Ayala bridge bukas na!

Ayala Bridge. STAR/Edd Gumban

MANILA, Philippines – Binuksan na sa publiko ang Ayala Bridge matapos ang tatlong ulit na pagkakaantala nito.
Ayon kay Manila Vice  Mayor Isko Moreno, bagama’t partial opening pa lang ito dahil tig-isang linya lang sa northbound at southbound lane ang bukas sa mga motorista, malaking tulong na rin ito upang maibsan ang masikip na daloy ng trapiko sa ibang  lansangan.
Sinabi ni Moreno na sa Hulyo 23 ang kabuuang pagbubukas ng tulay dahil may ilang bahagi pa ng tulay ang hindi pa nasesementuhan.
Paalala pa nito, hindi pa maaaring dumaan ang mga truck at bus sa tulay.
“Nananawagan tayo sa ating mga kababayan na magagamit na po nila ang Ayala Bridge pero na­nanawagan kami na sana magdahan-dahan lang po at may mga barrier pa pong nakalagay sa magkabilang gilid,” ani Moreno.
Matatandaang Abril 21 ang naunang target date para buksan ang tulay na iniurong ng Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) sa Hunyo 11 na hindi rin natuloy dulot umano ng pag-ulan.

Tags : Tayo Bus, Tayo Bus Season 2 Full Episode, Cartoon for children

Tayo Character Coming to 150 Seoul Buses

SEOUL, Apr. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — A total of 150 Seoul town buses will be transformed into ‘Logi,’ a famous cartoon character that looks like a cute little bus from the Tayo the Little Bus animation.

The Seoul city government and the cooperation for town buses will wrap Logi prints on 150 buses. Some 15 buses will be also adorned with LED eyes.

Choi Pan-Sul, the New Politics Alliance for Democracy member for the Jung-gu district in Seoul, said that two lines with Tayo-wrapped buses established in March 2014 saw their average number of customers and earnings increase compared to earlier periods.  

Tags : Tayo Bus, Tayo the little bus , Cartoon for kids

Tayo and friends to feature on more Seoul buses

The first passengers to ride the city buses inspired by “Tayo the Little Bus” last month wave their hands at the Seoul Plaza in Jung District, central Seoul. [NEWSIS]
For many children in Seoul, seeing Tayo and his friends sprawled across the city’s buses might just be like a dream come true.

The bus project, featuring characters from the animated television series “Tayo the Little Bus,” was initiated on March 26 as a one-month event to mark National Public Transportation Day. But thanks to its enormous popularity, especially among kids, the Seoul city government decided to extend the operation until May 5 and increase the number of buses with Tayo and his friends from four to 100.

“We have heard a lot of requests to increase the number,” an official from the transportation division of the Seoul Metropolitan Government said, “because sometimes parents and their children spend a lot of time trying to get [to the areas] where those buses come and go. So we decided to expand the Tayo buses to reach different neighborhoods.”

He added that other regional governments had also asked if they could operate the same buses, though intellectual property rights issues prohibited the project’s expansion.

“Tayo the Little Bus,” an animated series presented by Iconix Entertainment, follows the adventures of Tayo, a little blue bus, and his band of friends.

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon added on his Twitter account that the city was also considering introducing a subway train designed after “Larva,” an immensely popular cartoon show for kids that features a pair of red and yellow slugs.

“The city is also working on doing something for ‘Pororo the Little Penguin,’” he said.

The Tayo buses - Nos. 370, 2016, 2211 and 9401- operate in the same way as regular city buses, stopping at each station. Parents and children can use the Daum map to check run times and the real-time locations of each vehicle.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government said more than 400 people hopped on those buses every day - a significant increase compared to previous periods. It also noted that it plans to add various features, including destination announcements using the voices of Tayo characters.

Seoul said that it costs about 3 million won ($2,840) to paint each vehicle. Mayor Park said the idea for the Tayo buses came from a request via his Twitter account last year from a Seoul resident and mother.

Tags : Tayo Bus, Tayo the little bus, Tayo Bus Season 2

'Zootopia' And The Disney Animated B-Movie

Zootopia is a seemingly unconventional Disney animated feature released during the would-be off season. That’s what makes it interesting and potentially exciting.
Walt Disney

