You know what there is a lot of at GDC? Beards. We’re not talking five o’clock shadows, we’re talking elaborate facial topiaries that would be the envy of Viking warriors. Unwinnable is no stranger to facial hair – there are at least half a dozen mighty beards currently on staff – so we sent our intrepid photographer Daniel Imperiale into the wilds of the GDC 2013 show floor to track down the most exquisite examples of beard-growing that he could find (not to mention a couple handsome mustaches). (more…)
When we think of superheroes on stage these days, the horrible truth is that we’re likely to picture Spider-Man flying through (falling from?) the air before anything else. Julie Taymor isn’t to blame for this, at least not directly. She has merely followed in the footsteps of the most successful superhero filmmakers who, for the last decade, have made films that are too serious and too intensely immersive to be anything but emotional rides of wonderment and despair. (more…)
For fans of The Ben Stiller Show, specifically Gen-Xers who were old enough and bright enough to watch it airing live, it was a sad day in 1992 when Fox made the call to cancel it. Then the show won a posthumous Emmy for outstanding writing in a variety series (counted among the writers: Judd Apatow, David Cross, Bob Odenkirk and, of course, Mr. Stiller).
It might have been this bit of vindication that led Fox, in 1999, to give Ben one more shot, this time to produce a pilot for a serial program. The result was Heat Vision and Jack, a sci-fi thriller starring Jack Black, Own Wilson and Ron Silver. (more…)
To anyone who’s seen Akira or Evangelion, the idea of Japan building a backup Tokyo is nothing new. It’s even fair to say, after the massive firebombing campaign of WWII, that the current Tokyo is, in fact, Tokyo-2. So it should only come as mildly surprising that Japanese lawmakers have proposed a backup Tokyo (Tokyo-3) to be built and presumably left vacant until disaster strikes. (more…)
“All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.”
–Robert Hass, Meditation at Lagunitas
Since Makoto Shinkai’s arrival on the anime scene, he’s created some of the most breathtakingly beautiful – and heartbreakingly depressing – feature films in the industry. He’s one of the few directors out there to regularly be compared to the great Hayao Miyazaki, and with each release the comparison becomes more favorable. Every single one of his films, however, has dealt with the very same theme: loss of love and disconnection over time and space. Even before he released 5 Centimeters Per Second (2007), some of his critics (particularly those named Daniel Imperiale) had begun to wonder whether the young anime auteur had anything else to say. (more…)
Unwinnable likes taking pictures. We’re pretty good-looking, and we want you to know it. There might have been a pretty big convention going on around us at the time. (more…)
I just powered my way through all 26 episodes of an anime that was completely devoid of philosophical depth, utterly substandard in artistic quality and about as emotionally mature as the 11-year-old girls that make up its target audience. Oh, and did I mention that I loved it? (more…)
