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Penguin

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  1. Penguin
    Yeah, I know. But Dallas doesn't know what he's looking at any more than we do. He also says it looks fossilized, but true fossilization requires groundwater and sedimentary minerals, so clearly he's just speculating/free associating and not stating fact. The chestburster may have come out of something inside that shell, then burst through the outer suit too. The stills captured from the trailer might just be showing the being that was inside it.
  2. Penguin
    Wow... colour me shocked and delighted! Full on toy. Now my interest is seriously piqued. Time to start saving. Considering the VF-4G only appeared in games, I wonder what accessories it will have other than a pilot figure?
  3. Penguin
    Who's to say that the "body" in the chair was even a body? Maybe it's some sort of techno-organic suit. No way to tell at this point. All I know is, I'm well and truly excited about this film.
  4. Penguin
    Well, I'm disappointed, but not surprised. I'd love if it were a toy, but so far, history has shown that new Yamato web exclusive designs are HDP kits, hasn't it? Has Yamato ever issued a web exclusive fully assembled toy that wasn't just a repaint (e.g. all the weathered versions) ? So, I'm expecting another HDP. If so, it might just be my first, depending on the price. Not willing to put out Regult prices for something I have to build and finish myself, especially (as David noted) since transformation will wreak havoc on the paint job. Since I'm primarily a fighter-mode enthusiast, if it's too pricey I'll just stick with my 1/72 resin kits.
  5. Penguin
    I'd buy it, but I'm not too certain how likely it is. While S to D is just a new head, the Sound Force version is based on the VF-17T, which requires a new canopy/nose as well as a head for the double seater. Depending whether that needs significant re-engineering, it could be a deal breaker.
  6. Penguin
    Considering how disappointed I was with the first, I'm down with a "clean slate" approach. That trailer actually has me vaguely interested.
  7. Penguin
    I wouldn't neessarily lump them together, and note that I did say can help a culture grow, not always. I think that if all a remake does is reiterate the original, then it may still have value if it encourages people to seek out the original and expand their horizons. Two comparisons I'd like to present. Firstly in film, I think something like Gus Van Sant's Psycho was without value. He did nothing to explore that story in any different way, and it didn't inspire any new interest in Hitchcock's works at the time that I noticed. It inspired a lot of scorn and derision. John Carpenter's The Thing and David Cronenberg's The Fly (two oft-repeated examples of good remakes) I'd argue added tons of value over the originals, presenting much more sophisticated themes (and with the help of modern special effects, a more visceral experience) than the originals. In a different way, Kaufman's 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers is closer to a reiteration of Segal's original, but a change in setting (time and place) and more depth of character allowed the ideas of the original to gain new relevance by making them a comment on the interpersonal isolation of the modern era, rather than the earlier being taken as a comment on Anti-Communist paranoia. Secondly, since you brought up music, one of my favourite comparisons is on an a fun little album called "Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits". It features a bunch of cover versions of classic cartoon themes by modern artists. Matthew Sweet covers the old "Scooby-Doo" theme. Though it's well-performed, it is so spot-on to the original you have to think "why bother"? It adds nothing to the music. However, I get a real kick out of hearing the Ramones perform the classic 60's "Spider-Man" theme in their signature style. Actually, Matthew Sweet I find to be a repeat "offender" in this regard. He and Susanna Hoffs have done a couple of albums titled "Under the Covers", which are all covers of their favourite 60's music. In general, Sweet's versions are so close to the original I tend to think "then why not just listen to the original?" But when Type O Negative covered Seals and Crofts' "Summer Breeze" in goth metal style on their Bloody Kisses album, it's such a different take on the original that I'd argue it does add something to the pop music cultural lexicon. I realize that both of these speak more to the artistic or personal growth a remake can generate than a fuzzy notion of cultural relevance. To me, that's a more useful discussion since relevance just means "bearing on or having connection to the matter at hand". You can argue whether any work or idea has relevance from dozens of perspectives. If the matter at hand is contemporary culture, is "Back in the U.S.S.R." still culturally relevant? Not verbatim, since there is no U.S.S.R. anymore. You could argue that some of what it expresses may still apply to the state of modern culture. Could it be relevant from a historical perspective? Sure. Would a Rihanna cover of it be culturally relevant? The ideas would be just as relevant, no matter who recorded it. Would I be in favour of it? No, but who cares what I think.
