Toshihiro Kawamoto guest of honor at AM^2 2012

“AM2 PROUDLY ANNOUNCES CELEBRATED STUDIO BONES CHARACTER DESIGNER AND DIRECTOR TOSHIHIRO KAWAMOTO AS THE FIRST OFFICIAL GUEST OF HONOR FOR HIGHLY ANTICIPATED 2012 CONVENTION

“A Founding Member of the World Famous Bones Anime Studio Comes to this Summer¹s Most Anticipated Anime, Manga and Music Convention this June 15-17, 2012 at the Anaheim Convention Center and Anaheim Hilton! Get your Passports
Today and Experience the Difference!

“LOS ANGELES, Calif. (February 17, 2012) ­ Celebrated character designer and director, TOSHIHIRO KAWAMOTO, of such famed animes as COWBOY BEBOP, MOBILE SUITE GUNDAM ZZ, MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM 0080, MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM 0083, TEKKAMAN BLADE, BLOOD THE LAST VAMPIRE, ESCAFLOWNE, MOBILE ANGEL ANGELIC LAYER, WITCH HUNTER ROBIN, FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, SCRAPPED PRINCESS, EUREKA SEVEN, OURAN HIGH SCHOOL HOST CLUB, GHOST IN THE SHELL and outside of Japan as the character designer and animation director for the beloved many more will attend this summer¹s most aniticipated anime, manga and music convention AM2 (June 15-17, 2012; Anaheim Convention Center and Anaheim Hilton). More info and attendee registration can be found at www.am2con.org

“Kawamoto founded the world famous anime studio Studio BONES in 1998 with Masahiko Minami (former Sunrise producer) and Hiroshi Ousaka (animator colleague who passed away in 2007. He has an animation career that spans over 25 years and has a long list of high profile works but is best known for his work as the character designer and animation director for the ever popular anime, COWBOY BEBOP.
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Book review: Mystic Investigators: Bullets & Brimstone

Mystic Investigators: Bullets & Brimstone
By Patrick Thomas & John L. French
Published by Dark Quest Books
ISBN: 978-0-9826197-3-5
Review copy purchased by reviewer

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

Fresh from my review of Stefan Kanfer’s bio of Humphrey Bogart, here’s my review of another Bogie fan created by New York homeboy Patrick Thomas. Those of you familiar with the world of Murphy’s Lore will welcome the return of Negral, the forgotten fire god of Sumeria who became the Devil’s Detective to avoid fading away. Fresh from his triumph in Patrick’s previous publication, “Lore and Dysorder”, which this book keeps referring to (or was it this book that preceded “Lore and Dysorder”? Let’s do the Time Warp again!), Negral joins forces with a mortal cop, a police detective named Bianca Jones, to track down one of the Devil’s lost souls. That’s someone who signed a contract with the Devil and tries to get out of it.
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Book review: Tough Without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart

Tough Without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart
By Stefan Kanfer
Published by: Borzoi Books, aka Alfred A. Knofp, Random House, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-27100-6
Review copy purchased by reviewer

Review by Ida Vega-Landow

This has got to be one of the best books I ever read about one of my favorite celebrities! I’ve been a Bogie fan for as long as I can remember, and I’ve read a lot about him as an actor and a man, but nobody humanizes him as completely as Stefan Kanfer does. He goes into great detail about Bogie’s background and life—his socialite parents, the exclusive prep school that he dropped out of, his brief naval career and less than successful acting career on Broadway before he got his big break in the movies, his three failed marriages before he met Lauren Bacall—but he never gets boring, judgmental or moralistic. This Stefan Kanfer is a straight-shooter; he tells it like it was for one of America’s greatest male show business icons, and lets us be the ultimate judges on what kind of man Humphrey Bogart was.
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