Just an artist who has an older comic-book-ish feel to his stuff IMO. I don't really collect the prints myself, but I certainly dig his work. His set of Star Wars posters and the Akira poster are definitely my faves.

As someone that grew up with this movie, read every manga, saw the anime when I was just a kid, and owns an original cell from the anime, this greatly saddens me.

I had seen those Star Wars prints before, but that Akira work is definitely amazing

Damn man. I'm jealous that you got one. Is it weird that moving to Austin sounds better I'd I'd have chances at awesome stuff like this. My sister lives bout 15 minutes from there I think. But her work schedule prob won't allow her to be a reliable mule for me.

i have the Empire Strikes Back by Stout. they dropped on nye and i happened to take that day off from work. the went up around 1124am EST and were gone what seemed like seconds later.

the print is stunning.

i wanted to try for the set of 3 (the non variant set), but the solo ones went up first, and i didnt want to wait around.

Just googled him. Thanks. His Star Wars prints are unique (except for Han Solo in Empire who looks shoddy.) But the AKIRA poster looks a bit to close to Otomo's own pencil and ink. Maybe it's just me..

Or did he just take Otomo's images and make a new poster?

Akira is not a great piece of science fiction. But it's visually amazing. And for the time and era, an amazing thing to see. But personally, it was one of those movies I grew out of really quickly.

What pisses me off about this remake is set in New York City. Fuck that. I grew up in NYC. I know this city and I even still discover stuff about this city, but why is every other stupid movie being set in New York City?!?! I want to know more about other cities. Set it in Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Hong Kong or whatever; still cliche but not as bad as NYC. Enough already.

Well muling for this particular print would have been a big crap-shoot - the online tickets to the 'Mondo Mystery Movie' sold out in under 30 seconds, and you had to attend the movie to buy the print. Being a 10pm show, the posters didn't go on sale til about 12:40am, and we didn't go home until 1:25. We live only minutes from Alamo's downtown & south (where Mondo is) locations, but my girlfriend was still pissed I dragged her to such a late movie and then stayed for nearly an hour after it was over


Somebody mentioned this in the comments section of some news-site reporting on the event. To be honest, until reading that & seeing pictures online, I never thought of it. In person I thought it was plain as day that it was a Stout poster - he certainly seems to have a distinct type of composing / arranging his work. He kept the anime/manga look to all the characters - but they're all hand drawn by him.

If I heard right, he draws each character & depiction separate & arranges them all as separate layers. I think staying true to the art style that these characters were originally depicted in is pretty vital - especially to please Akira fans with this work rather than just the collectors who dig his work. After all, it's not an actor's likeness he's working with, its somebody else's character drawings. I believe this is his only animated poster to date, but I would imagine that if he'd put his 80's-American-comic-book style to the characters of Akira, it could really be a huge turn off the biggest fans of the movie & manga.

Oh, and that's a nice poster you've got there Tony color me jealous, as I was mentioning earlier today that the Stout trilogy posters are some of the only prints I'd call must-haves on my wall.

It would be great if the movie goes as planned...and then no one goes to see it.

UPDATE: Sulu is also very wary of Hollywood's take on Akira. Let's hope this doesn't turn into another Avatar [or actually, as gatchabert pointed out, maybe it's better if it does]

http://io9.com/#!5794934/george-takei-to-warner-bros-dont-whitewash-akira

ugh...I thought they canned this idea.

it's sad--"whitewashing" the story and all. Isn't it kind of and insult to our intelligence as an American/western audience--especially for the white folks--when WB and the like think that we can't handle watching anyone on a big budget film other than white folks? Akira was ground-breaking in certain respects as far as what went into it and where it took off, so if you're going to do a remake of a classic, shouldn't it be just as ballsy? in a good way, I mean.

Anyway, what does Mr. Otomo think about this? anyone know?

My guess is that regardless of how he feels about this turd idea, he rests comfortable at night, confident that he made the baddest manga on earth.

Otomo is a pretty happening dude, and still creating. Freedom, Steamboy, Metropolis... Why not just get him to be involved in this vomit idea? The only thing I could see redeeming this waste of celluloid.

If my plot to overthrow the world suceeds, I promise I will can this movie.

I'm with you Vombie, it's insulting to EVERYONE of any race (maybe for different reasons though.)

The best thing that can happen is Riff Tracks will have some primo moments with it.