  8. Penguin
    There is an interesting discussion to be had on these topics... because it's not an all-or-nothing proposition. To your first point, some stories are so couched in the idioms of their time that they can become incomprehensible to later generations. First they lose subtlety and wit that is based on the colloquialisms they employ as these fall out of use, then history itself can leave the time frame far enough behind that people cannot relate to the setting, and then the language itself can change enough that it's barely understandable. So, I think it's arguable that some stories can reach a wider audience and keep their ideas relevant by being retold. Understanding The Taming of the Shrew as originally written requires a study guide. Watching 10 Things I Hate About You gets across the same themes. (Arguing the artistic merit of either presentation is another matter entirely.) Second, a vast number of movies are themselves retellings of stories. If you want to talk cultural stagnation, then an adaptation may not be any better than a remake. You aren't making any new statements or expressing any new ideas. However, it can be argued that adaptation can help a culture grow by making those ideas accessible to different segments of the population. Akira would be a good example of that. I'd wager that more people in North America have seen the anime than read the manga, so the adaptation helped the story's ideas reach a wider population, and by extension that helps the culture grow. But, if adaptation across media is valid because it helps original ideas reach a larger audience, then retelling within the media with changes to help it reach a new audience has to be equally valid. So, if we're going to reduce things to the point of absurdity, either no story should ever be moved from its original form or medium as doing so doesn't add any new ideas to the culture, or remakes have to be as valid as adaptation if it helps ideas reach new audiences. Of course, none of this necessarily excuses Hollywood, as they're just doing it to reduce financial risk, not to expand the cultural consciousness. If I may make a suggestion Vic, perhaps your ire may be more effectively aimed not at remakes on their own merit, but at a corporate culture that may suppress or prevent original ideas from getting a chance to reach a wider audience in favour of repetition as a means of securing profit. Updating and retelling stories CAN make them more culturally relevant and help a culture grow. Remakes aren't inherently evil or culturally bankrupt. Hollywood is.
  9. Penguin
    Although, to be fair, Otomo's artwork is so awesome only animation could capture it.
  10. Penguin
  11. Penguin
    Lookin' forward to that. The RGM one isn't quite as cool as the VF Master Files, but the tech-head in me still loves all those specs and schematics.
  12. Penguin
    She's a beauty, alright... but I just can't see myself putting in the effort to make it really shine at such a tiny scale. I mean... 1/72 will be just under 5 inches tall, for about $40 plus shipping plus time and effort. Just can't do it. Beautiful gunmetal sheen they got on the gun pod. *sigh*
  13. Penguin
    Saying "it does not connect" to the previous two doesn't necessarily mean reboot or restart. Same characters, previous movies still happened, but the plot is not a continuation of the previous. From that perspective, it's not a big deal. Really, Casino/Quantum were the first two Bond films I can remember that directly followed one another from a plot perspective since Diamonds Are Forever (which starts with Bond's intense and violent search for Blofeld in reaction to Tracy's murder). For all the rest, there were small references to previous films (e.g. From Russia With Love references Bond's killing of SPECTRE operative Dr. No), but the plots weren't really connected in any meaningful way, and most didn't even have significant back references, especially once the Connery era was over and SPECTRE/Blofeld were replaced by individual ubervillains. Interesting notion about "Bond" being an alias, but not one I'd care for. Certainly, everything so far implies one character with a single past (though before Casino, that past had totally veered into comic book "sliding history" territory). In all the books and movies, "Q" was actually the only real code name, standing for "Quartermaster". A lot of people thought "M" stood for "Master", but that was never put forth in the novels or movies. The character's real name was Miles Messervy in the novels. Fleming may have had him called "M" because the real head of MI-6 is colloquially called "C", which has come to mean "Chief" but was inherited from the first director Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming's habit of signing documents with just a "C".
  14. Penguin
    Yes, were that to happen, it would be pretty awful. However, I have to disagree that this is even close to what's going on these days. The amount of effort spent bemoaning remakes approaches "mountain out of a molehill" compared to how many movies are actually released. Take the more than 250 American films released this year. About 10 are remakes. That's 4%. Of the 40 or so #1 films this year, only 1 was a remake (True Grit). So, we are pretty far from having the film industry dominated by remakes. For that matter, the last two remakes of the summer, Conan and Fright Night, performed so abyssmally that they had movie execs saying "maybe we made too many remakes this year".
  15. Penguin
    Yeah, but exploiting current trends and themes in order to appeal to new viewers and be financially successful isn't the same as actually being worthy to UC-fixated old curmudgeons like me. But don't include Turn A in that list... it's still Tomino, and it is excellent. Now where's that North American release they were promising?
