Astro Boy

I don't know why I never bothered with Astro Boy. I've had a copy of the 2003 animated series for years now, but never bothered to watch. There was always something else to see or read and the clild like character just didn't have that draw that comes from being completely bad-ass at first glance.

I mean, come on. He's a prepubescent robot boy in tight underwear and go go boots...

However, after watching the new computer animated movie, I am a convert. As soon as I left the theater, I went over to Toys R' Us and bought 3 versions of the diminuitive little bugger, and a few of the bigger bad guys for him to fight. He's currently on my desk fighting my 7" NECA and Mezco figures and kicking some plastic behind. Later, I'm going home and will dig through my DVD collection for those discs so I can find out where this little nekkid guy has been and what other stuff besides his butt mounted machine guns he has in store for me.

After some quality time with wikipedia, I found out that Astro Boy is actually the first Anime. It was this one that spawned all the big eyes, funky hair, speedlines, and those pans, zooms, closeups, and long-ass panoramic establishing shots, that we all remember so well from Robotech (Macross to you folks). That is way cool.

So how does the new computer animated film stack up to the old school series?

I like it. Though the animation isn't up to Pixar standards, a lot of the effects and colors are appealing and make up for the lack. The fights are something else. Watching Astroboy in the area, or going toe to toe with the mutated Peacekeeper I felt myself cheering inside like a schoolgirl watching Robert Pattinson save Kristen Stewart from yet another vampire. This little guy could totally kick that wussy bloodsucker's butt though, with his arm cannons, rocket feet, and the aforementioned butt mounted firearms.

The plot is about what you'd expect; a variation of Pinocchio. Dr. Tenma loses his son in a lab accident and in his grief decides to make a robot copy. blah blah blah. Truthfully, if you're going in for some witty dialogue and great acting, you're going to be disappointed. The lines are all kind of forced, with director David Bowers script clunking along. There is maybe one line that actually drew a laugh from me and it wasn't "a squirty-bottle's got to do, what a squirty-bottle's got to do". Seriously, the screenplay reads like bad B movie.

The voice casting doesn't help. Again, we see how casting big names can really kill a animated film. Every time Nicolas Cage spoke, I felt physically ill. He is an example of an actor who should be banned from doing voice work. Ever. I felt like he was sitting at a table doing a read through. Many of the other actors share this same failure. Bill Nighy as Dr. Elefun. Donald Sutherland as President Stone. Samuel L. Jackson as Zog. All of them should have been dropped before they were cast. The only one who knew how to have fun with it was Nathan Lane and the voices of the RRF, though the poor script really killed their work.

But if you make it through the exposition, you'll get to the good parts. They last 40 minutes or so of the movie really kick it into high gear and by the time I got to the end, I felt satisfied enough to forget about the rest of it. I came away hoping that they would be releasing a sequel sometime soon, since this effort seemed much like a dry run, with many of the peices needing some refining.

To recap: If you're a fan of deep, traditional anime, you probably won't like this. If you like you're a summer blockbuster movie goer who's a kid at heart, then you probably will.

       

Pandorum

I have a secret fetish for 1st person perspective games. There's something about the first person perspective that really pulls you into a fictional universe. I was never big on the "shooters" like Doom, but I did love "sneakers" like Thief. Mostly is was the horror aspect. More than any other video game genre, the 1st person perspective games felt like a classic horror movie, where your peripheral vision is limited and stuff tends to jump out at you when you're holding your breath. There was many a time during Thief: The Dark Project when I almost pissed my pants when I turned around and found myself face to face with a zombie.

In a way, that's exactly why I enjoyed Pandorum so much. When the lights go down in the theatre and you find yourself staring at Ben Foster waking up, you're as lost as he is. You have no idea what is going on, and you don't know what he's got to do. There's no exposition until about halfway through the film. The whole mystery forces you into this little box, holding your breath, waiting for that zombie to pop out.

