Antikewl Daily » Retro

The Open Road: London filmed in colour, 1927

Trevor May — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:22:18 +0000

Between 1924 and 1926, Claude Friese-Greene filmed “The Open Road” — a documentary of the United Kingdom from Lands End to John O’ Groats. What’s most remarkable about this footage is that it’s shot in colour using a process called Friese-Greene Natural Colour, based on the Biocolour process originally developed by his father William.

This is an eleven-minute segment of that film, restored by the BFI, shot in London.

The Lost World Of Friese-Greene (2006) DVD at Amazon.co.uk (via Boing Boing)

Happy 40th Birthday Sesame Street

Trevor May — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:54:12 +0000

It’s hard to believe but Sesame Street was born 40 years ago to this day. The show was originally conceived in 1969 to teach less advantaged children, through the means of television, so that they would arrive in school with the same preparation as middle-class children.

The show’s 40th season also starts today featuring new title and end sequences, First Lady Michelle Obama and its very first CG-animated block, Abby’s Flying Fairy School.

To celebrate, Google has shown a whole bunch of Sesame Street-inspired logos throughout the last week. They have them collected in higher resolution on their website, including all the localised ones that you may not have seen in your country, along with a “behind the scenes” look at the making of the final day’s logo, below.

Here’s some more to feed your Sesame Street fix:
Why did Britain fall out of love with Sesame Street?
TIME Magazine: Sesame Street’s 40-Year Cavalcade of Stars gallery
Feist’s performance on Sesame Street
Ricky Gervais and Elmo
Sesame Street Classic songs playlist

Walt Disney on What’s My Line?, 1956

Trevor May — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:53:27 +0000

Here’s mystery guest Walt Disney on the North American version of the TV quiz show “What’s My Line”, first aired on CBS in November 1956. The show also features Jerry Lewis as a contestant who asks, “Walt, did you check with the government to see if they needed any money lately?”

Also fascinating are Walt’s comments on his love of the immediacy of television. I wonder what he’d have made of the internet.

Cassia Beck: Vintage inspired photography

Trevor May — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:41:56 +0000

If you haven’t already (as I mention the lovely lady on my personal Twitter pretty much every day!), take a look at Cassia’s wonderful vintage-inspired photographs.

She’s just made the front page of Flickr’s Explore with this colourful collection of beach huts, shares her favourite things on her blog and sells prints through her shop on Etsy and on All Things Original.

If you’re in Brighton this weekend, be sure to drop by the IO Gallery at 39 Sydney Street where a selection of her retro TTV images are for sale. They’ll only be available there until Monday 24th August, so be quick!

Home movies at Disneyland, 1956

Trevor May — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:11:15 +0000

Jeff Altman, an assistant film colourist, has been restoring a bunch of his grandfather’s old 16mm home movies — including this absolute gem of a family vacation to Disneyland in 1956, a year after the park opened.

What’s amazing is not only the image quality, but that they managed to capture Walt Disney himself (shaking hands with Jeff’s grandmother, no less). Superb! (via The Disney Blog)

Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain DS

Trevor May — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:30:41 +0000

While working this evening I downloaded and listened to the latest Retronauts podcast. I hadn’t listened to it before and was surprised to discover that it had been replaced with a podcast for another 1Up offering, The Grind — an RPG games blog. As I’m not adverse to such things (and because they mentioned Fallout at the start of the episode) I listened to it anyway.

But that’s not what this is about! When I was about seven years old I ordered a book called The Warlock of Firetop Mountain from the school book club. Probably because, to a seven-year-old, it sounded pretty cool and most likely because it shared a premise with my favourite game of all time, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons for the Intellivision.

Part-way through the podcast I thought I heard a reference to this book and — sure enough I had! It turns out that a company called Big Blue Bubble, developers of, uh, nothing really, are producing a game based on the original Steve Jackson/Ian Livingstone-penned book for the Nintendo DS. It’s unlikely that the game will live up to the lofty heights my wide-eyed seven-year-old self held the book but the screenshots look promising.

Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain for Nintendo DS is scheduled for release at the end of 2009.

