Anime Central 2013 - SUNDAY

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Anime Central 2013 - SATURDAY

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Anime Central 2013 - FRIDAY

Friday, May 17, 2013

First Music Video Recorded in SPACE

Astronaut Sings Bowie's "Space Oddity"

on board the International Space Station

• [Source: Blastr] As Cmdr. Chris Hadfield prepares to take his final bow and exit the outer-space stage that is the International Space Station, he gives us one last encore.
• There's already no shortage of reasons to love Cmdr. Hadfield. His raw charisma has reignited the world's interest in space exploration. He even managed to grab the attention of both Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock. But his time is running out, and, before he returns to the womb of Mother Earth, he has one last video message to impart, which also doubles as the first music video to be recorded in space.

• Somehow, deep down, we always knew the first-ever intergalactic music video would involve David Bowie. We're glad we were right, and we're thankful it was Hadfield who made it happen.
• Safe travels home, commander.

Anime Central is this Weekend!

May 17-19, 2013,

Rosemont, IL

Hyatt Regency O'Hare

Stay Tuned for UPDATES!


Don't miss the biggest anime event in the Midwest
or end up like this...

"I can't believe I missed the con! NO! NO! NO! NO!"

Captain Harlock - English Trailer

CG Animated Film Coming this Fall!

• Appleseed's Shinji Aramaki is back at it again, this time tackling anime icon Captain Harlock.
  
  Harlock is the archetypical romantic hero, a space pirate with an individualist philosophy of life. He is as noble as he is taciturn, rebellious, stoically fighting against totalitarian regimes, whether they be earthborn or alien. In his own words, he "fights for no one's sake... only for something deep in his heart". He does not fear death, and is sometimes seen wearing clothing with the number 42 on it. In Japanese culture, the number 42 is associated with death (the numbers, pronounced separately as "four two", sound like the words "shi ni"—meaning "to death").

• In the future, Mankind has achieved a vast starfaring civilization, but is slowly and steadily succumbing to ennui or despair, often due to defeat and subjugation by a foreign invader. Rising against the general apathy, Harlock denies defeat and leads an outlaw crew aboard his starship Arcadia to undertake daring raids against Earth's oppressors. Their primary oppressors are the Mazone, a race of organic plant-based alien women who explored Earth in the mythic past and are now back to reclaim it.

Get ARISE from this New GitS Trailer

"Ghost in the Shell: ARISE"

The full 90-second trailer for the first installment, "border:1 Ghost Pain," premiered on Saturday.

The story is set in 2027, one year after the end of the fourth non-nuclear war. New Port City is still reeling from the war's aftermath when it suffers a bombing caused by a self-propelled mine. Then, a military member implicated in arms-dealing bribes is gunned down. 

 

During the investigation, Public Security Section's Daisuke Aramaki encounters Motoko Kusanagi, the cyborg, wizard-level hacker assigned to the military's 501st Secret Unit. Batou, a man with the "eye that does not sleep," suspects that Kusanagi is the one behind the bombing. The Niihama Prefectural Police detective Togusa is pursuing his own dual cases of the shooting death and a prostitute's murder. Motoko herself is being watched by the 501st Secret Unit's head Kurutsu and cyborg agents. 

 

In addition to the new trailer, the anime's website posted a character relationship chart and published a comment from "salyu x salyu," the performer of the first volume's ending theme song. 

 

The Ghost in the Shell Arise anime, which consists of four 50-minute parts, will premiere in Japanese theaters on June 22, and will then be available on Blu-ray Disc and DVD at retail on July 26.

Images © Masamune Shirow, Production I.G/Kodansha, Ghost in the Shell Arise Production Committee

Katsuhiro Otomo's new anime: SHORT PEACE

• An omnibus of four shorts by Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira, Memories, Steamboy) and other leading anime creators.
  
  The four shorts are:
  
  "Combustible" ("Hi-no-youjin")
  Screenplay, Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
  Character Design, Visual Concept: Hidekazu Ohara (Memories' Cannon Fodder)
  Music: Makoto Kubota
  
  "Tsukumo"
  Screenplay, Director: Shuhei Morita (Kakurenbo, Freedom)
  Original Story Concept, Conceptual Design: Keisuke Kishi
  
  "Gambo"
  Director: Hiroaki Ando (Five Numbers!)
  Original Story Concept, Screenplay, Creative Director: Katsuhito Ishii (Redline, Funky Forest: The First Contact, Taste of Tea)
  Character Design: Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Evangelion, .hack, Summer Wars)
  
  "Buki yo Saraba" (A Farewell to Arms)
  Original Story: Katsuhiro Otomo
  Screenplay, Director: Hajime Katoki (mechanical designs in Gundam franchise, Super Robot Wars)
  Character Design: Tatsuyuki Tanaka (Tojin Kit)
  
  In addition, Koji Morimoto (The Animatrix's Beyond, Memories' Magnetic Rose, Noiseman Sound Insect, Genius Party's Dimension Bomb) contributed the film's opening animation.
  
