Atheism vs Theism vs Agnosticsism vs Gnosticism

Good chart. I'm an Agnostic Atheist who occasionally dips into being an Agnostic Theist. [Link]

Equestria Girls

This must be just for cosplayers, right? [Link]

“We are responding to the desire by our fans to experience the brand in more ways,” said John A. Frascotti, Hasbro’s chief marketing officer. “They imagined themselves as which pony they would be or which pony they identified with the most.”

So Hasbro created Equestria Girls, a parallel world in which the My Little Pony characters were reconceived as teenage girls in high school. To maintain continuity, Hasbro retained the same creative talent, animation style and message of friendship.

“Our goal is to stay true to who those characters are,” said Meghan McCarthy, the head writer for the movie, adding that the high school setting allowed for new storytelling possibilities. “It’s new but still an extension of our mythology.”

The movie — titled “My Little Pony: Equestria Girls” — will be released on DVD later in the United States and other markets worldwide, followed by a television debut on the Hub network in the fall.

“It is a major strategic initiative for us,” Mr. Frascotti said, one that will feature toys, apparel, publishing and accessories. Multimedia components include an interactive Web site, content on YouTube and a partnership with Stardoll.com, a fashion Web site for girls.

Hasbro does not break out revenue for My Little Pony, but in its earnings statement in April, the company said its girls’ category rose 23 percent in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, growth that was helped in part by the My Little Pony brand.

Equestria Girls offers an opportunity to build on that growth, said Michael Vogel, vice president for development at Hasbro Studios. “This is a bold new direction,” he said.

On the Importance of the Villains of Scooby Doo NOT being Supernatural

I hated when Scooby Doo started having actual ghosts and monsters. [Link]

[I] will fight tooth and nail over the idea that there should never, ever be even a trace of the supernatural in the world of Scooby-Doo. And as far as I'm concerned it's not a matter of preference, either -- it's so deeply ingrained into the premise of the show and the way the characters interact that if actual monsters do show up, the whole thing collapses.

Don't get me wrong, as I'm pretty sure the record will show, I love the supernatural as a storytelling element. In real life, I might be a die-hard skeptic -- such a Velma -- but when you're talking about stories, there's something undeniably appealing about Draculas and Wolfmans and other assorted monsters. They're the embodiment of all of our fears and anxieties, given a physical form and weaponized against us. There's an amazing kind of power in those ideas, especially when it comes to stories that show us triumphing against them.

I even get why it might be appealing to make the monsters real for Scooby and the Gang. After all, fighting real ghosts and monsters makes for a more exciting show, especially once kids have twigged to the formula the original series was built on, which inevitably and invariably led to the unmasking and grumbling about meddling kids that would become the show's signature element. When it's not done exactly right, it can be a monumentally boring way to kill an hour, even if Batman, Robin and Jerry Reed -- or as I like to call them, the Holy Trinity -- are involved. And to be honest, it falls short of that mark an awful lot, to the point where I'll be the first to admit that more often than not, I'm a bigger fan of the franchise in concept than in execution.

So on one level, I completely understand why the series has occasionally gone in that direction with stuff like The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo or the recent live-action movies on Cartoon Network. Adding in actual spooky threats makes things more, well, threatening. There's an unpredictability and a danger to the supernatural that you just don't get from someone's crooked groundskeeper trying to scare folks away from a ski lodge with a length of rope and a couple of pulleys, and putting characters that are already defined and beloved into a new sort of situation seems like it'd be a great way to shake things up.

And that would be great, if Scooby Doo was a cartoon about kids fighting monsters. But despite appearances to the contrary, it's not.

Scooby-Doo is a cartoon about kids looking for truth.

Stop Motion Jonny Quest Titles

Awesome


Jonny Quest Opening Titles from Roger D. Evans on Vimeo.

Greatest Animated Theme Song of All Time

Vote. [Link]

We're putting together the ultimate science fiction (and fantasy) playlist - all the music that everyone should have on his or her iPod.

Today, help us decide which Anime animated, puppeted or early morning kid type TV tunes absolutely must be in the mix. Which would you rather have in your ultimate science fiction playlist: Cowboy Bebop's "Tank" or the Batman: The Brave and the Bold theme?

Here are the rules for this particular playlist, only animated, Anime and puppet-based TV shows. 

My picks:

Cowboy Bebop


Johnny Quest


Fraggle Rock


Venture Bros.

Clinton is a Brony on NPR

Brony defined.. President Clinton on Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me. [Link]

​The NPR show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me has a segment called "Not My Job," where they quiz their guests on a topic they shouldn't know anything about. Last week's guest was former president Bill Clinton. Can you guess what his topic was?

