Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 10, 2008 in Star Trek
To me there will never be anything quite as fun as the original Star Trek series, so it makes my heart happy to see a new generation having a bit of fun with the old school crew right here in New York City:
“Start Trekkin is in fact the greatest comedy experience you will ever have. Each episode is a fully improvised explosion of the Universe created by Star Trek. A new crew and a new ship explore the universe every time, taking on the single most exciting problems sentient life has ever encountered. This is a full hour-length narrative created before your very eyes and based on your suggestions.”
By the way if you’re on Facebook you can join their fan club here! I’m sure they’ll be announcing some new stardates shortly…
Watching the economy melt down has made me think of the last time we had a good old fashioned recession, and by chance it was while the last President Bush was in office in the early 90s. However on the upside a recession can be a good thing as it forces film makers to turn away from high budget wonders and forces them to get creative with their story telling skills. In fact the last recession gave birth to an entire field of of indie film makers — sadly that spirit from the 90s has been replaced with mindless blockbuster special effects films. In fact if I had to place blame for this trend it would have to be with none other than George Lucas and his last trio of Star Wars films which kicked of in 1999 (frankly did he really need the money?).
But turning back to an earlier age: The early 90s forced film makers to come up with original ideas. Working without a huge special effects budget many of these films were in the crime genre which allowed them to focus on strong characters and fast paced action (this was the post-MTV era after all). It’s interesting but looking bak at that period you get a sort of silver age of crime cinema that is a nice echo of the film noir era. Here are a few of my favorites:
The Krays: This 1990 indie film from England was quite powerful. Based on a true story most of the film takes place in swinging London of the 60s, and 80s Britpop fans will live the fact that the co-stars were from the band Spandau Ballet.
Goodfellas: Made in 1990 for a budget of $25,000,000 this is one of my favorite Martin Scorsese films.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 9, 2008 in Star Trek
There’s only one man on planet Earth who has the right to wear this t-shirt and that’s none other than Mr. William Shatner — THE only man qualified to play Captain James T. Kirk on the silver screen. I blame J.J. Abrams for the fact that we now find that any slob with $25 and access to the internet can prance around with Shat’s shirt on his back. Damn all of you apathetic fanboys who haven’t spoken up on this issue. Hell if it weren’t for Shatner we’d all still be watching friggin’ Westerns…
Shown above is a clip from the 1978 made-for-TV movie The Return of Captain Nemo which was produced by — yup you guessed it: Irwin Allen! I can just picture the writers pitching the show to Irwin:
“Look I know you’ve got tons of left over scenery from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, well I tell ya what we’re going to do with it: All the kids are into Star Wars so we go old school a revisit Captain Nemo but here’s the twist baby: we add in space aliens, laser beams and have plenty of shots of things blowing up big time!”
By the way least I slag the scripting dept. too much one of the authors involved in this “epic” was none other than well known author Robert Bloch whose credits included writing the horror novel Psycho and three scripts for Star Trek.
When I started this blog I made it a point not to be overly political, unless it was something that touched on an issue that would be sacred to my fellow fanboys and fangurls. And as all of you know for the last thirty or so years funding for causes like NASA, science research and education has been devastated by both parties. In fact since the 80s we’ve watched space shuttles blow up not once, but twice.
The last time this nation seriously cared about both science and education was at the height of the Cold War — and in a sense Sputnik did more to help America than anything else. Yet we’ve gone from willful neglect to a harsh contempt of science in our nation. I know in my heart the next Sputnik will change that, and that may be gas hitting $20 a gallon or watching China land on the moon while we need the Russians to visit an orbiting space station.
Sadly I’ve watched the Republicans become the party of anti-science these last few years, and this is even more pathetic when you realize that President Dwight D. Eisenhower put NASA in business in the first place. Recently I’ve been upset by the choice of Sarah Palin — it’s abominable that the daughter of a science teacher lacks the sophistication to believe that the concepts of God and evolution are some how exclusive of each other. But Tuesday hit a low point when Senator McCain dug into Senator Obama over an “$3 million [earmark] for an overhead projector”. That overhead projector is the central projection unit for a planetarium — which is vital if we want to teach the next generation of kids about science:
“McCain’s phrase suggests Obama spent $3 million on an old-fashioned piece of office equipment that projects charts and text on a wall screen. In fact, the money was for an overhaul of the theater system that projects images of stars and planets for educational shows at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium. When he announced the $3 million earmark last year, Obama said the planetarium’s 40-year-old projection system “has begun to fail, leaving the theater dark and groups of school students and other interested museum-goers without this very valuable and exciting learning experience.”
