$200 Peanuts

Ryan Air's Michael O'Leary talks about travelling free on airlines in the near future.

The Organic Rebellion

I don't know why I find this amusing. It could be the silliness or the blatant copyright infringement. Or the fact that it follows a tradition of Star Wars parodies or that it seems, um, like 30 years too late.

Actually it does remind me a bit of Hardware Wars which, more than the original Star Wars movie, inspired in me an interest in film.

I am not sure Store Wars would instill a desire to buy organic goods (but it might promote amateur filmmaking).

Celebrating the Interior

There has been a lot of discussion on the blogs I frequent about a young man named Gilles Trehin. Gilles draws very vivid, intricate, and believeable representations of an imaginary city he calls Urville.

I like this short documentary about his work and I found his appreciation of the socio-political aspects of the real world and their impact on his interior vision equally intricate and vivid.

The work in some ways reminds me of the drawings of Achilles Rizzoli, a strangely introverted draftsman who represented people in his life as buildings.

Public Restrooms Seen from Space

No. Wait. It's just an eclipse.

Nuclear Nightmares

Hardhitting images in this visual project make explicit the ill effects of radiation.

Nobel Prize for Game Design !?!!

Here is an interesting article about expanding the role of videogames and reconceptualizing what gaming can entail.

The Truth about Bigfoot

feet.jpg

SXSW and the Great Hope

There were a few articles and speeches from the SXSW festival that I found intriguing simply because the implicit theme was self-defined, community-based media production and control.

This piece by Derek Powazek highlights how out of touch Hollywood is.

Bruce Sterling's speech was powerful. The end portion, to me, is a moving call for an authentic populist movement in America.

UPDATE:

Video from the session that Derek discusses.

Great Fan Film Choreography

I keep thinking about how art students go to museums and copy the masters. This is the 21st century action film equivalent, I suppose.

Curious George and Web 1.0

We went to the theater last weekend to see Curious George. The film is very "smooth" (that's the term that comes to mind) as the story has few intense moments. The most disturbing thing is when the Man in the Yellow Hat lets George get taken away by Homeland Security (he eventually ends up in Guantanamo but the torture scenes are kid friendly).

Although stylistically divergent from the illustrated books, the story is really very engaging for kids (and me, of course, but what's the difference really?).

What I liked about the movie actually has nothing to do with the hour and half at the theater. It has more to do with the lack of the usually kiddy movie hype and the website. The hype thing maybe due to the fact that I didn't notice the ads but I don't remember the usually mess of promotions.

My eldest daughter and I stumbled upon the movie website from the Apple Quicktime trailers page. The Curious George site opens to fill the screen and includes several different environments that kids can click and explore. It reminds me a lot of the discussions back in the web 1.0 day when cyberspace was a location and websites became "destinations". Maybe it 's broadband, or maybe it is the raw 2 dimensionality, or the renderings, or whatever but I thought that the interface as space, though seemingly old school, really was fun to explore and play with.

As fun as the movie and the website are, I still must admit that I have a soft spot for the original George.

Metrocentrism and the Oscars

It's not just me. Larry Mc Murtry, who along with Diana Ossana adapted Brokeback Mountain for film, remarked backstage at Sunday's Oscar awards something to the effect that of the films he has written that have been nominated for an Academy Award only the film that was set in a urban setting won an Oscar (Terms of Endearment).

The New York Times ran an article also talking about Los Angeles selecting a film that reflects itself.

It is something that we in the rural west and mid-west feel and it is something that extends well beyond gay cowboys and the movie industry. Rural areas are just as complex and deserve equal attention. How about some respect?

Design Activism

Houtlust is a site documenting creative public awareness campaigns for serious social issues. Very powerful work.

3 Months too late: Fictional Christmas Cards

I love  this project and have to admit that it is because I find the photographs that come slipped inside Christmas cards excruciatingly awful.  Usually that one image has to summarize an entire year or give a fresh representation of the family (see how we look now!).

There is entertainment value in that, I suppose.  But this bloke's Christmas card pictures are fun and has got me thinking that we all could use a little more play in our lives. If not for yourselves or your hapless victims then for the sake of making photography ever so slightly less "redundant". So, here I throw down the gauntlet: next get-together try a little fiction or roleplaying.  And send me the results!