  Short Peace assembles "top creators at the leading edge of Japanese animation, exploring possible future avenues of expression." Short Peace is also the title of a collection of Otomo's manga shorts that was first published in the 1970s. Yasumasa Tsuchiya is producing the shorts at Sunrise.
  
  "Combustible" already debuted in a preview screening in Japan last year, and the Annecy Film Festival in France presented both "Combustible" and "Tsukumo" as nominated works last June. "Combustible" also played at the Platform International Animation Festival in Los Angeles in October. The short won the Grand Prize in the Animation division of the 16th Japan Media Arts Festival Awards and the Noburou Oofuji Award in the 67th Annual Mainichi Film Awards.
  
  The omnibus film will open in Japan on July 20.

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Disney animates Marvel's BIG HERO 6

Disney's first attempt at animating comic book heroes...

• [Source: Brian Truitt, USA TODAY] Live-action Marvel Comics characters have been saving the day on the big screen, and now Disney is borrowing from the comics for a new animated action comedy. Big Hero 6 stars Hiro Hamada, a robotics genius who — along with his mechanical pal Baymax — joins a team of rookie crime fighters when a plot arises to decimate the high-tech metropolis of San Fransokyo. The computer-animated movie, which will be released in 3-D on Nov. 7, 2014, is inspired by the 1998 Marvel miniseries Sunfire & Big Hero 6 featuring Silver Samurai, Sunfire and a group of superpowered individuals who come together to save Tokyo. The film marks the first time that Walt Disney Animation Studios has made a movie with Marvel characters since Disney bought the comic-book publisher in 2009.

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Animated Version of "Man of Steel" Trailer

Awesome trailer gets animated!

• Fans have taken scenes from the Animated Superman series and spliced them together with the soundtrack from Zack Snyder's "Man of Steel" trailer to create this inspiring piece of video.

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Kid's Version of Star Wars VII (with Puppets)

Now Showing in Awesome 2D!!!!

• With fresh excitement over the announcement of a new Star Wars movie, three children (and some, ahem, adults) set out to make a trailer for a possible Episode 7. Shooting in beautiful Los Angeles including famous Vasquez Rocks and supplementing with VFX and sounds inspired by Star Wars, this short teaser asks the question what a galaxy far, far away be like with Junior Jedi protecting it.
  
  Winner - "Best Group Project" Premiered at Encino Charter Elementary School Movie Night on April 27, 2013.

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The Walking (And Talking) Dead

A Bad Lip-Reading of the Walking Dead

ENDER'S GAME - Official Trailer

Based on the best-selling, award-winning novel...
ENDER'S GAME

• Set in Earth's future, an imperiled humankind that has barely survived two conflicts with the "Buggers", an insectoid alien species. In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, an international fleet maintains a school to find and train future fleet commanders. The world's most talented children, including the main protagonist, Ender Wiggin, are taken at a very young age to a training center known as the Battle School. There, teachers train them in the arts of war through increasingly difficult games including ones undertaken in zero gravity in the Battle Room, where Ender's tactical genius is revealed.

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Ray Harryhausen dies at age 92

Ray Harryhausen
(1920 - 2013)
"Special Effects Legend"

"Without his work, there never would have been a "Star Wars" or a "Jurassic Park,''
-Steven Spielberg

• [Source: L.A. Times; by Dennis McLellan] Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion animation legend whose work on "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms," "Jason and the Argonauts" and other science fiction and fantasy film classics made him a cult figure who inspired later generations of filmmakers and special-effects artists, has died. He was 92.
  
  Harryhausen died Tuesday in London, where he had lived for decades. His death was confirmed by Kenneth Kleinberg, his longtime legal representative in the United States.
  
  In the pre-computer-generated-imagery era in which he worked, Harryhausen used the painstaking process of making slight adjustments to the position of his three-dimensional, ball-and-socket-jointed scale models and then shooting them frame-by-frame to create the illusion of movement. Footage of his exotic beasts and creatures was later often combined with live action.
  
  Working with modest budgets and typically with only two or three assistants -- if any -- to keep costs down, Harryhausen created innumerable memorable big-screen moments.
  
  In "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" (1953), a dinosaur thawed out by A-bomb testing in the Arctic goes on a Big Apple rampage in which it devours a New York cop before meeting its demise at Coney Island.
  
  In "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963), the mythological hero Jason, played by Todd Armstrong, slays a seven-headed hydra guarding the Golden Fleece, then Jason and two of his men battle seven sword-wielding warrior skeletons that spring from the hydra's scattered teeth.
  
