DMW: Digital Music W...

Anime News Network reports that Shinichiro Watanabe's anime Cowboy Bebop is being developed at Fox. This news was a long time coming. Considered one of the better contemporary animes to be produced by Sunrise (the same studio that has worked on all the Gundam series), Cowboy Bebop is credited to helping making anime a mainstream commodity. It first aired in the US on Cartoon Network's [adult swim] block in the late '90s and helped shape that block into a skewering male demo powerhouse block.

To briefly describe the series, its a sexy, violent, smart series that features a cast of characters you grow to love. A rag tag group of bounty hunters with past lives so dark and intriguing, you can't stop watching. You must know how the series ends. I love all the characters - Spike, Jet, Ein, Ed and Faye. The anime became an instant classic and I recommend that you watch it if you haven't already. Also watch the movie Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door (that's the original title before it was changed to Cowboy Bebop: The Movie).

Posted by Amanda Nanawa on July 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Photo by Amanda Nanawa

As promised, Goldfrapp returns to the States with a handful of dates (its always a handful of dates). And once again, the Midwest is screwed because there are no dates whatsoever for that region. Interestingly, this second US leg of the tour brings the band to larger seated venues and higher ticket prices. $75 is the most for better seats while the crap seats are at $39.50. The band is indeed moving on up... Radio City Music Hall. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for dancers, pole dancing and theremin play.

US & Canadian Dates (Autumn)
09/12/08 New York, NY, Radio City Music Hall
09/14/08 Toronto, ON, Danforth Music Hall
09/16/08 Vancouver, BC, Commodore Ballroom
09/17/08 Seattle, WA, Showbox SoDo
09/20/08 San Francisco, CA, Treasure Island Music Festival
09/21/08 Los Angeles, CA, Orpheum

Tickets for the Radio City show go on sale Friday 7/25/08 at 12PM on Ticketmaster.

And then there's mention on Pitchfork about the iTunes Original Sessions that will release August 12. This is what's on tap:

01 iTunes Originals
02 "It Was the First Song Will and I Wrote Together"
03 Lovely Head
04 "It's Quite an Unusual Song"
05 Paper Bag (iTunes Original Version)
06 "It Was Recorded Outdoors"
07 Deer Stop
08 "We Like the Slow-y's"
09 Black Cherry
10 "I Never Get Tired of Doing It"
11 Strict Machine (iTunes Original Version)
12 "It's Got a Certain Quality About It"
13 Forever
14 "It's Another One We Really Like Playing Live"
15 You Never Know (iTunes Original Version)
16 "I Think I Was Going out With a Guy at the Time"
17 Satin Chic
18 "Keep Telling People It's a HillBilly Version"
19 Ooh La La (iTunes Original Version)
20 "It Was a Message to Me Really"
21 Eat Yourself (iTunes Original Version)
22 "Sentiment of the Song Is This Idea of Traveling"
23 Road to Somewhere (iTunes Original Version)
24 "I Was Inspired by a Friend of Mine Who Lives in Spain"
25 Little Bird (iTunes Original Version)

Posted by Amanda Nanawa on July 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

**UPDATED as of 7/19/08**

Folks have been visiting blogs to find out about the song that was used for the Watchmen trailer. Its Smashing Pumpkins and the song is "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning". I remember the other track, "The End is the Beginning is the End", making an appearance on the film Batman & Robin, you know the film Batman fans and theater goers want to forget . It was a lot faster though, more hard rock. I love this track and its found on their release Rarities and B-Sides. So anyway, if you don't want to bother visiting the Apple site for the trailer, then look out below:

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Some of you may have already heard about the Watchmen trailer that is playing prior to The Dark Knight in theaters. If you want to take a glimpse, the trailer is online now and exclusively on Apple. That means you can download it onto your iPod and salivate over it while acting all crazy weird over the trailer.

Click to see the Watchmen trailer.