PETER SAGAL: So you're a former president, you're a Rhodes scholar, you're famously well informed. What could we be sure that an accomplished person like you would know nothing about? And then the answer came to us: the TV show "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic." 

That's pretty amazing. You know what's even more amazing? BILL CLINTON GOT ALL THREE MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC QUESTIONS CORRECT.

Let that sink in a minute.

Transcript at the link.

Pope Car in Cars 2

This leads to some questions about the world of Cars. [Link]

Cars 2 forces the audience to make some nutty assumptions and — weirdly enough — I didn't have a problem with most of these. For example, I could swallow the embellishment that these anthropomorphic cars have organized themselves into nation-states that parallel our own. There's Car Italy, Car Japan, and presumably Car Burkina Faso.

I could also understand that these gas-guzzling golems have carnal urges. I blame Battlestar Galactica and the Vision and Scarlet Witch's doomed nuptials for my casual acceptance of sultry, 4-wheel-drive-on-2-wheel-drive rear-ending.

Additionally, "You Might Think" by The Cars plays at one point. This implies that a Station Wagon Ric Ocasek exists and — by extension — there's a Coupe Phoebe Cates who once exposed her headlights to an autoerotically-inclined Hatchback Judge Reinhold. (NSFW if I have to spell this shit out).

I could even tolerate the cars' disturbingly realistic human pupils which follow you around the multiplex, as if some astigmatic albino cave yetis were hiding behind the movie screen and watching their own movie: The Shadowy Room Full Of Happy Children And Their Pet Somnolescent Adults.

No, what blew my brains out was that Cars 2had brief scenes with a Car Pope. With his own Popemobile.

Did Pixar toss in a glimpse of the auto-papacy as a throwaway joke? Absolutely not. In a $200-million film about Gremlins and Yugos who run mafioso dynasties and a deranged Tonka-Truck-Tokyo filled with Geisha Sedansand squat bidets built for pooping automobiles, nothing is off-the-cuff.

No, Pixar bigwig John Lasseter and company are making some very pointed statements about the theology of Cars. Let's unpack the significance of the Pope Car.

It’s the Great Dalek, Charlie Brown

Ok, this is incredibly cute. [Link]

If Charles Schulz had written about a time-hopping Gallifreyian instead of a chronically depressed little boy, chances are his artwork would look like Larry Wentzel's. There's no Snoopy as K-9, but who wouldn't want to see A Weeping Angel Christmas?

New Thundercats footage

Looks pretty good. [Link]

[W]e were lucky enough to get a few minutes with the show's new creators art director and producers. We'll have the full detailed recap later this week (with lots of ThunderCatsmythos scoop), but here are a few details we picked up. For one, the series is going to try and explain why the evil wizard Mumm-Ra doesn't just stay in his hulked out form all of the time (finally)! Also we're going to get a lot of backstory fleshed about each character. But finally, and probably most important thing we learned: Lion-O will no longer be a boy in a man's body. He's just going to be a young leader, not ready for the responsibilities that he's handed. Should be interesting.

Creepy vintage Valentines

Real vintage, real creepy. [Link]

a series of vintage Valentine’s Day cards that, similarly, have a different effect given our contemporary cultural sensibilities. After decades of efforts to draw attention to and problematize men’s violence against women, these cards seem misguided at best:

Comics fans will find this one prescient. Women in Refrigerators.

Son of God in the Big City

When does his cousin, Mohammed visit? [Link]

As part of the network's upfront presentation to advertisers (full slate here), Comedy Central is set to announce "JC," a half-hour show about Christ wanting to escape the shadow of his "powerful but apathetic father" and live a regular life in New York City.

In the show, God is preoccupied with playing video games while Christ, "the ultimate fish out of water," tries to adjust to life in the big city.

"In general, comedy in purist form always makes some people uncomfortable," said Comedy Central's head of original programming Kent Alterman.

When asked if the show might draw some fire, especially coming on the heels of the network's decision to censor the Muslim faith's religious figure on "South Park," Alterman said its too early in the show's development to be concerned about such matters. 

Also, Christians don't threaten to kill people for offending their religious sensibilities anymore. Not since the Crusades.

Unpublished Jack Kirby designs

Awesome. [Link]

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that there's been a sudden surge of interest in the concept designs and characters the legendary Jack Kirby created for animation that have never been realized. Kirby, of course, is the co-creator of Captain America, the X-Men, the Hulk, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the Golden Age Sandman, romance comics and -- let's be honest here -- comic books as we know them today, but after doing all that, he took a job as a designer for Ruby-Spears animation in the '80s, where he created dozens of projects that many of his fans have never seen.