The Sci-Fi/Horror Survival sub-genre has been around for awhile now. The general consensus is that their record isn't that good, though I loved every one I've seen so far. The Resident Evil movies were modestly successful, spawning 2 sequels. I believe it's more because Milla Jovovich is such a kick-ass ass kicker than because of anything the filmmakers really did. I loved what Christian Gans did an excellent job on Silent Hill, with great atmosphere and design. I watch it every few months. Most reviews will tell you that Doom sucked hoary balls, but I can't resist space marine pictures.

With Quaid and Foster playing space colonist, Pandorum falls nicely into that niche. While there aren't any great looking machine guns or drop ships, there are some nice creature effects and costumes. Most of the action is hand to hand or with various blunt or edged weapons. It's kind of like 28 days later, but on a space ship. The plot is pretty easy to follow, though the surprise at the end threw me off a bit. It's something similar to Boyle's Sunshine, where all of a sudden we've got Pinbacker running around like Freddie. It doesn't exactly come out of left field, but it felt a little distracting.

Cinematography wise, I had some gripes. There's an awful lot of camera shake going on here. I guess it's a new gimmick that is replacing the done-to-death handheld documentary style. Whenever there's a creature on screen, the camera gets all jittery and does some weird zooms and blurs. It can get irritating. I do love the blacks though. There are several scenes where you can't see a damned thing. It's perfect since the characters can't see a damned thing. It's a thing I wish Filipino horror movie makers understood.

I was impressed with the sets and costumes. The production team must have had some fun building this. It's not a nice Trek ship. It wasn't made for living. These people are supposed to be in stasis for a century long journey, so there aren't any sofas or curtains or picture windows to see a passing comet. It looks like a factory, grease and grime, soot and solder. It feels more real, and far more scary than if they had made things silver trimmed and shiny.

It's sad that this movie didn't get a lot of press in the general media. It's well made, entertaining, and satisfying. Like most sci-fi films released in the Philippines theatrically, it lasted all of a week. I'm waiting eagerly for a DVD, and hoping that it did well in other countries so that we can see a sequel that the ending inferred.

       

3.75" Terminators from Playmates

 

Having already been disappointed by the T-800 Endoskeleton from NECA, I wasn't too keen on picking up any new toys from the Terminator franchise. There's something about the endoskeleton from the original 1984 that doesn't translate to plastic. If they're true to the animatronic effects, they get a toy with limited articulation. If they take creative license, geeks get all riled up about it not being accurate. Personally, I wouldn't have minded a few more ball joints.

Though NECA got the Terminator 2: Judgement Day license, it was Playmates that got the rights to do toys based on the new Terminator: Salvation movie. I honestly don't know if this was a good move on either the studio's or the toy manufacturer's part. Playmates has been known as a manufacturer of toys for the younger set. Choosing them to make toys based on a franchise that has been traditionally R-rated is counter intuitive if you ask me. Since the new film was rated PG-13, they could argue that it's for a younger audience, but their toys are generally for the 5 to 12 crowd, so no.

The result of this odd pairing is some really silly looking toys that remind me of the end of the old classic GI Joe molds when Hasbro was painting them neon colors. These guys are supposed to be suffering a post-apocalyptic dystopia and they're wearing day-glo orange. oh-kay. The effect through out the lines (3.75", 6", 12", and the role play toys) is of Terminator for kids, which is pretty dumb since kids aren't supposed to be seeing it.

The exception is the 3.75" endoskeletons. Though they suffer the same kind of kidification effect as the human figures, at this scale it's harder to notice. For the most part, it the influence is limited to the head, which looks less like an angry skull and more like a surprised monkey. Thankfully, the rest of the mold is pretty much spot on, with much of the same faithfulness to the original that they had in they have in the 6" version, only littlized.

Little or not, Playmates was able to pack in a lot of great detail. There are tiny little rivet holes, lines where metal panels join, hydraulic pistons, and the requisite doohickery. They've even got a coat of paint on them so they're not so blah. You can either go with the evil silver coated T-800 (the one that Arnie played) or the evil-er dark gray T-700. I basically got several of the dark ones and have the silver one playing "Sarge".

