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This week on The Anime Effect: To celebrate 10 years of The Book of Life , filmmaker Jorge R. Gutierrez joins the show to talk about his love for anime, including how Spirited Away inspired his celebrated film and the surprising place he first watched Akira . Plus, the latest news on One Piece , SK8 the Infinity and much, much more, including recommendations from our resident anime experts! Episode 36 of The Anime Effect is now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere else you listen to your podcasts! If you're waiting to watch the video episode, it'll be live on Crunchyroll and YouTube at 7 p.m. Et. Listen or Watch on: Episode 36 Summary In this week's episode, LeAlec, Nick, and returning guest host Josellie Rios chat about their Fall 2024 anime watchlist so far, a new Goku balloon gets ready to debut in New York City, and we chat about My Hero Academia announcing its final season.

One man is preparing for a “quite unbelievable” Oscars night, having found himself nominated three times this year in the same category.

Special effects supervisor Neil Corbould is up against himself twice over, after being recognised in the category for his work on three movies – Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, The Creator and Napoleon.

Corbould has two previous Oscars to his name – for Gladiator and Gravity. He told the BBC that this year’s close-to-hand competition could be “the kiss of death,” and said:

“I might have three seats and have to play musical chairs!” The best part? “I get invited to three different after parties.”

Corbould has been working in the film industry for nearly five decades, having followed his uncle into special effects. Colin Chilvers previously won an Oscar himself, for his work on the 1978 movie Superman. He also worked on The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Condorman...

James Hampton, best known for his roles in “F Troop,” “Teen Wolf” and “The Longest Yard,” for which he earned a Golden Globe nomination, died Wednesday due to complications from Parkinson’s disease, his agent confirmed to Variety. He was 84.

An award-winning actor, director, writer and producer, Hampton enjoyed a career in entertainment that spanned half a century before retiring to his native Texas.

Born in Oklahoma City and raised in Dallas, he served in the Army after attending North Texas State College. Shortly after, he landed a role in the hit television series, “Gunsmoke.”

On “Gunsmoke,” he met and developed a close relationship with Burt Reynolds. The pair worked together on “The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing,” “The Longest Yard,” “W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings” and “Hustle.” Hampton also wrote and directed several episodes of Reynolds’ CBS sitcom, “Evening Shade.”

Throughout his career, Hampton played supporting roles in films like “The China Syndrome,...

James Hampton, a veteran character actor best known as bumbling bugler Hannibal Shirley Dobbs on ’60s sitcom F Troop, died Wednesday at his home in Fort Worth, Texas, from Parkinson’s disease complications. He was 84 and his death was confirmed by TV biographer Randy West.

A character actor whose amiable appearance made him the quintessential sidekick, Hampton had a long career in film and television before retiring to his native Texas.

Beyond F Troop, he is best remembered for many key film roles, including appearances as “Caretaker” the manager of the prison football team in the Burt Reynolds prison film, The Longest Yard.

He also had supporting roles in the 1979 thriller The China Syndrome, the 1981 superhero comedy Condorman, the 1985 comedy, and Teen Wolf,. playing Harold Howard, father to Michael J. Fox’s title character. Hampton reprised the part in the 1987 follow-up with Jason Bateman, Teen Wolf Too, and the animated series spinoff.

Ryan Lambie Dec 7, 2016

Space horror in The Black Hole. Animated death in The Black Cauldron. Ryan looks back at a unique period in Disney's filmmaking history...

When George Lucas started writing Star Wars in the early 70s, the space saga was intended to fill a void left behind by westerns, pirate movies and the sci-fi fantasy of old matinee serials. "Disney had abdicated its rein over the children's market," Lucas once said, according to Peter Biskind's book, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, "and nothing had replaced it."

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Indeed, Disney was one of many Hollywood studios that Lucas had approached with Star Wars and they, just like Universal, United Artists and everyone other than 20th Century Fox boss Alan Ladd Jr, had turned it down flat.

Let's be honest - there's a certain scepticism surrounding Marvel Studios' next movie, Ant-Man, that seems to have left fans less excited than they are for most McU films.

Guardians of the Galaxy managed to dispel similar feelings with a perfectly pitched trailer, but for Ant-Man the feeling has continued to hang around in the build up to its release.

It's not hard to guess why. When it comes to powers, shrinking and talking to ants sounds pretty lame, no matter how much they try to style it out by adding that he has "superhuman strength... like a bullet".

