Origami Unicorn

E-books, the Homesteading the New Frontier

The light at the end of the tunnel has been announced quite a number of times, but with e-books sales up substantially—anywhere from seventeen to twenty-four percent, depending on you listen to—and with surveys indicating they are likely to tap a market resistant to buying conventional books—young men with the disposable income to buy the gadgets to display them—it looks like the marketing machine of Amazon may finally have pushed the concept to the tip-over point for a broader market. One of Publisher's Weekly's commentators commented that "sci-fi" readers, authors, and Cory Doctorow were leaders in the trend. Now, aided by a push from Oprah Winfrey, it looks like the concept of e-downloads driving real book sales is also gathering steam. This is a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because more readers and wider distribution are always welcome; bad, because Amazon and Oprah already hold tremendous power in the marketplace. One hardly would want to see it more concentrated.

British Comics From DFC

With the flood of Japanese and Japanese-derived comics worldwide, it probably should not have come as a surprise to find that there were no comics being produced in Britain. That's about to change, with DFC (The David Fickling Comic) counting its way down to a subscription comics series aimed at children in the UK. Their website is up and running, and the publicity machinery whirring away. Random House supported, mailings start in May, with the aim being that—at least in the UK—the comic be in mailboxes every Friday. Subscriptions accepted worldwide, if you want to pay the postage.

Last Days

First, before you set this in motion—turn down the volume on your computer. This film has a very loud electronic score. The animation uses elements from the scroll that opened the second section of yesterday's post to journey on a trip through the seasons, using conventional symbols in classic style, to modern effect.

Team Lab, credited at the end, does data management. It not clear they did more than commission the animation.

Japanese Animation

A Japanese television program, in English, about Japanese animation. This first part is interesting in that it shows an enthnocentric point of view and how this pop culture has spread across the world. If you find it boring, skip to the second part, but the first only runs about four minutes.

An abrupt change of tone, as the program moves to the development of animation in Japan. It leaves out a lot, which I'll probably get to some other time, but the art is lovely.

Balance

Balance won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film in 1989.

The film inspired a scene in National Treasure: Book of Secrets, as is mentioned in its credits. The twin brothers Lauenstein have a website that shows this film and more about their work.

Tekkonkinkreet

Once, in a place called Treasure City, there were two brothers. The older was called Black and the younger White, and the movie made from their manga story is called Tekkonkinkreet, "Reinforced Concrete." The movie has won a string of awards, most recently from the Future Film Festival, which was held in Bologna, Italy, this January.

And this is the close of the movie, which gives some idea of the beauty of the drawing, and the film score. It is a full length feature film that only saw a limited release in the US: LA and NY.

However, the title is available from Amazon as several types of DVD and as a download. There is also a soundtrack album.

Borders Goes High Tech

Borders has opened the first of what it intends to be series of stores featuring electronic downloads of books, newspapers, magazines, and music, as well as Long Pen (tm) technology for book signings with the signer at a distance. In addition, people can create their own books in-store, either pictures or text. It looks like any brand new mall bookstore to me—their nifty embedding code does not work but my link does—except for those kiosks, which may be the first finger flutter of the wave of the future: delivering electronic media. It's not clear how this will work against giant Amazon but at least Borders is in the game.

Tolkien Estate v. New Line Cinema

In one of those revelations that cause double-takes, it was revealed that to date New Line Cinema has paid $62,500 for the rights to J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Steven Maier, a lawyer for the UK-based Tolkien Trust, said, "New Line has not paid the plaintiffs even one penny of its contractual share of gross receipts, despite the billions of dollars of gross revenue generated by these wildly successful motion pictures." The suit seeks to block New Line's use of The Hobbit for two upcoming pictures, which, given the profits realized on the first three films, may be a major incentive to ante up.

On the left coast, Bonnie Eskenazi, the trustees’ US counsel who filed the complaint in L. A., said: "New Line has brought new meaning to the phrase 'creative accounting.' I cannot imagine how on earth New Line will argue to a jury that these films could gross literally billions of dollars and yet the creator’s heirs, who are entitled to a share of gross receipts, don’t get a penny." If things go as they did in the Peter Jackson case, the matter will probably be settled out out of court, depriving the public of the chance to admire the work of New Line's accounting department.

Steve Gerber, September 20, 1947 - February 10, 2008

Prolific comics creator Steve Gerber died from complications of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis while waiting to join a list for a lung transplant. Best known as the co-creator of Howard the Duck, he also worked on Omega the Unknown, Void Indigo, Tales of the Zombie, The Legion of Night, and Hard Time, to name only a few.

Roy Scheider, November 10, 1932 – February 10, 2008

Dead, of complications from a staph infection, after a two-year battle with cancer, Roy Scheider. He was best-known for his role in Jaws, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, and the tv series SeaQuest DSV, which he came to really dislike and denounced publicly. He will appear in two films still in post production.