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GAME OVER VIDEO GAME CULTURE ART EXHIBITION JUNE 2 – JUNE 27, 2012 Artists include: Aaron Brown, Albert Reyes, Alex Chiu, Ana Serrano, Andrice Arp, Aska Iida, Bradford Lynn, Brian Luong, Bryan Wong, Bubi Au Yeung, Cam Floyd, Carlos Donjuan, Christopher Chan, Cory Schmitz, David Horvath, Devin McGrath, Elizabeth Ito, Elliot Brown, Eric Broers, Erin Althea, Gabe Gonzales, Gary Musgrave, Grant Reynolds, Heidi Woan, James Chong, James Kochalka, Jarrett Quon, Jay Horinouchi, Jeni Yang, Jeremiah La Torre, Jeremy Tinder, Jeremyville, Jeromy Velasco, Jesse Balmer, Jesse Fillingham, Jesse LeDoux, Jesse Moynihan, Jesse Reklaw, Jesse Tise, Jiyoung Moon, John Lau, Kerry Horvath, Kevin Luong, Kio Griffith, Kwanchai Moriya, Lawrence Yang, Linda Kim, Louise Chen, Luke Chueh, Luke Rook, Maiko Kanno, Mare Odomo, Mari Inukai, Mark Ingram, Martin Hsu, Matt Furie, Meatbun, Miso, Nick Arciaga, Patrick Kyle, Peter Kato, Philip Koscak, Renee French, Sana Park, Sara Saedi, Sarah Lee, Sean Chao, Shawn Cheng, Shiho Nakaza, Shihori Nakayama, Sidney Pink, Silvio Porretta, Stasia Burrington, Stephanie Kubo, Theo Ellsworth, Tru Nguyen, Yejin Oh, Yoskay Yamamoto, Yumi Sakugawa and more. AARTING: BLANKIEDESIGNER SER. 1 FIGURE Blankie is a great new blind box figure series from aarting. 12 different figures designed by artists from around the world. UGLYDOLL: CERAMICSALT & PEPPER SHAKER The head detaches via magnet to use the pepper shaker. His head is the salt and body the pepper. ANIMAL MARCHING BANDNOTECARD SET Such a playful, cute notecard set from illustrator Junzo Terada. SUPER IAM8BITART BOOK SUPER iam8bit: More Art Inspired By Classic Video Games of the ’80s. GAMA-GO:YETI SUBURBS T-SHIRT The suburbs are encroaching on Yeti’s habitat. UGLYDOLL:OX T-SHIRT Ox is the best. Simple one character design. LILLIPUT:WIND-UP TIN ROBOT The design of the robot and its packaging is very nostalgic of mid-century toys! WIND-UPSPACE ROBOT His eyes and mouth light up as he treks through the land. UGLYDOLL DAVID HORVATH By ERIC NAKAMURA We’ve covered Uglydoll over the years and watched it grow – even working on events such as Uglycon – a convention based on Uglydoll. In this podcast with David, we cover topics such as Uglydoll’s growth, character creation, the film, what’s next, and more. It’s a podcast that’s over 45 minutes in length and if you’re into creating anything, this is a must listen. >> MEI MELANCON By ERIC NAKAMURA You saw her for too short of a moment as Psylocke. She was the jilted “Hello Moto” bride. Recently she was Jamie Chen on The L Word. In over 100 commercials and assorted roles alongside of her modeling career, I catch up with Mei Melancon at Giant Robot 2 on a recent morning for a podcast. We cover topics that begin with her appearances in high profile commercials, X-Men, L-Word, relationships, and her little known upbringing in a commune in Japan. >> GIANT ROBOT: GAME OVER EXHIBITION PHOTOS By ERIC NAKAMURA Thanks for the visit to Game Over at Giant Robot. The exhibition features 140 pieces of art from nearly 80 artists. The opening reception on...
