Friday ACE is going to be a bit late (again) No Friday ACE this week due to my work on Episode 50 of R5 Central. In the meantime, I offer this up. Last year I did some voice work for Operation Nihilistic Hailstorm, a web series by James Mah, a friend of a friend of mine. The end result is the following.
Check out James’ Youtube channel to check out the rest of the episodes of the series along with other sweet vids.
From /m/:
NOW THIS IS THE STORY ALL ABOUT HOW
MY LIFE GOT FLIPPED, TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
AND I’D LIKE TO TAKE A MINUTE JUST SIT ON THOSE PARTS
I’LL TELL YOU HOW I BECAME THE FUCKING KING OF HEARTSIN NEO JAPAN I WAS BORN AND RAISED,
TRAINING UNDER MASTER ASIA IS HOW I SPENT MOST OF MY DAYS!
ZENSHIN, KEIRETSU, AND THE EAST BURNING RED,
WITH THE WINDS OF THE KING BLOWING OVER MY HEAD.
WHEN THAT ASSHOLE ULUBE; HE WAS UP TO NO GOOD
STARTED MAKING TROUBLE IN MY NEIGHBOURHOOD
MY FAM’LY KAPUT, COVERD UP BY GOVERNMENT FARTS
I WAS AWAY, INHERITING THE TITLE OF KING OF THE HEARTSI SHOUTED FOR GUNDAM AND WHEN IT CAME NEAR
THE LICENSEPLATE SAID “GOD” AND HAD A CARD IN THE MIRROR
NOW I PROUDLY I COULD SAY THAT RAYNE WAS MY HO’
BUT I DID NOT REALIZE IT, YO GUNDAM FIGHT GOI PULLED UP TO CHINA ABOUT SEVEN OR EIGHT
AND I YELLED TO MY MASTER “YO, HOME FIGHT YOU LATER!”
LOOKED AT MY GUNDAM HONED MY MARTIAL ARTS
TO SETTLE MY SCORES AS THE KING OF THE HEARTS
Just finished watching Phoo Action, the hour-long pilot based off of Jamie “Gorillaz” Hewlett’s comic Get The Freebies.
I found out about this at the last second and got my hands on the episode from a friend. I wasn’t expecting much even though this boasts Carl Weathers at the police chief, a script co-written by Jessica Hynes from Spaced and Euros Lyn as the director but it turned out to be a lot better than expected.
WARNING: The following show requires an open mind.
Here’s how this works: You’ve got Terry Phoo, a mutant hunting specialist from Hong Kong’s JKD Police Division in the year 2012 (and one step to the left) who is sent to London after the Queen is murdered by The Freebies, a trio of mutants led by Johnny Freebie: a guy with a basketball for a head and a tracksuit. (Yes, it sounds crazy already. If you can’t cope at this point, you might want to turn back now.)
Amidst this is Whitey Action, daughter of the Police Chief, who has a bit of a party streak in her (along with her friend, the Lady Eleanor Rigsby) but, as Carl Weathers best put it, “she’s got a smart head and a smart mouth and the two can’t seem to match up”. During a botched attempt by the Freebies to kill the next heirs to the throne, she meets Phoo and the two of them have to hurry to save London from having their new King(s) from turning blue. Literally.
Let it be known that I’m kind of nuts so I’m open to a lot of things. I’m a fan of the Japanese SpidermanTV Series for crying out loud. Then again, after Spider-Man 3, who can blame me? I tend to gravitate to shows that may look bad in special effects, overdosing on on-screen insanity, and are just sweating camp but I still enjoy them. The pilot of Phoo Action is a lot like those kinds of shows but it has something a lot of them don’t: People who are in on the joke.
Honestly, had this taken itself seriously, I’m sure I’d be breaking my head through wooden boards without any formal training at all whatsoever because it would have been horrible. Phoo Action has all the feel of a comic book mixed with 1960/70’s martial arts and cop shows and it shows. While we’re going on about comic books, having never read Get the Freebies, I can’t say anything about loyalty to the source material but if any of the other reviews online are any indicator, it seems like they nailed it.
