Fake Steve Jobs, Tampa, and the iPhone

Why does Florida always have to own the most embarrassing example of everything?

Bearded lady? Man with lady hair?: "
Check out the circus freak who was first to score an iPhone in Tampa. For Christ's sake could we not get at least one normal-looking person in line for these things? Jesus. Much love to Engadget for scoring this."

(Via The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.)

First Look: 'Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen'

Entertainment Weekly has a sneak preview of Stephen Colbert's new comic book, Tek Jansen. Awesome.

(Via Buzzfeed.)

Nintendo pounds Sony and MS in sales - (37signals)

Nintendo pounds Sony and MS in sales - (37signals): "

The Wii is beating the PS3 and Xbox 360 to pulps in the market place. In May, they sold 338K units — more than Sony (82K) and MS (155K) could manage together. In Japan it’s even more dominating, selling 5:1 against the PS3.

And while both of the super-advanced consoles from competitors are losing money for each unit handed over the counter, Nintendo is making a killing. As a result, the company’s market cap has peaked higher than Sony.

(Via Graceful Flavor.)

More about Nintendo:

Pretty Shoddy Pixels

First place, not third

King of Kong trailer

Yahoo Movies has a trailer for The King of Kong, which I saw at SxSW this year. This film is one of tne of the best docs about video games ever. (Actually, I'm hard pressed to think of many good docs about video games, so it's really nice to see a decent one.) How good is it? It's looking like the film will get a fairly wide theatrical release in August, so you may actually get a chance to see it before it hits DVD. I encourage you to support documentary films in the theater -- it happens so rarely these days.

(Via Matt Dentler's blog.)

"The Host" to spawn a sequel

Twitch reports:

Chungeoram Productions is already at work on the sequel to Bong Joon-ho's The Host, and while details about the director and cast have yet to be announced, executive producer Choi Yong-bae said Monday that full-scale production will begin this fall, with a theatrical release slated for sometime in 2008.

Read more at twitchfilm.net.

Simpsons Jumpstyle

Is there a pop-culture wave the Simpsons can't ride? If so, I don't want to know about it.

(Via New York Magazine.)

Kodak says camera sensor may eliminate flash

Yahoo News reports:

By Franklin Paul
Thu Jun 14, 12:43 AM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Eastman Kodak Co. (NYSE:EK - news) said on Thursday it has developed digital camera technology that nearly eliminates the need for flash photography, part of the company's effort to make money from its deep patent portfolio.

The world's biggest maker of photographic film says its proprietary sensor technology significantly increases sensitivity to light. Image sensors act as a digital camera's eyes by converting light into an electric charge to begin the capture process.

I'm already pretty impressed with the low-light sensors on digital cameras, but there's certainly room for improvement. Kodak's line of cameras has never been impressive but with the film market taking a back seat to digital photography, Kodak needs to do something to distinguish itself from the competition. This may be it.

(Via Consumerist.)

7 Weeks of Harryhausen and Toho Double Features in Detroit

Sci-Fi Japan reports:

Starting this Saturday at 2:00pm, the Detroit Film Theatre in Detroit, MI presents seven consecutive weekends of monster and fantasy movie matinees on the big screen. The first half of each double feature will be a restored 35mm print of one of Ray Harryhausen's classic stop-motion animation films, followed by a bonus second movie from Toho Studios. Among the films being shown are 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH, GODZILLA, MOTHRA, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH, THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, and GODZILLA VS. MEGAGUIRUS.

I've never wanted to go back to Detroit after my brief visit there a few years ago, but if anything were to tempt me, this would be it.

Official Site: Detroit Film Theatre

(Via SciFi Japan.)

Toronto After Dark Film Festival - final deadline approaches

Attention Filmmakers, this is your LAST CHANCE to submit your Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Action, and Cult feature and short entries to the 2007 Toronto After Dark Film Festival, Canada’s premier festival of international thrilling cinema. Full details and the online submission form are available at their website.

'Death Proof' on DVD in September, Sans 'Planet Terror'

Cinematical reports that Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino's half of the Grindhouse double feature) will be released on DVD on September 18th without Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez's half). What this means for Planet Terror or the eventual release of Grindhouse (with all those great intermission trailers for fake movies) as a whole is unclear. I'm not even certain which cut of Death Proof it will be -- the Grindhouse version or the re-cut of the film that appeared at the Cannes film festival?

We've had better news about the release of a disc to DVD, but I suppose any news is better than none.

(Via Cinematical.)

"Four Eyed Monsters" on YouTube

That's right, the 71-minute movie that has spurred a lot of debate on the future of independent film and film distribution is now available in its entirety on YouTube for one week (until this coming Friday). I believe this is the first time YouTube has put up a feature film, and Lord knows how long it will take to download the thing, but if you're curious now you can see it for nothing. Click play above or visit the page on YouTube.