Monkey Island Special Edition for iPhone

Trevor May — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:59:47 +0000

Following the recent rumours of a port, Lucasarts quietly slipped The Secret of Monkey Island onto the iTunes App Store this week without fanfare… So quietly that it still isn’t mentioned on the game’s official site. But yes, that’s right, you can now play the updated point and click classic on your iPhone and iPod Touch!

Weighing in at a hefty (for an iPhone app, anyway) 350Mb, it includes the new “special edition” version with the voices and enhanced soundtrack found on the Xbox and Windows versions as well as the original VGA version, just as it appeared in 1990. Simply swipe two fingers across the screen at any time while playing to switch between them. Swiping two fingers sure is easier than messing with DOS extended memory and Soundblaster drivers for hours on end! Oh how I miss 1990s PC gaming… You really had to work to play a game back then. None of this plug and play nonsense.

I digress…

The new high-definition visuals work just as well on the less than high definition format of the iPhone’s three and a half inch screen. The controls, while seemingly cumbersome at first, work incredibly well once you realise that the screen is functioning in the same way as a laptop trackpad to guide the cursor around. This offers much more precision than if you were to use a greasy finger stump to directly select objects on the screen.

Just as in the original it’s possible to store multiple saved games which means you can let your friends and family have a go. It’s a simple feature that’s surprisingly lacking in many iPhone games that would benefit well from it. Yes, I’m looking at you, Rolando!

In summary, it’s a great port of a lovely revisiting of a fantastic classic. Buy it now and help ensure Lucasarts re-release Sam & Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle and the rest of their point and click adventure back catalogue!

The Secret of Monkey Island £4.99/$7.99 (iTunes App Store link)

Apollo 11 Live TV Coverage

Trevor May — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:05:50 +0000

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first landing on the moon, Jason Kottke has set up a virtual 1960s television set which will broadcast coverage “live” tonight at 16:00 EDT for the moon landing and 22:10 EDT for the moon walk.

The coverage will be reported by the late Walter Cronkite, who sadly passed away last Friday.

The Apollo 11′s lunar module, the LM-5 (better known as the Eagle), landed on the moon, with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong as its passengers, on July 20th 1967.

More vintage Disneyland Hotel stuff

Trevor May — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:03:43 +0000

I recently had an email from Donald W. Ballard who corrected a few details in my previous article on the Disneyland Hotel. Don’s written a book on the subject so should know his stuff!

His blog is a treasure trove of things about the hotel; early photographs both private and promotional, concept art, newspaper and magazine clippings and advertisements, brochures, passes, memos… even a mini golf scorecard! You name it, it’s probably in there.

The Disneyland Hotel: The Early Years is available direct from the author for $47.50 plus shipping.

John Hanna, Illustrator (1919 – )

Trevor May — Sun, 10 May 2009 14:08:27 +0000

Browsing through my backlog of blog feeds this morning a post by Nick Asbury caught my eye. He was looking for more information about the illustrator who created these beautiful covers for Country Fair magazine, signed “Hanna”, in the 1950s.

By the time I had found the post he had already managed to discover that it was an Australian artist by the name of John Hanna who lived in England from 1948 to 1962.

Surprisingly there’s very little the web about him, but I have managed to dig up a few additional scans of his work for Country Fair. (via Ace Jet 170)

Update 5th Sept 2009: Lots more lovely images here on the Delicious Industries blog. Frustratingly they appear to have been dug up at a boot fair very close to home! (via Drawn!)

How Disneyland Helped to Send Man into Space

Trevor May — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:16:07 +0000

Stephen Worth has an interesting article over at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive on how we’ve imagined the future throughout the past century. It includes scans of an article from a 1950 issue of Coronet magazine, illustrated by Chesley Bonestell, about a family trip to Venus in the year 2500, along with some clips from the Disneyland TV show’s “Mars and Beyond“. Mars and Beyond was one of three space-themed specials:

It’s impossible to overstate how important the Disney space shows were to the American space program. President Dwight Eisenhower requested a copy of “Man in Space” to screen for his top military officers to convince them that space travel was indeed possible. Six months after “Mars and Beyond” aired, congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act which established NASA. The launch of Russia’s Sputnik satellite in October 1957 might have been the immediate impetus for the swift passage of the funding for the program, but the groundwork for the concept behind NASA was laid by Wernher von Braun and Walt Disney.