Visually, I have to give props to the art direction. The whole thing looks like it was lifted from the Get the Freebies comic with its vibrant colors that add to the on screen craziness and make this a pleasure to watch. Double props go to the SFX team. Suits with a mixture of CG on the eyes and animatronics bring the Freebie trio to life and make them all the more fun and slightly creepy. I can only imagine the layer of hell those are to move around.
The acting is solid all the way around. Like I said before, everybody’s in on the joke so they’re able to have fun with it. I mean, there’s no way you can play the concept of a pair of hot pants turning out to be Buddha’s Loincloth seriously.
Oh and Carl Weathers freaking rocked in this, and I hope he sticks around because he stole the show.
The only real gripe I have with this is the action. It came off looking like something from the 1960’s Batman series with a bit of modern Kung Fu Finesse on top for good measure. Personally, I really feel that faster and tighter action scenes could really compliment the show and get people watching but then again I’m the guy that liked Death Trance. Here’s hoping The Powers That Be see this too and make a move in that direction. Even if they don’t, it fits either way.
All in all, I’ve just gotten my first thing to look forward to in 2009.
POINTS OF INTEREST:
-Official Myspace Page
The First Trailer for Kamen Rider Den-O & Kiba: Climax Deka just aired and is up on Youtube!
In addition, we’re getting ANOTHER variant of Double Action:
After the release of Double-Action Wing Form on March 26th, and for the release of Ore, Tanjo !’s Director’s Cut version, a new Double-Action will come out : Double-Action Climax Form ! Thus we could hear the main song from the next OVA : Climax Detective. It will be sing by the Quintuple-Action group as known as Momo, Ura, Kin, Ryuu and Deneb !
Toei and Bandai: We’re Going To Bleed Your Wallet Dry.
It’s a fact that more people know the Super Mario Brothers theme by heart than their own national anthem, second only to the 1960’s Batman theme. The question is, what if the theme WAS a national anthem. Famed game composer Nobuo Uematsu thinks that this is a good idea.
From 1up.com:
I think that the Super Mario song should be the national anthem for Japan. [Hums the death refrain] So when someone wins a gold medal at the Olympics, a Japanese athlete, the flag should go up with the theme song. Shoop! …The world would have a different image of Japan if we use that.
Check out the rest of this award winning banter here.
All I’m saying is that if Japan gets to have the Super Mario Bros. theme replace the Kimigayo, the Star-Spangled Banner should be replaced by Hulk Hogan’s intro theme…
What? You were expecting Team America? Pssh, forget that. And now, this week’s Friday ACE.
So Go-Onger recently premiered. This is what instantly came to mind before I declared a Five Episode Rule on it:
At least we got this shortly afterwards….
This was the scene outside of multiple Scientology branches this past Sunday as part of a mass 4chan Scientology raid protest. The reason this wins the honor of having this week’s Friday ACE named after it. Because of the massive Rick Roll that was the London protest group…
From This Entry Here:
One guy in a full-on V outfit made an announcement in a very dull and proper fashion that none of us could hear properly. We were busy heckling him (anonymous has no problem with criticising anonymous), when he reaches the end of his speech and presses play on a boombox…
The crowd went fucking wild.
500 people rick-rolling the UK Scientology head office. It was at this point I saw the corners of the cops’ mouths twitch into smiles as they realised it was ok: we were from the internets.
Thank you Anonymous for making my week. What? You were expecting a Valentine’s Day theme? Too bad. And now, your Friday ACE.
After getting excited over a false Hibiki OV Series image, I figure the next best thing would be to give everybody updates over everything we know so far about Climax Deka:
Here’s the supposed story via the thread on HJU:
A few months after parting with Momotaros and the rest, Ryoutarou is living a peaceful life. But, one day, Zeroliner appears with Yuuto in front of Ryoutarou.
“The flow of time is being disrupted. On top of that, the culprit seems to be Momotaros.”
Ryoutarou is surprised by Yuuto’s words, and goes off to investigate with Yuuto to find out the truth.Meanwhile, Momotaros has heard about this incident and in order to prove his innocence, Owner (and company), Urataros, Kintaros, and Ryuutaros, also join in the investigation.