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TOKYO ~ More than a thousand people crowded into Minato ward’s Zojoji Temple to pay their final respects Sunday to movie director and screenwriter Shindo Kaneto (photo left), who died of natural causes on May 29 at the age of 100. A sought-after art director and apprentice to Kenji Mizoguchi in the 1930s, Shindo made a name for himself in the 1940s as a prolific and popular screenwriter before working as assistant director to such iconic filmmakers as Kon Ichikawa and New Wave titans Seijun Suzuki and Yazuo Matsumoro. In 1950 Shindo formed one of Japan’s first independent production companies and began to direct politically outspoken features with a distinct class-consciousness, focused principally upon the struggle of the lower and working classes – an interest which would culminate in his extraordinary study of a rural 20th century peasantry The Naked Island, considered by many to be Shindo’s masterpiece. Children of Hiroshima ~ 1953 Shindo’s real cinematic breakthrough, however, may have come in 1953 with his controversial Gempatsu no Ko (Children of Hiroshima), the first and among the most powerful Japanese narrative films to depict the atomic bombing of Shindo’s hometown and its aftermath. Gempatsu no Ko starred his regular leading lady Otowa Nobuko as a young teacher who returns to several years after the bomb in search of her former students – was a critical success when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The powerful and controversial film was released in the United States only last year, in a retrospective of Shindo’s work at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Hadaka no Shima (The Naked Island) ~ 1960 The Naked Island, released in 1960, is a stark, wordless drama, filmed in quasi-documentary style, about an impoverished farming family scraping out a living on a barren outcropping devoid of fresh water. The film, which has no dialogue, follows its characters’ lives of crushing toil on their daily pilgrimage to haul water by hand from the mainland. Shindo was also known for two critically praised horror films, Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968). Both are set in Japan’s feudal era, a time of war, famine and lawlessness. Onibaba ~ 1968 In Onibaba, a woman and her daughter-in-law, desperate to survive, murder roaming samurai and sell their weapons and armor. In Kuroneko (The Black Cat), two peasant women, raped and killed by samurai, return as seductive, vengeful demons. [Japan Zone ~ RIP Shindo Kaneto] [The New York Times ~ Kaneto Shindo, Wide-Ranging Filmmaker, Dies at 100] [Harvard Film Archives ~ Masterworks by Kaneto Shindo]
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Maya Nakanishi was a 21-year-old dreaming of a tennis career when a five-ton steel girder fell on her at work severing her right leg below the knee. After six months of hospitalization, a resolute Nakanishi began training with a prosthetic limb and showed remarkable progress right away, qualifying for a berth on the Japanese team at the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games. Although she barely missed medalling at the ’08 Paralympics, Nakanishi vowed to transform herself into one of the best prosthetic-wearing sprinters in the world, and a year later was accepted into a program that enabled her to train under gold medal triple jumper Al Joyner at a U.S. Olympic Training Center in California. Nakanishi is currently training in preparation for the 2012 London Paralympic Games to be held August 29 till Sept. 9, the biggest paralympic event ever with 4200 athletes from 160 countries competing in 20 events. But world-class “amateur athletics” is a misnomer, and para-athletes often pay their own expenses to compete unlike they able-bodied counterparts. Nakanishi, now 26, found herself scrimping to make her athletic dreams come true. Aside from everyday living expenses, Maya had to pay to use training facilities and for her trainer. Paralympic regulations required that she have at least two prosthetic limbs for the competition. And at about 1.2 million yen ($14,500) a piece, they cost a pretty penny. During the worst times, Nakanishi found herself living in her car. But Maya lost a limb not her resolve. Earlier this year, she decided to publish a calendar featuring photographs of her posing semi-nude wearing nothing but her rose-pink prosthesis, raising quite a few eyebrows across prudish Japan. Some people went as far to criticize Maya for “humiliating disabled people” by baring her disability. “A prosthetic limb is something beautiful, not something you should be embarrassed at being seen with,” said Nakanishi, whose prosthetic legs are made of red fabric and fabric with a rose print. She also said that publishing a semi-nude calendar is also meant to bring more attention to the financial adversity fellow Paralympic athletes are facing. “No matter how much disdain and bashing I will receive for the calendar, I want to pave the way for younger athletes to shine,” she said. A limited 2,000 copies at 1200 yen (US$15) apiece are available. Visit Nakanishi’s website at ameblo.jp/n-maya/ for details. [Yahoo! Sports ~ Maya Nakanishi] [Spiegel Online ~ Maya Nakanishi: Ein Kalender als Paralympics-Ticket] [The Asahi Shimbun ~ Athlete poses seminude to fund Paralympic dream]
