Back in June of 2009 I did a post about a 59-feet tall life-size Gundam replica to be unveiled at Tokyo’s artificial Odaiba island. That attraction was epically shown to the public, and I speculated on how all these monumental statues across the world will come to life and destroy the planet in the same post. That’s right. World War III will be fought with controlled giants resembling popular Anime franchises and religious figures like Buddhas. To quote myself (self-indulging):

It’s only a matter of time before they build life-size EVA units to take over the world, colonize the moon while harvesting minerals from Mars and refurbishing Pluto as a gigantic nuclear explosive to repel Angels from invading. AH! [TBT - 59-Feet Tall Life-Size Gundam to unveil in July]

That was almost a year ago. Lone and behold, they went and built a life-size Evangelion Unit 01 replica from the bust up, to be unveiled at Fuji-Q HighLand amusement park at a new pavilion called “Evangelion: World – Life-Size EVA-01 Construction Project“. They asked the fans which Eva unit should be built, and to no surprise, of course Unit 01 was chosen and built. [Source - AnimeNewsNetwork]

No matter how anti-Anime you are, you have to admit that it’d be pretty amazing to stand in front of this monolith… and maybe wonder if it was a waste of resources. Look! There are people walking in front of it! Just like the screen-shot of the Anime shown above! Fuji-Q HighLand was also home to the aforementioned 59-feet tall Gundam but it would be lying down this time. The giant will stand again at Bandai’s main Gundam plastic model factory later on this year.

-phibz.

It is 3:30am and I got home not long ago from a full day of covering the SuperSkillz event at The Opera House in downtown Toronto, a talent show organized by Filipino Student Associations across the city. It was a great event, especially with the ever-energetic PJ Phil Guerrero mastering the ceremony. Our (HMC) interview with him will always be engraved into my memory due to the sheer hilarity and genuineness of “Sir” Guerrero’s personality. But more on that in my next post.

In around 15 hours, the festivities for the 82^nd Annual Academy Awards will commence. Needless to say (if you saw my recent, and first, video blog), that my Oscar Fever is reaching its highest temperature. I was so ready to write my predictions throughout the day at SuperSkillz, and watching Garron and Alison post theirs only increased my anxiety. But finally I get to, at 3am in the morning.

Let’s start off with the main categories that no one really talks about:

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winner: Up In The Air written by Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner

Banana’s Choice: Up In The Air written by Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner

Runner Up: Precious written by Geoffrey Fletcher

I won’t be too shocked if Precious got a surprise win in this category, but if any other of the nominees wins, there’s something wrong. First of all, District 9 is an adaptation of Neil Blomkamp’s earlier short film which has the same plot. Secondly, Up In The Air was just a better executed film than the rest, as intense as Precious was.

Best Original Screenplay

Winner: Inglorious Basterds written by Quentin Tarantino

Banana’s Choice: The Hurt Locker written by Mark Boal

Runner Up: The Hurt Locker written by Mark Boal

Sorry, everyone knows I am 100% a Hurt Locker supporter, but it seems Tarantino’s multinational/borderline-stealing filmmaking style is likely to take this one. To be fair, he hasn’t written a captivating script since Pulp Fiction, not to say Basterds was better than Pulp Fiction though. I find that in the original screenplay category, great dialogue more often than not wins you the little golden man. Second to that, is to have something intriguingly original, such as Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (I’ll love that movie until that memory-surfing technology is invented and tested, on myself…to erase Eternal Sunshine from my memory?).

Best Animated Feature

Winner: Up by Pete Doctor

Banana’s Choice: Up by Pete Doctor

Runner Up: No such thing

Up is going to win. Just like how WALL-E was destined to win last year. Like Garron said, Up is nominated for Best Picture, so it’s kind of default that it wins this category. Still bitter that Wallace & Gromit won 4 years ago, Miyazaki got ROBBED! Howl’s Moving Castle ftw! C’mon!!

Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Mo’Nique as Marry Lee Johnston in Precious

Banana’s Choice: Mo’Nique as Marry Lee Johnston in Precious

Runner Up: Vera Farmiga as Alex Goran in Up In The Air

Mo’Nique essentially began, and still is, a comedic actress, and look what she pulled out of her bag of talent. I think the defining factor for myself is the clear distinction between her humorous persona, and the disturbingly pitiful character she put on for Precious. I mean, it was frighteningly unreal how sinister and foul her character was, but somehow she found a way to get the audience to sympathize with her. Amazing. Also Vera Farmiga was friggen smokin’, and yes, her performance was very convincing.

Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds

Banana’s Choice: Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds

Runner Up: Not even a little close.