  In "The Valley of Gwangi" (1969), a group of turn-of-the-20th-century cowboys on horseback attempt to lasso the movie title's namesake, a 14-foot Tyrannosaurus rex, to capture it for a Wild West show.
  
  And who can forget the prehistoric flying reptile that scoops up and carries off Raquel Welch, clad in an animal-skin bikini, in "One Million Years BC" (1966)?
  
  The fantasy world of Ray Harryhausen inspired Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, James Cameron and many other filmmakers, some of whom have paid cinematic homage to the special-effects maestro.
  
  In Pixar's 2001 animated feature "Monsters Inc.," a Monstropolis restaurant is named after Harryhausen.
  
  Director Robert Rodriguez's "Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams" included a Harryhausen-inspired multiple-skeleton swordfight and a closing-credit thank you to Harryhausen.
  
  And Lucas' "Star Wars: Episode 2 -- Attack of the Clones" featured a gladiator-style scene, including two shots set up exactly like ones Harryhausen devised for his 1958 classic "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad."
  
  "I had seen some other fantasy films before, but none of them had the sort of awe that the Ray Harryhausen movies had," Lucas said in "The Harryhausen Chronicles," a 1998 documentary written and directed by film critic and historian Richard Schickel.
  
  In 1992, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Harryhausen with the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for technical achievement.
  
  As part of a Hollywood contingent that wrote letters and donated money to get Harryhausen a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, Spielberg wrote: "Without Harryhausen's effects work over the last five decades, there never would have been a 'Star Wars' or a 'Jurassic Park.' His films continue to set our imagination on fire."
  
  For Harryhausen, it all began with a giant gorilla named Kong.
  
  Born in Los Angeles on June 29, 1920, Harryhausen was 13 when he saw "King Kong" during its run at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
  
  "I haven't been the same since," he is repeatedly quoted as saying over the years. 
•  

Epic DREDD Fan-Film

Based in the Judge Dredd universe

• Last year’s Dredd film was great, but sadly, it was a box-office bomb. Luckily, with no sequel on the horizon, some fans have stepped in to fill the void. Enter: Judge Minty.
• Based on the minor character from the 2000AD comic series, this fan film tells the story of an aging Judge forced to face his own weakness. After being injured on the job, Judge Minty is forced to take the long walk into the Cursed Earth.
• It’s 27 minutes of pure, unadulterated awesomeness. The production values are quite high for a fan film, and the look falls somewhere just outside the budget of the recent big-screen adventure. It has a little too much gloss around the seams, but the FX are pretty solid.
• The film is so good that the folks at 2000AD and publisher Rebellion have given it their blessing, and the creators are even planning some screenings at a few fan cons. Hey, we might not get a proper Dredd sequel, but this sure beats nothing.
•  

Sneak Peak at Cancelled Clone Wars Episodes

Clone Wars Special Preview

• The beloved CGI series Star Wars: Clone Wars might’ve gotten the ax during Disney’s buyout of Lucasfilm, but there’s still a silver lining — there’s reportedly a near-season’s worth of content already produced and just waiting to find a way into the wild. Now we have our first look at those precious few remaining episodes. 
• 
  IGN has a 2-plus-minute clip that follows Jedi Master Plo Koon and and a team of Clone Troopers as they investigate a pretty rough shuttle crash. In a show of sheer FX force, the entire search takes place in the middle of a massive sandstorm, which is a true sight to behold. If nothing else, we’re losing one of the most visually stunning shows on TV. 
• 
  In case you’re wondering when the new episodes might make it to air, join the rest of us. Disney has remained mum on its plans for Clone Wars since pulling the plug, though the best guess would be a possible DVD release or online agreement (i.e. Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Prime) to burn off the remaining episodes.

 

Teaser for ENDER'S GAME Trailer

The official trailer for Ender's Game premiers May 7.
 Watch the Trailer Here 

Today is FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!

The First Saturday of May is Declared
FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!

• Free Comic Book Day is a single day - the first Saturday in May each year - when participating comic book shops across North America and around the world give away comic books absolutely FREE* to anyone who comes into their stores. *Check with your local comic book shop for their participation and rules.
• Need a local comic shop to visit on May 4th? Use our "shop locator":
  http://www.freecomicbookday.com/StoreLocator

• [Source: Detroit News] When the doors open today for Free Comic Book Day, an annual event that's grown in stature from a few stores to some 2,000 worldwide, publishers and purveyors of tales of heroes and villains will court new readers who, despite the ease of digital displays, are making time for and spending money on comics printed on paper.
  
  Retailers say the turnout and scope of the event, which began in 2002, is giving them and the industry a chance to tout their success by giving away 4.6 million comic books featuring everything from Superman to "The Walking Dead" to Gilbert Hernandez's "Marble Season.".
  
