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Pixar dumps Disney
Pixar Animation Studios Inc. said Thursday it ended talks with Walt Disney Co. to extend a five-picture deal for Disney to distribute Pixar films.
Pixar, the computer animation pioneer founded by Apple Computer Inc.'s Steve Jobs, said it would begin talks with other companies to distribute its films starting in 2006.
"After ten months of trying to strike a deal with Disney, we're moving on," Pixar CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. "We've had a great run together -- one of the most successful in Hollywood history -- and it's a shame that Disney won't be participating in Pixar's future successes."
The move was a clear setback to Disney, which reaped a financial and critical bonanza from the partnership and has struggled with its own strategy for animation.
Disney said Pixar's final offer would have cost Disney hundreds of millions of dollars from the existing distribution deal and was not sweet enough going forward.
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Ain't it Cool reviews Miike's Zebraman and Gozi
From the Zebraman review
Yokohama, 2010. In an otherwise normal-looking city, animals are starting to behave funnily, and new, previously unheard-of species of animals such as giant crabs are sighted. Clearly something is amiss in the city, but primary-school teacher Ichikawa (Miike regular Sho Aikawa in his 100th film role) has other things on his mind. His wife is having an affair, his daughter is a teenage prostitute, his son is bullied by his classmates and he himself is a lousy teacher with no self-esteem. The only thing that keeps him going is the memory of “Zebraman”, a superhero series broadcast in the 1970s but cancelled after seven episodes because of disastrous ratings. One night, after Ichikawa has put on his home-made Zebraman suit (you’ve guessed it: black and white stripes), he hears a funny sound and goes out to investigate. Out on the street, he gets into a fight with an unsavoury individual who turns out to be an alien. And he isn’t the only one; it quickly transpires that all of Yokohama is beset by aliens, who have taken over the bodies of their human hosts with a view to taking over the whole planet. Unexpectedly, Ichikawa in his Zebraman guise turns out to be a match for the aliens, and so he begins to realise that he is not just ACTING Zebraman anymore, but through some weird process he doesn’t understand has actually BECOME Zebraman – which, among other things, means that the hair on his neck stands on end whenever he senses alien mischief in the vicinity, like a zebra’s.
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Takashi Miike's newest film is an homage to the henshin cinema. It's called Zebraman.
Police Probe 'Assault' on Scientist Stephen Hawking
British police are investigating an alleged assault on scientist Stephen Hawking, the disabled cosmologist and author of the best-selling "A Brief History of Time."
Detectives want to question Hawking about a number of minor injuries he recently suffered.
A Cambridgeshire Police spokeswoman said Monday detectives were probing allegations that the university professor had been assaulted.
"Police are investigating an allegation of assault on a 62-year-old man from Cambridge," the spokeswoman said, declining to give further details.
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I'm lovin' it: MacDonald's related erotica
Everyone fancied Louise. I don’t think just the guys. I think everyone either fancied her or loved her. It isn’t because she was stunningly beautiful, not like a model or anything. I mean she was lovely, she was beautiful. But she was beautiful because she was just so cute, so giggly, friendly, she was adorable. She wasn’t blonde, she wasn’t rake thin and she was little. And there was something almost boyish about her, maybe it was just her shortish brown hair or perhaps because she was so quick to have a laugh with the lads. Certainly her body wasn’t boyish, she had these wonderful firm breasts and I used to have to fight so hard not to stare at them. And I’ve got to mention her bum. Everyone else’s McDonald’s trousers sagged around their arse, her’s just showed it beautifully, guys used to try and find excuses for her to have to pick stuff up, she knew what was going on and would just laugh and flirt with us, she was incredibly sexual, every where she went she brought this undercurrent of sex, she didn’t seem to try she just emanated sexuality. And she flirted constantly, which was lovely, but it did mean you always wondered, does she like me or is she just fooling around? I’m sure everyone wondered and everyone knew everyone else was wondering, so no one ever really asked her out or anything like that.