To quote Matt Damon on the David Letterman two nights ago – “not a chance in hell”. That’s right. Not a chance in hell that Sir Christoph Waltz won’t win this category. Its almost on par in saying Heath Ledger wouldn’t win Best Supporting Actor last year. Never have I seen a villain in a film show so little physical and facial intimidation, and yet, inject so much malice and fear. The Joker and Hans Landa = top two movie villains of the decade.

Best Actress

Winner: Meryl Streep as Julia Childs in Julie & Julia

Banana’s Choice: Meryl Streep as Julia Childs in Julie & Julia

Runner Up: Carey Mulligan as Jenny Miller in An Education

This category has certainly caused a stir in the movie world. But this also shows a distinction between the politics versus the actual quality of actors. That, or a separation in moviegoers who can distinguish a better performance, and those who just ride popularity trends. I honestly think Bollocks is only getting so much attention and recognition because this is the furthest her dramatic acting career can go. So the Board of Shadowy Figures decided to just give her the award before she surfs the inevitable typecast actor drought. But seeing as how political things can get, Sandra Bullock would probably win, but I refuse to believe it! On the other hand I chose the wonderful Carey Mulligan as the runner-up because I lover her, and that she has a great career waiting for her. This year’s Ellen Page in a way.

Best Actor

Winner: Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake in Crazy Heart

Banana’s Choice: Jeremy Renner as Sgt. William James in The Hurt Locker

Runner Up: Jeremy Renner as Sgt. William James in The Hurt Locker

Like Garron said, the new guy NEVER wins, unless you’re Adrien Brody and you somehow edged out Jack Nicholson. Jeff Bridges is the veteran actor and he deserves a little golden man for the many years he’s put into acting in films. But to be fair, his performance was stronger than the rest. As much as I’m rooting for Jeremy Renner, Sgt. William James isn’t too much of a diversion from Renner’s regular personality. Rugged, fearless, and dangerously logical. The other nominees, such as Morgan Freeman, I think could have executed a more convincing and powerful Nelson Mandela. Honestly, Matt Damon’s performance at times overshadowed the voice of God himself. And I think it’s about time George Clooney played a villain. I mean a real villain, not Michael Clayton. Yikes.

Best Director

Winner: Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker

Banana’s Choice: Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker

Runner Up: Anyone but James Cameron

Even though I tend to have a Canadian bias, this time I really, really do not want to see James Cameron win, anything! Surely Avatar is going to take home Best Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and even Art Direction, but please let it be the extent of it. I hate to be sexist here, but one thing that captivated me with The Hurt Locker was that a female director brought such cinematic force in a war movie, historically embedded as a male-dominated genre. On top of that, almost the entire cast was male. This goes to show how much outer direction she gave throughout the production of the film. In a sense, Kathyrn was embodying a character unto herself just so she can mold her actors and crew to convey the right messages. Bravo, Madame Bigelow. Bravo.

Best Picture

Winner: The Hurt Locker

Banana’s Choice: The Hurt Locker

Runner Up: Any film but Avatar, The Blind Side, A Serious Man

First to explain my runner up choice(s). Like I said, I don’t want Dances With Smurfahontas, I mean, Avatar to win ANYTHING except technical awards, which it deserves. The Blind Side being nominated still baffles me. There are so many other worthy nominees that could have filled the 10^th spot e.g. Crazy Heart, (500) Days of Summer, Star Trek, Invictus even Julie & Julia would’ve been better. A Serious Man, if there were still 5 Best Picture nominees, this latest Coen Brothers film would have been left out. It was great in its innate art-film nature, but that’s as far as it took me.

An Education, District 9, Up, won’t win, but I still prefer them to the three films I just mentioned. The closest runner-up of the remaining three (Basterds, Precious, Up In The Air) would be Up In The Air in my opinion. I love realist, character-based movies that take the audience through the ups and downs of a slice of a character’s life. The cast was sewn compatibly together and the mockumentary-esque icing made it all the better.

———————-

There you have it, The Banana Times’ Oscar Predictions. I am honestly still bitter that (500) Days of Summer did not get nominated for anything! The Academy Awards still favors dramatic films and performances, leaving genuine comedies, romances, and even dramadies in the dust next to Thomas Haden Church and his crappy and redundant existence in the invisible third movie of the Spiderman film franchise. F*** I hate that movie so much I want to punch James Cameron right in the Piranhas.

-phibz.

Its been quite a February, considering it is the shortest month of the year. We had the NFL SuperBowl XLIV, the NBA All-Star Game, Chinese New Year, Valentines Day, and last but not least, the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

To celebrate this wondrous month, The Banana Times made the move to start blogging in the form of video. It is not like the usual video blogs you see, where the speaker talks and looks straight into the camera. We here at TBT love to mix things up, and like any worthy and great genre, it adapts and adopts. We hope you enjoy our little spin to the video blog style!

