Monsters and Rockets

DAYMARE TOWN

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Sun, 20 May 2012 14:14:00 +0000

Daymare Town is an online point-and-click game with a nicely quirky look and tone. It feels less like a Myst clone than a short adventure you take within the pages of an artist's sketchbook, with the 3D graphics of most point-and-clicks replaced by scratchy little cartoon scenes. But just because the game has such a charmingly simple look, don't assume that the puzzles are easy to beat!

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MONSTER HOUSE animatic made from cheap plastic toys

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:11:00 +0000

I really liked Monster House, but didn't exactly love it. The idea was cute and the script and voice performances were good, but the motion-capture animation just didn't quite work. The characters had interesting designs, but their movements were kind of stiff and weightless and their eyes often had an eerie, lifeless quality. (Click the image at left to buy the film on blu-ray.)

I would've been just as happy if they had shot the entire movie the same way they shot their storyboard animatics, using cheap plastic toys to act out the action scenes. The clip below illustrates this process. It's taken from the Youtube page of Rob Schrab, one of the guys behind the film. He's also helped bring us The Sarah Silverman Program, Scud the Disposable Assassin and other weird delights... But somehow, I doubt he's ever had more fun with any of his projects than he did making this clip.

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Technocrati tags: [Monster House][Rob Schrab][Animatics]

Thomas Edison, Beat Poet

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:20:00 +0000

When he wasn't busy inventing little gizmos like the light bulb or the phonograph, or electrocuting elephants, Thomas Edison relaxed by writing surreal, jazzy poetry that would've done Ginsberg proud. Read the following untitled piece, and you can almost hear the bongos in the background.

A Bowery angel smoking a palm tree stubbed his toe on a comet, and pimples came out on his toe nail as big as mountains. He swore so much that God made eight new planets out of the conversation & peopled and fauna'd and flora'd them eccentrically. The almighty has a vein of humor. He made these planets & peopled them to give amusements to beings on the rest of the celestial plantation. The men were 800 miles long & 1/4 inch thick. They slept on telegraph poles, and animals with bodies as big as a pea with 900 eyes each as big as a saucer lived on these long men by catching them by the feet and sucking them in like macaroni.

Man, that cat they called the "wizard of Menlo Park" was, like, outta sight! To dig more of Edison's real gone prose poems, bop on over to NPR's website to listen to an interview with Blaine McCormick, editor of the Edison Papers Project.)

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Le Petit Prince

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 22:35:00 +0000

Prince packs a lot of awesome into his tiny frame, and artist Troy Gua has somehow managed to capture a lot of Prince's awesome in an even tinier jointed doll, complete with fancy Purple Rain outfits and a little purple motorcycle and everything. Gua promises that there is "so much more 2 come," including a little plastic Appollonia. Let's go crazy!

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Happy 81st birthday, William Shatner!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 22:29:00 +0000

Today marks the 81st birthday of William Shatner. I was tempted to celebrate by posting something goofy, a clip of Shatner's infamous performance of Rocket Man or whatever, but instead I decided to post this clip from Shatner's directorial debut, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. While it's widely (and accurately) regarded as the worst of the Trek films featuring the original cast, it does contain a handful of really effective scenes, such as the one above. Let's all gather around the campfire for one more evening with Kirk, Spock and Bones. Happy 81st, Captain.

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SNL's original Stefon sketch

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:26:00 +0000

Saturday Night Live is pretty uneven these days, but the show does feature one breakout, consistently hilarious character: Bill Hader's jittery, drugged-up, gay nightclub promoter, Stefon. Stefon is a currently a recurring guest on Weekend Update, but he made his debut a few years back in a sketch where he was supposed to be Ben Affleck's wayward screenwriter brother. Many of the character's core elements were there from the beginning, right down to his peculiar obsession with totally jacked midgets with keg abs. But the sketch doesn't quite work, and Stefon seems more creepy than funny... Clearly he needed the stabilizing influence of his tirelessly patient Update pal, Seth Meyers.

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FIRELIGHT - Steven Spielberg's 1964 alien invasion movie

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:38:00 +0000

Steven Spielberg has been making movies about aliens visiting Earth for a very long time. Before War of the Worlds, before E.T., before Close Encounters even, there was Firelight. Shot in 1964, when Spielberg was but a lad of 17, Firelight featured a cast composed largely of Spielberg's high school classmates. (His sister Nancy also had a leading role.) According to Spielberg, the film earned exactly one dollar in profit! Much of the film is lost today, but you can see one of the surviving fragments here.

