It’s always a delight when fun stuff arrives in the mail, and yesterdays delivery was an unexpected treat! I’d pre-ordered a copy of Animation Blast #9 a month ago and had, for the most part, forgotten I’d done so. When I opened the package I was surprised at the size of it! 108 pages of good quality printed stock, chock full of fantastic articles and artwork.

A complete run-down on the book’s content can be found here on the website, but it includes gems such as an article on Disney’s “Tenth” Old Man, John Sibley, on Disney in the 50s, bawdy wartime cartoons, The Three Cabelleros, Korty Films and writer John Dunn.

If you’re in any way interested in cartoons or animation — or even art — history, do yourself a favour and buy a copy!

The top quality of this book, and the tantalising sneak peek over at The Blackwing Diaries, has really made me wish that I’d pre-ordered a copy of Amid’s other new book, Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation, as well. It’s out of stock everywhere!

Update: Jenny has just brought to my attention Amid’s posting on the Cartoon Modern blog (I have too many blogs to read and missed this one today!). Amazon should have stock in within the next day or two and will them ship out then. So go buy that too!

I hadn’t given this Nintendo DS game much attention until now which, in retrospect, seems rather undeserved. It’s pretty much a re-working of the original SNES game, one of the pioneering 3D games on the platform, with a removal of the ground action and a revert to good old dogfights. This review of the game at IGN gives it the thumbs up so I think it may have to be a future purchase.

There’s a lovely article over at Design Observer today about Halfway, Oregon. A town bought in the 1999 dot-com boom days by Half.com.

I think I’m going to forget all I’ve read about Die Hard 4’s title and who it’s being directed by and move swiftly on — possibly forgetting that the whole thing ever happened. Perhaps I should just be grateful that it’s no longer called Die Hard 4.0… on account of the plot revolving around an internet-based terrorist organisation… *lone cough in silence*

Here’s something that caught my eye… Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) are collaborating to produce an exploitation horror/slasher double bill called “Grind House” in the vein of those 70s horror flicks with fantastic posters (but were actually total crap). Both filmed in Texas, Death Proof, Tarantino’s movie, stars Kurt Russell as a mad man hell-bent on killing hot chicks with his big car (“sort of a slasher film, but instead of a knife, it’s a car”), and Planet Terror, Rodriguez’ half, is a zombie movie starring Rose McGowan with a machine gun for a leg.

It all sounds too good to be true… but there’s more! They’re also shooting fake trailers for spaghetti western, blaxploitation, sexploitation and kung fu movies which will show between the two films. Want more? One of the trailers will be directed by Edgar Wright (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead) and another by Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel). If all that wasn’t enough, check out these gorgeous teaser posters.

For some reason I’ve had this friggin’ song in my head for weeks. The Waitresses were a bit of a one-hit wonder (two, of course, if you count Christmas Wrapping) and this video, even by the 80s standards, is pretty damn awful!

Wired have a new article over at Game|Life about the forthcoming Sam & Max game. As a great fan of the original LucasArts game and Steve Purcell’s comic strips (I’ll forget the cartoon happened) I must admit that I’m very dubious about a successful transition from 2D to 3D and I’m still very much to be convinced.

I’ll put that aside though and announce the good news: It’s out in October.

The bad news? It’s on GameTap, which means a) you lose the game if you unsubscribe to their service, and b) you can’t get it if you’re outside the US! You’ll eventually be able to get the game from Telltale‘s site but there’s no date on that as far as I know.

Ah well, at least they haven’t cancelled the whole project yet.

… and I sure as hell hope this is a fake. Everyone knows that Megatron is an infeasibly sized handgun!

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It’s unusual to see the flip side to the debate on web site accessibility. Jeff Croft offers one here:
“I believe too many people are trying to make accessibility a binary (yes or no) matter. It can’t be. It has to be a continuum.”

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Even better than a plush puppy that reads your email to you… it’s Mochi eating! There’s even a cameo appearance by Keiko near the beginning.

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Millions of books, planetariums and children’s mobiles across the world today become obsolete as Pluto is demoted to ‘big floaty rock thing’ along with Ceres and UB313.

What would Gustav Holst say? Will there now be two versions of his orchestral suite?*

* It turns out that he wouldn’t have said anything as he died before Pluto was discovered. Even the Pluto part of the suite is actually just the end bit of Neptune.

Update: Kottke’s doing a cool contest to find the best (new 8 planet or old-skool 9 planet) mnemonic, e.g. Man, very erroneous! Moronic jerks shouldn’t uninclude neat Pluto.