Both of the versions comes with a couple of accessories, though I gotta say they aren't that impressive. The T-800 comes with two pistols, one "ray gun" and one relatively normal looking weapon. Like the NECA version, neither really fits in the buggers hands. They look pretty good for Joes though. The T-700 gets a nicer looking rifle. It's not really film accurate, but it fits much better in the figure's hand and looks pretty mean. He also comes with a bent I-beam that he's supposed to have... well, bent. It doesn't really fit well in his hands and he looks ridiculous carrying it around. I tossed all 7 of mine.

Articulation is hit an miss. The shoulder joints are excellent, offering the unit a wide range better than most Marvel Legends (the yardstick against which all toys are measured against). elbows and knees are basic hinge joints with about a 55 degree arc. More than adequate really, and better than some GI Joes. However, the rest of the toys joints are the suck.

One, no thigh cut or equivalent. Two, no ankle joint. Three, no outward movement of the leg. With its tiny footprint the endoskeleton has, these three joints are essential for stability. Any other position is basically out of the question. Four, No wrist pegs. You can get his rifle into a two handed grip, but you need to bend a lot of plastic to do it. Five. No waist. This is just retarded. Six, no neck. Wtf, Playmates? Essentially, you're little endo-man can only stand up with his gun pointed sideways at the ground. If you try any more dynamic positions, he bites the dust.

Some killing machine, huh? They might as well have included a fluffy bunny.

But then again, the real reason I bought these wasn't so they could overrun the human race but so that they could get their asses kicked by the Marvel Universe. They're very good at that sort of thing:

They also look good getting the shit kicked out of them by other toys:

At the original price of p400.00, it would be pretty ridiculous to try and build a terminator army with these things. 400 bucks is simply too much to ask for these. Nice looking or not, they simply aren't on the same level as 25th Anniversayr GI Joes which retail at less than that. The plastic is much softer, there aren't many paint applications, and you don't a lot of accessories. Heck, you don't even get the IOF (Idiotically Oversized Firearm) that the new Rise of Cobra figures have.

Luckily, they've recently gone on sale at 50% off. That means they're only p200.00, or about $4 each. That's not bad for something like this.

Now if only NECA would make me a 3.75" Arnie so I could put him on a motorcycle...

       

Bulma from Dragonball: Evolution

I think Dragonball is stupid. There I said it.

I'm not just talking about the recent live action movie (which I think most will agree, was pretty terrible), but also the source material. Many of the most popular shows, like Dragonball, are just a series of ridiculous escalations of violence. Season 1: kid learns kung-fu, stops bad guy. Season 2: kid learns new kung-fu, stops team of bad guys. Season 3: kid learns alien super kung-fu, stops alien bad guys. Season 4: kid gets team of super kung-fu experts, tuns into giant gorilla, kills super bad guy, while destroying huge chunks of Earth's ecosystem. Meanwhile, you're sitting there watching 30 minutes of close-up coverage of the characters looking beat down and panting, as about 2 minutes pass in the actual fight. It's retarded... and they decided to make a movie of it. Giant gorilla and everything. sigh.

This time around Bandai is the one that got the license, though I'm pretty sure they already make the Dragonball toys for the cartoon as well. It's a much better fit than the Playmates Terminators which was a weird match up from the get go. Bandai's known for great children's toys from many Japanese series, plus their excellent Ben 10 stuff, and the Dragonball series is made for children, so quality toys that are made to appeal to that audience would do well.

When these were first released here, they were about p400.00, same as the Playmate Terminators. That's about $10, same as retail in the states. They've been on the shelf for months now, and if you wanted it was pretty easy to get a complete set and build Ozaru. IF you wanted. Apparently no one did. Now that Toys R Us and Toy Kingdom are clearing shelf space for Christmas, the toys are now only p150.00. Much better, but I still wouldn't pay that much for most of them.

The only one I really wanted was Bulma since the only thing I liked about the movie was Emmy Rossum and Jamie Chung. I realize this is completely shallow, but then I'm not particularly deep. Both their parts were pretty small compared to how much they had to do in the cartoon. I'd rather have seen the Tournament of Champions as a movie than the silly story they ended up with, but then that might start me on a fanboy rant. I'd have to break out wikipedia and frankly, I don't have the time right now, so let's not go there. It's too bad they don't have a Chi Chi figure in her babydoll dress. That would have gone over better than that crap Fu Lum toy.

