Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 12, 2008 in Comic Books
I’ve been reading that the ending of the Watchmen film will be different than the graphic novel, however these six character posters give me quite a bit of hope. I had my doubts about the casting but this is starting to look right! Above is the poster for Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), and below are the posters for Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson) and Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup). Read more…
Someday in the future spaceships will make use of talented but perhaps blind engineers to rescue the day? Yes it sounds like the character Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation, but no it’s the year 2008 and our hero is Marco Midon who works for NASA: Read more…
Baldev Raj Chopra was a unique Bollywood director because he was able to relevant social films that still appealed to popular tastes. Shown above is Naya Daur from 1957 which shows post-independence India where Industrialization is slowly creeping in. The plot deals with the conflict between rich and poor which Chopra brought to the screen during his career: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 11, 2008 in Animation
Frankly I’m still a bit let down from last year when the Academy picked glossy Ratatouille over the more interesting Persepolis. This year fourteen films were submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, of those only three lucky picks will make the cut to be in the best animated feature category. This year the films come from every corner of the world, although as an anime fanboy I’m very happy to see two entries from Japan! Here’s a guide of who’s who this year: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 11, 2008 in Science
Everyone is mourning the loss of the Phoenix lander due to the harsh Martian winter, however I’m quite impressed with how this mission lasted much longer than anyone could have predicted:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 10, 2008 in Star Wars
“We’ll be sent to the spice mines of Kessel or smashed into who-knows-what!” This R2-D2 until looks like the “who-knows-what” part of that description:
There’s just no excuse not to take Hello Kitty on the road with you! This new Hello Kitty Alarm Clock is purrfect for those who like to travel — when you flip it open you use the mirror to see just how tired you look too. And best of all this alarm clock features “three different Hello kitty chimes to wake you up in style”, although I’m not sure I’d call that a feature…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 10, 2008 in Comic Books
DC Comics has just published a nice coffee table book entitled Watching the Watchmen: The Definitive Companion to the Ultimate Graphic Novel by artist Dave Gibbons and designer Chip Kidd. This slick book includes character design sketches and even unreleased pages aimed at Watchmen fanboys like myself. Currently there’s also a related interview with Gibbons in Time magazine that’s worth checking out:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 10, 2008 in Videogames
Hint: If you’re at a party in the year 1980 and people are passing around an issues of Games Magazine — run! By the way it’s interesting to note that this magazine was first published by Playboy in 1977 until 1990. Later it was resuscitated by another publisher and is still in business today.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 9, 2008 in Japanese TV
What I love about comedian Ken Shimura (志村けん) is that you don’t have to understand Japanese for him to make you laugh. This little song was sung with the J-pop group Mini Moni (ミニモニ), a subgroup of Morning Musume (モーニング娘). My Japanese is rather lacking by he song has something to do with “eye-application gymnastics” according to my Google translation of the headline.
Nothing goes together better than ramen and fanboys! There are two things that are great about this re-useable noodle cup which is made out of ceramic: First it’s good for the environment (although perhaps not as good for your diet) but it also allows a budget conscience fanboy to buy ramen in bulk and pinch pennies even further which can be spent on better things like comic books.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 8, 2008 in Comic Books
I’m sorry I couldn’t help myself with that headline! But the sight of cowboys and indians hanging out with dinosaurs (well minus the cowboys) brought Sarah Palin’s creationism to my mind right away. However that shouldn’t take dissuade you from checking out Turok: Son of Stone whuch will be coming out in February 2009 from Dark Horse.
Oldboy (올드보이) was a popular 2003 revenge film from Korea which was based on a Japanese manga by the same (オールド・ボーイ) written by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya which ran from 1996 until 1998. Now normally I’m 100% against Hollywood remakes, but in this case I’ll make an exception. I think if Spielberg tackles Oldboy that it might popularize and open the door for more Asian cinema to come to the United States. And if he can get a popular actor like Will Smith involved that would be a real cherry on top:
“Steven Spielberg and Will Smith are in early discussions to collaborate on a remake of Chan Wook-park’s “Oldboy.” DreamWorks is in the process of securing the remake rights, and the new pic will be distributed by Universal. In the 2003 Korean original, a man gets kidnapped and held in a shabby cell for 15 years without explanation. Suddenly, he’s released and given money, a cell phone and clothes and is set on a path to discover who destroyed his life so he can take revenge.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 7, 2008 in Star Wars
For eons now we’ve all seen the classic Hello Kitty Toaster, so you knew it was only a matter of time until some other clever marketing dept. would swipe the idea. But what I find funny is that the Kitty toaster creates an emblem by leaving the Kitty face untoasted while the Darth Vader embraces the dark side of the toast by burning an insignia of Lord Vader into the middle of your breakfast:
“If there’s something every Sith Lord knows how to do it’s make a balanced breakfast. While the Jedi have to live off of Jawa juice and fried nerfsteak, the Dark Lord of the Sith prefers to have a reminder of his fiery Mustafar defeat at his breakfast table. Every morning he burns that moment into a slice of bread with the Darth Vader Toaster. This black, ominous kitchen appliance easily leaves the mark of Vader’s helmet in every yummy piece of toast. Slather some Bantha butter on top, or make two pieces for an extra-Sithy BLT. Force power not required to operate toaster.”