The Banana Times Productions presents,
BANANA BLOG 01 – TIGER! TIGER!

恭喜發財!

-phibz

On January 16th 2009 The Banana Times, as part of the Heroic Melon Collective, hosted a film screening and music event at O’Grady’s Tap & Grill in Downtown Toronto. The event was titled The Best Case Scenario. We had an audience of around 70 people, almost double the amount of our last screening, Awkward Night Out.

We showcased a lineup of films that were very diverse, to show the HMC’s versatility and varying styles. Along with our short films, the very talented Kevin Lam from Bujumed Media and others, performed several musical numbers that eased the crowd into the event.

The Banana Times screened three things on the night, A Melon’s Journey: The Beginning, a teaser trailer for our upcoming film Dry Cups and a short version of our definitive documentary Peel Me. Videos below:

A Melon’s Journey: The Beginning

Peel Me – Trailer

Other works of the night included The Homecoming from Reuben John A. Tumanguil’s Perfect Destiny Pictures, Central Squares I & II from Lester Calleja’s Lemon Meringue Productions, and the headliner Process Of Elmination from Alex Chung’s Saunica Films. Videos below!

The Homecoming

Central Squares I & II

Process Of Elimination

All in all the event very well! On behalf of the HMC, we’d like to thank everyone who came and for everyone who helped! Please tune in to www.HeroicMelon.com for more details on our upcoming projects, updates and events!

-phibz

Apple iPad

wait….iPad? really!? Yes, i’m talking about Apple’s long awaited tablet which was announced today through Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Essentially it is a super sized iPhone/iTouch and since its release has already been buzzing hard in Twitterville. Of course like any huge product it is getting bashed left and right by fanboys or just natural haters. I personally think it is another smart step for the  huge electronic juggernaut that Apple already is. Prices range from the base model ($499 USD 16GB) to the top model ($829 64GB with Wi-FI) which is of course reasonable considering Apple always demands a premium just for slapping an i in front of everything. The size and weight is of course attractive with the top of the line model measuring 10 X 7, 0.5 inch thick and only 1.6 lbs. Gaming, eBooks, multitouch, app store you name it’s got it.  But of course until we get our hands on one we remain hopeful that it doesn’t suck as bad as the team who named the product and newly purchased kindle users don’t feel sad, at least your unit sounds less ridiculous.

-wilks (@wilkinc)

Source: Apple

Today marks the launch of Canada’s First Peer-to-Peer Lending website Communitylend. Currently available only in Ontario I am very excited to see where the Toronto-Based Startup is going to do to the finanical landscape of Canada, where sources say, has a 100-billion unsecured consumer loan market with annual interest payments of close to 15-billion. Although originally founded in 2006 they delayed launch with good reason due to regulatory concerns. Of course security is without a doubt the biggest worry end users may have when monetary transactions are involved online, not to mention a bad rep that online transactions have had in the past (nigerian prince scam anyone?). CommunityLend is doing its best with this peer-to-peer lending system, which is already gathering fans in other countries, by making it as painfree as possible. In a nutshell both lenders and borrowers have to be “verified” and borrowers can go through a “bidding” process to find the best rate for your loan. Once you get past the huge legal disclaimer and instructions (with good reason of course and I would make it mandatory if you are interested) you will find that Communitylend is in fact a great step in the right direction to make things simpler & more importantly transparent. I only hope to see them take off and spread across Canada.

What are your opinions on CommunityLend?

 sources: kelowna.com, communitylend.com

-wilks (@wilkinc)

It looks like Jay Leno’s move to an earlier time slot didn’t work out as well as NBC had hoped. With lackluster ratings NBC is contemplating bumping Jay Leno into a 1/2 hour slot at the original 11:30 est slot and then bump Conan and Fallon’s show to start at 12:05 and 1:05 respectively. As much as I liked the occasional Jay Leno, 20+ years in the same “role” is already pretty good in my books, retiring now wouldn’t be a huge blow to his repertoire. Conan on the other hand has been able to grab a younger audience which of course is an affiliate’s dream and plus he does have a $50 million penalty clause in his contract which I think NBC would definitely not want to touch. Well and as for Fallon, well….let’s just say I watch it only for ?uest Love.

source: Chicago Tribune, Washington Post

-wilks (@wilkinc)

The first decade of our second millennia is coming to a close in 6 days, and it seems a little anti-climactic. But to highlight this landmark event, we here at TheBananaTimes are going to countdown to 2010 with a series of posts called “Decading Bananas: Hong Kong”. As I am now in Hong Kong and will be dissolving into the new year here as well, I will comment and enlighten some cultural, historical and social topics in the past 10 years, mostly relating to the my own experiences and more importantly, the big picture – The Banana.