Who cares if the actor for a movie based on Japanese source material is actually Japanese himself. Not like there are a ton of notable male Japanese actors out there- or even Asian male actors, for that matter. Would it be better if they found a Chinese guy and cast him for the part? Hmm?

What Takei's main beef is, is that there's so FEW chances for Asian (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc. any of them!) actors to do anything in Hollywood outside of type-cast roles. Now here's an opportunity for 2 (at least) to have staring parts in a major film (based on the characters in the source material) and it's just being "whitewashed" and those chances are being taken away. Your'e right too, though, a lot of non-Asian Americans probably wouldn't notice if the actor was Japanese vs. Korean, Chinese, etc. if they did cast an Asian actor (without using Wikipedia.)

it's exactly attitudes like this that forces the hand of hollywood to cast white actors. there are plenty of asian-americans who do care, and even a larger body of asians around the world that also care.

do you know how infuriating it is to see even mere background characters in a movie played by the "wrong" asian type, speaking a hacked up pseudo-asian-language?

why not find some Japanese-American actors? they introduce lots of new white talent--why not give others a chance? I think they should give Asian-American actors a go at this.

Just kidding. I really think they should pull the plug on this...unless they made this in Japan--with Japanese actors, Japanese language, Katsuhiro Otomo as the consultant, subtitles and the whole deal, but with the big Hollywood budget.

eh...what a mess. other than money, was there even a good reason to do it? that was a rhetorical question.

yeah definitely. my thing is that WB is really saying, "white audiences don't want to see anything other than movies with white actors". I don't know...maybe that's true to a certain point--or maybe they haven't really taken the risk otherwise. I just think it's a put-down on white viewers especially for hollywood to think that they couldn't handle it. like, really? seriously? we're talking about AKIRA--not Mary Poppins. my guess is that a predominantly white fanbase made AKIRA such a success in the West in the first place. But to them I guess if the movie has asian or black actors, it becomes an "asian" or "black" film, but a film with white actors can just be a film about people and we should all be able to relate and go see it, so let's whitewash--or effectively dilute AKIRA, Dragonball, Astro Boy, Speed Racer, the Last Samurai, Dances with Wolves, Lion King, anything that had to do with Egypt. It's really shitty how the movie business keeps this thinking going. But I guess more than anything, it just boils down to marketing to your target audience and making that money. no art. no progression. no fair treatment. no balls. no respect. just "how can we get a few million people to pay us 10 bucks a piece this summer to go see something vaguely familiar to them?"

Dragonball didn't do so well for this reason, right? no?
that should've said one of two things. Stop doing live-action anime movies, and/or don't change the ethnicity of the characters--it's insulting to viewers and to the original material. Are they saying that it's an improvement? I mean, they wouldn't do it the other way around, so why is it OK to go down this one way street?

For those of you taking issue with the Akira actor ethnicity thing, did you feel the same way about the two principal actors in V for Vendetta not being English? Just curious.

I didnt know Hugo Weaving wasn't British..


saw this on imdb. wouldnt this give him a sliver of British upbringing?

"During his early childhood, the Weaving family spent most of their time traveling between Nigeria, Great Britain."

AFAIK he's Australian. And Portman is Israeli.

Haha, I didn't see it, but I think the difference would be between nationality not race.

that's called acting, right Roger? Christian Bale fan here.
But we know that's not the issue.
the guys who would play the characters in AKIRA might be decent actors--nothing against them. work is work, I guess. the problem is "why would you even think to not cast Asian leads?" like it's not important.
If they did a remake of the Great Gatsby or something, it wouldn't even cross their minds to cast non-white leads. and non-white actors wouldn't even show up to audition probably. Hollywood will keep white stuff white and take your stuff and make it white too. but I think it's racist. Are the actors racist? no. It's the guys in charge who think to do it that way.

Anyway, they can make the Titanic break in half, Star Wars, and blow 100million to create a Waterworld, make Jeff Bridges look 20yrs younger, but you can't find a Japanese actor or two to play a role in a movie that is? I don't buy it.

I'm done ranting. I feel like watching AKIRA now it's been a while.

quick question though. In V for Vendetta, they had cast an actor to play V before Hugo Weaving--but the actor just couldn't get past having to wear the mask the whole time, so they gave it to Hugo--who didn't mind. Anyone know who the original actor was?