“Wright revealed at the Creative Screenwriting event that they have been working on various treatments for a Blade Runner sequel over the last couple years. And there is also the claim that recently the duo have been working with Blade Runner co-executive producer Bud Yorkin on the project. It should be noted that Yorkin likely doesn’t control the rights to a Blade Runner sequel, and all of this is being developed outside of the studio.
But this isn’t just some small side project, Travis also claims that they are already working with a pre-visualization team on some of the hunter action sequences for their eventual pitch with the studio. I don’t believe that Ridley Scott is involved, but the screenwriting team has worked directly with his brother Tony Scott on projects, so their might be a possible connection.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 29, 2008 in Animation
This is the latest trailer for the Lucky Star OVA release — this latest promo stars a live action actor playing the owner of the comic book shop. While wandering around on Friday at the New York Anime Festival I asked the marketing director of Bandai here in the States if they we’re planning on bringing over the OVA and reading in between the lines my sense is that they’re waiting to see how the current box set for the first series does on the market.
To me this sort of represents a major issue that the “Anime Industry” in the US faces — unless you can sell at least 5,000 copies of a DVD it just isn’t worth the effort to even think about a show. And even then it can take well over a year from when a show comes out until it can be packaged for America, and by that time tastes may have already changed. The flip side is also that the Japanese may want a premium for their show, which while it may be a hit in Japan could be a risk for an American distributer. And inside of this gap the niche audience for a show will either “share it” via P2P or a brave few will order a DVD from amazon.jp.
I do see some hope emerging as slowly companies seem to be waking up: At NYAF Funimation was pushing people to watch their channel on YouTube or order their channel on Verizon FIOS. I was also hearing about a Hulu channel for Anime and it even seems that Anime News Network is getting into the act by streaming some show in a “low quality resolution”. But I think the real solution will be for the Japanese companies to cut the middle man out and put their stuff on YouTube, have fans subtitle it at low cost and make their money by having Google sell the advertising. This is just a theory of course but I have noticed that even with this economic meltdown that Google’s stock price has yet to go below $400 a share.
The other nice thing about the Google/YouTube model is that it will allow indie film/video folks to produce a show that can hit a global market: So you might see a flood of new work coming from Bollywood and Hong Kong aimed at a larger audience.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 29, 2008 in Videogames
Both of these commercials are from 1982 (Bubblicious Gum above and Apple Jacks cereal below) and both adverts shamelessly ape the then hot trend of home videogame systems. For my money the Bubblicious commercial has much better production values, although that said I never did eat Apple Jacks back in the day.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 28, 2008 in Animation
Super Mega Special Mecha Awesome Chocolate-Dipped Shining Flaming Glowing Incredible Serve! Shown above is a clip from the new Lucky Star OVA which was just released in Japan. While on the surface the show is a comedy, what I’ve always admired about the series is that doesn’t mean that the characters are flat like a typical sitcom.
This scene is a good example: There’s a volleyball showdown that makes many references to various pop culture references, but under that there is the touch of getting inside the mind of Tsukasa Hiiragi who is the younger sister of Kagami. After getting knocked down Tsukasa grows up a little bit and dusts herself off to try and beat her older sister — in Hollywood this would be the turning point and the loser would become the winner. However the writers still make her lose, but now she can dream of the future day of not being in her sister’s shadow.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 28, 2008 in Japanese TV
My guess is that this commercial pushing the new DOHC VTEC engine (which was in the new Honda Integra) dates to 1989. Michael J. Fox is just a little bit older than me, so watching him in his youth sort of brings me back to the future when the year 2008 was the stuff of science fiction.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 27, 2008 in Science
Shown above is a bit of footage of the first Chinese space walk. I hope this winds up helping NASA, in fact last night during the Presidential debates the space walk was mentioned by Senator Barack Obama:
“It was “a small step by Col. Zhai Zhigang, but a historical leap in China’s space dreams,” the official commentary said, in a deliberate echo of Neil Armstrong’s words as he became the first man to set foot on the Moon. It was clear, the commentator said, that China was a latecomer to the space party compared to the United States and Russia, taking its “starting steps” several decades after its rivals.”
