The trailer for the domestic release of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone—the first movie in the “rebuild” of Neon Genesis Evangelion—has just arrived on Apple’s trailer page. The animation looks stellar—not surprising, since it’s Gainax we’re talking about—but the English voice acting might throw you off a bit.

Evangelion 1.0 will be released into select American and Canadian theatres, followed by a DVD release this fall.

Imagine Genndy Tartakovsky directing a mix of Danger: Diabolik and You Only Live Twice, and you might come up with something close to this trailer for A Kiss From Tokyo (watch it in HD)—which is actually a promo for Seductive Espionage, The World of Yuki 7, an artbook chronicling the adventures of “swinging 60’s spy girl, Yuki 7”.

I’m a sucker for vintage and exotic spy cinema, so not surprisingly, I love how the trailer pays homage to that particular genre, from the grainy look and transitions to the background projected car chase and the John Barry-inspired soundtrack. I know Yuki 7 only exists within the pages of Seductive Espionage, The World of Yuki 7, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a full-length feature chronicling her adventures.

Indigo Bridge Books—aka, Lincoln’s coolest bookstore—has recently announced a graphic novel book club.

The first meeting will take place on July 7, 2009 at 7pm, with Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World being the spotlighted title. The second title to be discussed will be V For Vendetta (and hopefully as a result, more people will come to realize just why the movie was so disappointing).

If you’re on Facebook, you can RSVP here.

Now, all they need to do is organize some anime screenings and a Dungeons & Dragons night or two, and Lincoln’s geeks will have a new hang out.

What do you do when the King of Pop dies? Why, you listen to the music, of course. And what wonderful music it was, and still is: funky, soulful, danceable, intense, plaintive, and catchy beyond catchy.

Nothing can get a crowd moving like those opening beats from “Billie Jean” and just try to listen to “Thriller” without mimicking those zombie dance moves. And let’s not forget “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”, “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”, “Beat It”, “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)”, “Bad”, “Man in the Mirror”, “Smooth Criminal”... the list goes on. A lesser artist would probably give anything to have just one of those hits, but Jackson had them all, and he made it look, and sound, so easy.

But with someone as iconic as Michael Jackson, you can’t simply stop with the music. He was too big, too influential, too eccentric. However, when we’re confronted by the death of someone as singular and iconic as Jackson, there’s a temptation to focus on the person’s extremes, and we run the risk of attempting to make sense of the loss of a caricature rather than a human being.

Michael Jackson was one of the greatest performers of all time. It’s not even worth trying to deny that. The glove. The jacket. The moonwalk. The award ceremony performances. The music videos. The singles, including those from the days of The Jackson 5. They all add up to something that will never be rivaled nor equaled. And any attempts to do so will simply reveal the pretenders to the throne for what they are.

Michael Jackson was also a deeply flawed, broken, and lonely individual. His many eccentricities hinted at that. Some of them, such as sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, were false. Others were—let’s face it—harmless, but were nevertheless fodder for the media circus. However, there were other things in Jackson’s life that can’t be so easily brushed aside. There were failed marriages. Charges of child endangerment. Struggles with drug addiction. Bad business deals. The plastic surgery. A tumultuous childhood that contained both abuse and unbelievable stardom. And of course, allegations of child sexual abuse.

To be completely honest with ourselves and Michael Jackson’s legacy, we must recognize and deal with both of these extremes. And therein we find the true sorrow: Michael Jackson was a supremely gifted individual whose God-given talents were ultimately squandered, both by his own mistakes as well as by the vagaries of a culture who loves to both canonize and crucify its celebrities. And the final irony, the truly poignant thing about all of this, is that he died less than three weeks before beginning a farewell tour that could have been his moment of redemption.

All that being said, there’s another temptation with the death of a celebrity… and that’s to give into the fallacy that one’s fame can make them immortal. Things that are of this world will always fade, and fame and celebrity are most assuredly of this world. Fame fades, celebrity falters—all is vanity, as the Teacher puts it. And that’s as true for royalty as it is for us “commoners”.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate the music, which, in Jackson’s case, is what it always comes back to. And so, I’ll wrap things up with a celebration of sorts—Michael Jackson’s legendary performance of “Billie Jean” at the 25th anniversary celebration of Motown Records (during which he premiered the mighty moonwalk).