The darkness of Star Wars: The Clone Wars

If you think about, it is depressing. [Link]

he Clone Wars are not the epic struggle between good and evil the cartoon makes them out to be. They’re not even a real conflict. To the people fighting them, they’re real enough, but there aren’t even two sides; just a single commander, ordering his troops to attack each other. Imagine if Gargamel was secretly working for Papa Smurf.

Like I said, this is dark, dark stuff. But that’s not the half of it.

The Jedi lose the Clone Wars, bigtime. They not only don’t defeat the robot army, they are all killed. By theirOWN TROOPS. Consider that for a moment: this is a show for children about a war which will end with the good guys getting shot in the back by their own soldiers. The fact that a lot of the young fans might not know that doesn’t make it better; arguably, it makes it worse.

Once you know the disastrous conclusion of the Clone Wars, it’s hard to look at the TV show the same way. For instance, consider Ahsoka Tano, Anakin’s padawan apprentice. She calls him “Sky Guy,” he calls her “Snips.” She’s 14, and her plotlines are easy for the show’s young fans to identify with (she loses her lightsaber, and scrambles to get it back before Anakin finds out). All in all, not a bad role model for Star Wars-loving little girls, who finally have a female Jedi to root for. And she makes a cool Halloween costume!

Too bad she’ll be dead before she’s 16.

Live Action Star Blazers movie

Looks good. [Link]

We were ambivalent about the trailers for the animated Space Battleship Yamato movie, but we're full-on excited for live-action space battleship fun. Something about the crusty old captain with and the ship firing all batteries just gets us going.

Space Battleship Yamato, known in the U.S. as Star Blazers, was a total classic of our youth, featuring a massive spaceship built into the ruins of the World War II battleship Yamato. It's off to outer space to save us from the evil forces of Iscandar.

The animated version, known as Uchū Senkan Yamato: Fukkatsu Hen, was originally scheduled to come out December 12 in Japan, but it doesn't sound like it actually came out. But we're hopeful we get to see this live-action version in 2010, as promised. According to Anime News Network, Takashi Yamazaki, director of Returner, is handling the film. And pop star Takuya Kimura (Howl from Howl's Moving Castle) plays the lead role, Sasumu Kodai. The main female lead, Yuki, is more of an action hero than in the 1970s version, and two characters who were male in the original will now be female.

The Batman: The Animated Series Writer's Guide

Awesome stuff. [Link]

Thanks to the success of Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, the crew behind "Batman: The Animated Series" was essentially given the chance to start over with Batman, and one of the most interesting things about the writer's guide is seeing Dini, Timm and Brian actually going through 50 years of the character's history and deciding what worked for them and what didn't. It's the sort of thing that comes through in the series itself, and while every writer that's worked on the character has their idea of What Batman Should Be, this is one of the first opportunities we've had as readers to actually see people starting over and deciding how it is from now on.

Daria coming to DVD!

Finally! This is one of my favorite animated series, ever. [Link]

These MTV execs, far from the cavalier attitude we've seen too often throughout the years, seemed very intent on doing a good job with the show. They want to make sure they put out a product that we want to buy. To that effect, they seem extra-dedicated to avoiding oversights and lazy slip-ups (like putting the cut-for-television version of IICY? on DVD). And here is some of what they shared:

1. It sounds as though, rather than put the episodes out season-by-season, they are looking to put the whole series out at once, including the movies.
2. There will be goodies, though which ones, I am not sure. However, the Sarcastathons and the specials were mentioned, and it looks as though they are going through ANY footage to find superfluous Daria appearances (like on TV talk shows).
3. The commercial bumpers will be preserved, and in their rightful places.
4. The episodes will be from the original masters, so no Noggin jujitsu cuts.
5. As expected, most of the music will be replaced. The money was not there to attain the rights for DVD. However, some of the replacement music will be covers, and the rest will be replaced by music that is substantially similar. Real music, not muzak.
6. The DVDs could come out as early as spring 2010. I'm going to play it conservative and still claim that they won't be available until late 2010. For outside of the United States, it will be closer to 2011.
7. The price will be very reasonable.

Samurai Jack movie?

Very cool. I loved the series. [Link]

Frederator has an interview up with series creator Genndy Tartakovsky, saying that he is teaming up with J.J. Abrams for a “2D/stereoscopic 3D production” of the legendary samurai. What’s more, IMBD has an announcement suggesting a 2011 release date! If that’s true, color me excited — Samurai Jack was an awesome show, probably with the best theme song on Cartoon Network. What do you think?