My favorite Paul Newman film is The Hustler from 1961, his acting in that role still brings that film to life with a raw power that you don’t see often today (of course a good screen play and the right director help too). Of course many fanboys and fangurls know Newman for so many of the other films that he brought to life — every role from a prisoner in Cool Hand Luke (1967) to a cowboy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Paul Leonard Newman we salute you:
“Paul Newman, who died yesterday at 83 of cancer, was a beautiful man who never seemed to notice his own beauty. He was at his worst when the camera did.
But far more often, he was at his best when he was too busy thinking to care about the looks he’d been given. He stood for an American archetype: he was the shrewd guy. Practical, tough, urban. He figured angles, calculated odds, charted courses, deployed distractions, maneuvered brilliantly. He wasn’t violent, he wasn’t a leader, he wasn’t Mr. Cool with the babes, he had limited gifts for comedy and highly-articulate, dialogue-driven set pieces. But nobody played shrewd better than Paul Newman. He became great playing shrewd.
You could see it in his eyes, and he probably didn’t care much whether they were blue or not. You’d see them narrow as he lapsed into concentration, then come alive again as they read cues, divined patterns, perceived dynamics, sniffed weaknesses. He figured it out with a gusto he sold to audiences brilliantly and you — with him — enjoyed his triumphant cerebration.”
Below: The famous scene from The Hustler between Eddie Falson (Paul Newman) and Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason):
History doesn’t repeat but sometimes it rhymes: The last time there was a total financial meltdown it was a good era for fanboys, in fact the 1930s was pretty much the birthplace of modern fandom itself. Here are my top ten examples why the last Great Depression was fanboy friendly:
Superman, Issue #1 (1938): The entire genre of caped superheroes can be traced to this comic book. The good and bad side of economic chaos is that it can make you look for a hero to save the day.
It’s amazing to think that Godzilla is over 50 years old, I wonder what fanboys will think of him when he hits 100 in the year 2054? Will fanboys cherish him as we do King Kong today or will they just see a silly rubber suit? Shown above is a package design from a model kit, my guess is that it’s from the 1960s.
It’s amazing when you think that the original Battlestar Galactica was just a made-for-TV-movie yet to be fair they put a ton of work into the production making sure that the mecha had that Star Wars feeling yet was unique enough. The Viper was one of the best designs of the show and now you can go old school with this model kit:
“Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the original Battlestar Galactica, this model kit has been updated for a new generation of fans. Newly tooled details, clear parts (if you’re cool enough to cram in our own lighting circuits), and an expanded decal sheet are just some of the bonuses Revell has packed into this kit. Time to relive the good old days – when your roommates went out on “dates” and you stayed home working on a model kit. They never knew how much fun they were missing.”
On a related note here’s a vintage commercial which shows you how to properly play with your Galactica toys (hint: using the garage as a space station is a great idea):
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 25, 2008 in Star Wars
My image of fanboy hell is listening to a second rate orchestra poorly play every known science fiction theme song from the 30’s to the 70’s — and Geoff Love made this horrific vision come true. But what I do love about this album is that the packaging is designed not to get the publisher sued, it’s ever so close to Star Wars but makes it a point of getting “creative” with the subject matter. The first thing you’ll notice is that they seem to take the actors from the TV show Buck Rogers and put them in place of Luke and Princess Leia:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 25, 2008 in Star Wars
I could never quite stand the rainbow palette that colored the ever so cute world of My Little Pony but seeing this fan modified horsie switch to the dark side makes me ever so happy inside!
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 24, 2008 in Animation
Above: The animated film Flighty directed by Leigh Hodgkinson.
I’ve seen a website here or there try to be the “YouTube of Animation” but frankly the efforts always fall short. So I have to admit that I have my doubts about the potential success of new site 4mations which was just launch this week by Channel 4 in England.