PART I – THE COMMERCIAL HARBOUR

Being an international student growing up in Hong Kong, the pop culture we absorbed was mainly from the television (Note: International students in HK attended schools where English was the primary language being taught, local students were taught in Cantonese). Those of my generation experienced their childhood and adolescence in a Hong Kong still under British rule with the looming and inevitable handover on the horizon. This meant that the media that we were surrounded by were not necessarily national, and as our schools implied, but were mixed in Eastern and Western cultures.

Post-handover and into the 2000s, Hong Kong TV still retained its bilingual tendencies and its international reputation even increased. Due to the dip in the economy after the 1997 handover from British rule, tourism was a financial savior, and thus the international, consumerist and packaged Hong Kong was more apparent than ever. Spawning from this tourist dependency was a flurry of intricate, touching, narratively rich television commercials and advertisements.

My first day back in town, I had the privilege to check out a Cathay Pacific commercial shoot. I got to Cathay City, the main headquarters of the corporate airliner. They had a half a floor filled with interior sets of airplanes, from models of the 80s up until the latest “fishbone” model today. Walking around the sets was nostalgic and almost dreamlike.

The director was an Englishman, Laurence Dunmore (directed The Libertine), whose fast-pace efficient style controlled the flow of the set intricately. His direction was voiced in a firm and demanding tone but was not intended to be forceful or even rude, just efficient. This attitude suits Hong Kong’s work ethic perfectly, where unnecessary work and roundabout methods are frowned upon. Any thing or time that is wasted is a hindrance to success. It is a dream for any Hong Kong artist in charge of a multilingual set to operate like this.

Another CX commercial directed by Laurance Dunmore

Other than the director and 4 or 5 other people, the rest of the crew were Cantonese speakers. Even with the majority of the cast and crew being Chinese, Dunmore’s fast-pace efficiency still held out. This goes to show the potential of international collaboration in a place like Hong Kong. After realizing this, I discovered where my inter-disciplinary mindset and attraction to cross-cultural creativity originates. This way of thinking was how The Banana Times came about.

The commercials that I have been drawn to, and that have inspired me in the last decade was a clear foundation behind The Banana Times and what we aim to do here. I only hope that even after 12 years after the handover from British rule that this collaborative and unified ideology will not fade, and that Hong Kong is not the only post-colonial region that has adopted this creative practice.

One of my favourite CX commercials

I shall conclude Part I of Decading Bananas here, and ask why not encourage cross-cultural understanding and integration under the common goal of creativity and art? Even if it is for commercial purposes. Until Part II, I bid you all a very happy Christmas!

-phibz.

The 3rd of four posts. The lead protagonist of the long-running grand manga/anime series One Piece, will appear on the cover of Men’s Non-No fashion magazine in their January issue. Monkey D. Luffy, the series’ main character, will be the first manga/anime character to appear on the cover in the magazine’s 24-year run. It is also Eiichiro Oda’s first cover illustration for a magazine that is not manga or anime related. Very cool! [More at AnimeNewsNetwork]

The first eight pages of this issue will showcase models who resemble various characters from the One Piece universe such as Nami, Robin, Zoro and Sanji.
This goes to show the status of the One Piece franchise. I say give it 5 to 6 more years, and One Piece will reach the level of influence, grandness and omnipresence that Dragonball had and still has. Oda explicitly states that his biggest influence was Akira Toriyama and his mammoth Dragonball franchise, so it isn’t far-fetched to say that One Piece will follow in his footsteps. They DID get together to create a one-shot collaboration, Cross Epoch. Sidenote: Doesn’t Luffy’s outer jacket resemble a something Gokou wears?

Another leading man on the cover of a magazine is Korea-superstar Rain on the Korean Allure magazine, promoting his latest blockbuster film Ninja Assassin. [More at AllureKorea]

Not much to say here. Asian men, feel inadequate? (:

-phibz.

The 2nd of four short posts today. A news update each for two Korean girl bands, Girls’ Generation and Wonder Girls.

First up, So Nyeo Shi Dae. Tickets for their upcoming Asian concert tour were sold out in three minute last week. You did not read wrong. THREE minutes. I guess every lonesome Asian guy out there is finally catching on to this great phenomenon. They are scheduled for two concerts in Seoul on December 19th and 20th, then they move on to Shanghai and Bangkok. [More at The Chosun Ilbo]

Next, Wonder Girls. The Wonder Girls are scheduled to appear and perform on the popular show So You Think You Can Dance next week. They’re going to perform their latest US released single “Nobody”. [More at StarEastAsia] Music Video Below:

I don’t really know why they were invited to perform at SYTYCD, their dancing in the MV has nothing compared to SNSD’s “Chocolate Love” in the video above. Ah well, hope they put on a good show.

-phibz.