At first blush, Bulma looks pretty good. Faithful to the movie, anyway. The bangs and ponytail don't do much for me, but her face is decent. It doesn't much look like Rossum, but then at this scale, there's only so much you can do. I'd rather they make the face look clean than try to hard to get the likeness and fail. The leather get up is great. She's molded mostly in black so the shiny plastic goes over well without the need for much paint. It's very feminine, and standing up, she looks perfectly acceptable.

But standing is about the only position she's good for.

Bandai really mucked up her articulation. Despite relatively nice articulation on the male figures of the line, which share joint systems similar to the DC Universe Classics line (though much uglier), Bulma suffers from joints that are pretty old school. She's got a ball-jointed head, hinge/post joints at her shoulder, v-cut hips, thigh cuts, and hinge knees. That's it, a measly 7 points. The v-cut crotch is the real kicker, making her leg articulation useless. She can't sit, squat, crouch, anything. All she can really do is spread her legs. Great if there was a pole included and dressed as a stripper, but she's not. She can't even be posed sitting on a 1/18th scale motorcycle, which is a ridiculous oversight if you ask me.

Making things worse, Bandai saw fit to give her among the worst accessories in recent memory. Her sculpt works in 3 holstered firearms which is insanely cool, but instead of making them removable, or giving her a pair to actually hold, they gave her that idiotic tricorder thingamajig she had in the movie. You know, the one she had to track the Dragon's balls.

Speaking of Dragon's balls, she's got one of them. It comes with this little "stone" display stand, but it's really nothing to gawk about. It's fairly cheap looking and made of mediocre plastic. It's not going to break or anything, but is its useless. If you collect the whole wave of 4" figures, you'll get all 7 of these things and be able to form... a bigger stone display stand. dun dun dun DUM!

They also have another value add piece in the package; a piece of the "BAF" Ozaru figure. Knowing how this gimmick has really improved set sales among collectors, you'd think this BAF would be something pretty impressive. It's not. The pieces are little more than hollow casts. When assembled the back is open, so you can pop Goku into this transluscent half-shell. There is no paint, only base articulation, and you can't display him from the back. Bad, bad, bad.

If that wasn't enough, Bandai even touts a third reason to buy all 7 figures on the package. If you collect all 7 packing inserts, you can form a crappy paper Shemron the Dragon! Score! Really, the least they could have done was make the inserts out of some kind of high quality card or something. Papercuts!

Bottomline, I do not recommend this line. Though Bulma is a pretty fair sculpt and looks great with a Scarlett head on her, she has some god-awful articulation and no useful accessories. It makes it impossible to put her in any kick ass poses. While the male figures have better articulation, they also look terrible sculpt wise. At p150, it may be a nice gift for one of your neices or nephews (one you may not particularly like so much), but it's not really something that'll add to anyone's collection.

       

Transporter & Bridge Playsets

I've already said that Playmates isn't my favorite toy company in my previous Terminator Endoskeleton Review. If you're an 8 year old kid and you happen to be playing with some old school TMNT toys, then you're probably happy as a turtle full of pizza. But if you're a discerning trekkie looking for some nice collectible toys to decorate your shelf, you'll need to look elsewhere.

When the new Star Trek reboot rolled into theaters I was overjoyed. I loved the film and was hoping for some nice things to go along with it. Unfortunately, though Bankee (our local Playmates distributor) brought in all 3 lines of action figures, they were dissappointing. The 12" Galaxy figures were probably the best bet for collectors, but I found the poor tailoring on their cloth uniforms a turn off. Both the 6" Warp and 4" Galaxy series suffered from pathetic articulation, particularly in the legs. What's worse, the 4 inchers, who were supposed to include parts that you could use to complete two playsets that were sold seperately, where suspiciously light. If you look on any of these packages in the toystore, you'll see a huge empty space on the bottom of the bubble where various chairs, consoles and other things were supposed to go. Apparently, the Galaxy figures distributed to Asia are missing these goodies. What a gyp I tell you.