To clarify, the Adler Planetarium requested federal support – which was not funded – to replace the projector in its historic Sky Theater, the first planetarium theater in the Western Hemisphere. The Adler’s Zeiss Mark VI projector – not an overhead projector – is the instrument that re-creates the night sky in a dome theater, the quintessential planetarium experience. The Adler’s projector is nearly 40 years old and is no longer supported with parts or service by the manufacturer. It is only the second planetarium projector in the Adler’s 78 years of operation.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 8, 2008 in Star Wars
This is the trailer for the Nintendo DS game Star Wars The Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance. The game looks like quite a bit of fun — I have to admit the idea of battling the dark side of the force while being stuck on a subway ride wouldn’t be the worst way to spend a commute for this fanboy.
I think this is footage from Comiket this Summer — on the left is Alisa a reporter from the Anime NewType Channel. It looks like they’re looking at the guide for the show while having an animated conversation. I’m impressed how the cosplay attired young lady on the right manages to stay in character for so long…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 7, 2008 in Comic Books
The 80s were the perfect time for Bloom County as Doonesbury hit a high point in the 70s — the time was right for a comic strip that was sophisticated and geeky yet silly. Berkeley Breathed wasn’t afraid to have a Star Trek reference yet his work was very “user friendly” at the same time (sort of like Pogo). But all good things come to an end and Breathed pulled the plug on the strip in 1989 — so along with New Wave music the strip sort of represented the 80s to me.
Now sadly since about the year 2000 I’ve stopped reading physical newspapers — I get all of my news via the web. Around NYC the only paper who has a decent comics section is the Daily News, and the few times when I’m looking at the Sunday papers in print the New York Times just sort of sucks you in. So I was pretty surprised to learn that five years ago Breathed brought back Opus as a strip!
To me bringing back Opus was a mistake so I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything. It’s sort of like going to a reunion show for a cherished band from a previous era — you just know in your heart it’s never going to be quite as good the second time around. Of course a more fanboy example of this would be the poor job Lucas has done on the last trio of Star Wars — no matter how much work is put into special effects, it just won’t feel the same as the first time you watched it. So I salute retiring Opus:
“Berkeley Breathed is putting his penguin on ice. The 51-year-old cartoonist said he will pull the plug on his comic-strip career and “Opus” after Nov. 2. In an e-mail to the Los Angeles Times, the 51-year-old Breathed wrote, “30 years of cartooning to end. I’m destroying the village to save it. Opus would inevitably become a ranting mouthpiece in the coming wicked days, and I respect the other parts of him too much to see that happen. The Michael Moore part of me would kill the part of him that was important to his fans.”
“Opus,” a 5-year-old Sunday comic with a madcap political bent, stars the pudgy penguin from Breathed’s classic “Bloom County” strip. It will end just before the presidential election.”
This horror inspired LEGO masterpiece is wonderful! It was on display at BrickCon 08 — check out all of the amazing photos here (taken by Nannan Zhang).
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 6, 2008 in Japanese TV
Ken Shimura is a wonderful comedian — it’s so easy to laugh at this skit without knowing a word of Japanese. Shown above is a segment from his latest comedy special — below is another fun skit:
“StarWarsShop has become the exclusive US carrier for a bunch of new items from England’s Wesco Limited, items that fans can now get stateside! This new Darth Vader mini flashlight key chain measures a little over 3 inches long and includes a bright red LED light. Batteries included.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 5, 2008 in Japanese TV
Because Coca Cola Light is THE beverage choice of Japanese Flashdance wannabes from the 80s! By the way Coca Cola Light is Japanese for Diet Coke — it was introduced over there in 1984, but in 1999 was renamed to Diet Coca-Cola and in 2007 was once again renamed to No Calorie Coca-Cola. Currently in Japan the spokesperson for this diet delight is none other than Sarah Jessica Parker of Sex and the City fame (although us old school fanboys had a crush on her back when she starred in Square Pegs).
For quite some time now Scientists have known that a great way to mess up life on Earth is to have an asteroid impact (just ask our dinosaur friends) but it’s interesting to think that such an event would prevent life from starting up on a planet. Well it turns out that this may be why we never got to have next door neighbors on Mars:
“A giant asteroid could have destroyed Mars’s chances of evolving into an Earth-like blue planet by punching a hole in its crust so large that it damaged the red planet’s magnetic field, scientists have found. Earth’s magnetic field, generated by molten iron moving in its core, deflects radiation that would otherwise blast its atmosphere into space.
Scientists have long been puzzled why Mars lacks a similar field, but measurements from an orbiting spacecraft may have provided an answer. They have found intense magnetic anomalies affecting surface rocks all over Mars’s southern hemisphere. These appear to be remnants of a field that once embraced the whole planet.
