32 years ago today the Sanrio company came up with the concept of a cat made out of some sort of marshmallow that took the world by storm. Join us as we celebrate the birth of the most popular character ever to be based on nothing.

Thanks to Trevor and Tash for letting me know about this day. Now here’s Hello Kitty showing you the finger:

Ramping up to the big Iron Man feature and follow on the heels of 2 successful Ultimate Avengers direct-to-DVD releases, Lions Gate and Marvel will release Invicible Iron Man on January 23rd. The invincibly tiny cover art was provided by DavidDVD and heres a synopsis of the plot:

While raising the ruins of a long buried Chinese kingdom, billionaire inventor Tony Stark digs up far more than he bargained for. He unleashes an age-old prophecy that foretells the resurrection of the Mandarin, the emperor of China’s darkest and most violent dynasty. To confront this destructive force, Stark creates an armored suit infused with high-tech weaponry to stop the evil that he himself has raised form the earth.

I’m supposing this will take place inside the Ultimate Avengers continuity as a prequel or something.

Special features include featurettes on the origin of Iron Man, a gallery of Iron Man armor, and a first look at the 4th Marvel DVD feature, Dr. Strange. Suggested retail is $20 as usual but theres a Gift Set planned with Iron man and both Ultimate Avengers movies and a Marvel Icons Iron Man bust. That will set you back $60. They obviously carefully planned this gift set release for the busy Valentines day season. Ladies, you now know how to charm your comic nerd boyfriend, and its with cartoons and the torso of an alcoholic in a suit of armor.

Hollywood Reporter is breaking news that the Matrix directing Wachowski Brothers are now going to helm a Live Action update of Speed Racer for producer Joel Silver.

The article mentions Vince Vaughn being screen tested for Racer X, and that Larry & Andy want to make a more family friendly movie unlike their existing efforts (Bound, The Matrix, V for Vendetta).

They’re of course promising mind blowing effects and racing in ways we’ve never seen before. I certainly hope so because after this summers 1-2 Nascar punch of Cars and Ricky Bobby, I’m not sure racing is very interesting to film without the type of unexpected chaos a car chase in a movie allows. That said, I’m a fan of the car chase in Matrix Reloaded and hope they’ve got some fresh ideas.

Speed Racer is of course an infamously cliched Japanese animated series, and one of the first to ever be imported to the US.

Of course, instead of posting an actual Speed Racer clip to go with this article, I’ll go with the Dexter’s Lab send up. Its funnier and less boring.