  According to the Free Comic Book Day's website, participating Metro Detroit retailers include comic stores in West Bloomfield, Canton, Dearborn, Farmington, Clawson, Madison Heights, Warren, Ferndale, Rochester Hills, Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, as well as Windsor. For a complete list, go to www.freecomicbookday.com.
  
  It's also a chance to extol not just comics as an art-form, but as a nexus of pop culture, too, said Joe Field, who organized the first Free Comic Book Day in 2002 and has been its chief architect and No. 1 proponent ever since.
  
  "That really is the crux of Free Comic Book Day, inviting people into these shops that are really social hubs for people who like anything that's going on in popular culture," he said this week.
  
  It's also a time for the industry to tout its growth, in print and online.
  
  Among print-based products, from magazines to books, comic book publishers big and small have been posting steady gains in sales and increases in issues.
  
  John Jackson Miller, who tracks industry sales figures and estimates through his www.comichron.com website, said that sales of single-issue comic books were up nearly $60 million to $474.6 million in 2012.
  
  That compared with $414 million in 2011 and $310.6 million in 2003.

May the 4th Be With Everyone

Celebrate Star Wars all the livelong day

• [Source: NerdistNews] It's a pun that has become a way of life. Star Wars fans everywhere choose the fourth day of May, which is this very Saturday, to celebrate the saga that takes place quite a while ago in a different part of the universe. Lots of people do lots of things to commemorate their favorite film saga and as we're now in a world where Episode VII is a mere two years away, this year has a huge amount of official things going on in which you may be interested. Here are but a few:
  
  In Los Angeles, at the historic Egyptian Theater, Entertainment Weekly's CapeTown Film Festival will be screening Return of the Jedi not once, not twice, but thrice. Thrice times. Why thrice? Because it's Episode VI's 30th anniversary year, of course. Who wouldn't want to see Jabba's Palace, the Battle of Endor or Luke and Vader's final confrontation on the big screen? There promises to be a whole bevy of guests (who have yet to be announced. Mysterious) and photo ops and "other surprises" as well. Perhaps Boba Fett will take someone prisoner.
  
  Denver's Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum will be having a day-long celebration of Star Wars including a Jedi Academy, Trooper Training, a place to create your own Wookiee or Ewok and even a real full-size X-Wing fighter, supplied by Lucasfilm. You might even win an opportunity to sit inside the cockpit and pretend you're Luke Skywalker, or Wedge Antilles if you're really cool.
  
  Disney's Hollywood Studios will become Star Wars-ified in honor of the 4th. Completely separate from their Star Wars Weekends, beginning May 17th, the festivities on Saturday will include themed entertainment, such as characters walking around (and maybe riding Star Tours with you), exclusive merch, a dance party (we all know how much droids like to get down) and a special fireworks show.
  
  And while we're on the topic of Star Wars and doing things, now would be an excellent time to sign up for the second annual Course of the Force, the week-long relay put on by Nerdist and Lucasfilm that stretches from Marin County all the way down to San Diego, just in time for Comic-Con International. All the money raised from running slots will benefit Make-A-Wish and the fun had will benefit everybody. Register now for a quarter-mile spot and don't forget to wear comfortable shoes and Jedi robes that breathe.
  
  Are you properly prepared to celebrate the fall of Emperor Palpatine, Ewok style? Where are you celebrating Star Wars?
• 
  

Futurama is Cancelled... Again!

Futurama
[1999 - 2003]
[2010 - 2013]

• Futurama has a pretty crazy history: Though the animated series launched on Fox, the network canceled it after four seasons. Fans persisted in their wish for the show to return, and in 2008 Comedy Central brought it back.
• Sadly, the upcoming season marks the true end of Futurama. Before it premieres, Comedy Central is posting exclusive content every day on Facebook.
• The network's 50-day "Countdown to Futurama" will include character designs, new clips, art and more. I'd say there's quite a demand, since the series' Facebook page has a whopping 26 million fans.
• Futurama returns June 19 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Comedy Central. Here's a new clip from the season premiere:

Rare Candid Set Pics from Empire Strikes Back

Behind-the-Scenes Photos of
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

• [Source: Blastr.com] As the sacred screenplay for J.J. Abrams' Star Wars VII is being massaged and manipulated, it's sweet ambrosia to look back fondly on the original trilogy and pray that some essence of them is being channeled into the next installments.
  
  
  To help resurrect and restore the glory of arguably the saga's finest moment, here's a rare collection of behind-the-scenes shots from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. 
  
  
  Many have been unseen for years, including some amazing candids of director Irvin Kershner straddling a tauntaun, Carrie Fisher napping on a snowmobile, Harrison Ford piloting the production's snowcat and some epic stills of a Wampa whacking a stormtrooper from a deleted scene.
  
  
   CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PICS 

Cosplay Fun: Acrobatic Lara Croft

As you can see, it takes more than just
the right costume to be a Tomb Raider...