Clearly, scientists like Wernher von Braun and politicians like Eisenhower and Kennedy were responsible for America’s space program. But it took more than science and funding to put man on the moon. It took will. The awe inspiring imaginary vistas of Chesley Bonestell and the fantastic animation of Ward Kimball and Walt Disney became our collective dreams. The day after “Man in Space” aired, every man, woman and child in America had the same fantasy in their head- the burning desire to go to the moon. The visions created by these artists and filmmakers became reality because they crystallized and energized our collective will.

Animation has the power to mobilize society to do great things.

Mars and Beyond can be found on the Walt Disney Treasures – Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond DVD along with “Man in Space” and “Man and the Moon” as well as, of course, on YouTube:

If that’s not enough, here’s some Ward Kimball concept art.

Happy 20th Birthday, Nintendo Game Boy

Trevor May — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:58:54 +0000

As incredible as it sounds, the Nintendo Game Boy is 20 years old today!

The now iconic hand-held video game console was launched in Japan on 21st April 1989 as the spiritual successor to Nintendo’s Game & Watch line. The console, which went on to sell nearly 119 million units worldwide, was released to the US a few months later in August and to the UK and Europe the following year.

Bundled with it was, of course, a copy of Tetris but it was neither that, nor Super Mario Bros nor any of the big-selling titles that left a lasting impression with me — possibly because it’s one of the few video games I’ve actually completed that honour goes to Final Fantasy Legend.

Final Fantasy Legend was a western port of the Japanese RPG Makai Tōshi Sa·Ga and, despite being made by Square, wasn’t a Final Fantasy game at all, merely re-badged to cash in on the popularity of the Final Fantasy series in the US. It was apparently enhanced and re-released for mobile phones in Japan in 2007 and the series also celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Too bad I traded mine in for a copy of Chase HQ… I don’t think I’m ever going to let my 13-year-old self live that down!

Still, at least I kept my copy of Solar Striker and if I ever lose that I’ll always have its theme tune permanently etched into my brain.

Update: Be sure to check out the Game Boy timeline over at Gizmodo.

Space Mountain Retrospective

Trevor May — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:51:20 +0000

Here’s a wonderful retrospective of Disneyland’s Space Mountain by Geoff at Your Souvenir Guide.

I wasn’t lucky enough to be anywhere near Anaheim on its opening day in 1977 (nor, for that matter, old enough!) and haven’t had the opportunity to revisit since the 2005 revamp, which saw it return to the original iconic white, but this ride still holds a special place in my heart.

Disneyland’s Space Mountain is “Star Wars” and punk rock and “Saturday Night Fever” and the New York Blackout, all made one single, glorious whole. It’s all about believing, just for a moment, that you are riding the engine at the center of the universe. At that moment, you are ten years old, like me.

I couldn’t have said it better.

I’ll still miss the Dick Dale soundtrack which ran from 1995 to 2003 though!

Vintage Kids’ Books My Kid Loves

Trevor May — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:20:49 +0000

Check out this wonderful blog entitled Vintage Kids’ Books My Kid Loves of “vintage children’s books from thrift shops, library sales, book stores, online and elsewhere”. Image from Gyo Fujikawa‘s exquisite Lets Grow a Garden.

Incidentally, if you like Gyo Fujikawa, there’s a ton more images of her work on Flickr.

Ward Jenkins’ B-Boy Show

Trevor May — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:16:31 +0000

Ward Jenkins, animator, contributor to Drawn! and curator of the wonderful Ward-O-Matic blog current has a wonderful looking solo show at the Grassy Knoll Gallery in Portland, Oregon inspired by graffiti and 80′s hip hop. This is a little too far for me to travel so I’m grateful that so many photos are available online.

Original artwork can also be purchased directly from the gallery website.

BBC nuclear bomb script released

Trevor May — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:18:43 +0000

The National Archives have released a transcript that was to be read by the BBC every two hours in the wake of a nuclear attack in the Cold War between 1973 and 1975.

This is the Wartime Broadcasting Service. This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons. Communications have been severely disrupted, and the number of casualties and the extent of the damage are not yet known. We shall bring you further information as soon as possible. Meanwhile, stay tuned to this wavelength, stay calm and stay in your own homes.

