Opening Friday, May4th to May 25th will be the second annual exhibition for New York’s animation industry artists. There’s an incredible wealth of talent in the NYC area and this is a great time to check out what every is up to when they’re not working at a studio. Around thiry-five artists will be displaying their work which includes Jared Deal, Kelly Denato, Danny Kimanyen, Jim Manocchio, Jessica Millazo, Dagan Moriarty, Reject, Tim Shankweiler, Justin Simonich, and a whole bunch more. The doors will open on May 4th at 7PM at the Stay Gold Gallery in Brooklyn. An after party is planned at Barcade at 10PM. I’ve never been to Barcade but I can only imagine great things from a bar that is half arcade, half beers, and all good time. It sounds like a hoot and I plan on being there dressed in my Sunday best.

Further info can be found at:

www.staygoldengallery.com

Spiderman 2.1 is basically an extended cut of the Spiderman sequel. I have no idea what extra stuff they added but probably nothing to rant and rave about. This is just a marketing ploy to get the ball rolling with Spiderman 3 advertising.
Smokin Aces is a very fast paced mob movie. A snitch (Jeremy Piven) has a million dollar bounty on his head and everyone is out to collect. Semi all-star cast of Ben Affleck, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia, Ryan Reynolds, Alicia Keys, Common, Jason Bateman, and many smaller roles with some other known names.
The Last King of Scotland is the true story about Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) as the brutal Ugandan dictator. Actually it’s more focused on the physician played by Edward Norton who is basically held as a slave to Amin. Whitaker won the Oscar for his role.
Freedom Writers is an overdone story about a bad bunch of students who get turned around by some teacher (Hilary Swank) who has her own unconventional methods. This story has been done to death already.
Notes on a Scandal is about Cate Blanchett as a pottery teacher who has an affair with one of her students causing madness in her personal and professional life. It was nominated for a bunch of Oscars.
Pucked is the newest National Lampoon movie. This one went straight to DVD and has Jon Bon Jovi as a dumb guy who starts an all women’s hockey team because it’s his dream. WHAT?! Stick to the music JBJ, this one might be one of the worst movies ever to be made.

If I had to choose one it would be Smokin Aces. I have Spiderman 2 already and don’t need an extended cut. But if you don’t already have it then I would definitely recommend it. Otherwise Smokin is a really cool movie. Its mindless action most of the time so don’t expect something that will make you think for hours and hours. This is just a fast paced fun movie. I’m curious to see Last King of Scotland but I heard it was just OK besides Whitaker’s performance being stellar. And then there’s Pucked. I’m sure that’s so bad that I would laugh at it.
Alright stick to Spiderman or Smokin Aces.

Keep an eye peeled on ESPN for all you sports nuts out there for this anime-influenced commercial. It was commissioned by Transistor Studios of NYC and animated by Jared Deal, Thomas Bone, Max Garcia, and a good friend of mine, Keelmy Carlo. There’s some really nice animation and compositing. I’m a fan. It makes me want to watch ice skating. For those of you who don’t give a darn about watching sports but want to check out the spot, here it is! Enjoy!

I wouldn’t normally make this a blog post, but after I read this description of ‘Ninja’ about ten times, I realized it was completely deserving of it’s own post. I guess if you haven’t watched Ninja, go do so and then read the below description.

“Shamoozal: Ninja - Kid and his disgruntled talking dog, Shamoozal, trash his sister’s room by pretending it’s a ninja samurai battleground.”

I mean really, do these people even pay attention to what they watch? If you listen to the podcast, you’ll know that the big running gag lately is the whole “Jacquo the dog” thing. Not only do people think Jacquo is a dog, but I’ve seen him called names like “Taco” once before too.

I certainly was a child of the 80’s. I remember when the very first episode of Transformers was aired, and then witnessed the glut of cartoons based off of toy lines sprawl across television. It was quite a spectacle. In an earlier post, nerdlogger “tdb” suggested we do a post on one of the other cartoons with transforming vehicles: M.A.S.K. I thought it was a damned good idea.

M.A.S.K. stands for “Mobile Armored Strike Kommand”. Dig that “K” in there. Now, if you ask me, Ed Boon and John Tobais must’ve been a huge fans of this show when they came up with Mortal Kombat’s title. That “k” just gives it that 80’s edge it so rightly deserves. It already has an insane cast of wacky characters none of whom wear the same uniform yet all belong to the same klub (hah I’m so clever), so all it needs now is a jamming 80’s theme song sung by some hair band wanna-be. Lucky for us it does:

Sorry that we keep teasing you with new info from the next episode of Shamoozal, instead of… you know, actually showing the episode. Then again, I guess you guys went through a similar thing when you were waiting around for Ninja, so you should be used to it.

I thought long and hard about what I should present to everyone this week. Frank and I wondered what images we should show, if any at all. I even thought about showing a near finished scene, but decided against that too. Instead, I decided to give you something even more obscure than normal resulting in that stupid Zoink image up above. It’s only fitting because the Zoinks haven’t had a new cartoon in a year now *gasp*.

Friday the 13th!!!! Where’s Jason Voorhees? Nowhere! Instead you get this crop of flicks.

SHOW ME THE ENDDDDDDDDDDING!

Disturbia – Shia Lebouf is a kid under house arrest. So he gets bored and starts spying on neighbors. Friends join in. They’re all having a good time until they think they witness a murder. No one believes them and there’s no evidence. So the whole movie is Shia and friends trying to prove their neighbor is a murderer. I kind of want to see what happens in this movie. I admit the trailer got me interested. BUT… I would rather just see the ending in the trailer. A 5 minute movie would be fine with me. The trailer is enough build up to get me interested and then just show me how it ends. I don’t care about seeing 90 minutes of this story.

Larry and Balki? I don’t think so.

I caught an animated commerical for the Xbox 360’s version of “Guitar Hero 2″ tonight. I think that there’s a hefty dose of rotoscoping, but reguardless its a very well done spot. It gets me pumped to go play some GH2. I don’t know which studio did it, but its a really niece piece. Enjoy!

Konami has a bit of a history when it comes to creating characters based on Hollywood icons. From Contra to some of Hideo Kojima’s greats, familiar faces can be found all over Konami games. Take a peek.

Contra
Jimbo and Sully. Mad Dog and Scorpion. Bill and Lance. The two protagonist of the Contra series have gone by many names here in the states (it’s always been Bill and Lance) but their initial influence has never changed. Someone at Konami must have been a big fan of Predator and Rambo, because these characters are clearly based off Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. And why not? If Arnold and Sly made a movie together during the 80s, the world may have blown up. Since they never did, Contra was the next best thing that could happen.

Despite the fact that Disney may eventually pull this clip from Youtube for copywrite infringement, I had to post it today. Its a sequence from “The Three Cabelleros” which stared Donald Duck. I think I’ve watched this clip about a million times and it always blows me away. Animated by Ward Kimball around 1944, there is just so much going on its hard to keep up with on one viewing. Most of today’s younger viewers may dismiss it right off the bat since its so “old”, but please watch it with an open eye. I think you’ll be quite surprised and maybe you’ll see why this stuff is timeless. UPDATE: Whoop! There you go…its been pulled! Well, take my word for it, its awesome stuff, so go out there and rent a copy of it or something.