One dense post, hope you find something interesting.

Another delayed post, started this post in mid-February. The only reason I'm mentioning this is I wish I got it out sooner, over at Ain't It Cool News, they had a clip of the Where the Wild Things Are movie. It's been yanked, no matter, apparently they are making major changes to the movie so much of the project is being redone and I think it's been pushed back a year.

Fables. Jeez, I can't believe I waited until now to get into the series. And to think I only started reading it because of James Jeans' covers. You can download the first issue at DC's Vertigo website. It starts out slow but give it a shot. The last story arc was amazing (issues... late 30s, early 40s). If you are in a hurry, there's a torrent of the majority of the issues out, including the spinoffs. But remember, show them some love and buy the graphic novels or the back issues. I'm waiting for the entire set to pop up on eBay so I can snag it all in one go.

Freak Angels, a free, weekly, ongoing comic written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield. Not only is it free, I'm totally digging the art. And Warren Ellis has given us Global Frequency, The Authority, and Transmetropolitan, need I go on? The plot is still relatively thin (don't have that much to go by), but the setting seems to have been done to death... still for a free comic, I'm a fan.

I forget who sent this Youtube video to me originally, it's a Batman: Gotham Knight preview. Haven't heard of it? Well this description was posted on IMDB. "Anime-inspired direct-to-DVD anthology film. Comprised of six short stories, from diverse creators, including Academy Award-nominated Josh Olsen (A History of Violence), Batman Begins writer David S. Goyer, and comics scribe Brian Azzarello. It's planned for a release window of two to four weeks prior to the release of The Dark Knight, and would bridge the gap between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight."

This article gives me hope for my architecture degree. Care to know who designed the majority of the Air Jordans (including the very first one) in Nike's lineup? An architect named Tinker Hatfield. Found that out while I was watching the CNBC special, SWOOSH Inside Nike.

Firefly will never die, or hopefully it'll get revived on the small screen. I've already professed my love for the short-lived series on this blog. Now an established author has one upped me by writing a Firefly novel. And guess what? It's totally free!

Daily Monster. There have been similar projects in the past, but not many of them includes a video of every single monster! Great stuff.

Saw a photo of this Target promotion in this month's Fast Company. Thanks to Cathy for the article. Too bad I missed it, what the hell was I doing at the time? I was working a block away...

I really should get started on the knitting. This R2D2 knit beanie is FREAKING AWESOME.

Resources:

How to Speak, a lecture given by MIT professor, Patrick Winston. I think MIT pulled the video from Youtube, but check the comments. There's a link to a video hosted at Harvard. Going to be honest here, haven't sat through this one yet... And Chip Kidd presents The Learners. Haven't sat through this video either. Subject matter sounds like fun though.

Wokai.org. I guess it's similar to Kiva.org, but this microfinance site is concentrated on China. My little cousin is heading over to Beijing this summer to intern for them. Very exciting! I don't know when I'll be over there for a few months of study, but I'd love to get involved when I'm there.

Core77 has a link to three great rendering tutorials. I swear I'll sit myself down one day and go through them. I really need a studio I can go to.

For a time I was hooked on pudding tea. More recently I started going back to Whatever, a dessert joint in Chinatown my brother introduced to me a few years ago. Check them out for fresh fruit drinks, and they aren't that expensive! Prices are similar to pudding / boba tea.

Resonate Ink Illustrations by Si Scott, and other tidbits

Si Scott's Resonate ink illustrations are filled with swirly goodness. And get this, he does it all by hand! I wouldn't even be able to pull this off in Illustrator which is much more forgiving. It's rare that I devote so much space / bandwidth to one image in an entry, but I'm so infatuated with the work that I am demanding all of you to check the site and look at the other work in the Resonate series. Interested in a print? Checked with Soma Gallery, no luck. If you don't read anything else in this post, please go and check out his site.

Hand knit silk / wool biology frog. Seems like knitters these days are having a lot of fun with their craft. As you can probably tell from my previous posts I intend to join in.

Wonder if Drawn ever thought of this concept, Artist A Day, simple site showcasing one artist per day. It would be nice if they had thumbnails next to each artist on the list (from the previous days). Lot of painters... didn't see anything too interesting so far.

Mozilla hires developers from Humanized, great. Now that you have some UI experts on board, and have proven that you can return FireFox to v.1 speeds (v.2 was so damn sluggish), could you please make v.30b2 not crash as often in Vista? Or is it Vista's fault? I'm assuming it is...

Humanflows by Miguel Cabanzo is a project that intends to visually map global migration year by year. The prototypes give an example of migration taking place starting in 1991 based on two factors so far. I'm impressed that they were able to track down the data behind the numbers and organize them into such a simple interface. Two things that came to mind, wish there was a graphical representation of how many individuals immigrated into a certain country rather than having a bunch of numbers count up. How about heat maps, higher the number of immigrants, the brighter a country gets? The other thing that I was looking for which is probably more dependent on the data than the interface... was the preference of the Chinese. Would have been nice to see if the Southerners preferred America or if the Northerners preferred Australia, etc. Currently, all emigration sprouts from the label of the country, guess it would have been too unwieldy to zero in on the exact regions or cities. Whether or not you are interested in the data, watching the prototypes is pretty mesmerizing.