From 1977 this is a commercial for the Mickey Mouse Magic Kingdom which featured a set of modified Weebles made to look like popular Disney characters. Looking at this ad the monorail looks quite cool, although as I child I detested the egg shaped toys a great deal. In fact the advertising taunt of “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down” so irritated me as a child that I had to know the answer as to what kept the damn things from falling over.
So after much experimentation my ultimate solution was to put one in a vice grip — and thus in the process almost destroying the vice grip. But after a long struggle I got to see the inner workings of the Weebles which were remarkable simple (there was a lead ball at the bottom of the inside of the sturdy plastic shell). Although looking back at it I had no idea that this Hasbro toy (which was rolled out in 1971) would be going strong decades later despite my scientific research on how to destroy the buggers.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 6, 2008 in Animation
Before I start trashing this trailer for Monsters vs. Aliens there are two things that I’ll admit to upfront (but if you’re a fanboy how could you blame me?):
1. Dreamworks has always been second banana to Pixar, and I’m not talking Coke vs. Pepsi but more like Coke vs. C&C Cola. In other words: If you thought that Shrek was good you don’t know what you;re talking about (unless by good you mean box office of course).
2. At this point in time if you’re going to do a CGI film you better damn well be ready to blow me out of the water because I’ve seen it all before — or — at least have a unique look for the film that I haven’t seen before.
Now I’m glad I got that out of the way! On paper the concept for this film sounds good, but alas the devil is in the details and from what I see here Dreamworks is determined to ummmm — well that’s a good question?
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 6, 2008 in Television
The cult classic TV show Quark is now available on DVD which is great news for fans of the talented Buck Henry who was co-creator of the original Get Smart show along with Mel Brooks. The 70s were a good time for both science fiction and sitcoms — and Quark put the two together in a very clever way. Now to be fair Woody Allen tackled the genre with the film Sleeper, but Quark was more of a parody of existing shows and movies from Star Trek to Star Wars which made the show a fanboy favorite years before Spaceballs:
Come November 14th I’ve got to so see this flick! I’m already in love with the poster art — it’s like James Bond is thinking “Yeah it’s perfectly normal to have some explosive residue on my designer tux while strolling down the desert with my fashion model friend with a handgun on hand to deal with any arch villains whom we might just run across in the hood”. Not only that but James Bond can even wear a hanky in his jacket pocket and make it look good…
This is the first look at the Mickey Mouse Glove USB Flash Drive, although right now there’s no info on pricing and availability. The gloves in the Mickey Mouse cartoons were in fact a silent tribute to the cel painters who had the painful task of coloring each inked frame of acetate. Having done this sort of work back in my art school days I can tell you that it’s a painfully slow task which is very easy to muck up, so it’s very gratifying to see this very modern tribute to the golden age of hand painted cel animation.
Radiation shields on! One of the real limiting factors with space exploration is human biology itself. A good example of this are cosmic rays which are quite scary when you study them, and so far we’ve come up with some pretty crude protection methods. So it’s great to see some research being done to imitate the protection that we get here on Earth with the magnetosphere:
“Future astronauts could benefit from a magnetic “umbrella” that deflects harmful space radiation around their crew capsule, scientists say. The super-fast charged particles that stream away from the Sun pose a significant threat to any long-duration mission, such as to the Moon or Mars.
But the research team says a spaceship equipped with a magnetic field generator could protect its occupants. Lab tests are reported in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion. The approach mimics the protective field that envelops the Earth, known as the magnetosphere.”
By the way it should be noted that deflector shields pre-date Star Trek and have been employed in science fiction stories since the 1920s, although the show did popularize the concept with the general public.
, so you knew it was only a matter of time until some other clever marketing dept. would swipe the idea. But what I find funny is that the Kitty toaster creates an emblem by leaving the Kitty face untoasted while the Darth Vader embraces the dark side of the toast by burning an insignia of Lord Vader into the middle of your breakfast:
