Kaiju (怪獣 kaijū) is a Japanese word that means "strange beast," but is often translated in English as "monster."
Zerosaur Battles Wolf-Human for Controlling the Outer Space! A salute to the stylish classic movie posters of Toho and Daiei, this super-soft cotton ringspun tee features a pretty vibrant silkcreened image.
Check out this collection of classic "kaiju" trailers:
Our friends at Podcast on Fire are having a Christmas Extravaganza Competition and giving away Shelf Life Clothing T-Shirts & Posters, as well as some Hong Kong movie magazines and DVDs!
Head over to their site and test your knowledge of Hong Kong movies in order to win! It's a pretty fun challenge for Asian Cinema fans!
The Hollywood Reporter reports that Sammo Hung, the vastly underrated Hong Kong star/director/producer/choreographer/talent responsible for dozens and dozens of my favorite movies, is in negotiations to fight some sort of supermonkeys in an upcoming American film directed by Kevin Munroe. Maybe some new exposure will help Sammo's legend grow in the U.S., where he's woefully under-appreciated. Sammo's the equal of Jackie Chan and Yuen Woo Ping (combined!) and should be working on some major projects!
Jackie Chan sent this video to members of his American fan club in 1996, when there were only a few members. It's a personal and pretty entertaining tour of his Hong Kong offices:
Here's a more recent tour of his secret Hong Kong apartment/Batcave:
I stumbled across this video on youtube the other day and I don't think you need to understand Cantonese to see how funny it is. The great Sam Hui sings about water rationing in Hong Kong and goes from bathtub to atomizer and beyond in pursuit of cleanliness:
After I recovered (almost) from hearing the new James Bond movie theme "song" for Quantum of Solace by Jack White and Alicia Keys, I decided to seek out Bond themes that have been rejected over the years and compile them here in the Shelf Life blog for convenient one-stop listening. I can see why most of these were rejected by the producers in favor of the themes they used, but in one or two cases, I'm not so sure. I'd love to hear what was rejected in favor of the Jack White / Alicia Keys "Another Way to Die Another Day" theme.
So, here are the rejected Bond themes (that I know of) that I found on youtube:
BLONDIE- For Your Eyes Only
ALICE COOPER - The Man with the Golden Gun
JOHNNY CASH - Thunderball
DIONNE WARWICK - Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (for Thunderball)
LORRAINE CHANDLER - You Only Live Twice
JULIE ROGERS - You Only Live Twice
ACE OF BASE - Goldeneye
PULP - Tomorrow Never Dies (Tomorrow Never Lies)
SWAN LEE - Tomorrow Never Dies
PET SHOP BOYS - The Living Daylights (This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave)
SAINT ETIENNE - Tomorrow Never Dies
DOT ALLISON - Tomorrow Never Dies (Tomorrow Never Comes)
K.D. LANG - Tomorrow Never Dies (Surrender); Although rejected as the theme song, this song actually appears over the end credits of the movie.
Thanks go out to Stewart at PODCAST ON FIRE for giving us a plug! Check out his site if you're a fan of Asian Cinema. I highly recommend their recent podcast on the late great Lam Ching Ying, one of my favorite Hong Kong movie stars!
Watch their site for some Shelf Life Clothing giveaways soon!
Check out our newest tee, a familiar image to spaghetti western fans. This is our 1st use of 100% organic, natural cotton for our line, and we love the look it gives this design.
Just be careful not to run into Lee Van Cleef while you're wearing it!
"If there is at least one Native in this country for whom Wahoo reasonably reinforces a belief that her or his race is invisible or subhuman -- thus making it even a little bit harder to engage in life’s everyday struggle -- isn’t that enough to bring a curse on our sports teams? It sure seems worse than trading Babe Ruth or banning goats from a ballpark."
There's even a petition. We're all in favor of supernatural explanations for professional sports teams' sucking!
And, of course, signing the petition while wearing one of our Caucasians baseball team logo t-shirts would only help appease the mystical forces that keep Cleveland from winning a championship:
We received an email last week informing us that our use of the famous and oft-silkscreened reproduction of Che Guevara on our popular and thought-provoking "I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THIS GUY IS" tee was an infringement of someone else's copyright, which was incredibly surprising, considering the incredibly vast proliferation of the image on everything from t-shirts to Mike Tyson's abdomen – which is what our tee is satirizing in the first place.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say regarding the current legal status of the image:
Actual legal claim to the image notwithstanding, we've been inspired to avoid involvement in any international skullduggery and copyright claims by tossing out the drawing of the Korda image and updating our shirt to portray "Che" with a puzzled face that supports the punchline that is the real message of our design – that many of the people you see wearing a Che tee have, at best, a vague grasp of the history behind the man displayed on their chest. We think the tee is actually funnier now:
So – whose actual image did I reference in drawing the new design? What face could stand in to allow me to capture the spirit of what "Che Guevara completely stumped as to his own identity" would look like? I started sketching a beret and moustache onto several pictures of confused faces and decided to go with, well ... a confused "Face":
That's right, under that revolutionary beret and moustache – our model was none other than The A-Team's Dirk Benedict.
I'm just going to take a moment to express my frustration with other companies blatantly stealing one of our T-Shirt designs. Mere weeks after we showed our CHE GUEVARA: I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THIS GUY IS design around at the Magic Trade Show, imitations and knock-offs started to pop up:
ShelfLifeClothing.com has added a new design to its poster art gallery, and it's another in our series of posters for movies that only exist in our dreams.
Since we're big fans of blaxploitation and old horror movies, our love of BLACULA inspired this fictional foray into the world of another of the classic Universal monsters, done in the gritty blaxploitation style – WEREWOLF OF HARLEM. Stare into the tortured eyes of our voodoo-gypsy cursed hero and you'll notice a passing resemblance to the great Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, and genre regular Bernie Casey just might have inspired the look of the priest who must find a way to stop the horror that is running loose uptown.
From The Cleveland Plain Dealer: "DeAndre Way is not much of a basketball fan, and he surprisingly has never seen LeBron James play. So when Way saw that James mentioned his stage name, "Soulja Boy," in a recent article, Way was caught way off guard."
From Deshawn Stevenson: "Lebron James is overrated."
From Lebron James: "With DeShawn Stevenson, it's kind of funny. It's almost like Jay-Z [responding to a negative comment] made by Soulja Boy. It doesn't make sense to respond."
Late last Friday night, my good friend Tony sent me a link to this video of a "drunken" Jeff Goldblum:
...Which of course makes me wonder why Tony was searching out "JEFF GOLDBLUM DRUNK" on the Internet late on a Friday night. He's also responsible for sending me a link to the Glen Danzig Video I featured in January.
A man who claimed to be acting out of "curiosity" when he asked seven different women to kick him in the groin was sentenced yesterday to 60 days in jail.
"I cannot be satisfied that you do not presently pose a risk to the community," Justice Bruce Frazer told 28-year-old Jarrett Loft, who had pleaded guilty to one count of mischief to property.
The judge allowed Loft to serve his sentence on weekends so he does not lose his machinist job.
Court had heard on seven different occasions last April and May Loft approached women using trails in city parks and asked them to kick him in the groin.
One of the women, afraid of what the man might do if she refused, kicked him repeatedly.
Loft, an Oshawa native who moved to Guelph several years ago, thanked her and left on his bike.
Yesterday, Frazer appeared frustrated a presentencing report offered little insight into what motivated the crimes.
"It's remarkable for what it doesn't say," the judge said.
Frazer was also concerned with a notation in the report that Loft had taken counselling several years ago and did not feel he needed any more. Jacqueline Coady, Loft's common-law spouse, told the court she is at a loss to explain the man's conduct.
"I can honestly say I find it as odd and peculiar and disturbing as everyone else," said Coady, who was eight months pregnant with the couple's daughter at the time of Loft's arrest.
Coady said Loft told her he developed a "curiosity" after looking at various pornographic websites. She said she had spoken to a counsellor who assessed the man and believed his conduct was a result of curiosity rather than a mental health issue.
Defence counsel Richard Gazzola asked the judge to impose probation with a counselling term.
