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Archive for the 'Toons' Category

POW! ZAP! ‘Batman’ cartoon cast

April 16th, 2008, 4:44 pm by Jayson Peters

According to his blog WWdN, former Star Trek: The Next Generation wunderkind Wil Wheaton is one of the voices behind Cartoon Network’s upcoming series Batman: The Brave and the Bold, which will pair with The Clone Wars on Friday nights (see original entry). Read the rest of this entry »

Check out animated Yoda, you must

March 6th, 2008, 9:29 am by Jayson Peters

StarWars.com has released a new annotated sketch of Yoda as he appears in The Clone Wars. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, really … but it’s neat to read the notes on how the diminutive Jedi Master should look and act.

These sketches make it look so easy, don’t they? Until you remember that The Clone Wars is actually a CGI movie and this is just previsualization.

Form Blazing Sword! Voltron crashes Boomerang

February 14th, 2008, 8:01 am by Jayson Peters

black_lion_headon480.jpg
Keith piloting Black Lion (TIME WARNER/BOOMERANG)
Starting Monday (Feb. 18), Boomerang will air the 1984 giant robot cartoon Voltron: Defender of the Universe in all its glory! This follows the announcement of a live-action movie in development.

If you’re unfamiliar with Voltron, it’s the complex human story of five mechanical lions that, when crammed together, form a sword-wielding robot warrior that defends Planet Arus from evil King Zarkon, the vain Prince Lotor and the wicked witch Haggar.

Read the rest of this entry »

‘F-Minus’ cartoonist signing at Changing Hands

December 14th, 2007, 1:37 pm by Jayson Peters

Tony Carrllo, the brilliant artist behind the syndicated cartoon “F-Minus” (which you can read in the Classifieds section of your East Valley Tribune), will be signing copies of his book (titled, appropriately enough, F-Minus) noon to 3 p.m. Saturday (Dec. 15) at Changing Hands Bookstore, 6428 S. McClintock Drive, Tempe.

Go Speed Racer!

December 12th, 2007, 6:34 pm by Scott Kirchhofer

speed racer pic

I went to see The Golden Compass this weekend. It was a fun and entertaining movie, but nothing special. Check out Craig Outhier’s movie review for more. The highlight of the movie was seeing the trailer for the new Wachowski Brothers picture, 1960’s Japanese animated cartoon turned live action adventure movie Speed Racer. I don’t know much about the Speed Racer cartoon, but what I do know is that the Wachowski Brothers make excellent movies (V for Vendetta, The Matrix, Bound) and I’m sure this will be no different. The cast is solid, featuring actors Emile Hirsh, Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon and John Goodman, and the NEW TRAILER looks freakin’ sweet. Speed Racer zooms into theaters on May 9.

SPEED RACER HIRSH

Love and war on the Red Planet

October 10th, 2007, 12:06 am by Jayson Peters

I’m a huge fan of the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs, even though I believe he was an unabashed white supremacist. (Just to be clear, I am not.)

Tarzan and his Martian Tales aren’t the finest literature in the world, but how can you not have fun reading chapters with titles like Love Making on Mars, Through Carnage to Joy and Corridors of Peril? It’s the pinnacle of pulp fiction from the era that defined it.

Burroughs’ swashbuckling vision of a living Mars (or Barsoom, as he called it) awash in the blood and sweat of all-too-human aliens so captured the imaginations of his time that a crater on Mars was named in his honor.

The world will likely be talking about this epic interpretation of Mars again soon, if Pixar’s hybrid CGI/live action adaptation, tentatively titled John Carter of Mars, takes off in the years to come. Read the rest of this entry »

Thundercats are loose!

October 9th, 2007, 11:27 pm by Jayson Peters

tcatseye.jpg
The cavalcade of ’80s animation to the big screen of the 21st century continues!

Remember this:

“Thunder … Thunder … Thunder … Thundercats, ho!”

?

Variety reports that Jerry O’Flaherty, art director on such popular video games as Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3, will direct the CG retelling of those cats from Thundera. This will be O’Flaherty’s first foray into film.

The magazine says the movie will encapsulate the origin story of the Thundercats and their journey from a dying world to a new home inhabited by an undead sorcerer named Mumm-Ra. Who hates them. For some reason.

"There comes a time when even gods must die"

September 20th, 2007, 11:30 am by Scott Kirchhofer

superman doomsday box

Superman Doomsday, DC Comics’ newest direct-to-DVD, feature-length animated movie hit stores on Tuesday and I must say it lives up to all the hype. Inspired by the bestselling graphic novel “The Death of Superman”, which gained national media attention in 1993 when DC Comics killed their greatest hero, the movie condenses the epic story into a 75-minute gem that packs one heck of a punch.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tobey Maguire to adapt ‘Robotech’

September 9th, 2007, 2:00 am by Jayson Peters

Tobey Maguire is planning to produce and possibly star in a live action Robotech movie“Spider-Man” star Tobey Maguire is planning to produce and possibly headline a live-action film based on the ’80s anime series “Robotech.”According to the Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. is anxious to pit the shape-shifting robots known as mecha against Dreamworks and Paramount’s recent hit, “Transformers.” Presumably, Maguire would play Rick Hunter (pictured above left in a screenshot from Harmony Gold Productions), a young pilot who stumbles into a world of aliens and giant transforming aircraft.Robotech The Shadow Chronicles DVD Robotech hasn’t exactly been idle since the ’80s, however. There have been numerous book and comic adaptations as well as “lost stories” in various formats. There was even a pen-and-paper RPG from Palladium and a slew of video games. An aborted new TV series became a line of novels subtitled “The Sentinels.” And early this year a sequel film, “The Shadow Chronicles,” went straight to DVD. It updates the series with modern computer animation, yet still manages to blend well with the classic episodes (also available on DVD). It tells the story of a new generation of Earth defenders returning home from a war on the other side of the galaxy to find their planet ravaged by aliens, then mysteriously abandoned and then immediately threatened again by mysterious forces.

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