Such anomalies are absent from the northern hemisphere, suggesting something happened to change the planet’s magnetic field in the distant past. This fits with another Mars oddity, that the rocks are much thinner in the northern hemisphere than in the south, a phenomenon known as the “crustal dichotomy”.”
“First there was the theoretical Big Bang that got the universe going. Several billion years passed. Then a Little Bang birthed our solar system. At least scientists have long thought that’s how it went, and now they have a computer model to back up the idea that our sun is the product of an explosive event. The new modeling finds that a supernova, or exploding star, could indeed have triggered birth of our sun in a dense cloud of gas and dust, the researchers say.
Stars are born when a cloud of material collapses. Exactly what triggers the collapse is not entirely known. One idea is that most stars, including perhaps our sun, were created in dense starbirth regions when another very massive star explodes, putting intense pressure on surrounding clouds.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 3, 2008 in Animation
When Mickey Mouse first stepped out he was a little bit cute, but he was also a bit of a devil too — but sadly over the years Disney would transform poor Mickey into saccharine sweetie that we know today. But I have to admit that Disney is now starting to let outside artists have fun with their brand which is a breath of fresh air after years of cute kitsch merchandise:
“Medicom’s Runaway Brain figure has been around for a few years now in two variants which were small toys measuring 15cm or 5.90″in length. The company has announced another variant which doubles the size of the figure to 30cm and quadruples the price. We’re guessing this is one that’s targeted solely at serious collectors.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 3, 2008 in Videogames
Nintendo DSi mania is sweeping Japan (and the rest of video game fandom!) — shown above is a demo of upcoming games on on the DSi platform and below is the press conference footage of the introduction of the platform. The conference is in Japanese but you can get a pretty good idea of the feature sets from the presentation:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 2, 2008 in Japanese TV
This advert is amazing because 1983 had to be one of the low points for Disney — Walt had been dead for well over a decade and The Little Mermaid was still a few years in the future. Yet what impresses me is that the power of the Disney characters thanks to Walt’s storytelling skills were still keeping the company afloat all of those years later, and cooler yet those characters were so strong they could support a theme park in Japan. By the way if you look closely in the commercial you’ll see a very lackluster looking Snow White…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 2, 2008 in Videogames
The latest update in the Nintendo DS line is the DSi and this great mobile game platform is becoming more iPhone like (well maybe closer to the iPod Touch) as the new features include a touch screen, camera, WiFi, app store, and browser. If Nintendo would only think of adding a phone I think they could give Apple a run for their money with the youth market.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 1, 2008 in Star Wars
Caution: This is a cranky fanboy rant! The preview art for the Topps Star Wars Galaxy Trading Cards looks rather uninspired to say the least. In an age of Star Wars merchandise pushing the edge with cool looking art toys and a diverse community of creative professionals who love the show the above artwork shows a lack of imagination. Don’t get me wrong the artwork is professional, but alas it’s too conventional — it looks like a Photoshop collage. If you’re selling the “art of Star Wars” you should be afraid to show some drawings and a wider range of styles:
“In response to a steady stream of fan requests over the past decade, Topps is bringing back Star Wars Galaxy — one of its most beloved entertainment card brands. The Galaxy tradition of presenting diverse artist interpretations of the Star Wars Universe continues in fine form as Topps gears up to release all-new Series 4 this February. Not only is this series aimed at the long-time Star Wars collecting community; Topps is also looking to attract a whole new generation of younger Star Wars fans and collectors. As this segment of the fan base was still diapers when the Galaxy concept first debuted over 15 years ago (many weren’t even born then), the card marketer expects the current popularity of Star Wars will attract kid and teen audiences to the Galaxy brand as well.”
…the only marketing buzzword they didn’t use above was “demographics” and “social media”! Come on Topps if you look at everything from sneakers to skateboards you know that kids and teens are will allow you to have a bit more fun with this “beloved brand”.
NASA needs a stronger champion, current Administrator Michael Griffin thinks we should return to the moon because it is easy. The irony of this is that JFK picked the lunar mission because it wasn’t easy. Frankly if our only goal is to return to the moon we might as well just give NASAs budget to China as they’re already well on track to doing this now. To me part of the point of NASA is doing what hasn’t been done before — this sort of R&D project allows us to innovate as well as explore:
“NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin defended his agency’s determination to establish a lunar colony before embarking on a manned Mars mission Sept. 30, arguing that those who prefer to focus only on Mars are overestimating what is known about the Moon and underestimating the difficulties of going to Mars.
Addressing the International Astronautical Congress here, Griffin said the U.S. Apollo program spent a total of just 27 working days on the Moon, which he said is as big as Africa and merits substantially more exploration.
Several space agencies, including some in Europe, say their scientists are much less interested in the Moon than in Mars and that, since doing both is beyond their means, are weighing whether to focus on Mars.”
