justin bieber

Now this is a weird guy here. MG5, or Missile Gorilla 5, by Zollmen kind of came out of nowhere earlier this year. No story, not much hype outside a single thread on skullbrain ... I'm not sure this figure got a lot of love from buyers once it was released, but I was excited from initially seeing it when Frank Kozik showed off a photo of a prototype in January. Not only goes the monster hearken back to the old die cast toys that had firing missiles, but it is also a goofily grinning King Kong ripoff, so how could I possibly pass this one up? We can just call this one patchi kaiju, since as far as I know it is a made up beast, and it definitely pulls elements of the legendary King Kong. Apparently this figure is part of an ongoing line from Zollmen called Monster Parade. There have been a few minis released under this Monster Parade moniker... so perhaps this is a new series of toys to be released by Zollmen. Header //3 out of 5//: The front of this header is really cool. The illust...

Finished watching Season 1 of Gilmore Girls . Perfect soap. Love it. Beautiful people with devastatingly charming smiles. Great girl-next-door / boy-next-door stuff. A very young Jared Padalecki, years before Supernatural . Lauren Graham so likable -- great eyes. Great class and gender thing, even a bit of race (Korean bit). So talkative! And some of the dialogue is tremendous. Like: LORELAI: Manly curtains. LUKE: Oxymoron. LORELAI: What did you call me?

I just wrote about Cyclomanion ( サイクロマニヨン ) by Real Head ( リアルヘッド ) just yesterday , but I had to show off the other one in the family, right? This particular one is similar in color to many other colorways released by Real Head that people have dubbed Gold Mist. I'm not sure if Gold Mist is an official name or not. You can all (I think) of the RxH Gold Mist releases here: (photo stolen from meczilla on skullbrain. click on the link for meczilla's flickr) I even spy Cyclomanion in there! Header //3 out of 5//: Sculpt //4.25 out of 5//: Paint //4.5 out of 5//: I feel the same about pretty much everything on these two different Cyclomanions except for the paint. While I really like the Gold Mist color scheme, I think with this particular sculpt, the rubbed paint application of the gold one comes off a little better in showing off the strengths. This figure appears to be made of a flesh colored vinyl with the bronzey paint applied. It is a nice, subtle hue and a slight metal...

There are some lines of toys I have just never acquired the taste for despite their high demand. But sometimes these companies release that one toy that finds a way into my niche little collection. Cyclomanion ( サイクロマニヨン ) by Real Head ( リアルヘッド ) is that toy. Ever since I was a kid, I have been a fan of gorilla themed toys. I hadn't had many apes in recent years outside random figures like a talking Optimus Primal from the Beast Wars cartoon. Lately I have been replenishing my ape collection with Japanese vinyl. They are mostly older toys, but Real Head released this figure, and it just fit in with the other apes living in my house. I'm not sure exactly, but it was speculated on skullbrain that Cyclomanion was Real Head's take on the patchi kaiju image pictured to the right here. Patchi kaiju, or fake kaiju essentially, were cheap little trading cards that were drawn, painted, etc. in Japan in the 70s that often borrowed elements of certain popular monsters at the time a...

Went to see In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008). Silly French title: Bons baisers de Bruges. Great film! Hilarious very dark humor. Tremendous dialogue. First lines: After I killed him, I dropped the gun in the Thames, washed the residue off me hands in the bathroom of a Burger King, and walked home to await instructions. Shortly thereafter the instructions came through - "Get the fuck out of London, you dumb fucks. Get to Bruges." I didn't even know where Bruges was. It's in Belgium.

I previously wrote about the Matango ( マタンゴ) by M1Go (Ｍ１号) here about a year ago. I just wanted to show off a new member of the fungal family I received from a boardmember on skullbrain ! I pulled my old category scores from the previous Matango entry and applied them here... then elaborated on the Hawaii paint. I've also added a bit about the headers for these toys, since I did not do so the first time around. And, just for shits and giggles, pictured here is a poster from the movie! Header //4.5 out of 5//: No complaints here. I really like the hand drawn monsters and typeface on here. It advertises for the relatively new company (to the older companies like Bullmark or Marusan for instance) and other products while still feeling vintagey. I would have liked it if it were slightly larger, and if it didn't seem as generic as it does. For someone like me (a non-Japanese reader!), this header would be a little better if it highlighted the fact it was for Matango. As it is now,...

Went to see Diary of the Dead (George A. Romero, 2007) with TG & EPN. I am sick and tired of that new fashion, since The Blair Witch Project (1999), that makes every horror moviemaker film his piece as if it were filmed by some guy like you and me with his camera. Literally sick, because some of them actually make you nauseous (all that uncontrolled movement). So I really worried when the film began. But, hey, I shouldn't have, Romero is still the King. It's totally postmodern and metacinematic, very clever and hugely entertaining. Hyperreferenced, with Romero himself as the principal reference -- and there's nothing wrong with that. Hurrah for zombie movies, I say.

Sunday, June 22, 2008 Watched DVD: Dudley Do-Right (Hugh Wilson, 1999). Brendan Fraser & Sarah Jessica Parker. Utterly useless. What a waste of talent. Mais que diable allaient-ils faire dans cette galère?!

Pile of junk or beautiful garbage? This one may be the classic case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. Here is the latest offering from the company Longneck . This hideous beast is called Dempagon ( デムパゴン ). This particular version is Dempa-gon ver 2.0 2008 according to the gold label on the header card. The monster itself is a mish-mash of various items. It is in the theme of Junk Kaiju.... or junkheap... monsters that are made of various debris, or are even themselves moving trash heaps. Maybe Hedorah fits in this family too as he seems to be made from toxic sludge. I've seen a few toys made in this theme, and I know of the monster Garuban from the old television show Captain Ultra. Hopefully I'll soon be reviewing a giant Garuban I got recently. The others I have seen have mainly been large pieces of trash forming a humanoid shape. One monster made by Kaijuken even has an airplane tail sticking out of his ass. Dempagon is a bit different from these others in that he...

...when you are cleaning or reorganizing or something, take a mental inventory of all the stuff you have accumulated in a given amount of time... ...and completely feel overwhelmed and disconnected from it all? I posted some photos the other day on skullbrain after starting to reorganize my Detolf of the hideous mess I had created in our bonus room. I beared down and started cleaning up this clutter. I moved shelves around, finshed the installation of lights, decided what went where. There is still more to do even now, but when I look at my space and my things, i am feeling burnt out, broke, and overwhelmed by too much still. What is it in me that keeps me buying this stuff when i am going to look at it in a few months and not feel good about it? It was like this before toys came back into the picture, and it probably will be if they ever go away. The feeling is on and off with me. I have had it before. When a lot of bills are due, it brings it on for instance. There are other times I...