A Dash of Paprika May 27, 2007

With this post we begin a new series and blog category called Macs in Media, which details appearances and cameos of our favorite computer on television, in movies and other popular media. True, most Apple cameos are sometimes chokingly-omnipresent and obvious product placements from Apple’s marketing overdrive department, but now and then they manage a subtle little slip that titillate the Mac faithful, or occasionally even come up with a more meaty appearance where the computer is actually a significant part of the story. Or not. Whatever. (Let’s just say us fanboys get tickled pink when we see a Mac in a movie.)

PAPURIKA (2006), directed by Satoshi Kon, from Madhouse/Sony Pictures Entertainment (Japan):

This first entry shows a cameo of what appears to be a Macbook Pro in Satoshi Kon‘s new anime film Papurika, (Paprika), released late last year, and the DVD just last Friday. The anime is from the creators of Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers, and is a great, mind-bending trip about a gadget that allows someone to slip into another person’s dreams. One review puts it best: it’s like Hello Kitty meets Philip K. Dick.

The Mac shown above looks like a regular 15″ Aluminum PPC Powerbook, but the dual hinges on the top edge give it away as a MacBook Pro – the odd thing is that the iSight lens seems to be missing. (And it’s also telling that the MacBook Pro wasn’t yet around during the production of the film either. I could be wrong though; I’ll look into it.) What’s even odder is that the laptop featured isn’t a Vaio, since the film was co-produced by Sony.

For more info on the movie, check out IMDB, or google some reviews like the one from The New York Times. Catch the trailer here.