F-ZeroOne

I watched the first season of Spaced a couple weeks ago, so now I really want to see Shaun of the Dead.

There is a three disc Collectors Edition of Spaced due out in the UK shortly:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B...2480229-2079647

Season Two is more of the same, only even better!

Keeping up my habit of my favourite bits of various things I watch being the things that aren't actually in them (er... its like this... for example, my favourite episode of Kimagure Orange Road is the "Giant Monster Jingoro Attacks" one, which is a summer special parody, not really part of the "proper" series), the scene I liked the best from Shaun of the Dead is the "The Man Who Would Be Shaun" segment. Nick Frost does an uncanny Sean Connery...

Oh, and cricket bats. Its about time someone made a film featuring this most lethal of all melee weapons...!

I want a Cornetto.

Oh my God, they let him into the country. There goes Tokyo...

You didn't tell me about this place before, did you?

And, as I've argued before, mecha fans get on very well with members of the opposite gender - its just we have a bit of trouble trying to stop them gunning us down with their ace mecha piloting skills to start with!

Edit: "Didn't know she was working in a bikini?" I bet...!

"Macross" inspires "Star Wars" ... video games that is.

Anyone catch the Minmay Poster/Scroll hanging in the office of the SW: Episode III video animator's office? You can see the scene during the "Making of Episode III" video game featurette on the bonus disc of the new SW Trilogy DVD.

On page 11 of this thread: ahem

"Just been watching the "Making the Episode III Game" feature on the Bonus Disc. Would the LucasArts employee who has the Linn Minmei poster on their office wall like to stand up and be counted on Macross World, please?"

Heres a couple to get you started:

http://gojistomp.org/indexm.html

http://www.clubtokyo.org/

Don't know about the 1954 DVD version, I'm afraid - have you tried the usual retailers like Amazon or CDJapan? Very good movie, though, much more so when you consider the impression most people have of Godzilla from the films that followed it (though its exactly those films that got me into Godzilla in the first place - Terror of MechaGodzilla still being a favourite of mine... )

"Skull leader, this is Skull Two - have encountered new kind of Zentraedi warrior - wha -?! Hes got me! Hes got me!! No! NOOOOOOO!!"

"Skull Two? Skull Two?! Respond!"

Just been watching the "Making the Episode III Game" feature on the Bonus Disc. Would the LucasArts employee who has the Linn Minmei poster on their office wall like to stand up and be counted on Macross World, please?

nemesis120, mechatek, you jointly win the no-prize! Which is not accepted at millions of outlets anywhere in the Universe!

Regards the intake stickers - I know; personal choice, I felt they looked better that way up on the 1/55 at least. My Yamatos have them the right way round.

A quick image of my "classic" Valkyrie toys, plus a bonus inclusion of the Takatoku 1/40 Orguss Orgoid and two lovely anime gals!. First person to point out the difference between the two 1/55 Valkyrie toys - asides from the fact ones Max and the other Mirias - wins a no-prize!

Don't forget your towels!

Isn't the MiG-31 just an upgraded MiG-25?

No. The exteriors are very similar, but that's about it.

The internals are quite different.

Theres a definite family "look" to the MiG-25 and -31, but once you see some detailed pictures its fairly easy to spot the differences. The -31 is a much more advanced aircraft, with a monster radar and two seats (the back-seater in the -31 muct have one of the worst seating positions in any modern fighter!).

The MiG-25 was, more or less, a flying fuel tank with a powerful (for the time) radar up front, and two massive engines behind. It was a pure interceptor (and sometimes recon aircraft; the Israelis managed to shoot one down only with extreme difficultly), whereas the -31, while also an interceptor, is designed to deal with low-level targets as well as high and fast ones.

You know.. now that I think about it, genetic degradation might explain why the stormtroopers tended to be complete idiots, or at least horrible at killing anything.  Heavily recycled genes....

What gets me is that if the Empire's stormtroopers (which should be the elite, special forcess types) are that bad, I shudder to think what their regular troops are like.

The Empire only sent Stormtroopers to capture the droids because regular Imperial Troops couldn't even hit the desert...

I got 16/18 when I tried it the other day. I'm rather bad at old-school games, but I grew up when there were a lot of those machines about! Can't remember exactly what I failed on, though...

I think someone once described Where Eagles Dare as the ideal war adventure movie because the good guys get to wear the best uniforms...!

Also, while cool, there is no way the P-40 could survive through the maneuvers it was put through,

I thought Pearl Harbour had established that if you want to take on an entire enemy air amarda, then the P-40 is the only thing that you can do it in...

Okay, okay, - the P-40 is one of the most under-rated aircraft of all time; they were useful enough that, like the Hawker Hurricane, they made them in the thousands long after they were technically behind the leading edge. Pearl Harbour just irks me because the advice given on how to fight a Zero in one is exactly the wrong thing to do...

Or did he?

http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/interview...s/index-pf.html

Oh, David...

I just saw shaun of the dead. I dunno....i think i just can't appreciate British humour....

You were expecting maybe someone chasing round scantily-clad women on speeded up film?