Mickey Mouse Makeover

Mickey is getting a makeover. This kind of thing is required from time to time for characters or they lose relevance. Comic characters have the same issues. [Link]

Now, however, concerned that Mickey has become more of a corporate symbol than a beloved character for recent generations of young people, Disney is taking the risky step of re-imagining him for the future.

The first glimmer of this will be the introduction next year of a new video game, Epic Mickey, in which the formerly squeaky clean character can be cantankerous and cunning, as well as heroic, as he traverses a forbidding wasteland.

And at the same time, in a parallel but separate effort, Disney has quietly embarked on an even larger project to rethink the character’s personality, from the way Mickey walks and talks to the way he appears on the Disney Channel and how children interact with him on the Web — even what his house looks like at Disney World.

“Holy cow, the opportunity to mess with one of the most recognizable icons on Planet Earth,” said Warren Spector, the creative director of Junction Point, a Disney-owned game developer that spearheaded Epic Mickey.

The effort to re-engineer Mickey is still in its early stages, but it involves the top creative and marketing minds in the company, all the way up to Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive.

The project was given new impetus this week with the announcement that, after 20 years of negotiations, the company has finally received the blessing of the Chinese government to open a theme park in Shanghai, potentially unlocking a new giant market for all things Mickey.

Disney executives are treading carefully, and trying to keep a low profile, as they discuss how much they dare tweak one of the most durable characters in pop culture history to induce new generations of texting, tech-savvy children to embrace him. Disney executives will keenly watch how Epic Mickey is received, to inform the broader overhaul.

Keeping cartoon characters trapped in amber is one of the surest routes to irrelevancy. While Mickey remains a superstar in many homes, particularly overseas, his static nature has resulted in a generation of Americans — the one that grew up with Nickelodeon and Pixar — that knows him, but may not love him. Domestic sales in particular have declined: of his $5 billion in merchandise sales in 2009, less than 20 percent will come from the United States.

“There’s a distinct risk of alienating your core consumer when you tweak a sacred character, but at this point it’s a risk they have to take,” said Matt Britton, the managing partner of Mr. Youth, a New York brand consultant firm.

In Epic Mickey, the foundation of which a group of interns dreamed up in 2004, the title character still exhibits the hallmarks that younger generations know: he is adventurous, enthusiastic and curious. “Mickey is never going to be evil or go around killing people,” Mr. Spector said.

But Mickey won’t be bland anymore, either. “I wanted him to be able to be naughty — when you’re playing as Mickey you can misbehave and even be a little selfish,” Mr. Spector said.

In many ways, it is a return to Mickey at his creation. When the character made its debut in “Steamboat Willie” in 1928, he was the Bart Simpson of his time: an uninhibited rabble-rouser who got into fistfights, played tricks on his friends (pity Clarabelle Cow) and, later, was amorously aggressive with Minnie.

Epic Mickey, designed for Nintendo’s Wii console, is set in a “cartoon wasteland” where Disney’s forgotten and retired creations live. The chief inhabitant is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a cartoon character Walt Disney created in 1927 as a precursor to Mickey but ultimately abandoned in a dispute with Universal Studios. In the game, Oswald has become bitter and envious of Mickey’s popularity. The game also features a disemboweled, robotic Donald Duck and a “twisted, broken, dangerous” version of Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World.” Using paint and thinner thrown from a magic paintbrush, Mickey must stop the Phantom Blot overlord, gain the trust of Oswald and save the day.

Consumers will not be able to buy the game before fall of next year. Anticipation is intense. “Wow! This is amazing,” said Eli Gee on GameInformer.com. “I’m really... REALLY excited.”

I love xkcd

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.
There are so many things to love in this world.

And I'll Form the Head!

LEGO Voltron. In minifig scale. (The figures are at its feet!) [Link]

Years have passed since Zarkon's invasion of Arus. A team of Space Explorers approaches the planet. Young but determined, these explorers have been sent by the Galaxy Alliance on a special mission: to search for the secret of Voltron. The team of explorers consists of five brave young (brick)men: Keith, Pidge, Hunk, Lance, and Sven. Together, with 71 hours of building, they form Lego Voltron. From work in progress to cockpit details and shoulder pin mechanisms, the photographed details are there to enjoy. The builder includes credits to the Teknomeka plans for the frame of the structure (history of the plans, models, and another model) (via).