The Null Device

Want some authentic Daft Punk robot helmets? That'll be US$65,000 and one year. Oh, and you'll need a license from the band. Also, be aware that they don't run on batteries, so if you want to wear yours with the lights running, you'll have to do so whilst tethered to a power cord.

(via Engadget) ¶ daft punk fashion gadgets 0

I just came back from seeing Interstella 5555, and it rocked. It's a collaboration between more-interesting-than-most French vocoder-house outfit Daft Punk and an anime studio, and is essentially an animated feature whose soundtrack is the entire last Daft Punk album, with a few minor edits. The story involves an ancient villain turned pop-music svengali abducting the Biggest Rock Band In The Galaxy from a concert on the Planet of the Smurfs and pressing them into work as a manufactured pop sensation on Earth. The imagery references a lot of classic anime (for example, the spaceship control room and spacesuit designs borrow from 1970s anime series Battle of the Planets, and that's not to mention the shape-shifting spaceship); most of the characters are drawn fairly naturalistically, except for the band's drummer who is a goofy, smurf-like munchkin. Anyway, hopefully this will end up on DVD; it certainly made me see Daft Punk in a new light.

(The feature which came before it was Kaidohmaru, another anime set in feudal Japan. It didn't really grab me; also, the video seemed very washed out. I'm not sure whether this was a technical problem or some anime idiom alien to me.)

¶ anime daft punk film interstella 5555 0