Assistant Crown attorney Murray deVos suggested a brief jail sentence, calling the crimes "predatory, planned behaviour" in which Loft specifically targeted women who were alone and isolated.
The judge agreed the man's conduct was "disturbing, frightening and has . . . left a lasting impression on the victims."
In a series of victim impact statements, the women describe being disturbed by their encounters with Loft and hesitant to use public parks.
Following the jail sentence Loft will be on probation for two years, during which he must get counselling, not access the Internet and stay away from parks, schoolyards and playgrounds unless with someone approved by his probation officer.
Every once in a while I like to single out something someone took the time to write out and post on the Internet:
Posted by: billy bineson on April 2, 2008 at 04:30:52
ok ill admit i talked trash about this movie when it first was being talked about, and this does look a litte better, but i think its a little dum getting Robert Downey Junior to play Iron Man, because my best friend was just telling me how Robert Downey Junior is a alchoholics in real life, and that iron man in the movie is an alchoholic too. So its a little bit of a cop out for him to play him, its like having someone who really had gamma radiates to play the hulk (aka brian banner). But this movie will sail a lot of tickets anyway because of all the CGI, which i also think is a cop out, make the story about the character, not about fighting and flame throwers, and punching, and cars. But whatever, im not the director, and im probably will go see it anyway, but one of my best friends is a director, and i talked to him and he said he wouldnt have directed the movie, to mainstream for him. thats the type of person we need directing our comic book movies we loving so much, go indy, get back to the roots of it! but im just a geek who needed to vent.
UPDATE! Follow-up posting:
Posted by: billy bineson on April 2, 2008 at 04:38:10
oh i just watched the hulk traielr again, why in the heck is he not blowing everything up and throwing army tanks, and punching building, all hes doign is talking, and talking, and talking.. hulk needs to SMASH! oh and i just reed that the hulk is gonna be red from now on, so anyone think hes gonna turn red in the movie, that actually would be pretty SHIBBY, ok well hopefully these directers start listening to the fans, WE WANT HULK TO SMASH AND QUIT TALKING!
NBC Universal and News Corp. launched a new streaming video site, hulu.com, and it features free, advertiser-supported video streaming content of many classic TV shows and movies, etc. While the site is loaded with gems (This WKRP episode jumped out at me right away), I just wanted to showcase the availability of nine episodes of JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS FLYING ROBOT.
Originally called Giant Robo in Japan, it was dubbed, retitled brilliantly and imported to the U.S. in 1969. It features a ten year old boy named Johnny Sokko that has watch that allows him to control a giant robot that battles various monsters and bad guys. He also wears a suit with short pants, but don't let that fool you – he often packs a gun and has a few shootouts with the evil Gargoyle Gang.
Two years before FIRST BLOOD told the story of a Vietnam vet killing machine harassed by yokels to the point where all hell breaks loose, there was a movie called RUCKUS, which told the story of...a Vietnam vet killing machine harassed by yokels to the point where all hell breaks loose!
Writer director Max Kleven made the low budget flick with a bunch of friends, and the geniune "hey kids, let's put on a show" attitude makes this a great B movie.
Dirk Benedict, between gigs as Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica and Face on The A-Team, played the shell-shocked vet "Kyle Hanson" and Linda Blair played the female lead, with a great cast rounded out by Richard Farnsworth as the local sheriff and John Ford regular Ben Johnson treating the proceedings with respect. Willie Nelson contributed to the banjo-heavy soundtrack. Playing out like a tongue-in-cheek TV movie of the week version of Rambo, but with stunts that look so suicidal and reckless you can't imagine what maniacs outside of a Hong Kong movie would possibly agree to perform them, it's one heck of a fun movie.
A great company called Anchor Bay put out a DVD of RUCKUS in 2000, but it has since become unavailable. DVDs on Amazon will now run you upwards of $65.90! Ouch.
Bud Spencer is an Italian actor whose on-screen persona often resembled Popeye's nemesis Bluto, and his signature fight move was a hammer-like blow on the top of the opponent's head – which sometimes caused victims to spin around with cross-eyes, fall down unconcious, and even occasionally managed to drive an opponent into the ground like a tent stake (see trailer below).