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Who do you want to be today?

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:30:00 +0000

Face Substitution from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

In this absolutely amazing (and creepy) clip, Kyle McDonald uses prototype computer software to replace his face with the faces of various famous folks, in real time. How long will it be before Hollywood starts releasing new movies starring resurrected versions of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean?

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DEATH-RAY cosplay

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:13:00 +0000

A couple of Halloweens ago, animator Matt Taylor had one of the coolest costumes ever: Daniel Clowes' Death-Ray! Visit Taylor's blog to learn about how he created his version of the ill-fitting suit worn by the disaffected teen superhero/serial killer in the classic Clowes comic.

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CICADA PRINCESS

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:06:00 +0000

Cicada Princess from Mauricio Baiocchi on Vimeo.

Cicada Princess is an upcoming short film from Mauricio Baiocchi, based on his book. The current status of the project is uncertain, but Baiocchi is asking for donations on the film's website.

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MARY WORTH acted out by real people

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:22:00 +0000

The long-running comic strip Mary Worth becomes a Lynchian nightmare when acted out literally by this snarky theater troupe. (I've looked in vain for the original strips that inspired these shorts. If anybody finds a url, let us know in the comments!)

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Out-of-print BLADE RUNNER SKETCHBOOK online

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:19:00 +0000

The Blade Runner Sketchbook has been out of print for years, but now the whole book is available online for free. The book features the original drawings by Ridley Scott, Syd Mead and other artists who designed the classic film. Check it out here.

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LEXX co-creator dead at 49

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:59:00 +0000

Weirdos the world over are in mourning today, with the tragic news that Lex Gigeroff, the co-creator of the cult hit sci-fi series Lexx, has passed away at age 49. The show was wildly uneven, as even the most hardcore fans will admit... But there has never been anything quite like it on TV before or since, and it its best it was one seriously freaky good time. Here's hoping that Gigeroff's spirit is now enjoying an eternity frolicking with the sexy natives of planet Water.

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The many returns of the Miser Brothers

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:28:00 +0000

The Year Without a Santa Claus isn't the best of the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials. Sure, it's cute as heck, but the plot is a little draggy at times, the songs are a mix of covers and rather undistinguished originals, and the animation lacks the boundless charm of efforts like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But it's become a classic thanks to Heat Miser and Snow Miser, two of the most unforgettable characters in all of Christmas TV special-dom. Here, I'll let the boys introduce themselves:

They have yet to invent a scale capable of measuring the awesomeness of Heat Miser and Snow Miser.

The characters have been popular for decades, so it was perhaps inevitable that eventually Hollywood would decide that a remake was required. And so, in 2006, we got a live-action TV movie remake of The Year Without a Santa Claus, starring Harvey Fierstein as Heat Miser and Michael McKean as Cold Miser. How bad was it? Well, watch this clip:

Friends, that clip was the best part. It actually gets worse from there, with a lot of awful pop-cultural gags. And Chris Kattan. Sweet Jesus, this show makes the Star Wars holiday special look good.

The remake was swiftly and justly forgotten, but two years later somebody decided to try again with A Miser Brothers' Christmas, a direct sequel to the original show. This special would feature stop-motion animation and would try to be more faithful to the spirit of the original. Here's the big show-stopping number:

Yeah. It's somehow missing something, huh?

The animation is very good and the character re-designs work well enough, you can tell that the people making this special really wanted to honor the original. But there's something inert about the finished special, it never comes alive and it's just not very... well, special. If the original show is a little slow in spots, the sequel is downright sluggy, and it lacks the crude vitality that has made the original endure. The 2006 remake failed by trying too hard revamp and parody the original, while the 2008 sequel failed by arguably being just a tad too reverent toward its source material.

Of course, if we're looking at the various renditions of Heat Miser and Cold Miser, I have to include this one:

Sorry about that. But those 37 seconds of exquisite agony, courtesy of Joel Schumacher, were still better than anything in the 2006 remake.

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"I'm Dreaming of a Blue Sunset"

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:21:00 +0000

Enjoy this Doctor Manhattan-esque footage of a sunset as seen from the surface of Mars.

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A very 1987 Christmas to you!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 07:17:00 +0000

If you need a little retro Christmas TV, right this very minute, Betamax Christmas will put the jolly back in your holly. The site recreates a full evening of Christmas TV programming circa 1986 or so, complete with rabbit ears on the TV that you have to fiddle with to get a better picture. (You change the channel by flipping the remote floating over on the right. It seems obvious once you notice it, but it took me a while to spot it.)

