It doesn’t matter whether you like sports or not, the Super Bowl is one of the biggest entertainment events of the year. The estimated 111.3 million viewers Sunday night made it the most watched television show of all time.
A big highlight from the night, at least for me, was the commercial presented by MetLife. The insurance company’s “Everyone” ad featured a bevy of classic cartoon characters.
A great aspect of the nostalgia-inducing spot was its use of B-list stars. Sure, the Peanuts characters common with MetLife advertising were present but so too were Saturday Morning heroes long forgotten. You could easily see popular ’70s and ’80s figures like Voltron, He-Man, and The Jetsons. Also on hand were lesser-knowns like Jabberjaw, Hong Kong Phooey, and Magilla Gorilla.
MetLife’s Facebook page has bios of most of them but cartoonist Mark Anderson has an exhaustive list in chronological order. Anderson even corrected MetLife’s mention of Captain Caveman to his doppelgangers Rock and Gravel Slag.
If you missed the ad, watch it below and then seek out the excellent coverage by Anderson. The Facebook page also has a few “behind the scenes” videos to check out. Oh, and see if you can find the numerous inclusions of the stripe shirt-wearing Waldo.
It’s a good week to be a Marvel fan. A few hours ago the new trailer for Marc Webb’s reboot of Spider-Man debuted and it is pretty amazing indeed. I loved the first Spider-Man movie when it came out, but then again I was a sophomore in High School and I haven’t really watched them since that time. The Amazing Spider-Man looks like a Spider-Man movie I can get behind.
Andrew Garfield looks great as Peter Parker, and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey will be a welcome break from whats-her-face playing MJ. The tone of the film looks great. Spidey cracks jokes and displays some impressive acrobatics, and the costume and tech look awesome. All in all, this is one of the top four movies I’m most excited about in 2012, along with… Read More
For the average movie-goer, “Hitchcock” means Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo, and North by Northwest. Maybe Rear Window, too. But the portly, prolific director made dozens of films, going back to the silent era, so if you haven’t seen Spellbound or Notorious, it’s understandable. However, these two titles should probably be mentioned in the same breath as Hitch’s better known films, if for no other reason but the way they have helped define genres and shape feature films since their release in the mid-1940s.
Yesterday MTV Geek got an exclusive first-look at the new TMNT toys that will be coming out later this year, and they are amazing. I was going to hop on the bandwagon yesterday and post the initial photos but I decided to hold off so I could try to organize my thoughts on the two different lines in a little more depth. Playmates is releasing lines based on the new show as well as a TMNT Classics line modeled after the original cartoon. Today I’m going to talk mostly about those.
2012: Year of the Dragon Turtle
With the new CGI show airing on Nickelodeon this year and Playmates releasing these toys, it could be a huge year for the Turtles. I haven’t seen anything from the new cartoon, but I know lots of awesome people are working on it and it should appeal to kids without seeming like some recycled 80s fad. Combine that with the fact that these new toys look like the best Playmates have ever released, and we could potentially have ourselves full-blown TMNT mania again. Read More
Ready Player One is a futuristic novel by Ernest Cline (writer of Fanboys) that presents a dismal future in which most of the population spend all the time inside a vast virtual world called the OASIS. The eccentric inventor of the game was obsessed with 80s pop culture. Upon his death he devised a game to pass off his massive fortune to someone who could beat a series of challenges designed to test the player’s knowledge of the geeky bits of culture he was so obsessed with. Join Rob, Tim, and Tommy as they discuss the book, including spoilers, and try to decide if the pop culture references make the book unique or ruin the whole story.