Vinny forwarded this list of 10 underhyped webapps a few days ago. Quick notes on the list. Qipit, sounds great, wish my phone's camera was better, going to save that for my visits to B&N =T. Think lighting is always an issue. Ning, heard about it before, not for me, Facebook is enough. Jott, know some people would love using this app, I just hate talking in general so it's quicker for me to email / text myself on my phone, besides I keep everything on Netvibe's Webnote. Anywhere.FM sounds awesome, I just need to set aside some time and bandwidth to upload my harder to find songs. I'm assuming I'll be able to share my music? Sorta like Shoutcast but without the damage to my bandwidth since everything is stored on Anywhere.FM's servers. Doodle, is this incorporated into Evite? Need to remember to use this next time we set up some event that requires consensus building for the date. Netvibes, they should make me Chief Evangelist. I've been banging the tables (or my buddylists rather) extolling the features of Netvibes. My main draw? Speedily checking all my POP3 email accounts at a glance. Previous start-up pages never stuck, this one has been on my first tab ever since I discovered it, I <3 features ="T." href="http://speedracerthemovie.warnerbros.com/">Speed Racer, trailer is out. I'm not really digging it. There was such a big deal made about the new camera developed for the movie (keeping everything in focus, just like a cartoon) but I guess it's one of those things that was cool in the mind, but not when executed.

Supermandolini, a pin celebrating the uber player. I'm assuming it's not officially licensed by Nintendo. Would go nice with an NES controller belt. I can think of a few individuals worthy of this pin...

On the subject of gaming, for a limited time, Steven Poole released his book, Trigger Happy, under a CC license. Grab it while you can! The PDF will is DRM free and will work on any device capable of reading PDFs. The book was originally released in 2000 and is about the aesthetics of video games.

Does free sound good to you? How about a few books by Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and the founder of Creative Commons. The Future of Ideas, Free Culture, Codev2.

While we are at it, this new site (to me anyway), PDF-Mags, collects over one-hundred
free PDF mag’s focusing on art, design, illustration and culture. Right up my alley! Oh if you want a free snowboarding magazine, check out ISM, it's flash based so it's not listed in the directory.

So much to read.

Quick hits: Wanted, Whale Hunt, Designers Accord

Wanted, read about this movie a few months back in an issue of Wizard. At the time all the hoopla was about the Iron Man movie (aftermath from the fan trailer that was released at the Comic Con). I was amazed that even with a pretty star-studded cast, the Wanted movie still slipped under my radar. It was one of my favorite mini-series during college and as with most popular comics since the 90s, the series took forever to finish. I think the last issue of Wanted came out a full year after issue #5. Though the Fox character was based on Halle Barry (Catwoman), looks like she didn't get the call. Instead Angelina Jolie filled in beautifully, so badass. I was a bit peeved that the story line was modified, but after checking up on the movie's synopsis, looks like most of the original elements are still there, just not in your face. Excellent rework! Check out the trailer. (credit: Mass)

The Whale Hunt, a photography journal by Jonathan Harris. Beautiful photos and several amazing GUIs to view them with. The GUIs are so well thought out, they fade into the background focusing your attention on what Jonathan saw and felt during the nine days he spent with a family of Inupiat Eskimos in Alaska. Every five minutes, one photograph, or sometimes up to 37 were taken depending on Jonathan's heart rate. Incredible story telling... there's more to Alaska than just the stuff we saw in First Descent. Oh, Jonathan did in fact read Moby Dick (check his FAQs section). THIS IS A MUST SEE!

Designers go green... right that's old news. What's new is The Designers Accord. Looks like the designer's version of LEED accreditation but for firms rather than individual projects and without any accreditation. Okay, guess it's not like LEED at all =T.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Not knocking on Alba or the other actors in the movie, but it's pretty sad when a CGI character can out perform the human actors. For action sequences that's nothing new, but take a look at the anguish the Silver Surfer is portraying above. Doesn't that just look gut wrenching? Okay maybe not for those of you who don't know about his sacrifice... so sit still for a second.

The Silver Surfer, know as Norrin Radd lived on an Earth-like world. When Galactus swung on by to dine on his planet he begged Galactus to spare his planet, Zenn-La and especially his love, Shalla-Bal. In return, Galactus imbued him with some of the power cosmic and he became Galactus' hearld seeking out worlds for his master to consume. You want sacrifice? That's a big sacrifice, exiled from your loved ones. You can read more about this complex character over at his Wiki. I'm a nerd and even I learned quite a bit from the Wiki-entry. In my defense I never really got into the whole cosmic stories. I preferred my superheroes Earthbound.

