08.29.2010

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Only 106 more shopping days until Tron: Legacy

Tron: ÖrökségIn the 1970s, we got Rollerball. In the 1980s, we got The Running Man. In the 1990s, we got Space Jam. Last decade, the subsubgenre was won by Shaolin Soccer – oh yes, we’ll be calling that sci-fi. To get the science-fiction sports film started right in the 2010s, December sees the apparently simultaneous worldwide (yes!) release of Tron: Legacy.

Though BuckBokai is sure you’ve seen this promo poster (from Hungary, location of the BuckBokai.com home office), featuring the gorgeous Beau Garrett as Frisbee- weapon-supplying program Jem, by way of io9 or Slashfilm, it’s definitely worth another repost.

BuckBokai does fear that Tron 2.0 will be bogged down in a lot of self-referencialism and continuity that only nuts of the first flick will get. Geekspeak, too, is sure to be rife in this thing, so it may be best to hope for mere coherence and nice f/x, although we’re essentially guaranteed the latter.

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08.16.2010

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Kobe Bryant vs. the Martians

If, in fact, the terrifying events speculated upon in Space Jam ever do come to pass, we can rest assured that any would-be alien conqueror (or maybe that should be conquistador, as in the San Diego Conquistadors) will find a Terran team ready with a gameplan.

Though Michael Jordan, having now been enshrined in the Hall of Fame twice to definitively end his basketball career (really), probably wouldn’t suit up for Team Earth, prospective on-court leader Kobe Bryant is ready.

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07.28.2010

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Bukimi no Tani Genshō Gō Gō Gō (or, Why the Speed Racer Movie was So Bad)

One of the key scientific theories of the 21st century is certain to be Masahiro Mori’s Bukimi no Tani Genshō, a.k.a. “The Uncanny Valley” Theory. The supposition suggests that as robots or animated objects more closely and closely approach a human form, the more likely there are to cause revulsion in a human observer until a great degree of realism exists.

ESPN.com’s excellent Patrick Hruby applied the Uncanny Valley Theory to video games back in 2005 (How long ago was that? Check out the image from the Madden ’06 he’s reviewing) and, by inference via BuckBokai’s idol Gregg Easterbrook’s “The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse,” to standards of living. Wikipedia informs us that “the problem of the Uncanny Valley also applied to 3D computer animat[ed …] films Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Polar Express, and Beowulf.”

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07.27.2010

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“It was real”: The Space Jam trailer recut

From the Shameless Cross-Promotion Department comes an excellent YouTube clip BuckBokai stumbled across for his other website, BallinEurope.com.

To quote myself (o how gauche), “one of the greatest phenomena on YouTube is the recut movie preview. BuckBokai believes that this recut Space Jam trailer is the best in the genre since the immortal Shining.” You gotta love the way Charles Barkley is given the lion’s share of trailer time, too.

(Incidentally, YouTube user Royalplinko proclaims the ‘Jam to be “the greatest film of the 90s”: a sentiment which with BuckBokai is hardly prepared to disagree.)

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07.15.2010

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The brilliant, albeit brief, science-fiction career of Sir Charles Barkley

Charles Barkley is a two-time NBA MVP (well, they *did* rook him out of it that one year), a Hall of Famer, an Emmy winner, a future governor of Alabama and/or general manager of the Atlanta Hawks, and the greatest interview subject of all-time – but Buck Bokai loves his acting the best of all.

A brief look at the short-yet-inspiring science-fiction career of the coolest man in existence, Charles Barkley.

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