MGMT’s Electric Feel performed by animatronic animals

Trevor May — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:50:33 +0000

The Rock-afire Explosion were an animatronic band comprised of anthropomorphic animals that played in Showbiz Pizza Place restaurants in the USA through the 1980s. After closing down many of these setups found their way to enthusiasts. Here’s one such setup, performing MGMT’s Electric Feel.

Perhaps even more obscurely, a documentary is currently being produced about car-salesman Chris Thrash, a guy who recently purchased the rights to Rock-afire Explosion with an aim to resurrect them and the Showbiz Pizza Place. (via Penny Arcade)

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition cartoons & podcasts

Trevor May — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:18:51 +0000

First of all, apologies if you arrived here excited by the pretense of the crappy (yet oddly endearing) 1980s cartoon of the same name. Here’s something very arguably better. Adam Phillips, the guy who created the superb Bitey Castle shorts, has been commissioned to produce a number of brief animated cartoons to promote the new 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

Episode 1: The Beholder (above)
Episode 2: The Gnome and the Teifling
Episode 3: The Mindflayer

He’s working on a fourth as I type.

Meanwhile, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins over at Penny Arcade and Scott Kurtz from PvP have put together a podcast of, essentially, eight hours of them playing Dungeons and Dragons around a microphone. With the wrong people this really could be the dullest thing on earth but it somehow manages to remain entertaining throughout the four half-hour and a bit podcasts they’ve already put out. Stick this link into iTunes or your podcast grabber of choice: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/rsspodcast.xml or, iTunes users, try this – more here, though you’ll need to sign up for a free account to access the pages.

They’re also doing a little strip to accompany each show.

And, oh ok… If you insist.

The Usbourne Book of the Future (1979)

Trevor May — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:55:07 +0000

I always love looking at optimistic views of the future from the past… and here’s a good one. The Usborne Book of the Future: A Trip in Time to the Year 2000 and Beyond, which was originally published in 1979. Chapters include “Robots: Science and medicine”, “Future Cities: Homes and living” and “Star Travel: Transport and travel”. (via Boing Boing)

It reminds me of the old EPCOT attractions from Walt Disney World like Horizons and Spaceship Earth that were also built around that time.

If you like this it’s also worth checking out the Paleofuture blog for all kinds of fantastic retro visions of the future.

Married to the Sea: Logo Turtle

Trevor May — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:00:48 +0000

I love this site. A daily cartoon created from the most random archive illustrations.

Frost and Pegg’s Perfect Night In

Trevor May — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:38:34 +0000

I only managed to catch the last fifteen minutes of Frost and Pegg’s Perfect Night In when it aired on Channel 4 a couple of months ago but, thankfully, a selfless guy by the name of FrostituteMayo (presumably a big Nick Frost Fan) recorded and YouTubed the whole lot.

Essential viewing for anyone that grew up in the UK through the 70s and 80s. (thanks David!)

Forklift Driver Klaus: The First Day on the Job

Trevor May — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:01:23 +0000

It seems that I’ve found the original inspiration for this fantastic German comedy-horror short “Forklift Driver Klaus” (video above — Caution: Contains simulated gore) at Boing Boing.

“Shake Hands with Danger” is a 1970s short film about safe Caterpillar tractor operation.

Super Mario Wedding Cake

Trevor May — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:53:48 +0000

Super Mario Wedding Cake: It’s been around before but this is the first time I’ve seen it — entirely edible too! Related posts:Why Super Nintendos Lose Their Colour Happy 20th Birthday, Nintendo Game Boy Rejected Wii Games Related posts:

Intellivision Burger Time Commercial

Trevor May — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:25:18 +0000

They sure don’t make TV commercials like they use to. This fantastic ad was for one of my favourite games as a kid, Burger Time, on the Mattel Intellivision. “We’re closed now!”

I Am 8-Bit GDC07 Preview

Trevor May — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 10:40:57 +0000

A preview of artwork to be shown at the I Am 8-Bit show from, oddly, this year’s Game Developers Conference. The official site is here (but empty) but you can still see some of the older ones from last time here.