Although he was most often paired with his clear-eyed cohort Terence Hill in spaghetti western comedies, his solo zany medieval action comedy "Soldier of Fortune" is a great romp in which many heads are conked. It sadly isn't currently available on DVD in the U.S., although I did find a region 2 British copy on Amazon.co.uk if you've got a region-free DVD player.
Someone please step up and get around to releasing this absurd gem of a movie here!
Cleveland Cavalier guard Damon Jones, who has proclaimed that he is "The Best Shooter in the World" and also gave himself the nickname "Handsome," grew tired of the fauxhawk hairstyle he's been seen in for the past few months, so he announced that his next hairstyle would be one voted on by fans at cavs.com.
Seeing a unique opportunity to use his "handsome" head as a canvas, I submitted photoshop designs of zany hairstyle ideas – and now the voting is over, and one of my designs was the winner:
The design is based on the three-finger "Three on a Platter" salute Damon gives whenever he makes a 3-point shot. Now we all must wait with bated breath to see if Damon is good for his word and actually shows up on the court with one of the funniest hairstyles in the NBA.
In this update to our previous blog about Edison Chen, we have exclusively obtained the latest racy photo in Hong Kong's "Sexy Photo Gate" scandal.
Mr. Chen held a press conference today announcing his retirement from show business in order to, as he puts it, "give myself an opportunity to heal myself."
Watch his press conference below:
Previous photos leaked to the Internet by a mysterious figure called "Kira" have shown Edison cavorting with such Hong Kong luminaries as Gillian Chung, Cecilia Cheung, and Bobo Chan. Through sources that do not wish to be named, we at shelflifeclothing.com have exclusively obtained the latest photo, the most shocking and revealing of all:
Please check out this video I put together showcasing some of the greatest film score composers of all time:
Here are the songs featured in the video:
John Barry - Dusk at Piz Gloria (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) Akira Ifukube - Title Credits (Destroy All Monsters) Bernard Herrmann - Main Title (North By Northwest) John Williams - The Asteroid Field (The Empire Strikes Back) Max Steiner - The Adventures of Don Juan Lalo Schifrin - Magnum Force Theme Henry Mancini - A Shot in the Dark Jerry Goldsmith - Ave Santini (The Omen) Erich Wolfgang Korngold - March of the Merry Men (The Adventures of Robin Hood) Miklos Rosza - Prelude/Car Crash/Rigby Reardon-Private Dick/Enter Juliet (Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid) Ennio Morricone - Man with a Harmonica (Once Upon a Time in the West)
The big news rocking Hong Kong for the past month has been the whopper of a blunder by HK popstar/moviestar Edison Chen, who took his cotton-candy pink, custom-made Apple laptop to get repaired – somehow forgetting that it held countless graphic photos of him having sex with most of the major starlets in the HK entertainment industry, including huge stars Gillian Chung, Cecilia Cheung, and Bobo Chan. Nearly 1,300 photos of major celebrities in various states of undress exploded across the Internet.
The bad news for Edison (besides already being cut from future movie projects and endorsement contracts) is that almost all of the ladies he is seen with in these racy photos are under contract to triad-controlled agencies (including the 16-year old niece of Albert Yeung, head of the Emperor Entertainment Group). Loss of their all-important chaste image in the HK entertainment industry means a major loss of revenue for some very tough people, and Edison's going to have a target on his head. He's currently hiding out in North America, probably living in fear for his life.
FYI: Edison Chen will be seen in a cameo in this summer's Batman movie, The Dark Knight, which is now officially a cursed production.
American Idol's Josiah Leming, the most self-absorbed, wrong-minded teen blunderkind to grace the airwaves this week!
Why the judges and producers decided to let this whining, infantile buffoon continue as far as he has is baffling. The greatest favor anyone could have done for this young man, and America, is to have doused him with icewater and instantly sent him packing with the word "talentless" superimposed over his whining, delusional face. This young man needs a dose of reality in the worst way. To imagine this mediocre, tacky, off-key stupe leaving his family to childishly live in his car and pursue his pie-eyed dreams of a career in music is sad. Add to that his off-key, vapid, Coldplay-imitating, fake-British-accent vocals, and we have a winner of a loser.