No problem, though - like I say, I did worry about how well some of the humour would carry across, and not everyone has the same tastes after all. A major part of the films appeal in the UK is that its a zombie apocalypse happening in our back gardens. A lot of the incidental, background humour is based around that.

Not sure how common the following term is internationally, but the phrase I've most often heard used among UK anime fandom is "Gainax bounce"...!

Shaun of the Dead is indeed very, very good. However, I do wonder how well its going to cross over with American audiences. Part of its appeal is that its set in a very British suburban environment. In a US zombie movie, the hero grabs a chain-saw. In Shaun, the hero grabs a cricket bat. Theres one line uttered by the lead supporting character that refers to a particular brand of ice cream; in the UK this cracks people up but I suspect its going to be a bit puzzling for a US audience [1].

Still, the DVD version (R-2 - not sure if theres a US release yet?) is extremely good value; it features no less than four cast/directors commentaries (including a "Zombies" one!) and a great many bonus features.

"Shaun of the Dead" is the creation of comedian/actor Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright, who were largely responsible for the excellent anti-sitcom Spaced, which will also shortly be available in a three-disc collectors set.

[1] And despite being only one word long, its an incredibly multi-layered joke as well, which will take some explaining...!

VOTOMS is an obivous one. I've always been a little intrigued why that series attracts so many manufacturers.

From what I actually own:

1) SOC Evangelion Unit 01. I already have Unit 4, but this re-issue arrived the other day. I haven't had much time to play around with it yet, but I still cannot believe I passed this up the first time. Theres just something about the design and colour scheme; it also helps that the joints appear to be tighter than the Unit 4 (which has a tendency to slip).

2) Takatoku Toys Big Dai-X DX. I love this toy. Its not very poseable, and it has a bizzarro "Rocket-Dog-From-Hell" transformation that never, ever appeared in the series X-Bomber. But it looks meaner than Hell, despite being bright red and yellow, and has an incredible sense of sheer, pure, die-cast weight. It also comes with a very pointy sword and multiple spring-loaded rockets for dealing with Commander Makara.

3) Takatoku 1/40 Orguss. Did these guys do anything wrong in the 80s? (well, asides from accounting... ). Dai-X, Valkyries, and then this. Okay, the transformations fiddly, and the plastic joints don't feel very solid, but its a beautiful design and I think I actually prefer it to the 1/55 Valkyries. And I

love Valkyries.

"A mighty robot that transformed into a...cigarette lighter." The hells? No wonder Japan is a country of chain smokers.

The story, according to English anime journalist/author Jonathan Clements is that a production team were stuck for ideas for a new show one day, so simply emptied the contents of their pockets onto a table - and got their idea from there!

Wasn't it Arthur C. Clarke who said that the best sign that theres intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe is that none of them have tried to contact us yet?

Personally, I'm going to be very disappointed if "they" don't turn out to be a race of hot female mecha pilots...

Part of the problem might be Bubblegum Crisis and in its place in anime fan history. In the UK, for example, where I've always had the impression that BGC is pretty highly regarded, at one point it was just about the only example of properly subbed anime around - not just a subbed anime, the subbed anime. 

I remember at that time Animeigo were releasing it, along with Urusei Yatsura. Urusei Yatsura was also subbed, remember. Those tapes were awful hard to find, though...

Anyway, I never cared for the little I've seen of either series (both the original and '40), and anyway in my view phrases like "You get to burning" just sound silly.

But if I had to pick one, it would be the original, no contest. Sonoda all the way, baby.

Oh, I know Urusei Yatsura all right - my all-time favourite anime TV series. I know Anime Projects released them in the UK subtitled, but at the time I ordered my BGC tapes - at 21 ukp per single volume! - I'm not sure if they'd released UY yet.

Oh, while I think of it - one of the hardest lessons to learn about being an anime fan is that its okay not to like something. No, really. There is a difference between not liking a particular version of an anime, and not liking the anime full stop. Try the sub, and if you still don't like it, thats okay. Honestly.

Of course, if you don't like Urusei Yatsura, thats instant death.

i love macross...but there's not much point in rationalizing how their nuclear engines work, even in SF theory. I mean, even in space, the valks used runway to take off (which was thankfully fixed in DYRL) which was kind of annoying. In general though, macross is pretty good in terms of realism for a 80's cartoon.

Macross isn't the only show to do this - Gundam has its "Base Jobbers" and launch catapaults. An aircraft carrier is, after all, pretty much a giant steam-powered device for flinging large metal objects into the sky. It looks odd, but then, the Macross arms were aircraft carriers at one point...

Not sure if you could get a steam catapault to work in a vacuum, though (David?!). Possibly an electromagnetic one...

As to explosions in space - I always thought that it was the vacuum that made them form circles all the time...

Part of the problem might be Bubblegum Crisis and in its place in anime fan history. In the UK, for example, where I've always had the impression that BGC is pretty highly regarded, at one point it was just about the only example of properly subbed anime around - not just a subbed anime, the subbed anime. For quite some time, it set the benchmark for what a subbed anime should be like, at least for me personally.

Try it with the subtitles, and the original Japanese songs. By most accounts, the dub is pretty awful. And it is quite old; its not going to look as impressive now as it did back in the day...