Posted by Amanda Nanawa on July 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Four years since the release of "Howl's Moving Castle", Oscar Award winner Hayao Miyazaki returns to the big screen this weekend in Japanese theatres with the unspooling of.... wait for it.... "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea" a.k.a. "The Little Mermaid". Yeah, Disney is definitely all over this one.

Here's the trailer as featured on a Japanese morning show (you will have to suffer through their banter as they suggest that characters are moe kawaii and make reference to the 9-year-old girl singing the theme song).

But what makes this release different from "Howl's..." or Academy Award winning animated feature "Spirited Away" is the fact that Miyazaki has shunned digital animation for hand-drawn pencil animations -- returning to good ol' pencil art. The entire project , which took about one and a half years to produce by 70 staff members, was drawn by hand. About 170,000 hand-drawn cells were used to animate characters, objects and background. The film also uses numerous other manually drawn pictures as the background -- with the succession of screens creating a slightly jittery atmosphere to the film.

"All things in the world are moving. I became an animator in order to move everything in the world. It's not only human characters that move," Miyazaki said. "Not only grass vacillates; the ground can move, too. I think delicate fluctuations give life to our production," he said. "The world is a living thing. Small children know it."

The director said he has been working to "create a world that five-year-olds understand."

"Five-year-old kids do not think with reason but rather they understand the true nature of the world instinctively," he said.

In a message posted on the Ghibli website, Miyazaki said the upcoming film "animates the sea not as background but as a main character."

I anticipate this to be as magical as "My Neighbor Totoro" or "Kiki's Delivery Service". It will be kawaii.

Source: Yahoo News

Posted by Amanda Nanawa on July 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Remember that time when people heard the song "1234" by Feist and saying things like, This sounds like something you can sing on Sesame Street. Well, Feist made her way to Sesame Street. US Sesame Street viewers can catch the new, updated version in August. She sings, cavorts with the Muppets, carries a number four -- oh, its as if she wrote this song with the full intention of getting on the PBS show. Interestingly, The Count doesn't make an appearance?????? I guess this was a full-blown solo, no duet with The Count.

What's that? You can't wait for August? You need to see Feist and those Muppets now? Ok.

"1234... I love counting, counting to the number 4...." All those kids will now be Feist fans.

Posted by Amanda Nanawa on July 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

That was not a typo. EMI actually showed real earnings in the first part of 2008. Amazing what cost-cutting, fat trimming and good ol' fashioned house cleaning can do to a company. Now the hardest part is to keep this going and to continue the bloodletting, I mean, the layoffs.

Here's an excerpt from the memo to staff:

"These are early days," Hands said. "And it can be misleading to look at just one quarter in isolation due to the timings of releases. "As we all know, the recorded music business is extremely volatile and we cannot count on future quarters always being this good. Nevertheless I believe these numbers are a demonstration of EMI Music's significant progress and all your enormous efforts to transform this business."

The quarter ended just when Coldplay's Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends was released worldwide. So the next earnings report should bode well since it would show the carry over of sales from Coldplay units.

Its still too early to pop champagne corks though. There's still too much work ahead and more cost cutting to make. Plus on the flip side, EMI is hiring the best talented executives from various sides of the entertainment and tech biz to get EMI fitted for a digital future. And let's not forget Guy Hands' vision of corporate sponsorship of musicians. The artist advance will have to be re-invented in such a way that certain corporations will end up being matched with particular artists. That's my view. Instead of EMI taking the risk at 100%, the advance will most likely come from a corporate sponsor or 50% from the sponsor and 50% from revenue share sales. I can see that happening.

Source: Reuters

Posted by Amanda Nanawa on July 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Been busy for the past few weeks. Here's a very interesting social awareness event that took place in the Bay Area some months ago. You really need to watch this and it might inspire you too.

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

Coincidentally, the store owner is related to the filmmaker Chris Chan Lee, whom I had interviewed several years back for indieWIRE for his feature Yellow.

Posted by Amanda Nanawa on July 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)