This photo, from his myspace page (so many homeless teens living in cars have myspace webpages these days), should inspire society to create a powerful space cannon in order to propel this kid into the farthest reaches of space, where his special brand of entitlement will not appear on network television and influence any other kids to try their hand at being an ass. His self-penned caption underneath the photo reads:
a little something for all the lovely ladies ( :
In conclusion , I'd like to say that you've also gotta love when an 18-year-old white kid refers to his synthesizer as "The Keys."
While riding a bus on the upper west side of Manhattan as a kid, I looked out and noticed Roy Scheider jogging along. None of the other passengers, who all happened to be French exchange students, noticed him as traffic allowed us match his pace while we made our way downtown. I quietly smiled to myself and mentally checked Roy Scheider's name on of my list of celebrities or personal heroes that I'd glimpsed on the streets of New York, as I'm sure many New Yorkers do when they stumble upon a notable person. About five minutes later, one of the French kids screamed out, "Qu'est que ce!? ... ROY SHEEEDARE!!!" and suddenly the windows of the bus were filled with kids hanging out, waving and calling to the star of "Les Dents de la Mer" in French like a bunch of schoolgirls would scream at the Beatles. Mr. Scheider looked over, waved and smiled without breaking his stride, and I admired his charming attitude and casual acceptance of a moment that seemed a bit surreal to me.
He passed away over the weekend, and I just wanted to note how his performance as Martin Brody in JAWS meant something to a lot of people all over the world, and definitely meant a lot to me. Here's to a time when real men were leading actors.
In talking to some twentysomething friends of mine, I found that none of them were really familiar with Rick Moranis' work outside of Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Spaceballs, and Ghostbusters, which is very depressing to me. I'm posting some of my favorite sketches from SCTV in an effort to showcase just how funny Rick was back in the day – the Michael McDonald bit is one of the funniest sketches I've ever seen:
I got the complete SCTV series on DVD for Christmas, and I'm only just getting to watching them. If you've never seen any of SCTV, you're really missing out on some funny stuff.
John Agnello, producer of such seminal bands as Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr., was spotted in one of our shirts on Brooklyn-based rockers The Hold Steady's website:
We've finally got our CHAMBARA POSTER shirt up on our website!
Since Sergio Leone lifted the plot of Akira Kurosawa's classic YOJIMBO to make his groundbreaking spaghetti western – A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS – we thought it would be cool to create a poster for an imaginary Kurosawa remake of Leone's masterpiece, THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY.
This original Shelf Life Clothing design is inspired by vintage samurai and spaghetti western movie posters, and imagines an all-star epic featuring Toshiro Mifune's "Sanjuro" character (The Good) crossing swords with "Zatoichi" himself, Shintaro Katsu (The Ugly), and Tatsuya Nakadai in "Sword of Doom" mode (The Bad).
SHELF LIFE CLOTHING COMPANY is part of a graphic, web, audio and t-shirt design studio daringly based in glamorous Cleveland, OH. Why Cleveland? Why not? Our screenprinting is done right here, and we get to see Lebron James play all the time.
We make high-end, limited run, 100% ring-spun soft cotton shirts with a humorous underground vibe.
We source our blank shirts from American companies, ANVIL KNITWEAR and AMERICAN APPAREL, ensuring our products are environmentally and socially conscious.
Our inspirations are drawn from a wide array of pop culture imagery – particularly from classic Japanese, Hong Kong and Bollywood cinema, 60s spy movies, vintage rock album art, WWII aviation art, spaghetti westerns; eurotrash cinema, and pro sports – Shelf Life makes a point of paying eye-popping tribute to unsung B-movie classics while also satirizing commonplace ideas and delusional behaviors.
Our designs have been discussed and featured by a diverse range of media, including ESPN, The Plain Dealer, Salt Lake Tribune, DIME magazine and Film Score Monthly.
We take great care in making quality shirts that you will look cool wearing!