DIS -0.61% dropped a trailer for Zootopia yesterday. It was a barebones teaser, with just the premise being laid out via Jason Bateman narration with just a bit of character introductions offered on a white screen. With no hint of plot or conflict, this was an announcement teaser for a film that wasn’t really on many peoples’ radars. It takes place in a world without humans, whereby animals of all kinds are now fully anthropomorphized. It’s odd that they had to explain that as (for example) the 1970′s Robin Hood needed no explanation. But maybe Disney was tired of having to answer all of the horrifyingly disturbing questions concerning the Cars/Planes universe (note: Planes: Fire and Rescue is the best Planet of the Apes sequel ever made). What is interesting is that the film isn’t a grand adventure saga or sweeping fairy tale epic. It is basically a crime comedy, a “reluctant partners” story about a fox (Jason Bateman) who is framed for a crime and the bunny (Ginnifer Goodwin) who must bring him in and presumably discovers the truth and helps clear his name. If that doesn’t sound like a typical Walt Disney animated feature in this day-and-age, that’s because Zootopia is a rare in-house Walt Disney Studios animated “B-movie.”
Zootopia comes out on March 4th, 2016, and it is not remotely the would-be main event for Walt Disney next year. They’ve got Finding Dory coming June 17th, 2016 and then they have the (presumably) sweeping Polynesian-set period piece adventure Moana for November 23rd, 2016. Of those three, you can probably guess which one is least likely to get a Best Animated Feature Academy Award nomination come early 2017. It’s been awhile since Walt Disney put out what you could consider (by their standards) a B-movie cartoon. Just in terms of recent history, this goes back to around 1995, where they had the glorified DTV offering A Goofy Movie in the spring before the big summer release (Pocahontas) and the Pixar spectacular Toy Story over Thanksgiving.
But that doesn’t mean that every would-be B-movie is a glorified TV adaptation akin to Return to Neverland or The Tigger Movie. Back in 2000, the big event was Dinosaur while Disney unleashed the offbeat and unconventional (and famously troubled) The Emperor’s New Groove in mid-December. That brings up another important point: The would-be second priority feature in the box office food chain sometimes becomes the top dog in terms of quality. Quick, do you prefer Dinosaur or The Emperor’s New Groove? That’s what I thought. And while I may be in the minority opinion, I’m the freak who loves Ratatouille but loves Meet the Robinsons even more. Now to be fair, over the last twenty years, the majority of so-called B-movies (which for the record is my own simplistic labeling) were theatrical pictures that barely went to theaters or came from other production houses. They were films like Gnomeo and Juliet,  Planes, and Mars Needs Moms. Obviously the Robert Zemeckis-produced or directed motion-capture films were not cheap, but few will argue that A Christmas Carol was more of a priority for Walt Disney in 2009 than Up. 
Having said that, the positioning of A Christmas Carol in early November did (I have long argued) real damage to Walt Disney’s The Princess and the Frog which was prevented from opening wide on Thanksgiving weekend like it darn well should have. But generally the various animated projects don’t clash with each other. It’s not like The Wild caused any problems for Cars back in 2006. What’s interesting about Zootopia is that it is indeed a pure Walt Disney production released outside of the prime season (early March, just as The Wild was in mid-April), which is rather unusual for the so-called off-season release. Disney hasn’t released a big-scale in-house animated production in the off-season since Meet the Robinsons back in March of 2007. Truth be told, Disney spent much of the last 10-15 years (post-Lilo & Stitch, pre-Princess and the Frog) in a place where the Walt Disney animated feature itself was a glorified B-movie companion to the year’s Pixar release, with the likes of Chicken Little and Bolt being presented as “the one that gets Disney its luster back.” Yes, Chicken Little was a big release and a solid hit ($314m worldwide on a $150m budget) in November, 2005, an attempt to score big with CGI animation and establish a new mascot character outside of Pixar and the princess line-up.

It says something that Disney is strong enough in the aftermath of Frozen and Big Hero 6 to again strong enough to offer an A-level Disney, an A-level Pixar, and a B-level Disney animated feature in the same calendar year. And the reason that this “matters” beyond my own curiosity is that the so-called B-movie allows that much more variety in terms of the kinds of animated stories and kinds of animated characters Disney can create. The likes of Zootopia doesn’t necessarily have to be a grand and sweeping adventure in the classic Disney tradition or what-have-you. It can be a crazy word-play based comedy like The Emperor’s New Groove, a dazzlingly creative and heartbreaking time travel adventure like Meet the Robinsons, or it can be a delightful throwback like Winnie the Pooh. Zootopia may not be the best or grandest Disney animated feature in 2016. But by virtue of its lower profile status and its existence as one of three, it has the freedom to be a little offbeat, a little quirky, a little out of the conventional Disney wheelhouse, as for that matter do the other two films by virtue of the same volume. Maybe Zootopia will magically end up being better than Finding Dory and Moana. All due respect, when is the last time you quoted Dinosaur?  

Tags : Cartoon for kids, cartoon 2015, masha and the bear

Holy Crap Does the Newest Justice League Cartoon Go Dark

Bruce Timm’s is returning to DC animation with Justice League: Gods and Monsters, and wow, he is not screwing around.
In the weeks leading up to its release, Machinima is giving us a three-part prequel webseries, the first of which is now online. It’s called “Twisted,” and features a new Batman (Kirk Langstrom) on the hunt for Harley Quinn. If that title doesn’t tip you off, it’s not for kids.
Ready yourself for dismembered bodies, corpse art, a bizarrely revealing Harley Quinn outfit, and hey, why not the most brutal incarnation of a movie Batman we’ve ever seen, and check out episode one:

What the heck did I just watch?