Maybe it’s all of the chaos happening right now in the world, or perhaps the tragedies that are affecting some people close to me, but I was in need of something to buoy my spirits. So imagine my joy when I saw that the trailer for Ponyo, the latest film from Hayao Miyazaki, was now on Apple’s trailer page.

After an initial viewing, it’s apparent that Miyazaki made good on his word to go back to a simpler animation style. Gone is much of the CGI and the designs and animation are much more basic. Nevertheless, I was completely entranced by the trailer’s halfway point.

Ponyo will be released here in the States on August 14. More information on the film, including some potential spoilers, can be found at GhibliWiki.

Twitch recently alerted me to War of the Worlds: Goliath, an upcoming animated feature that just sounds cooler than cool: it’s a “sequel” to H.G. Wells’ classic story with steampunk and alternative history aspects and done in an anime-like style.

As for the story, humanity has rebuilt itself after the initial Martian invasion using the remaining Martian technology. Now, they’re preparing themselves for the aliens’ inevitable return, developing a defense force consisting of giant steam-powered tripods, massive zeppelins, and fighter squadrons led by Manfred von Richthofen, aka the Red Baron.

As the filmmakers put it, War of the Worlds: Goliath will feature selfless heroism, alien cruelty, base betrayal and passionate lovemaking framed by the life and death paradigm of total interstellar war.

The film’s official website is still under construction, but you can find plenty of information—including a full synopsis, a director’s statement, and a gallery of production artwork— here.

War of the Worlds: Goliath is scheduled to be released on DVD in February 2010.

One element of the new Opus design that—IMHO, of course—adds some really cool-yet-subtle eye candy are the semi-transparent borders that appear on many of the images (an example would be the thumbnails in the “Recent Music Reviews” and “Recent Movie Reviews” widgets over there the right column).

I quickly came up with the idea in my Photoshop mockup without giving much thought as to how I might actually make it work when I got to the HTML/CSS stage. But once I got there, I found myself in a bit of a quandary. I had done something similar in an earlier iteration of Opus, using a transparent GIF image to add rounded corners to some of the images (this is similar to the approach Facebook uses to add rounded corners to the avatars on your “Wall”).

However, that approach assumes that you always know the size of your images, that your images are always the same size. Which is the case with 80% of the images on Opus, but there are plenty of images whose sizes are all over the place. I’d either have to create overlay graphics for every size, or make sure that I always used the same sizes of images in my entries time and again. Which aren’t bad ideas in and of themselves, but I was looking for a little more flexibility.

Ideally, I wanted something that could be applied to any image of any size, be it a photo, some artwork from a CD, a movie poster, etc. After about 30 minutes or so, I came up with the following method. It’s by no means original, and there are some drawbacks, but it works for my purposes—maybe it’ll work for yours.

Now, if you’re like me, and you learn better by seeing something in action and breaking it down, I’ve created a very basic demo that shows the technique in action. For the rest of you, though, read on.

Continue reading…

The Clientele—a longtime fave ‘round these parts—are putting the finishing touches on their fifth album. Titled Bonfires on the Heath, the album is tentatively scheduled for this October on Merge. Pitchfork has more details, including a track list, as well as a recent interview with lead singer Alasdair MacLean in which he discusses the new album, haunting literature, and the band’s potential end.

Pitchfork: So you’d say this album is a more austere affair than the last one?

AM: It is. It’s more full of ghosts and doubts and signs and wonders than any other Clientele record. It’s very spooky and tremendously sad at times. It’s about watching yourself disappear.

[...]

Pitchfork: Does that mean this is the end for the Clientele?

AM: It might do, I haven’t really decided yet. I think it’d close the chapter quite well. If you don’t have any more ideas you should just go away, I guess. But I don’t want to announce that the Clientele is breaking up. It’s always up in the air, you constantly have to rethink what you’re doing and wonder whether it’s courageous enough.

Pitchfork: If this is the end, would you be satisfied with what the Clientele accomplished?

AM: It’s a body of work that I’m not ashamed of. We survived generally being ignored in the UK, which I’m quite proud of. A lot of people would have given up if they’d been handed out the kind of treatment we get in our home country.

If you’re curious as to why The Clientele are such a fave, then by all means, check out a few songs on their MySpace page.

Related: MacLean has a side-project with Pipas’ Lupe Núñez-Fernández called Amor De Dias that MacLean describes as “all acoustic guitars in jazz and Spanish rhythm, and half of it is in Spanish.” The duo is nearly done with recording their first album, though no word yet on who is going to release it.