  16. Penguin
    As do I. I've loved Akira since I saw it on the big screen in its original North American tour back in the 80's. So here's my unnecessarily long-winded version of Eugimon's more succinct response. Here's a bit of history. There was once a great, sweeping manga epic being written. Rich and full set of characters, an intricate plot with interational ramifications, and absolutely fantastic artwork. Then, someone decided it should be anime... but they were going to do it before the manga story was even done. They jettisoned many vibrant and influential characters in whittling a sweeping epic down to 2 hours of animation, and slashed dozens of plot lines and character developments in the process. They even took one of the central characters and reduced him to random frozen body parts until a few seconds at the very end. Who in their right minds thought this was a good idea?? It's not perfect, but I think the Akira anime is fantastic as it is. For that matter, the manga is pretty awesome too. The anime being such a slashed and cut version of manga doesn't detract from my enjoyment of either. Neither will a live action version even more mangled to a different culture and continent. No one's saying we need a live action version to improve on the anime (at least, no one I know). As we all know, Hollywood is run by risk-averse, profit-oriented production companies. They chose Akira as a sci-fi property suited to the explode-a-rama format that brings in millions as a "tentpole" summer movie, and as a well-known "brand" to further boost attendance. It's has nothing to do with the quality or nature of the original work, improving on it, making it their own, saying something profound, reflecting on post-war Japan through the eyes of the West, etc., etc. Making a live action American Akira is purely a strategic move designed to make money. The director and/or screenwriter might try to inject something of substance (we can hope), but the producers are just hedging their risk/reward bets. Why do we "need" it? We don't. We never do. Why did we need an anime Akira in the first place? The manga is beautiful and awesome. Surely, the animated Akira was made at least (if not mostly) in part because the popularity of the manga would boost attendance at the film and help build box office receipts, just as WB is hoping with their version. So, if you're going to swing that "why not leave well enough alone" paintbrush around, be sure and give the Akira anime a couple of double-thick coats as well. So, I'm happy profit-minded producers were moved to animate Akira, 'cause I loved the end product. If Warners does the same, and gives us a great movie, then I don't care wheher they adapted the much-loved Akira or whatever. Good movies are hard enough to find these days. At least from one perspective, they're starting with fertile ground on this one, unlike some "branded" properties. (Monopoly the Movie? Really? Mr Scott, you have your work cut out for you.)
  17. Penguin
    They made "HB Pencil: The Motion Picture" in 1988?
  18. Penguin
    HLJ is at ~$290 US, not $400... or are you adding $100 for shipping?
  19. Penguin
    Well, I do collect Hot Toys figures (much to my wallet's chagrin), and this will be going into the collection. The Luke-head-in-Vader-helmet is a nice touch.
  20. Penguin
    Saw the trailer for this for the first time at Immortals last night. I have to admit, the cynic in me first thought "recruiting poster much?". Looks cool, though. Made me think of the Sheen/Biehn film too. Man... how many times as Michael Biehn played a SEAL? Navy SEALs, The Rock, The Abyss...
  21. Penguin
    QFT Personally, I don't care what they license, remake, reboot, brand, whatever in the pursuit of box office $$. I wouldn't care if they made "HB Pencil: The Motion Picture", as long as we got a good movie out of it. Problem is, as long as the magic formula remains "trailer with explosions" + "teenage boys" = $200 million, we're more likely to get lots and lots of loud drek.
  22. Penguin
    Sad thing is, it doesn't have to be a disaster. It's a solid, very cinematic story. We just have no faith in Hollywood. Man, I wish Guillermo Del Toro was still going to adapt Domu...
  23. Penguin
    Actually, I thought Stewart showed promise as an actress in Runaways, so of all the things that are going to be wrong with this film, I wouldn't automatically list her among them. More interesting to me was this comment: Certainly, the manga has enough material for two, three, even more movies... or more likely a TV series... but the action set pieces aren't all that frequent. Plus, I'd wager the overwhelming majority of those familiar with Akira have only seen the anime. So, what pray tell are they going to do to milk it out further? Not that it couldn't be done by a decent writer, but I can't imagine the producers allowing the first to end on a cliffhanger on the chance it doesn't do well. So, where would you guys put the breaks in between films? Would you have the first emulate the anime then derive sequels using the manga or other ideas? Or try to hew closer to the manga from the get-go? My thoughts would be to keep closer to the manga and split it into 2 movies. The end of the third volume, with Akira blasting the city a second time, would be a natural break point between the films.
  24. Penguin
    Tehcnically, yeah, it would work. As long as they removed any of the words or images that Harmony Gold has trademarked, they could release Macross Frontier in that edited form. Of course, would the returns be worth the effort, considering they'd also need to distribute it and so on? If they really wanted to inspire some North American sales, it would likely be easier (and possibly cheaper) to just English subtitle the Japanese blu-rays and let us import them from Amazon or HMV Japan or whatever, as opposed to carefully editing the animation and the dialogue to remove all the brand recognition and then take on the cost of distribution.
  25. Penguin
    "... should have sent a poet..." 42 cm... that's massive. I've never even played Metal Gear, and I want one.
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