Luckily, you can still buy one half of the Bridge and Transporter playsets in Toy Kingdom and Toys R' Us here. Even better, Bankee, realizing what a crap line they had on their hands decided to include the entire line in the recent 50% off sales. At p200, I still wouldn't buy the figures due to their overall poor quality, but the playsets are another matter. I got the Transporter set for p1,250.00 and the Bridge for p700.00. Score!

Both the sets come with 1 figure and a "playmat". The playmat is a roll of plastic that has a pattern printed on it. The included consoles and machinery are placed on the mat (the placement is made obvious by the pieces shape). The drawback to this of course is that you don't have all the pieces to complete the diorama, and you even if you did, you need a buttload of space to display the whole thing. I've basically just thrown both into my box of freebie posters.

The figures are about what I expected. Kirk comes with the Bridge, Good old Scotty with the Transporter. "Beam me up...", Nevermind. They both come with a belt that constantly falls off and a phaser pistol that fits into the holster. There's a tricorder on the belt as well, but it's not removable. They have precious little articulation: a swivel neck, ball/peg shoulders, ball/peg elbows, swivel wrists, swivel hips, swivel knees, and swivel ankles. The whole system is useless, and they can't do anything but stand really. And sit. whoo. hoo.

The real fun of these sets though is the pieces themselves. I'll start with the bridge. You get the main command island with the captain's chair, weps and helm control, two data screens, and a viewscreen. They're all separate pieces so you can arrage them any way you want. The chairs on the main island swivel so that you can put 4" figures in easily. I'm a little dissappointed that the details on the consoles aren't sculpted. Most are just decals that don't even fit their little wells perfectly.

The consoles look pretty good as the generic flight controls for any kind of ship. If I had a Marvel Universe Nick Fury and some SHIELD agents, this is where I'd display him. The data screens are nice, and they're generic enough that you can use them in anything. Iron Man's armory. Teletran 1. Avengers Mansion, Forge's Lab. Whatever.

But the saving grace is that big ass view screen. This thing is just amazing for something so simple. It's really just a curved frame with a printed piece of transluscent plastic on the back, but it works so well that I can't stop playing with it. If you place it in front of a light, the image lights up as if it was backlit. Perfect. I only wish they had included a few more scenes from the movie so it didn't always show the spiny Romulan ship on it.

The Transporter is a little different. It's not as versatile as the Bridge set as it's quite obviously something from Trek. It's half of the transporter pad with a detachable transporter "pod" and a console with the chair. And of course, Scotty. Trusty Scotty. I think the Transporter set suffers more than the Bridge with the lack of the other pieces because it's not modular. The Bridge is made up of many little consoles and stations that can stand alone. The Transporter looks more cramped without the missing pieces.

Again, the console that Scotty sits in just has decals to give it some detail. The console is more complex than the Bridge seats. It houses some electronics that connect to the Transporter itself and has two buttons that activate the features. The reason this set costs more is because it has lights and sounds that imitate the transport effect. The two bottons on the panel activate the whooshing.

If you press the first button, the "pod" lights up. The second button, the sound effects kick in and the lights slowly go up inside the pod, revealing the figure. Press button 1 again and they fade out, simulating the beam out. It's really quite fun and less annoying than most sound gimmicks. I tend to press it when I'm bored at work. The whooshing relaxes me, though I might be pissing off my boss.

You can also remove the pod and transport the figure inside to another planet. The pod has a button on the top that activates the beam in lights. Then you press the two buttons on the side to release the figure and PRESTO! one planetside trekkie.

At 50% off, I feel that both these playsets are a good buy. Even if you don't have a Star Trek collection, there are a lot of lines that benefit from the kind of high tech props that the franchise has. I'm thinking of displaying Iron Man Armor in the Transporter. While I wouldn't recommend the figures at any price, try and find these if you can. Both are great additions to any collection.

Here's some more pics: