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Posted on 08.17.05 by Widge @ 5:58 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  Dammit. Joe Ranft, one of the big enchiladas at Pixar, left us yesterday. An auto accident of some kind. He was story supervisor on Toy Story and Toy Story 2, storyboard supervisor on James and the Giant Peach and Nightmare Before Christmas, and directing animator on Brave Little Toaster. He was also the voice of Jacques in Finding Nemo, Wheezy in Toy Story 2 and my favorite character from Bug's Life: Heimlich. "One day I will be a beauuuuutiful butterfly and everything will be better." Much remembrance of the man is taking place at Cartoon Brew and Animation Nation. Our thoughts go out to his friends and family. He will be sorely missed. Update: Disney Blog has some info as well. Update: More details on the accident at the Hollywood Reporter. Categorized as: Headsup
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Posted on 08.17.05 by Widge @ 5:40 am
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  Well, there's some silver lining to be had with Disney's acquisition of the Muppets, I guess. Lemons into lemonade, you know. We get a season one boxed set on DVD, finally, with all twenty-four episodes across four discs. Granted, some of the episodes are missing bits--this isn't a complete, uncut first season--but for what's here, it's good for the fan of felt. In addition to the episodes, you get a trivia track ("Muppet Morsels"), the pitch reel, a gag reel and the second pilot episode, "Sex and Violence." This streeted last week. In related news, it appears that Kermit's hitting 50 years come September, which Disney Blog reminds us of. Call me an old fuddyduddy, but I could have done without the exotic dancers bit in the article Disney Blog references regarding his coming celebration. Categorized as: Headsup
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Posted on 08.10.05 by Dindrane @ 7:15 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  And it pays to relieve their stress when you want to grow them on Mars. A new article from Science Daily investigates the phenomenon of anxious plants and the gases they produce to signal their problems--not unlike a teenager writing bad poetry and listening to The Cure. NASA scientists are currently trying to learn new ways to counteract this anxiety in order to create viable gardening methods for Mars. Found via Fortean Times. Categorized as: Headsup and Stimuli
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Posted on 08.10.05 by Widge @ 12:54 am
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.   And so today we've got two versions of Delta Force: Black Hawk Down from Novalogic, taking you and putting you in the middle of the 1993 conflict in Somalia. What both versions have going for them is sixteen single player missions developed with the aid of former spec ops soldiers, multiplayer battles out the yin yang, cooperative play using split screens for up to four people, AI teammates that can recognize your voice commands, craploads of weapons that you can change-up during play and sweet in-play graphics. The PlayStation 2 version plays across your broadband to let you involve up to 32 players. The Xbox version will allow up to 50 players. Egad. Badass military gameplay that involves you and everybody in your neighborhood too. Gotta like it. For more info, check out the game's official site. Buy the PS2 version from Amazon. Categorized as: Games and Headsup
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Posted on 08.03.05 by Widge @ 11:47 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.    Anchor Bay is making a serious play for your coin with three TV releases: two that are high profile, one series that was before its time and nowadays would be on HBO or something and crushing people under its bootheels at the Emmys. Let's talk about that last one first: Profit. I watched the two-hour TV movie/pilot and perhaps the first real episode, but I can tell you that the two-hour opener is worth the price of admission. Adrian Pasdar had his finest hour playing the title character in this. That character happens to be a sociopath who sees a huge corporation as the source of all the ills in his life, and he makes it his life mission to get inside and climb--and anyone who gets in his way is pretty much toast. In-credible. And evil. And fabulous. I kept seeing this promoted as "Season 1," but of course...that's all she wrote. The set comes with a crapload of interviews with cast and crew, commentaries from the creators and Pasdar, and four episodes that never were seen because the fools yanked it from the air too soon. This streets next week. Categorized as: Headsup
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Posted on 08.02.05 by Widge @ 10:39 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  Well, it streeted today, and I know it's going to make a lot of folks happy. This first season boxed set from Urbanworks contains all twenty-four first season episodes spread over three discs. The fourth disc is for the ninety-minute TV special, "The Cosby Show: A Look Back," which aired in 2002. It's mostly a ginormous highlight reel for the entirety of the show's run, though it also comes with deleted scenes, bloopers, audition footage and the cast looking back on the show. This show's so solid, it's hard to pick favorites. However, I'll do my best: this is the season that has Theo and Cliff discussing how much money it takes to get ahead in the world (the Monopoly bit from the pilot), Dizzy Gillespie's appearance, and Cliff's track rematch among the episodes. Nice. Categorized as: DVD and Headsup
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Posted on 07.29.05 by Widge @ 9:26 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  My God, has it really been ten years since Lucy Lawless came on the scene with her razor-edged metal frisbee and her war cry? We are so old. Fans who feel the same way will be able to take solace in this, the massive seven disc 10th Anniversary boxed set from Anchor Bay. The sixteen episodes on this monstrosity were picked by the fans from the entire six-season series. Apart from features available on previous ginormous boxed sets like interviews with everybody, audio commentaries, featurettes and docus, plus fan-oriented bits that are unique to this release. The hardcore will want this. It's available from Amazon. Categorized as: Headsup
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Posted on 07.27.05 by Widge @ 12:31 am
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  Okay, so this isn't news. I've been telling you to read Finder for a while now. Talisman is probably my favorite graphic novel/collection after From Hell. And this isn't a recent issue I'm sporting here. But this is what creator Carla Speed McNeil (I believe it was Carla, she was in a conversation at the time, I've never met her in person and I didn't want to interrupt), put in my hand. But it's just a reminder. Read the book and love the book. Check out her website here for more info. Categorized as: Comics and Headsup
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Posted on 07.22.05 by Widge @ 2:02 am
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  We dig McFarlane Toys. We just do. It's a combo of the badass sculpts and the fact that Todd had the testicular fortitude to tell the toy companies "Screw you, I'll do it myself." And we always respect that attitude. Branching off into...well, branches, of the military comes Series 1 of the McFarlane's Military line. While they're concentrating on modern American fighting men right now, we can't wait to see when they start branching out and tackling other countries, other time periods. This series has for its basic figures the Army Ranger, Navy SEAL, Marine Corps Recon Sniper, Marine Corps Recon, Army Desert Infantry, and the Air Force Special Forces Command CCT. Each of them comes with authentic everything: uniforms, gear, and weapons. Each comes with its own custom base as well. Pretty sweet for something that is apparently (as McFarlane makes it clear on their website) done without the involvement of the DoD. For more pics, check out the site here. Categorized as: Headsup and Toys
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Posted on 07.20.05 by Widge @ 1:15 am
Comments on this: 3 so far. Add your own.  Meet Tork and Tara Darwyn. They are a husband and wife team of cryptozoologists, off tracking down such beasts as the Mothman, giant man-eating plants that put Audrey II to shame, and the Loch Ness Monster. Tork is a bit impetuous and hard-headed and Tara somehow manages to pull their collective fat out of the fire. I like it myself because it's high weirdness played for laughs, and you know how I love high weirdness. I subscribe to both Fortean Times and Skeptical Inquirer, for pity's sake. And as a bonus, there's plenty of bad pun action and monkeys. Everything goes better with monkeys. It's amusing stuff from NBM, so for some samples and other goodness, check out the title's website here. Categorized as: Comics and Headsup
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