Mr. Wonka! Just Punisher of Coddled Children

As much as I hate posting anything with a shelf date of more than 1 month, this was simply to good not to rave about. This amazing piece of design, this fictional relic...it's everything I love in visual form.

1. It's a Geek/Americana mashup (if you can consider 70s Penguin book covers Americana, and I do)
2. It's Engrish.
3. It's cute.
4. It works on many levels (this is not only the best scene in the movie, but it's a metaphor for the ENTIRE MOVIE, which I never realized till now. Omg.)

The time traveler responsible for this is Spacesick. He has tons more of the "I Can Read Movies" series on his webpage, and tons of just all around great design on his Flickr, like this:



This was a threadless t-shirt design but it lost! What the hell! People just don't get the wereburger joke.

Japanese Watchmen Trailer Makes The Movie Look 50 Times Better, Spoils Ending

SPOILER ALERT: The Japanese Trailer for Watchmen(or WOTCHMENRU, as I believe it is being distributed) totally spoilers the ending. Moreso than the American trailer.



Theory: Japanese culture is uniquely awesome because it is at once instantly appealing but fundamentally incomprehensible to Western audiences. A good example of this paradox is the new Japanese Watchmen trailer, presumably cut to appeal to specifically Japanese sensibilities. And it's BONKERS. Still, had I not read Watchmen, this trailer presents a movie I would actively want to see, a quality I think is lacking in the American campaign.

If you read any other nerd movie blogs you've probably seen it already, but did you really SEE it? Reactions and observations after the jump....

0:06...Starting out with the Zapruder Footage?! Okay, you've got my attention!
0:11...Positively zany Nixon make-up. He will be back later.
0:13...Castro! Does he know he's in this movie?
0:17...Terrorism!
0:41...Whip crack SFX over Silk Spectre flipping her hair around? Why not?
0:43...Note that the Knot Top gang have fu-manchu mustaches and look vaguely samurai-esque on film. Maybe that's why they're featured here.
0:49...YES! Dan Dreiberg looking old, fat and ugly! This is what Warner Brothers (Fox?) DOESN'T want you to see, America!
0:54...More Nixon in what appears to be a deliberate Dr. Strangelove reference.
0:58...The most grisly part of the Zapruder footage...I half expecting the cam to zoom in on Doctor Manhattan in the background NOT DOING ANYTHING.
1:12...More Nixon in the War Room. These are invented scenes! No Panel To Panel comparisons here. Kind of exciting!
1:18..."I say when doomsday is approaching!" This is so cheesy and hilarious. Why do the Japanese love/hate Nixon so much?
1:24...YES. DIES IRES! For overly dramatic trailer music, this is second only to Camina Burana.
1:36...This kind of vaporization probably carries a slightly different weight in Japan.
1:46..Spoiler Alert! New York gets blowed up!

Okay, so Albo has pointed out to me that you see the New York vaporization in the American trailer too...but they don't DWELL on it like that! Plus here you see that things are actually being decimated - the American shot just looks like an electric pulse that kinda chips up some buildings.

Let us question why the Japanese market is being sold this movie with an eye towards American political history. Was Frost/Nixon a really big hit in Tokyo?

In all seriousness, it seems that Watchmen is being billed in Japan not as a Superhero Movie, but as a Disaster Movie. I think you'll find this trailer shares it's advertising strategies with movies like The Day After Tomorrow and Deep Impact. Disaster movie trailers make a big deal about ticking clocks and panicked governments, and make no attempt to hide their money shots of destruction, because that's the point of the whole thing. So in the Japanese Market, is the Watchmen fundamentally a movie about the atomic bomb? About nuclear paranoia? Seeing as the Japanese had an ACTUAL atomic bomb dropped on two of their cities by a certain North American country, perhaps they are more interested in the dramatic possibilities of a story where that same North American country gets blown up itself than a story about a bunch of dudes in rubber suits?

I'm just theorizing. Either way, I'm now more genuinely interested in seeing The Watchmen. But enough about me; what do yall make of this thing?

Olympic Highlights...Matrix Style

Okay, so this is actually kind of an old video, and was made long before the Beijing Olympics. But I never had a good excuse to post it here, and the end of The Biggest Olympics Ever is probably the best reason I'll ever have.



You can actually feel your brain struggle to keep up with your perceptions as you watch it. It's not an unpleasant feeling.

What really blows my mind is that if you showed this video to someone twenty years ago, they would have no idea what they were watching. The "Bullet-Time" 360 effect is unique to contemporary filmmaking, and whether we realize it or not we're all fluent in a kind of film language that would be totally inaccessible to people just a few decades ago.

This skit is from semi-annual Japanese program called Kasou Taishou . You can also watch version of this video where the puppeteers are more obvious.

Your Excellency

All at once, Japan is apparently able to engage in PR, government business, possible subtle parody of goverment business, children's toy and entertainment advertising, blog fodder creation, and the warm mainline cultural moment of giving a beloved classy lady her due. Japan has started appointing cartoon characters to its government.

First, there was this:

This robot cat is called Doraemon, and he is happy to have just been appointed Anime Ambassador to the World. He is shaking hands with the Foreign Minister of Japan, Masahiko Komura. Our analog would be Ms. C. Rice*. Seems Masahiko Komura's trying to exchange a knowing look with Nobita, friend of Doraemon, but, from this angle at least, it looks to be unreciprocated.

Then today:


Naturally, Hello Kitty is now the Tourism Ambassador, specializing in China and Hong Kong. According to one article, she will have 11 other goodwill ambassadors to help her do her job, which is probably a good idea. Although of course.... this is a class act whose 2D disembodied head alone has moved millions of units of merchandise in many markets all over the world. I'm kind of surprised she had time to come and collect her certificate. Nice of her to dress traditional though.

*AHR did this mock-up to give an idea of what it would look like if anything like this were to transpire over here in Americaland.

Pobrecita's just happy to have a friend.

Web Game Of The Week: Rose & Camellia

Every Thursday on Geekanerd, Johnny (our resident Web Game Addict) offers up his pick for the best new game of the week.

Feel like getting your slap on? Well now you can with Rose & Camellia (from Nigoro), a Japanese Anime/Punch Out based slapping game. Now the game is in Japanese, and I don’t know how to read or speak Japanese, but I believe the gist of the story goes like this. You’re a little girl in feudal Japan who needs to slappity-slap all the other women in your quarters. Story aside, Rose & Camellia features beautiful graphics and a wonderful and funny game concept. Check it out!


Game Play:
The controls are really easy but difficult at first to get the hang of. Every once in a while, an attack button will appear to on the bottom right. Click on it then swing your mouse over the opponent’s face. When your foe is about to attack, an evade button will appear on the bottom left. Click on that then swing your mouse the other way. Once you have successfully evaded a slap, a counter button will appear in the bottom right. This has the same function as the attack button.

Strategies:
In playing this, I realized that the most important thing to master is the art of evading and countering. Attacking leaves you open to counterstrikes. If you never attack but just successfully evade and counter, you will have no problem beating the game. When the opponent is close to dying, attacking becomes much easier.

Thanks Johnny! Check back next Thursday for more Geek-Approved Web Games.