Disclosure: I work for B-Side Entertainment, the company that distributes Four-Eyed Monsters and other fine indie films on DVD and by digital download (you can get the iPod-ready version for just three bucks).

Seeing Science in Everything

Long-time readers of Stomp Tokyo may recognize Jeff Stanford's name as the writer of the now-dormant Filmboy reviews. Jeff now works as the director of Media Relations at the Orlando Science Center, and this week the Orlando Sentinel has a nice piece profiling Jeff and his work there. I especially like Jeff's admission that there's more of Dwight Schrute in all of us than we'd like to admit.

Read the Sentinel profile of Jeff Stanford here.

Tiki Road Trip, 2nd Edition, points out the latest tiki hotspots around the world

Tiki Road Trip, 2nd Edition, points out the latest tiki hotspots around the world.

Tiki Road Trip is one of my favorite books ever – an important resource if you're a traveling tiki fan. Of course, with tiki bars opening and closing all the time, regular updates are to be expected. Here's a link to buy the second edition of the book.

Author James Teitelbaum has apparently added "more historical detail about the classic tiki bars, while emphasizing the new kids on the tiki bar block. Now with 80 more pages than the first edition, the book also features more photographs of bar interiors, menus, mugs, and other artifacts. The international section has been expanded to cover the growing European tiki bar scene and Hawaii has been throughly documented as well."

(Via Tiki Talk.)

Kevin Smith to make "Porno"

That is to say, he's making a film called Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It's Smith's first non-Askewniverse pic since the ill-fated (and, in my opinion, underrated) Jersey Girl. Not that I thought Jersey Girl was terrific, but it got far more flak than it deserved. Hopefully this one will hit the sweet spot -- at least the title implies that it's going a bawdier route in the title than Smith's previous attempt at a non-Jay & Silent Bob flick.

Anyway, Cinematical has the details.

iPhone to be exclusive to AT&T for 5 years

If there were anything that could have pulled me away from Sprint as a carrier, this is it. I've been relatively happy with Sprint up to now, especially since most of my sizable family uses Sprint and the company offers unlimited calls within the network for a flat $5 fee. But something tells me as my Treo 650 keeps aging -- especially as compared to the iPhone -- hardware lust will win out over network "loyalty." Not that Sprint's customer service, monthly fees, or cellular coverage are good enough to warrant anything resembling loyalty, but up to now they've been convenient enough, and they've had the cell phone models I wanted.

Not anymore.

Of course, the price is going to have to come down considerably (or my wages up considerably) before I can afford the iPhone. I usually budget about $100 a year for phone hardware -- that is, every two years when my contract runs out I upgrade to the latest Palm phone using the contract renewal discount. The final price of the phone usually ends up being about $200. The jump from $200 to $600 is prohibitive, to say the least. Not to mention that my wife won't let me get away with just one iPhone in the house. Not for very long.

At least in the meantime I can be happy with my new Macbook, especially now that I've upgraded to the full 2 GB of RAM. The video card has no RAM of its own, so it steals memory from the main system to run. Combine that with memory-hungry apps like Firefox and the new Core 2 Duo system felt only moderately faster than the iBook G4 I bought a couple of years ago. With the full complement of RAM, however, it positively screams. It's a completely different machine. If you're in the market for a new laptop and you're thinking Macbook (and really, now that Macs can run Windows, why wouldn't you at least consider it?), definitely max out the RAM. Just don't do it at the Apple store -- their RAM prices are notoriously ridiculous. Order some from Crucial or use DealRAM to find another good deal (just stay away from the generic stuff) and install it yourself. I promise it won't hurt.

Slide Show: "Death Proof" cast arrives at Cannes screening

Apart from the natural interest in the screening of a modern exploitation film at the Cannes Film Festival, you might want to take a gander at these just for the extended look at what these red-carpet photo shoots are like.

Normally you just see one or two shots of a particular person with an article about them or with their bio on the IMDb, but but the lush photography here tells a story.

I particularly like numbers 4, 11, 14, 26, and 27. See the "Death Proof" slide show here.

New footage of the Loch Ness monster, um, surfaces

A British tourist caught new footage of a jet-black creature swimming in Loch Ness. The footage is reportedly some of the best ever taken, in particular because it includes the background shore in the shot. According to CNN, "That means it was less likely to be a fake and provided geographical bearings allowing one to calculate how big the creature was and how fast it was traveling."

I am by no means one of the Nessie faithful, but it would be kind of cool if it turned out there actually was a giant monster (or generations of a family of same) hiding out in Scotland's deepest body of water for all these years. The Loch Ness Monster was first reported in 565 A.D.