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Get your Schulz on!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 07:11:00 +0000

If you've wished that you knew how to bust a move like the Peanuts kids in the classic holiday special Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown (and goodness, who hasn't?) now you can, thanks to the helpful diagrams on the accordion Christmas card seen on the website of designer Candy Chang. The girl's head-flopping move is diagrammed on one side of the card, the boy's weird neck-jut thing is depicted on the other.

The card, however, does not appear to be available to actually print out so you can mail it to your loved ones. That's just... Well, Scrooge-ian is the phrase that comes to mind. A lump of coal for you, Ms. Chang!

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LAND OF THE LOST episode studies

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 10:45:00 +0000

I have made no secret of my raging fandom for the old TV series The Land of the Lost. So you can imagine how delighted I was to discover this site offering detailed commentary on every episode of the original series. The site finds just the right balance of amusement and respect, taking the show seriously without taking it too seriously. Once you're finished reading through their coverage of all three seasons, you can spend the rest of your 4-day weekend geeking out with their coverage of the original Battlestar Galactica, the original V and other dorky favorites of yesteryear.

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Cosmohut.com is a website and they are paying me to post about them

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:46:00 +0000

A while back I signed up with a website, Payperpost.com, where I can get paid a few bucks to write MonstersandRockets.com posts about certain products. I can pretty much say whatever I want, I just have to link to the product's website and write a certain number of words, and I'm done. I haven't done one of these in a while, but last night they sent me an offer from a site called Cosmohut.com and the offer was too good to pass up. So, I'm writing about Cosmohut.com, where you can learn about Make Up and pick up all sorts of Cosmetics Tips. They also want me to link to their Make Up Tutorials. I don't know why they looked at my sci-fi nerd blog and decided this was a good place to advertise their fancy lady website with the make up tutorials and such, but I'm glad they did because after they approve this post they'll send me some money and I like money. The end.

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George Lucas' daughter is a pro kickboxer

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:09:00 +0000

No, really. George Lucas' daughter Amanda is a pro kickboxer. She's the girl with the cornrow hair in the clip above.

Wondering how George Lucas feels about his daughter's chosen career? Well, he talks about it a little in this predictably sleazy TMZ clip:

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Andy Kaufman in unaired sci-fi comedy pilot, STICK AROUND

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 08:53:00 +0000

Comedy great Andy Kaufman plays a bumbling android in this rather hopeless 1970s sci-fi sitcom pilot. His "Foreign Man" accent would be put to much better use later, when he was cast as Latka Gravas on Taxi.

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GHOSTBUSTERS fan makes creepily realistic Harold Ramis bust

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 07:26:00 +0000

Ghostbusters fan Carl Lyon has built himself an incredibly realistic bust of Dr. Egon Spengler, the brainy 'Buster portrayed by Harold Ramis. Lest you think that Lyon is just obsessed with Harold Ramis or something, he assures us that he also plans to build the other Ghostbusters soon. A full gallery of making-of pics can be seen here.

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Happy 45th birthday, Star Trek!

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:11:00 +0000

45 years ago today, a little show called Star Trek made its debut on American TV. To celebrate, let's enjoy this fan film made by a bunch of kids in the 1970s, dubbed over with their adult voices 25 years later. (I hate to say it, but that cyclops monster is arguably an improvement on some of the effects in the original show.)

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Lee Harvey Oswald's Poseidon Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:07:00 +0000

Paul Wilson is a big fan of the 1970s disaster picture The Poseidon Adventure, miniature models and Lee Harvey Oswald. Perhaps these seem like three interests with very little overlap, but Wilson has actually managed to combine them... by building an enormous model of the SS Poseidon and sending a little doll of himself and a little doll of Oswald on a romantic cruise together.

Wilson's Flickr account is a wonder to behold. In the photo above, Paul and a very hairy Lee relax on deck in the hours before the ship's fateful New Year's Eve party.

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Obama "narrates" an upcoming animated film

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Stacy .) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:13:00 +0000

Son of Strelka, Son of God is an upcoming animated epic featuring narration put together from carefully edited clips of the audiobook of Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father. Judging by the rough animatic seen here the results are pretty amazing, with our Commander in Chief presenting a surprisingly jazzy, almost beatnik look at the dawn of civilization.

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