Friday, January 28, 2011
Minimalist Disney-Ride Posters
To check out more by the artist head on over to justoffmainstreet.wordpress.com
Timeline of the Hamburger
It's a shameless self promotion for a t-shirt company but it's still a fun video.
Friday Smodimation #1: The Great One
For those of you who do not subscribe to Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier's free iTunes podcast, Smodcast, you are missing out. You are also missing out if you haven't discovered the great animations inspired by Smodcast which come out once a month which have been created by Steve Stark Animations. So, since they are so goddamn entertaining, every Friday until I don't have any to show I am going to post a Smodimation starting with Smodimation #1: The Great One. Enjoy!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Reboot
Today, the Dow Industrial Average hit 12,000 points. The first time this has happened since 2008. Today the bottom feeders on Wall Street are patting themselves on the back for being the smartest guys in the room. Today, the American people, the backbone of this country, are still fucked.
For years unbridled consumption and scheming while artificially inflating the market to an unrealistic, unstable level has gone unchecked. After all, wouldn't that hurt our free market free enterprise spirit? And so our financial boom was as much a self sustaining system as taking steroids is a path to a successful athletic career.
And true to form, it hit the fan as shit tends to and the rats went running for higher ground. Soon the very people who were saying that ANY government involvement in our financial sector was akin to socialism was now begging the government to swoop in and save the day. Wall Street, who fixed the game for years to play in their favor so that they could take home multi-million dollar bonuses chirped the end of the world was near. Bankers, who had been using their team of lawyers to screw hardworking middle class Americans out of their lives, their lively hoods, and their homes plummeting one individual after another into debt and writing off their futures with the stroke of the pen began crying that the collapse could destroy the dollar. And the big 3 auto makers who had been warned for years that if they didn't begin to plan ahead towards a sustainable industry the way Asia was that they would see their extinction but instead chose to outfit every dimwitted soccer mom with a gas guzzling SUV had found themselves in the tar pits begging that they don't want to become extinct.
So, like an eagle to the nest, momma bird Washington swooped in and bailed out one ungrateful little brat after the other. TARP, the Stimulus, the Auto Industry Bailout.....it seemed everyone was fine with socialism once they were up shit creek. And where did Uncle Sam get the sustenance to sustain the old system? That's right; from OUR pockets. Taking from the have nots to give to the have's as it seems to be the custom in this country anymore.
So now, on this momentous day when Wall Street peeked 12,000, how has things changed? Well, Wall Street is back paying out record bonuses and throwing lavish parties for their clients. Bankers have one security net after another because they were just "Too Big To Fail." And the big 3? Well they are back on their feet making a profit. Hell, economists have been telling us that the Great Recession ended in December of 2009. Well that's awesome. Then millions of us better get to bed because we have a full day of unemployment to get at!
On the day that the human waste on Wall Street hit 12,000, the Congressional Budget Office said that 2011 would sustain above a 9% unemployment rate. By 2012, we may be able to get down to 8%. It won't be until 2016 that we could hope of getting back to 5.6%. End of the Great Recession?
Why is it that when the middle class sees their jobs shed like skin cells but Wall Street has a good day, that's the end of a recession? Why is it that the working man who busts his or her ass every day finds themselves on the unemployment line with congressional leaders calling them lazy but bailing out bankers is investing in "Americas Future"? How is it that our futures have been stolen, our tier as the middle class has been crippled, our children go without but we have to use OUR MONEY to bailout the auto industry because...well, we are the country that invented the fuckin things?!
This is America? THIS?!?
We hear one news report after another about uprisings in Greece and the United Kingdom and Egypt and Tunisia yet we, the people that invented a Democratic Republic, bend over for the politicians and the lawyers and the bankers and the brokers and all the other vultures and vampires of our society. This is America?
We fight the wars yet get denied medical benefits. We build the infrastructure yet get kicked out of our homes. We work day in and day out yet we get denied a livable wage. We show loyalty and yet it's OUR jobs that get cut before the bosses who were the ones responsible for fucking up the company. We are the first to wave our flags and yet we are used as stepping stones by organizations who show their patriotism by sending factories overseas and gambling away our nations fortune. This is America?
This is NOT America! This is not the America which rose up out of the ashes of imperialism. This is not the America which crushed the Nazi's and the Fascists. This is not the America that invented the internet, the airplane, and nearly every great company this world has ever seen. Our America has been stolen by those who the recession has truly ended for.
There is a day of reckoning that is coming when the dinosaurs of the old system will become extinct. When Wall Street and the Bankers and the haphazard companies and all their little puppets on the Hill will finally see the sun set on their ponzi scheme. See, people will only take so much before their patience runs out. When people get fed up they will not give up, they will stand up and revolution will be in the air.
Not a revolution of bombs and guns and violence. A revolution like that which made this country great. Bombs and guns may have freed us but ideas kept the chains broken. There will come a time when the people will just decide that they will no longer participate. We will no longer defend a nation that does not work in our interests. We will not assist in making profits for industries that treat us like slaves. We will not have faith in a financial system which uses us as a piggy bank one moment and then peasants the next. We will simply reboot.
No more parties, no more fat cats, no more stock exchange. Wall Street will be deserted. The auto industry will rust away. The banks will sit unguarded full of a currency which has no value. Washington will be swallowed up by the swamps once again.
Not a shot will be fired, not a bomb will explode, not a person will be assassinated. We will simply stop running the machine.