Justice League: Gods and Monsters is set in an alternate universe (in case you couldn’t tell), and as far as we know, is separate from the loose chronology of the more recent DC animated movies.
In this world, the Justice League is a crimefighting organization with notoriously brutal methods of maintaining the peace. Each of the core members also has a radically different origin story. As you saw, this Batman is doesn’t exactly have a “no kill” rule. Instead, he’s a scientist named Kirk Langstrom who accidentally turned himself into a vampire while trying to cure cancer. Superman is the son of General Zod, and was raised by a family of Mexican immigrants. Finally, the mantle of Wonder Woman was taken up by Bekka, a comic book character who married Orion, one of Darkseid’s sons.

What is it about?

Gods and Monsters is set in the aftermath of a series of suspicious deaths of well-known scientists, which casts suspicion on the Justice League itself.
If you’re interested in learning more about this alternate universe, you’ll want to check out the next two episodes of the Machinima series, as well as a four-issue prequel comic book series that will be released alongside the film.

And when is the movie out?

The movie will be available on Blu-ray and VOD on July 28, 2015. A Comic-Con premiere seems fairly likely.

Tags : Cartoon movies, cartoon for kids, Masha and the Bear

Cartoon Network to Revive ‘Ben 10′

Cartoon Network wants a second lease on life for “Ben 10.”
The cable outlet, part of Time Warner’s Turner, plans to introduce a new version of the popular animated series, which debuted in 2006 and chronicled the adventures of Ben Tennyson, a ten-year-old boy who discovers an alien device known as the Omnitrix that gives him the power to change into various aliens. Cartoon Network Studios will produce the new series, which will debut on Cartoon Network international channels in the fall of 2016 and in North America in 2017. Man of Action Entertainment, the original production team behind the series that includes creators Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, Duncan Rouleau and Steven T. Seagle, will serve as executive producers nd John Fang will be supervising producer.
“’Ben 10’ is a worldwide phenomenon for 10 years running, with more than 230 TV episodes produced. There hasn’t been an original production since 2012, but the overall popularity of the character has continued on,” said Rob Sorcher, Cartoon Network’s chief content officer, in an emailed response to questions about the project. “This demand from audiences around the world is the driving spark behind the relaunch. So we are creating this iteration for an entirely new generation of kids.”
The effort provides a map, of sorts, to buried treasure lying deep within many media companies. Content aimed at kids can live on well after its original air date and its time in syndication. The audiences for such fare often “age out” of it within a few years’ time, but new generations of the industry’s youngest viewers can easily catch on. Viacom in March, for example, launched its Noggin subscription-video-on-demand service that largely depends on old series like “Blue’s Clues” and “Little Bear” to lure audiences to its $5.99 per month offering. Likewise, some PBS stations continue to offer the landmark series “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” in some format, even though the famous host passed away in 2003.
To be sure, revivals are becoming more popular in all many corners of the media world. NBC plans to offer a retooled version of 1990s  sitcom “Coach.” And Netflix has unveiled plans to launch”Fuller House,” an update of the ABC sitcom “Full House.” What the animated series have in their favor: cartoon characters can carry on for years without aging, and dependence on actors is less obvious than it is with scripted programs.
Media outlets like Turner have a more powerful incentive to keep popular cartoon franchises alive. The merchandise associated with them is often worth billions. Cartoon Network said toy and game efforts associated with “Ben 10” have generated $4.5 billion in retail sales around the world.
The original “Ben 10” played out over the course of four linked animated series as well as a handful of animated movies. The older episodes will be “rested” in the U.S. during launch phase, said Sorcher.
He also suggested Cartoon Network would work to make the series appealing to viewers who were fond of watching video on the go via mobile devices. “The last generation of kids were the first digital natives. This generation is the first mobile natives,” he said. “You’ll see that reflected in our content plan.”
The relaunch of the series comes as Turner has vowed to beef up youth-skewing networks like Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Boomerang by creating content that can be used in both U.S. and international operations and also be tapped to strengthen digital means of distribution. Last July, Turner named Christina Miller, an executive with experience developing consumer products and digital operations, to oversee the three outlets.
Cartoon Network vowed the new “Ben 10” would feature “many new and fan-favorite aliens,” and depict Ben traveling the country with his cousin Gwen and Grandpa Max during summer vacation. For the series, however, whatever break it enjoyed seems to be over.

Tags : Cartoon movies, cartoon for kids, Masha and the Bear