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I'm currently reading Haruki Murakami's Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the world.
Here's a summary to wheat your appetite.
In Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Murakami has created a reality that readers will find hard to escape from. In fact, hes created two realities where readers are drawn in by the sirens call of Murakamis use of characterization and narrative prose. Each character is unique and likeable in some respect (even the thugs), and, interestingly, by the climax/fusing of these two stories, no true antagonist is brought into the picture.
One reality is that of a number-crunching "Calcutec" who, through hypnosis, is able to process various data through his mind, encrypt it, and write it back out without any memory of the process. Unfortunately, his kind is dying out from an unexplained shutdown of the brain. Other Calcutecs who received the same operation to facilitate their careers are simply dying in their sleep from no traceable medical problems. At the center of this dilemma are an eccentric old scientist and his chubby granddaughter, the only two that can answer the data processors questions. In fact, it seems that the professor is at the root of the problem, since he first created this complex operation. Chased by INKlings (grotesque, underworld creatures) and thugs, the protagonist must venture through Tokyos underground tunnels to figure out the source of a unicorn skull and the purpose of his most recent data processing session.
In the other, parallel reality, the protagonist resides in a high-walled medieval town, inhabited by spiritless people and golden, one-horned beasts. Stripped of his shadow, he must regain his mind and his memories, and escape back to "reality." He and his shadow conspire to map out the town and find the Walls weakness, but they are kept apart by the Gatekeeper, who controls the beasts and the impenetrable Gate. His daily task is to read the "old dreams" contained in the skulls of beasts that have frozen throughout the winter.
Both realities are inseparable. Both stories draw to an unexpected conclusion.
This book will leave you wanting to read more of Murakamis work. Like the American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, Murakami will stretch your imagination by presenting stories that will leave you saying "hmm" long after you finish reading them.
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Fuck yeah. Wanna draw me up some dinosaurs fighting people, Mike?
Putin is Samurai Sword by Hattori Hanzo
The story of Tarantino's film heroes looks very much like the history of Russia
It is for about a month already that Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 is demonstrated in Russian cinemas. The place of the modern cinematography king has been vacant for six years. Now, Tarantino is back and has regained the position. No matter if Tarantino did it on purpose or not, but he has once again made a film for Russians. Nikolay Berdyayev, the famous Russian thinker, could characterize the film with the following phrase: "It's a film about beauty and the inevitability of revenge, a film about the eternal female essence of the Russian soul."
Everything is quite clear about the cinematographic perfection of the new film by Tarantino. Universally known filmmakers have been once again demonstrated Tarantino's genius. The film has given much food for reflection to some of modern Russian producers. The audience has finally got a good film so radically differing from second-rate films.
In this particular case we speak about the Russian audience. As follows from comments of the US audience, the only thing Americans have seen in the film was horrible violence. Americans do dislike violence but still go to cinemas and watch such films. In a word, this film is repeating the fate of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, which is not a surprise at all. In spite of the fact that the film is permeated with American popular culture, the talent and the degree of artistic freedom characterize Quentin Tarantino as a purely Russian filmmaker. This means that Tarantino's basic audience is in Russia and his films are meant for the Russian audience
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The New Comic Book of life
the notion that humanity is nearing an end to its long held social, political and economic hierarchies is no longer a fear-instilled speculation in this troubled and stormy age. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the cries of war have deafened our calls for peace - and that the suffering has taken its toll on the souls of this once noble civilization.
How do we begin the long journey back to the remembrance that we've all come from one source? How do we begin our journey back to peace through unity?
Within the myriad of communications and education systems, divided and scattered upon the face of world cultures, one small beleaguered industry remains faithful to the message of hope and salvation. An industry and an art form that have fermented the greatest creative minds and the strongest and brightest hope
for saving a dying world.
Comic book writers, artists, editors and publishers will soon emerge as the real superheroes on the sociopolitical stage of world events.