There is a storm coming and when that storm passes the dinosaurs of the old system will be extinct and America will be reborn like a phoenix from the ashes. That will be OUR America.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Anime Destroys Another Treasured Childhood Show
I'm not saying ban anime in America. I have no problems with the Pokemon's and Digimon's and all the other mon's that are currently saturating our market in an attempt to convince snot nosed brats to beg their parents to purchase more Chinese goods. Hell, I use to really enjoy Speed Racer. But is their really a reason why Batman can't be animated in America any longer? Has Transformers become so costly that only an individual in a Japanese anime factory can pencil the timeless battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron? And what the fuck have we allowed them to do to the upcoming new Thundercats series?
Cartoons cannot be so expensive that we allow everything to look like Dragon Ball Z. Not knocking Dragon Ball, I loved that show, but not everything has to look like it. We don't need stripped down, half assed, imported animation to entertain our kids on Saturday morning and following the school day. It's not necessary for our cartoons to be rigid and weird so that our kids have something to watch other then the degenerates of Jersey Shore. And for fuck sake, do we really want to raise a generation that has grown up on cartoons that look like a bunch of emo bitch boys?
Keep America Animating! Yeah, it might not save our economy but at least our little boys won't grow up to be spindly sticks and our little girls won't be giving peace signs everywhere and relating sex to tentacle porn.
Examples of how anime has ruined the classices
Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995)
The Batman (2004-2008)
Transformers (1983-1987)
Transformers (2007-2009)
Thundercats (1989-1990)
Thundercats (Coming Soon)
Live Action Mortal Kombat Coming To The Web
Almost immediately the stop motion model of graphics mixed with the accuracy of the fight sequences and the gore came under attack. Joe "Droopy Dog" Lieberman even went out of his way to create a hearing of video games and "violence and corruption in our society." Controversy, however, just seemed to make the game more popular.
In a decade, Mortal Kombat has grown to 18 additional titles including the original with a relaunch of the original title set to hit PS3 and XBox 360 later this year. This continuation has allowed MK to transform from an arcade game into an entertainment legacy which has spawned dozens of combatants and evolved from a 2D stop motion fighting simulator into a 3 dimensional bloodfest to be proud of.
The massive success of the game has also led to spinoffs in other entertainment markets, as well. Mortal Kombat the animated series which has included MK: The Journey Begins and MK: Defenders of the Realm. Two Mortal Kombat major motion pictures. A live action television series called Mortal Kombat: Conquest. And, of coarse, a series of books, comics books, and card games.
But a lot of the spin off media for the franchise seems to have been short lived. In the 90s, everywhere you turned there was something new getting the Mortal Kombat treatment. But since the new millennium it seems that the franchise has shrunk back down to just a video game series. This has left many scratching their heads wondering why, in a Hollywood of remakes and epic special effects, there has yet to be a Mortal Kombat reboot. Well, thanks to the internet, this could possibly be coming true.
In 2010, director Kevin Tancharoen (best known for music videos) teamed up with fight choreoographer Larnell Stovall and filmed a not-for-profit short film based on the franchise called Mortal Kombat: Rebirth. The idea was to make a more realistic and visceral version of the series, almost emulating the more realistic tone which some directors such as Chris Nolan have been creating in order bring comic book movies into the 21st century. With a cast of volunteers, Tancharoen was able to land Michael Jai White (Spawn, The Dark Knight, and Sucker Punch) to portray Captain Jackson Briggs, Jeri Ryan (Star Trek: Voyager and Boston Public) to portray Sonya Blade, Matt Mullins to portray Johnny Cage, Lateef Crowder (The Book of Eli) to portray Baraka, Ian Anthony Dale (Dollhouse) to portray Scorpion, Richard Dorton to portray Reptile, and James Lew (Lethal Weapon 4 and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End) to portray Shang Tsung.
The short film was made in the hopes that a major studio would see the reboot potential and run with it. However, no studio seemed interested in the short at the time. But, as is with all things in the digital age, the short film made it's way online and from there it grew into a phenomenon.
At first no one was quite sure of what to make of the short. Was it promotion for a new video game? Was it for a new television series? Was it for a new film? Curiosity fueled sites like IGN and 1UP.com to launch speculations which only drove the interest for this short even higher. By the time the truth about the shorts origins came out no one really cared. All anyone knew is that they wanted this short to be made full length. And Hollywood responded.
On January 24th, 2011 Warner Bros. officially announced that they would be investing in a 10 episode web based mini-series for Mortal Kombat: Rebirth. The series is set to be written by Kevin Tancharoen and Spartacus: Blood and Sand writers Todd Helbing and Aaron Helbing. Not much of the cast has been announced yet but Michael Jai White has already confirmed involvement in the web series with Jeri Ryan and her people being strangely tight lipped on the news of the web franchise. The rumor mill also has characters Shang Tsung, Liu Kang, Sub Zero, Durak, Kabal, Kitana, Mileena, and Scorpion making an appearance.
It's unknown yet where Warner Bros. hopes to take this web based franchise. According to the dates which Warner's wants the webisodes online by it seems as though it coincides to help the marketing for the 2011 Mortal Kombat video game launch. But with online content becoming the preferred source of the up and coming generation, we could easily see MK: Rebirth turn into a massive hit series or eventually the rated R splatter film which we always wanted.
So, what brought on all this hype? Just take a look at the nearly 9 minute long YouTube trailer and see for yourself.
P.S. Ignore the gabby fast talking retard at the end.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
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