Blog - 2009 June

This mask (and the one you can see if you click on the image above) arrived from Japan and are already involved in a project. You gotta have a plan.

Finally picked up Blue Harvest for cheap in the HMV sale and I did really enjoy it. Mrs Pac was less impressed but that makes sense as she’s less of a fanboy. Although the interview with Seth Macfarlane and George Lucas was pretty toe curling.

As embarrassing as Rob da Bank is, this is great, if you’re into 90’s shoegazing. Click on the image above for the tracklist or here to attempt to negotiate the Soma website. This is the third in the series, the Weatherall one was rockabilly (bit too much for my simple tastes) although the Damian Lazarus one looks interesting. Might be cheaper to go elsewhere to buy than boomkat…

Been doing some bit’s with masks on my flickr inspired both by the genius that is The Wicker Man and our upcoming driving tour of the far north of Scotland. Whilst reading up on the original Wicker Man I discovered a world of great stuff on the appalling Nicolas Cage remake. Including The Wicker Show, Nicolas Cage Punches A Woman Whilst Wearing A Bear Suit, Top 20 Wicker Man Quotes and my favourite Gav’s New Wicker Man Rant Part 2.

It’s another film, sorry but I saw the trailer for Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea or just Ponyo as it seems to be in the American version and couldn’t help thinking of Inochi Kun by Takashi Murakam. I think it’s because they’re both so creepy…

Seems like it’s all about films these days which really doesn’t accurately reflect what we’ve been up to but there you go. Instead I’ve spent the evening enjoying these examples of Kinetic typography. And seeing as how wikipedia assures me that the first feature film to extensively use kinetic typography was Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest there’s the frame crediting Saul Bass above.

Anyway here’s some modern examples that I enjoyed, some because i like the film and some because i like what they’ve done with it: South Park, Dumb and Dumber, Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?“, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, The Big Lebowski, Full Metal Jacket, another The Big Lebowski, There Will Be Blood, a Richard Pryor quote and finally a tutorial on how do do it yourself.

Seems like I’m posting a lot of film stuff recently but at least this one is an art/film cross-over. The premise is: “HERB & DOROTHY tells the extraordinary story of Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means…Devoting all of Herb’s salary to purchase art they liked, and living on Dorothy’s paycheck alone, they continued collecting artworks guided by two rules: the piece had to be affordable, and it had to be small enough to fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment.” Trailer here.

Finally saw Hotel Chevalier which is the short film that precedes The Darjeeling Limited covering the background relationship between Jack Whitman (Jason Schwartzman) and his girlfriend (Natalie Portman) that was shown in some cinemas before the main film. I quite liked it, the look of it mainly…not really the content (there isn’t much of that) or the weird posed nudie stuff with Portman that just reminded me of the weird posed nudie stuff in My Own Private Idaho. You can see Hotel Chevalier here: Part 1 & Part 2

There’s a few more Betty’s at the flickr if you’re into that sort of thing. Maybe I should move on to Bunny Yeager next, for a bit of colour and contrast. Plus I’ve nearly run out of my Betty postcards.

Clearly I’m far too old to be getting excited about this but there you go. Hopefully the missions will be less repetitive than the last one but then just wandering around offing AI’s was fun…plus the Leonardo da Vinci elements look great too.