To this end, we the comic book creators - and you, the precious citizens of the world - must join hands together on this journey in order to teach and thus remember what it takes to nourish the budding rose of hope from beneath the mudslides of futility
which humanity has sunken into.
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Bush was demanding excuse to invade Iraq in January 2001, says ex-treasury secretary
The Bush administration started making detailed plans for the invasion of Iraq within days of coming to office, with the President himself anxious to find a pretext to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a high-ranking former cabinet member said yesterday.
The revelation is the latest in a string of potential embarrassments for the White House offered by the former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, who has gone on the record for a new book looking at his bumpy two years at the centre of US power, The Price of Loyalty.
Mr O'Neill said invading Iraq was "topic A" at the very first meeting of President George Bush's National Security Council, 10 days after his inauguration on 20 January 2001, and continued to be an abiding theme in follow-up meetings.
"From the very first instance, it was about Iraq," said Mr O'Neill, who was a participant in all the meetings and provided voluminous minutes and other documents to the book's author, Ron Suskind. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President saying 'Go find me a way to do this'
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Columbine Paintball
We painstakingly recreated the Columbine High school layout for you to live the action as closely as possible. Become a powerless teacher, an fearful student, a latecomer SWAT operative or an all-mighty Trench Coat Mafia gang member on a rampage, and kill without mercy in a bullet-free environment.
The only legal way to enjoy this event to the fullest is by paintball and we have it all. Come and shoot your friends and family members in remembrance at the original Columbine Paintball facility
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Woman charged of raping man
A 22-year-old woman was charged with interfering with a man in his thirties. The incident was allegedly caught on film.
The woman, the offended and a friend were allegedly in the apartment of the friend where the incident took place Saturday night. The man explained to the police that he was laying on the sofa sleeping when he suddenly woke up as the woman was handling him
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The New York Post on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
HERE'S the game's basic bit: You're a cocaine dealer, see, and you get ripped off in a drug deal that goes bad. So your mission is to get your drugs and your money back - by committing as many violent, homicidal crimes as you can possibly think up.
You can pursue your goal by killing Haitians, of course, but you can also kill anyone (or everyone) else. You can machine-gun them, beat them with baseball bats, chop them up with machetes or run them over with stolen cars.
And when you do, everything will look incredibly and shockingly real, with blood spewing everywhere.
You can kill a cop, steal his gun, and then use it to shoot someone else. Or you can pick up a prostitute and have sex with her in the back of your stolen car, then beat her to death - or shoot her, bludgeon her, whatever you want.
In fact, "whatever you want" is what the game is all about. Thanks to its artful and complex programming and its incredibly realistic graphics, the game creates the impression of being inside a totally unscripted, live-action drama in which you can manufacture your mayhem as you go along.
People, this is insane. This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy (emphasis mine) - or than any lie the feds think Martha Stewart ever told them, or any line in any song that Bruce Springsteen ever sang that rankled a cop in the Meadowlands.
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I want this.
The Official Shotgun Rules
The term Shotgun refers to the front passenger seat of an automobile. Calling "Shotgun" is the act of claiming the position of Shotgun for one's self. As this position is the most coveted of all positions when riding in a car, the following list of rules has been created to ensure that Shotgun can be acquired in a fair and equitable manner by any passenger of an automobile.
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More Suzuki goodness! Awesome cover for the box. Nice to see the Tarintino is homaging Suzuki with more than one reference to his work in Kill Bill.
I want *this* for my birthday
Suzuki's best in post modern yakuza cinema with the brilliance of Akira Kurosawa. I *must* have this boxed set.
"Bush will win next election": God
Pat Robertson said Friday that God told him President Bush will be re-elected in a landslide.
"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," the religious broadcaster said on his "700 Club" program on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded.
"I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way," Robertson said.
"The Lord has just blessed him," Robertson said of Bush. "I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him."
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Guess who's going to China for a month this summer?