Back to the movie, it took me about three days to finish it because I couldn't really stand the movie until Silver Surfer showed up in full force. From then on it was full speed ahead. Most comic movies fail from the start because they are hopeless. How can a director and his/her special effects minions hope to transition what you see on the comic book page and your mind onto the silver screen? What an artist can do on paper is almost limitless, with no need for a special effects budget. What a reader can picture in his/her mind is even more far-reaching (and cheaper, no salary or royalty to the creative team, paper, printing, distribution costs, you get the idea). But the director and special effects crew did an amazing job here. Not only did they successfully transition the character onto the screen, they added to his persona. Some of the moves he pulled off in the movie had me smacking my forehead and thinking, wow, I can't believe the artists never did that. He was also interesting during the slow parts of the movie too... beautifully done.

To be honest, the Fantastic Four were a drag on him. They should spin him off and just let him fly... or surf. I'd pay money to see a solo movie on the Surfer.

Movies to look forward to...

Transformers came and went. I was satisfied at the time, now comes a slew of nostalgic movies to look forward to (or not). I covered the Thundercats animated movie previously, the movies to be covered today are all live-action or CGI.

The first one up already sounds like a disaster (keep reading, I'm saving the best movies for last) as the Transformers counterpart in the mid-80s, G.I. Joe is bastardized by the accountants to appeal to a global audience. If the executives truly believe a G.I. Joe film produced as we know it won't appeal to a wide enough audience to warrant the investment, why bother making the movie? There's talk of this 'Action Man' character I know nothing about or have interest in, let's just call the movie Action Man and be done with it. The script isn't finalized yet, let's hope they either kill it or stay true.

Another Rambo movie, wasn't much of a fan as a kid, loved the Rocky series more and thought Stallone's Rocky Balboa movie was passable. Probably my third favorite movie in the series. Anyway, Stallone's at it again with John Rambo. The story ties in Myanmar which sparked my interest. Don't know anything about the politics there now but a quick search on Google News makes it seem much more tamed than it was in the past. Anyway, I'm unqualified to write about the politics and I don't know how much research Stallone did for the movie. The premise seems decent, but it's bloody as hell. Trailer included in the link above.

Beowulf. Haven't heard that name since high school! This movie wasn't on my radar but because it has Neil Gaiman's name attached to the screenplay, I'll be on the lookout later this fall.

Avatar. Apparently there are two movies duking it out for that title, a Shyamalan live-action adaptation of my beloved Nickelodeon series and something James Cameron has been cooking up for a while.

To be honest Robotech wasn't at the top of my list when I was a kid. I was exposed to the series in very much the same way as I was exposed to Saint Seiya. I don't remember it much as a weekly syndicated series, instead most of my exposure to it was through rented tapes at various shops in Chinatown. Anyone up for a Robotech marathon? I'm sure I can borrow the series from someone. Anyway, a movie is in the works starring Tobey Maguire, he is also looking to serve as a producer so it looks like he has a personal interest in the film's success. Things are looking bright for now, we just need to see what changes will be made for the adaptation to live-action / CGI.

I know nothing about GOLION, but the Americanized version, Voltron, is a childhood favorite. The episodes were very formulaic but the entire sequence of them jumping into their pods to enter the Lions hidden in various environments really made my imagination run wild. Anytime I'm day dreaming about sitting inside and controlling a robot, it's not a result of Mech Warrior but Voltron and Gundam. In short, someone has gotten their hands on the script and it's not corny. It's dark and I can't freaking wait!

Rewinding a bit, I'm sure many of you read Where the Wild Things Are as a kid. I purchased the book recently with the Scholastic credit I received (due to the muck-up with the Harry Potter book from DeepDiscountDVD) and as with many things from our childhood it wasn't as good as we recalled. I do appreciate how much the book leaves up to the imagination and I guess that's the entire point of it. Interested to see the director's take, how do you flesh out such a short book into a full length movie? The lone screen shot released gives us a lot of hope for the movie.



Get Smart, who's a fellow fan? It was a little bit before my time, but I used to watch it as a kid back to back with the Dick Van Dyke show on Nick at Nite. Great series and this looks like an all star cast, Steve Carrell, Anne Hathaway, The Rock. Austin Powers is the current king of spy comedies, wonder if Get Smart will reclaim the crown. The trailer brought back vivid memories from the show, click on the link to check it out.

Iron Man! Elmo notified me of the new trailer and it is AMAZING! Go on take a look here! If you don't think it rocks I'll give you $5. I was blown away...

The Dark Knight, I loved the first movie and was initially disappointed that they casted Heath Ledger as Joker in the sequel. But after hearing his Joker laugh I was won over. Now here come the photos from the movie (isn't everything a bit bright?) and... well I still like Jack Nicholson's version more.

If you didn't notice, I linked a lot to a blog called First Showing in this post. They have some good SEO because every search I did, their blog post was near the top. From the blog, they are making another Street Fighter movie... and it's going to suck as much as the first one heh.