・A black Momotaros that looks just like Momotaros will appear (the details are slightly different)
(I’m betting that the culprit = black)・The black Momotaros will transform into a black den-o (Sword form)
・Kiva will appear from a different timeline because the flow of time has been disrupted.
But Kiva’s actors won’t appear in the show. (Wataru will appear as Kiva’s voice by the actor, but Wataru himself will not appear.)
Now that last bit, which is somewhat disappointing, was recently debunked by the following pic.
It comes from this series of pics, the source of which hasn’t been revealed yet but I’d venture to guess this is from Takeru Sato’s blog again or somebody else involved with Kiva.
However, the really interesting bit is that the collage now shows that there’s apparently going to be time traveling between 2008 AND 1986, evidenced by the two shot of Ryotaro and Wataru’s father. Click the link to see for yourself.
The thing that seems weird is that we’re getting a main Den-O V-Cinema in addition to Climax Deka and I remember hearing somewhere that a Dark Den-O would be appearing in that as well? Maybe I’m confused as the news of both of these productions came so fast but hey, I’m human. I screw up on occasion. Somebody feel free to call me on it.
In the meantime, we’re getting a freaking Den-O OVA o_o
Yeah, I’d go into further details but right now I’m too tired from all this news hunting and I need some sleep.
EDIT: One more thing! According to this article, Climax Deka will see release in April…AND it’ll actually be in theaters!
Take care all.
Chances are there are some of you out there that don’t watch the Super Bowl for the game itself, you just stick around for the commercials.
This made it all the more worthwhile.
Stewie is bitchslapped and Underdog finally gets his for selling out to Disney. Even after his comic has ceased publication, the good man is will always be Charlie Brown. Thus, I have created a new phrase to further illustrate utter pwnage;
“Better crack open the Sunday paper, you just got Charlie Browned!”
….Yeah doesn’t exactly roll off of the tongue does it? Well you may as well coin it now as it accurately describes an event that Tokusatsu freaks like myself have been waiting 10 years for finally happened this week: Chaiyo Entertainment has finally gotten their asses royally kicked in the courts and Tsuburaya has claimed victory!
Works now, doesn’t it? And now, here’s this week’s Friday ACE!
Play this as you read the following….
Final Ruling in “Ultraman Case”
Published in Bangkok’s The Nation on February 6th, 2008:The Supreme Court yesterday ruled in favour of Tsuburaya Productions of Japan by finding Sompote Saengduenchai was not a co-inventor of Ultraman as he had claimed in a legal battle that started in 1997, said a lawyer for the Japanese firm.
Manu Rakwattanakul, a Baker and McKenzie Thailand partner representing Tsuburaya Productions, said the Central Intellectual Property Court yesterday read a Supreme Court ruling that said there was no circumstantial evidence to support claims that Sompote Saengduenchai co-invented the popular television superhero.
The ruling means Sompote and his company, Tsuburaya Chaiyo, must stop profiteering from Ultraman. Sompote had for many years earned significant revenue from producing Ultraman television shows, colouring books and T-shirts, as well as other merchandise using the character. However, the Supreme Court told Sompote to end such activities within 30 days from the date of ruling.
The case started in 1997, when Tsuburaya Productions filed a lawsuit against Sompote. He had earlier said that as co-inventor, he was entitled to sell Ultraman products. The court also ruled the transfer of Ultraman rights to Sompote was invalid, and the decision ends Sompote’s bid to continue his enterprise. Tsuburaya Production lost its case earlier in the First Instance Court but made an appeal and finally won in yesterday’s ruling.
Manu said, “It was a long case, involving many documents and witnesses.” He said the decision meant Tsuburaya Productions was the sole copyright owner. Sompote was ordered to pay 10.7 million Baht ($343,984 U.S. dollars) plus interest at the rate of 7.5 % a year starting from December 16, 1997, when the original lawsuit was filed.
(Special thanks to James Ballard for altering us to the good news!)
Excuse me while I go rock out with a Beta Capsule and scream “We Are The Champions”.
