Back in the habit

I'm trying to get back into the habit of drawing. I have about a million notebooks, and i have one that i really love which i carry about with me all the time, and i occasionally draw in it. I'm not very good, but i enjoy it, and i know i'll never get better unless i do more of it.

Anyway, here are some drawings from the past weeks and months, and a few just from today. Sorry about the poor photo quality. Click to enlarge.

Sketch of a photo of Malcolm X by Richard Avedon

Sketch from a photo of Twiggy by Richard Avedon

Dried rose on my windowsill

A Warhol skull and a Modigliani nude - sketched at The Met in New York

These 2 are from today. I understood absolutely nothing in my lecture on post-colonial modernist writing today, so after about 15 minutes I stopped taking notes and drew a waiter instead. The flowers are in a champagne bottle by my bed.

The Food Penguin

 Not Ranunculi

That's it for now, but i'm (hopefully) going to be drawing more and more, and if i like any of it i'll put it up, so check back soon.

Kings of the one shot

I just found the video for Ok Go's new song. You may not remember the band, but i'm sure you remember the videos, first the dance for A Million Ways and then the ridiculously famous and oft repeated treadmill dance from Here It Goes Again. These boys do their videos in one shot, 3 and a half minutes of handmade perfection. Their new video is no exception.



It reminds me of Filschi and Weiss, who i have blogged about before, or that car advert where they do the same thing but all with car parts. The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The "machine" was designed and built by the band, along with members of Synn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.

Here is part 1 of the making of:



Interestingly, this isn't the only video for this song that they made, and the other one is super awesome too. Also done in one shot and featuring the Notre Dame marching band, all the audio was recorded live during the take, so the sound you're hearing is exactly what you see them performing in that shot. IU can't embed it, but follow the link here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJKythlXAIY&feature=related

That's it for today, I hope it gave you a little life, i know both videos make me smile.

I get a kick out of you

Ok, so its not often that i blog about shoes i want, because i try not to make it that kind of blog, but sometimes i just can't help it. If you're not interested, stop reading now.

Right. So.

I'm not the kind of girl that buys the same item in more than one colour. I like things a bit wierd, a bit special. I wear things other people don't have. Owning something twice makes no sense to me. BUT...
I searched for 3 years for the perfect pair of brogues, looked high and low, vintage, high-street, internet, you name it, and i eventually found them. They are from Office, they are called Frank and i wear them almost every day. They are the perfect shoes, or so i thought.

Today, i went in to Office, and what do i find, but Frank brogues in different colours and materials. They have 20's style saddle shoes in canvas and leather, they have them in a matte sky blue, and they have these...

Now i've always said i'd never buy the same thing twice, especially with shoes, but i'm finding it very hard to resist. They are so beautiful, so feminine and so masculine at the same time. They make me smile.

I'm having a crisis. What should i do?

Cheat neutral

Around this time last year i saw this film at a press screening for a documentary film festival, and for some reason it popped back into my head so i thought i'd share it. I think it is kind of brilliant.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/films/p004tm7g

Sorry i can't embed the video, its owned by the bbc so you have to follow the link to watch it.
That's all for now.

Chicks who rock...

This is very cool, and oddly beautiful. I swear i've heard stuff less produced than this on some albums i own.



Issues of mechanical reproduction, unconscious art-making, and the beauty of chaos swirl about in Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s work. The themes are well-worn, but the approach is lighthearted and inviting. This French artist and composer has a knack for misusing everyday objects to create alarmingly organic music.
For instance: Boursiey-Mougenot once jerry-rigged a grand piano to play musical notes translated from the text being typed on a random laptop. He’s also attached harmonicas to the end of vacuum cleaners to create otherworldly, organ-like noises. In the video below, the artist placed an amplified guitar in the middle of a gallery and then allowed dozens of birds to perch upon its sensitive strings, resulting in some surprisingly listenable accidental drone!

This man has won oscars

I had a very long day today. It was good, i love directing, so any day where i get to do 6 hours of it is a pretty good one, but 12 hours on campus after 3 hours of sleep is enough to put anyone in a tired mood.

So, in case your day was as long as mine, or your spirits need some brightening, here are 2 fabulous photos of one of the sexiest men who has ever lived.

Aren't we all glad he grew out of that phase and into something slightly more respectable?

Have a beautiful day tomorrow, I have 2 hours of class and 8 hours of rehearsal, and i'm looking forward to it all. Who knows, if i keep this up maybe i'll meet George one day...

One of life's great questions finally answered

What if George Lucas remastered Singin' in the Rain? We've all wondered, and now the wait is over. Here's what it would look like.



I make very strange noises when i watch this, i wish you all could hear.

The Start of Something New?

In case that last post got you down, here's something to cheer you up. Joseph Gordon Levitt, actor/dancer/man-candy/future Mr Lucy Atkinson, has an amazing website, hitRECord.org, and on it i found this, a film he made with almost 200 collaborators on the site. Perhaps this is where indie cinema is headed?



The love i feel can only be expressed in gutteral noises.
Happy weekend to you all.

The End of Indie Cinema?

I find this article fascinating, and terribly depressing.
http://gawker.com/5465348/

The state of cinema in general is pretty dire at the moment, with the death of Miramax last week a tragic blow to quality filmmaking. The more i think about Avatar the more i dislike it. Pretty pictures are not what good cinema is about; plot, dialogue, acting, sheer feel-it-in-your-bones emotion, that is good cinema, and that's what the Academy appears to have forgotten.

Every time a film like this is made and gains acclaim, another film is left by the wayside. While everyone in the world is lavishing praise on a mindless piece of fantasy a truly exceptional film, adored by critics and anyone else who braved the cinema without the shield of 3D glasses is not nominated for a single American award. Moon, Duncan Jones's masterpiece, and in my opinion the best made film of the year, and the best sci-fi of the decade, has been ignored by the Academy, as well as the Golden Globes. The studio which produced it, Sony Pictures Classics, spent no money on awards publicity for it, not sending out screeners to academy members or hosting awards fundraisers as they do for other films. On Jones's twitter feed, @ManMadeMoon, he was inviting academy members round to his house to watch it. 

Jones said "[We] wanted to create something which felt comfortable within that canon of those science fiction films from the sort of late seventies to early eighties" and he succeeded. The film has the look and feel of classic 70's sci-fi, as though the station on which the character lives was built by the same people who built the Nostromo. The writing, the editing, the cinematography and the performance are all fantastic, so why did no one see it, and why is it not getting the attention it deserves?

The Academy Awards are supposed to be about celebrating excellence in the art of filmmaking, about showcasing the best and brightest, the most innovative and original. Money should not be a factor. Outstanding films made on a shoestring should be ranked higher than generic crowdpleasers made for billions. If the nominations are not based on quality then the awards lose their meaning, their prestige. If price triumphs over worth, how can the film industry be headed anywhere but the gutter?

For all your hygene needs

Vintage ads are amazing, and so many of them are oddly sinister. Here are some classics.

This one is less sinister than it is factual. Werewolverines really do go for the werewolf who uses Mr. Scarol. Believe me, i know. (click for full image)