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Well now you can relive this 1951 classic with your very own Gort Wind-Up Robot which can be used to terrorize your friends and family.
What happens when a top flight international team of biochemists and rocket scientists get together? The answer is Space Beer! The brew was created with barley grown on the International Space Station: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 18, 2008 in Star Trek
It was only a few days ago that I was so excited to hear that Majel Barrett-Roddenberry would be doing the voice of the computer in Star Trek XI and now I’m sad to say that this looks to be her last film:
“Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry who nurtured the legacy of the seminal science fiction TV series after his death, has died. She was 76. Roddenberry died of leukemia Thursday morning at her home in Bel-Air, said Sean Rossall, a family spokesman. Read more…