But Ant-Man isn't the lamest superhero out there - not by a long shot. A glimpse at this linep of superlosers will quickly make Ant-Man seem pretty decent by comparison:

Arm-Fall-Off-Boy

The Legion of Super-Heroes comic explicitly acknowledges the existence of crummy powers with its Legion tryouts and the Legion...

Disney’s so-far unprofitable interactive unit is placing a beg bet on Disney Infinity, a video game-action figure hybrid, and it's hoping that one draw will be music culled from the conglomerate’s vast library of songs familiar to fans of its movies, TV shows and theme parks. The Hollywood Reporter has learned that when Infinity hits stores Aug. 18 it will come with 16 songs licensed from Walt Disney Records, including a Henry Mancini tune from the nearly forgotten Condorman from 1981. “It took a lot of searching to understand what the rights were going to be because at the

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In 1981, Walt Disney Pictures released Condorman, a comedy/adventure film centered around a cartoonist (Michael Crawford) who begins to believe he’s a costumed hero and assists a female Russian secret agent in defecting to the United States safely.

Although the film wasn’t too successful and was hit hard by critics, today it’s remembered fondly by Disney geeks (myself included, of course) as a decent concept that was perhaps executed poorly.

Though no one ever thought that the hero would be back on the big screen, Moviehole is reporting that Disney may be interested in remaking Condorman and they’re looking at Robert Pattinson to play the lead role. They’re also considering shifting the genre from comedy to action.

Disney is well-aware of the film’s current status too. They’ve brought the Condorman costume and props to Comic-Con and the Pixar Toy Story Toons short “Small Fry...

These days a lot of studios are reaching back into their library of older properties, dusting them off and attempting to bring them to the big screen. Disney is looking at pulling out their 1981 superhero action comedy Condorman and bringing it back to life for the big screen.

The story for the film was inspired by Robert Sheckley's The Game of X, and Condorman follows comic book illustrator Woodrow "Woody" Wilkins who transforms himself into the superhero he draws. He's asked by the CIA to assist in an operation in Istanbul, "upon arriving in Istanbul, he meets a beautiful Russian named Natalia Rambova, who poses as the Russian civilian with whom the exchange is supposed to take place, but it is later revealed that she is in fact a Kgb spy. Woody does not tell Natalia his real name, and instead fabricates his identity to her as a top...

British-born director known for Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots

The film and television director Charles Jarrott, who has died of cancer aged 83, began his career during a golden period of British TV drama, working on Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play in the 1960s alongside writers and directors such as Ken Loach, Dennis Potter and David Mercer. Both series were presided over by the Canadian producer Sydney Newman, who encouraged original work – what he called "agitational contemporaneity" – and had an astonishing impact. But in 1969 Jarrott's career took a different turn when he left for Hollywood, thereby increasing his income a hundredfold, while having to contend with far less adventurous material. His best films were his first, two Elizabethan costume dramas, Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots, enlivened by the Oscar-nominated performances of Richard Burton (Henry VIII), Geneviève Bujold (Anne Boleyn) and...

Are you a fan of DC comics' Hawkman? I don't know how much success the character has actually had. I've carried out a quick straw poll of my non-geek associates and none of them actually knew who he was and two of them thought I was talking about Condorman, the Disney movie with Michael Crawford. If Warners and DC follow through with plans for a freshly-rumored Hawkman movie that low profile will be bound to change, courtesy of multi-million dollar marketing budgets. Of course, the studios are pretty much past the immediately recognizable Spider-Man, Batman and Superman types and deep into the second-tier sorts like Iron Man, Elektra and Green Lantern and still having a certain amount of success. Hawkman is as likely to succeed, or for that matter fail, as any of them - with an attractive cast and good advance word of mouth, they could get an...

Call them "cult classics." "Guilty pleasures." "Comfort movies." We all have a mental rolodex of flicks that may not be terribly popular but, for one reason or another, they resonate in a very special way. Maybe you saw it at the right moment. Maybe you just see gold where everyone else sees feces. Whatever the case, these are the special favorites that you keep stashed away for sick days. Here are some of ours.

My favorite superhero film of all time is called "Condorman." You've probably never heard of it. It's not an Oscar-nominated picture. It's not particularly well-liked. It isn't based on a comic book. It isn't available on DVD, at least not in the United States. Until recently, I hadn't even seen it since elementary school. To most, it's the very definition of movie theater trash.

To me, it's cinematic gold.

"Condorman" centers on comic book creator Woody Wilkins,...