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“When the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown struck northern Japan, I felt powerless to do something substantial to help my homeland. Family circumstances took me to Japan a few months later, and I resolved to visit the devastated area to see it with my own eyes. While I was there I decided to draw portraits of people who are living in shelters, to give them some token that a visitor from far away in America cares about their plight. “I remembered that after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City, school children in Japan sent 1,000 paper cranes, a symbol of healing and good fortune, to my children’s school. I decided to make 1,000 Portraits to give to people in northern Japan – a symbolic way to demonstrate that others care for them and that we support each other in a crisis. “During five subsequent trips to Japan, I was assisted by a humanitarian aid group, which arranged for me to visit schools and shelters. The response was overwhelming; when I focused on my subjects, they started to talk, or sometimes to cry. One woman told me that she had lost all her family photos in the tsunami, and was so grateful to have my portrait of her.” Nakagawa is shown (above) with NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly after sitting for a portrait last year. Ironically, Commissioner Kelly briefly lived in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, one of the areas hardest hit by the 3-11 earthquake and tsunami. Nakagawa’s “1000 Portraits of Hope” will be on display from June 18 through Aug. 8 as part of “Voices From Japan: Despair and Hope From Disaster” at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue at 112 Street. For more information, visit stjohndivine.org
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Tottori’s prefectural government has announced they will hold events in Tokyo leading up to its International Manga Expo later this summer. Tottori on the west coast of Japan is well known as the hometown for famous Japanese manga artists such as Shigeru Mizuki (Gegege no Kitaro), Gosho Aoyama (Detective Conan), and Jiro Taniguchi (Distant Neighborhood). First. the prefecture will host a manga event in Tokyo’s Akihabara “Electric Town” district on July 1, officials said. The Tottori prefectural government lsat year came up with a regional promotional program called “Manga Kingdom Tottori” to capitalize on the prefecture’s ties to the roots of manga and anime. The prefectural government then concluded an agreement with the ATPA to hold an event in Akihabara. The Akihabara promotion will be followed by Manga Kingdom Tottori August through November 2012. Then, in November, it will host the International Comic Artist Conference to bring together comic artists from overseas. Sakaiminato City, Tottori Pref., shot to fame after it served as a location for the Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) drama series “Gegege no Nyobo” (The Wife of Gegege) that aired in 2010. The story follows the lives of manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, the creator of the “Gegege no Kitaro” horror manga series, and his wife. The birthplace of Mizuki, the city also boasts the Mizuki Shigeru Road. More than 130 bronze statues of “yokai” ghouls and hobgoblins from the manga line city streets. At least 3 million visitors are attracted to the sightseeing spot every year. Meanwhile, the “Conan Street” was completed in 1999 in Hokuei, the hometown of “Detective Conan” manga series author Gosho Aoyama. Bronze statues of the manga characters are placed along the streets. The town office also opened the Gosho Aoyama Manga Museum, in which the artist’s illustrations from his childhood diaries are on display. His studio was also reproduced in the museum. Jiro Taniguchi is also a world-famous manga artist from the prefecture. He has been critically acclaimed in Europe for his elaborate drawings and was named a chevalier (knight) of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. Taniguchi has earned the nickname of “Yasujiro Ozu” in the manga industry. Although the artist was born in the prefectural capital, his “A Distant Neighborhood” is set in the city of Kurayoshi, which retains beautiful rows of traditional white walls and storehouses. [The Asahi Shimbun ~ Tottori Celebrates Manga Heritage ~ Manga Kingdom Tottori]
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