Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 3, 2008 in Comic Books
You know you’re doing bad when you can’t figure out at a casual glance if something is a parody or not — and such seems to be the case with issue #1 of Hulk Family which hits newsstands this week. To their credit Marvel has had Marko Djurdjevic do an amazing job on the cover, but this concept just seems so silly to me. Anyway you be the judge, here’s the description of the plot: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 3, 2008 in Star Trek
There was a time not so long ago where I seemed to be doing nothing but covering every marketing scheme and merchandisable goodie that the George Lucas empire would produce — and looking back on it to my amazement I actually lamented Paramount’s inability to do anything with Star Trek. But then J.J. Abrams came along and changed all that in no time!
The evidence of this came face-to-face to me today as I suddenly noticed that one of my new followers on Twitter was the USS Kelvin: My first reaction was that this was just a fanboy with a cool icon, but them upon checking out the tweets it turns out to be a Star Trek XI trivia contest sponsored by Intel and Lenovo. Needless to say the contest looks pretty cool, but I’d wish they’d take even a step further and customize those IdeaPad laptops with a Star Trek theme.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 2, 2008 in Animation
If you hate what Hollywood does to anime classics (or perhaps just dread the thought of it) you’ll love this parody flash film which comes from Happy Harry Toons in England.
Cinema fanboys rejoice! The Criterion Collection has started putting their films online for viewing. Unlike YouTube this will cost you $5 a movie, but the quality and variety is high. To me this is an important first step as my prediction is a that over the next few years we’ll see traditional media not only embrace the likes of YouTube, but my gut feeling is that this may lead to something that may be the next golden age of a new medium. But for now I’d suggest checking out the vintage 1972 science fiction film Solaris before the revolution starts.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 1, 2008 in Animation
What’s so odd about this Japanese commercial from 1984 is that it features the Flintstones meeting space aliens who have a vague anime feeling to them. What’s also strange about this advert is for the Lake Hotel is that the animation breaks away from the limited flat look of the original series in several shots — it’s very weird to see Fred Flintstone walk toward the camera.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 1, 2008 in Videogames
Taiko no Tatsujin (太鼓の達人) is a drum machine arcade game — what’s cool about the PlayStation 2 and the Wii versions is that they have special controllers which look like a miniature taiko drum. Here’s what the original arcade game looks like:
I really love how taken the physical interface of the game and turned into a peripheral customized game controller — which makes a standard game machine become much more toy like in terms of playability.
Editor’s Note: This week animation industry insider Joe Strike takes us to a charity auction where the who’s who of NYC animation embrace their inner fanboy to swap goodies and gawk at cartoons.
Whatever possessed me to raise my hand? I went into the ASIFA auction on November 20th, as broke or broker as anyone else in the USA today, just to see who was there and what was going on… before I knew it I was bidding on a 1926 copy of Animated Cartoons, by one E.G. Lutz, a copy of the book that taught Walt Disney how to animate (or so the legend goes), for a mere $60. Read more…
In my never ending hunt for cool and unblogged about pop culture in Japan, I found this mysterious item at the convenience store:
What sold me was it apparently went fast enough or was powerful enough to shatter it’s own UPC code. My first impression was that it had something to do with racing given what I thought was a speedometer or cyclometer. Then there is the fake signs of scraping and damage printed on. Read more…
You know what I want for Christmas? I want William Shatner to have a guest spot in the upcoming Star Trek XI film! But if I can’t get that instead I’ll gladly settle for this old school Star Trek Phaser and Communicator Set from ThinkGeek. The phaser has the nice touch of including an overload setting that is followed by an exploding sound effect (or as my computer programming friends would say “If it’s not a bug it’s a feature!”). The communicator is also cool as it features 20 fanboy friendly phrases like “Spock here, Captain”, “Scotty here, Captain” and my personal favorite “Transporter room ready to beam up”.
If you’re a Hello Kitty fangurl (or fanboy) that’s been hit by hard times this Hello Kitty 2009 Limited Edition Swarovski Watch might just be for you. Priced at a mere $579.99 the budget conscience kitty themed watch is a bargain when put next to the $3000 Neiman Marcus diamond-crusted Hello Kitty watch.
The BBC has announced that it will remake two new films based upon the the 1951 science fiction novel The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. The best known adapatdation of the novel is the 1962 film directed by Steve Sekely, although the title is an old BBC favorite having inspired radio plays in 1953, 1957, 1968 and a TV series in 1981. The new version will be set in the year 2011 in a post-peak oil setting where mankind has turned to the biofuel Triffid to solve the world’s energy problems — and everything goes wrong when the plant creatures grow hungry for human flesh. You see I always knew that biofuels aren’t the way to go…Read more…
It’s amazing what a bunch of Nintendo fanboys can do if they put their mind to it! I present to you the Pushpin Mario Shrine:
“This is the third revision of this project. From the first pin to the last took about two and a half semesters, though the final version was completed entirely within the first two months of Fall 2008. There are over 17,000 pins on the board, and the work was done entirely by students, mainly members of the CIS Student Association. The board is currently in the Student Computing Center at the University of the Fraser Valley.” Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 27, 2008 in Animation
On Thanksgiving Day of 1950 NBC presented The Rootie Tootie Thanksgiving Party which was sponsored by RCA. By December after the sponsor dropped out the show went by the name Rootie Kazootie. What’s impressive about this early piece of television history is that this special includes an appearance of both Kukla Fran and Ollie and Eleanor Roosevelt. The show lasted until 1954 and had an audience of between 2 and million kids which in turn inspired a line of comic books and other collectables. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 27, 2008 in Science
We always think of Jupiter as a gas giant, but what’s amazing to think about is that when you get to the core of the planet you have an Earth-like rock core that is 14 to 18 times the mass of Earth (which is twice the size as what scientists use to think):
“Jupiter has a rocky core that is more than twice as large as previously thought, according to computer calculations by a University of California, Berkeley, geophysicist who simulated conditions inside the planet on the scale of individual hydrogen and helium atoms.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 26, 2008 in Animation
As an animation fanboy I always love it when a cartoon makes a reference (visual or otherwise) to the medium itself. This clever animated spot from the English animation studio small time inc. shows a series of flipbooks that tell the sad tale of a little black dog. To me flipbooks are sort of the “gateway drug” to learning the basics of animation, so they have a special place in my heart!
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 26, 2008 in Science
Astronomers have just found a region of our galaxy where the sugar module Glycolaldehyde which is linked to the origin of life is available. This is great news in the search for extraterrestrials as it may help scientists discover the location of earth like planets that support life:
Being a Will Eisner fanboy I sort of have mixed feelings from what I’ve seen of the upcoming film The Spirit so far. The clips seems a bit better than I thought, but I still feel like the idea of turning The Spirit into some sort of superhero is misplaced as what makes him so special is that he’s so ordinary on a certain level.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 26, 2008 in Comic Books
In today’s issue of Batman it seems that after 70 years of good faith our trusty sidekick Robin will go over to “the dark side” and knock off poor Bruce Wayne. Well at least that’s the rumor we’ve been hearing — but it seems that in this latest issue the dark knight will meet with some sort of ultimate demise:
Sometimes I wish the kids toys were for grownups — in this case the Wall.E Learning Laptop has a really cute eye catching industrial design (in fact his right eye does wink at you). The learning laptop features a full QWERTY keyboard, moving arm controllers, a an animated LCD screen.
, a copy of the book that taught Walt Disney how to animate (or so the legend goes), for a mere $60. 