While the site features some very good content it’s a mixed bag, and the amount of animation only goes so deep. I also found the interface a bit clunky in terms of ease of use, for example the mechanism to go from one page to the next is hidden at the bottom of each screen. However on the plus side there will be a competition associated with the site so it may encourage some community. And the one thing i did like is that they did include an embed function to allow bloggers like myself to share the animations with others. Although my gut feeling is that I’d rather see organizations like Channel 4 team up with existing sits like YouTube rather than reinventing the wheel.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 24, 2008 in Videogames
This amazingly cool rubber band gun is based on the Konami PlayStation3 videogame Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. The gun is made out of stainless steel and includes a “precision laser pointer” for nailing your target. The gun was designed by a Japanese fan nd if you read Japanese you can find out more about it here.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 24, 2008 in Animation
Rrrrrrrr! I just love this vintage 70s animated sequence from Sesame Street, when you combine the super funky music with the groovy automobile theme it looks like something that might inspire a young Quentin Tarantino to grow up and direct Death Proof.
“Send normal lawn ornaments into orbit with artist Fred Conlon’s gnome-be-gone to the moon that, like his other sculptures, will bring just the right amount of mischief and mayhem to your yard. Handmade in Utah.”
“About half the stars in our celestial neighborhood may have traveled great distances through the Milky Way, according to a new study, which suggests our sun may be one of them. People have generally assumed that once a star forms inside a galactic disk, it stays in a more or less fixed orbit around the center of its galaxy, said lead study author Rok Roškar, a graduate student in astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 23, 2008 in Star Trek
Rod Roddneberry (the son of Gene Roddenberry) has been working on a documentary featuring the work of his dad relating to Star Trek for a few years now — at long last a trailer for the film is out and it looks pretty promising: Trek Nation.
One of the highlights of my fanboy Summer was exploring various Japanese ice cream flavors. My two favorites were the Nigamiga Oishii Maccha Bar (shown above) and the Uma-Kohcha Milk Bar (shown below). The Maccha Bar had a nice full green tea flavor while the Uma-Kohcha mostly tasted like cream with just a hint a tea flavor. Both treats are under the White Rose label and imported by JFC International in San Francisco.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 22, 2008 in Star Trek
If you’re a Star Trek fanboy (or fangurl) you owe a great deal to Joan Winston — she was one of a handful of people that invented the modern science fiction convention as we know it. Before 1972 there had been science fiction conventions going bak to the 30s, but these affairs were always focused on literary science fiction as the main show. In the 70s thanks to Star Trek this changed, and with it the audience for science fiction (and thus fandom) came in from the fringe to being a larger subculture that is now part of the mainstream of American society.
I was too young to get to those original Star Trek cons in the 70s (although I did talk my parents into a visit to the Star Trek Trading Post before it closed) but those cons served as a role model for the first generation of anime fans to take the bold leap into the larger world of conventions. In fact many of Joan Winston’s friends at the Lunarians played a critical role in allowing the first anime room at a science fiction convention in 1983.
“It was January 1972, and the first Star Trek convention was under way in a rented ballroom at the Statler Hilton in Manhattan. The organizers had expected a crowd of about 500. In the end, more than 3,000 fans turned up, so many that by the final day of the event registrars were issuing ID cards made from torn scraps of wrapping paper. For fans of the series, the convention marked the moment when a diaspora became a nation.
And it made a subculture celebrity of Joan Winston, who played a leading role in creating the event and went on to achieve a second-order fame as one of world’s most avid “Star Trek” fans. She died of Alzheimer’s disease on Sept. 11 at age 77, her cousin Steven Rosenfeld said. She lived in Manhattan.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Sep 21, 2008 in Animation
It seems these days that everyone is obsessed with multi-million 3D animated epics, but I think what people forget is that animated cinema is about storytelling — and that it doesn’t require an epic production to touch your heart. To me Don Hertzfeldt serves an inspiration of the DIY work ethic in animation which I’d urge any of you with an interest in the industry to follow. Shown above is his first film Ah, L’Amour which was made in 1995 when he was just 19 year old. Below is his film Rejected which would earn Don Hertzfeldt a nomination for an Academy Award in 2001:
