LightDrops looks like an ordinary umbrella but don’t let that fool ya. There’s more than meets the eye here. As water pours over the surface, potential energy from raindrops slamming onto the conductive membrane called PDVF transforms into electrical energy powering embedded LEDs sending your umbrella ablaze with light. The heavier the rain, the brighter the light to help you see your way.
Designer: Sang-Kyun Park
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| Story by chakrapennywhistle, rikrak Published on August 19, 2009 in This Handmade Life |
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Who (are you?): Rikkianne (Chakra Pennywhistle)
What (are you collecting?): Vintage Super 8 Cameras
When (did you start?): About 8 or 9 years ago.
How (many do you have?): 23
Where (do you find them?): Local thrifts and antique stores.
Where (do you keep them?): They are placed on a book shelf in my living room.
What(‘s an interesting story behind one?): Lots of them still have film in them! Someday we plan to get a projector and check them out.
What (piece would you like to add?): I want to find one in an odd color.
Why (do you love them?): It is actually a collection that my husband and I share. He loves them just as much as I do.
What (else do you collect?): Vintage Vera Neumann scarves. I have over 300 of them!
Which (camera is your favourite?): This one was my Grandfather’s. My Grandfather loved films. He loved recording and fiddling with all things film related. That camera was one of his treasures.
I brought over this interview from Etsy’s Storque. Anything vintage-camera catches my attention instantly. I envy this collection very much. I actually have my own little camera collection going on, but they’re not all vintage or video cameras. I have all sorts collected, including Fuji Instax Mini, a broken vintage Canon film camera, Canon EOS1000D film camera, Canon Rebel XT, instant sticker picture camera, a blue Diana+, yet another slightly old Canon film camera… and some more. Mine aren’t just for the sake of collecting; I actually use a lot of them. I wish I could collect some more vintage ones :D
In February 2008, a blogger named Devin Faraci led off a post on the Hollywood news site CHUD (Cinematic Happenings Under Development) with a solemn proclamation: “We’re on the verge of losing a movie.” He was referring to “Where the Wild Things Are,” a big-budget adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic picture book for children. According to Faraci, executives at Warner Brothers had deemed an early cut of the film “too weird and ‘too scary’ ” and were now contemplating extensive personnel changes and reshoots. The news rippled through Hollywood’s online underground. At Slashfilm.com, it generated 88 reader responses. At Firstshowing.net, another 25. Some readers pleaded with the studio: “Please please please follow through with the original.” Others took a more authoritative tone: “Do not turn ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ into something common and forgettable!” There were calls for fan solidarity and several threats of boycott, or worse: “I will personally face-punch anyone who stands in the way of this film being released.” Such variations aside, though, a common theme emerged: “Jonze is brilliant”; “Jonze is an artist”; “Trust Jonze!”
Spike Jonze, who is 39, has directed just two feature-length films, “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation.” Both were critical and commercial successes, praised for their originality and absurd humor, and yet they represent only a small fraction of the work that Jonze’s fans admire. He is part of the first generation of filmmakers to come up through the music-video world — in the seven years between 1995 and 2001, he was named best director three times at the MTV Video Music Awards — and his inventive, adventurous style is evident not just in the Hollywood movies he has worked on but also in his videos, skateboard-company promos and TV commercials for companies like Ikea, Nike and the Gap. These miniatures, which Jonze considers to be of no less artistic merit than his longer works, will be celebrated next month as part of a 10-day retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, an unlikely honor for a filmmaker with his background. He never went to film school — or, for that matter, to college. When “Star Wars” had its first run in the movie theaters he went to see it eight times, but he didn’t see “Citizen Kane” until he was well into his 20s, he told me, and he has never seen a single movie by Howard Hawks or John Ford.
Jonze avoids Hollywood, preferring to stick close to the fashionably scruffy neighborhoods where he lives and skateboards (Los Feliz in Los Angeles and the Lower East Side in New York). Even so, the Hollywood establishment has largely embraced him. In 2000, “Being John Malkovich” was nominated for three major Academy Awards, including best director. Two years later, Jonze was an executive producer for “Jackass: The Movie,” a desultory collection of stunts and pranks that was made for just $5 million and became an unexpected hit, ultimately grossing more than $79 million at the box office. In 2003, “Adaptation” garnered four more Academy Award nominations and one Oscar (Chris Cooper’s, for best supporting actor). Jonze, it seemed, was that rare breed, an American filmmaker who had managed to find mainstream success without doing anyone else’s bidding. And then, that summer, he decided to make his first big studio movie.
“Where the Wild Things Are” is arguably of a piece with Jonze’s earlier works; it features moments of transcendent beauty and moments of profound silliness. Just as in “Jackass,” characters smash things and throw things at one another. But it is clearly Jonze’s most personal film to date, and it is also his most ambitious. To bring Sendak’s characters to the screen, Jonze used a complicated mix of computer animation and giant monster suits. He shot in the forests of southern Australia, which required convening a crew of more than 150. The costume department alone was larger than the entire crew of “Being John Malkovich.” Variety put the film’s budget at $80 million, and other estimates go as high as $100 million. Jonze’s next most expensive film, “Adaptation,” cost only $19 million.
“Where the Wild Things Are,” in other words, cost about as much to make as did “Shrek” and “Madagascar,” and yet in almost every other way it represents a sharp departure from those family-friendly blockbusters. Most kids’ movies are brightly, mouthwateringly colorful; Jonze favored a mushy-vegetable palate of greens and browns. Most kids’ movies have a clearly defined plot and an unambiguous moral lesson; Jonze’s film has about as much plot as an episode of “Jackass.” Most kids’ movies crackle with one-liners; in “Where the Wild Things Are,” the characters talk over one another and spend a lot of time stumbling over their own words as they try to articulate their feelings. Jonze told me that one of his models for the dialogue was the work of John Cassavetes, which may be exciting news if you’re a fan of avant-garde cinema, but might not sound quite as good if you’re the president of Warner Brothers. Cassavetes, who once said that he found scenes with crisp dialogue “corny and boring,” is arguably one of the most brilliant American filmmakers of all time, but his movies never made much money, and he was effectively banished from Hollywood by the time he was 40.
Last winter, I spent an afternoon with Jonze at a postproduction studio in West Hollywood, where he had sequestered himself with members of his trusted creative team, a group he referred to as his “pack.” Jonze has worked with many of the same people for almost his entire career, including Lance Acord, his director of photography, and his production designer K. K. Barrett. Many of them had no feature-film experience before Jonze plucked them (as he himself had been plucked) from the margins of the industry. “I like hiring people based on a feeling — this person gets it — rather than what they’ve done in the past,” he explained. When I visited, the newest member of the pack was Sonny Gerasimowicz, a 36-year-old art-school dropout Jonze had hired first to work on the design of the creature suits and later to wear one of them in the film. At a recent office party, Jonze decided that it would be fun to try to throw Gerasimowicz through a wall. A Gerasimowicz-size hole in the Sheetrock attested to the success of that endeavor.
Along one wall of Jonze’s office was a bookshelf lined with DVDs that he referred to while making the movie — “The Black Stallion,” “E.T.” and “The Red Balloon,” along with various dirt-bike and skateboard videos. Jonze was perched on a couch with a copy of Sendak’s book on his lap. “It’s amazing how few words there are but how strong the sentences are,” he said, slowly turning the pages. “You can just stare at the drawings and take in all the detail.” Jonze has bright blue eyes, a bony nose that twists slightly to one side and a skateboarder’s spare physique. From the ankles up, he dresses like a 1950s studio director, in tailored suits of gray and tan, but then you look at his feet and see he’s wearing skateboard sneakers. He speaks in a small, halting voice and sprinkles his sentences with words like “cool” and “awesome.” Although he has no children of his own, his feeling for what it’s like to be a child seems to be stronger and more immediate than that of most people his age, and children are often drawn to him. Catherine Keener, who was nominated for an Oscar for her work in “Being John Malkovich” and who plays a divorced mother in “Where the Wild Things Are,” told me that her 10-year-old son, Clyde, once asked her why Jonze didn’t live with his parents; apparently Clyde didn’t realize that Jonze was an adult.
In Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” a child hammers some nails into a wall, is sent to his room without any supper and finds solace and wild fun on an island of monsters who pronounce him king. Considering Jonze’s own propensity toward mischief, it was tempting to see his fight with the studio (which, by the time I sat down with him, was more than a year old) as an embodiment of the eternal struggle between freedom-seeking child and authoritarian parent. Jonze chose a different family metaphor. “It’s like the studio was expecting a boy, and I gave birth to a girl,” he told me. “And now they’re learning to love and accept their daughter.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06jonze-t.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1
This is one of my favorite stop-motion animation piece. It’s done by a Japanese animator named Takeuchi Taijin. It’s fantastic how he connected the world in the room and the world in the photograph by making them interact with each other. It’s pure genious!!! I’m sure it was a lotta work, but it was possible with an animator’s patience and care for detail. I’d love to try one myself, in a less epic scale.
http://www.behance.net/Gallery/fashion/134471
Seeing the world through the eyes of artist Shirin Sahba is a delightful way to enjoy colour, detail and the idea of a simpler time and space. This British Columbia-based painter has been inspired by travel, cinema, and the Persian art of miniature. Sahba’s landscapes are stylized concentrations of pattern and miniature characters and architectural elements, and often include the notion of journey in the narrative. A wonderful description of her work is “the beauty of people relating to people relating to spaces.”
Feeding the Fish – detail
http://mocoloco.com/art/archives/011719.php
I happened to come across a post on the Fowler twins on NOTCOT. Mr. Ryan E. Fowler was my advisor, art teacher (for multiple art classes), and also my favorite teacher in high school. Now that I see his work on NOTCOT and Etsy and all that, I feel ever so proud to have had him as a close teacher :) I’ve seen a lot of his photography works but these are his first illustration works that I saw. Animals as subjects are not necessarily my favorite but I’m definitely digging the vintage quality, rough textures yet soft tones in his work. In fact, this type of illustration was something I’ve always wanted to try and learn. I wish I can see him at work!! I miss both Mr. and Mrs. Fowler.. I should visit them some time soon.
Official music video for ‘Ljósið’ taken from Ólafur Arnalds – ‘Found Songs’ (2009)available on Limited Edition CD/10″ Vinyl and Download here: store.erasedtapes.com
This beautiful music video is another great example of visualizing music or sound. It reminds me of Michel Gondry’s work, except in a more refined and elegant way. I love how the waves of color fade out like smoke.
FILM
16th Chicago Underground Film Festival
| when: | Thursday Sep 10 More times» |
| where: | Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N State St, 312.846.2600) map |
| price: | $10 |
How would CUFF celebrate My Super Sweet 16? It would probably include a bathtub full of swill beer, an abandoned warehouse, and loads of unprintable details. “Underground” means a lot of things, and its vagueness opens CUFF to unique programming choices. Features this year include The Boy with the Sun in His Eyes, Gold (a restored 1968 film starring Del Close), and Impolex. Among the documentary choices are It Came from Kuchar (about the mold-shattering Kuchar brothers), American Radical’s chronicle of activist Norman Finkelstein, and Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo. Shorts programs, live performances, and crying teenagers are also part of the fun. – Vincent Chun
Yoohoo, I’m always up for interesting, new indie films. They are fresh, separated from the cliches and the commercials, and inspiring new ideas. Attending these film festivals has often given me a fresh perspective on cinema.
visit http://www.ifpchicago.org/ if interested.
