sundance

Artists creates “invisible” car

A 22-year-old art student at the University of Central Lancashire, Skoda Fabia painstakingly painted a car so it blended in with her studio’s parking lot resulting in people “stopping in the street to look and coming up and almost bumping into it.”

To Suzanne Valadon on Mother’s Day

Just below Sacre Coeur in the 18th Arrondissement of Paris, there is a small blue marker that reads, “Place Suzanne Valadon.” Unknown by name to many Americans, Valadon is instantly recognized by sight as the model for countless paintings by Renoir, Degas and Lautrec.

Trailer: Meryl Streep as Julia Child

Via the excellent cooking site Simply Recipes, here’s the trailer for JULIE AND JULIA, Nora Ephron’s upcoming film based on Julie Powell’s book by the same name. Subtitled “My Year of Cooking Dangerously” and inspired by a blog she maintained during the project, the book was Powell’s memoir of reinventing her life by cooking every [...]

David Lynch catches big fish.

Sundance Channel salutes David Lynch this month with a series of screenings every Thursday, beginning this week with INLAND EMPIRE. See screening times and more.

Last week I was talking to a student about his screenplay and the “rules” of screenwriting, basically the formula that most stories get plugged into (you’ve got your “normality” and then “disturbance” in the first few pages and then the “first act turning point” … and so on). If you’re not familiar with it, please stay blissfully ignorant. It can make movie watching a little less fun when you can too easily predict exactly what is going to happen and when.

My own writing experience using this structure has run the gamut from… get-down-on-my-knees-thankfulness for the backbone it provides especially when you have a bunch of ideas that felt like loose body parts…. to feeling like creative choices have been reduced to something akin to the choices you hear parents give their kids… you can either eat your asparagus or go to bed (i.e. you can either do a strong first act turning point by page 30 or risk alienating your audience). But story structure is hard to knock, as a well structured movie moves and moves well.

“What about Lynch?”

Fished Out: Caribbean Sea’s big fish nearly gone

TALLAHASSEE, Florida, May 5, 2009 (ENS) – Sharks and barracuda disappear on Caribbean coral reefs as human populations rise, endangering the region’s marine food web, its reefs and its fisheries, finds a new study by researcher Chris Stallings of the Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory. Stallings says overfishing is the most likely cause [...]

Bike to work for health, savings, and cleaner air

The League of American Bicyclists has declared May 11 – 15 “Bike to Work Week,” and published a nine-page bike commuter guide for those of us who may still think that riding in traffic is a good way to get killed. Among the benefits of bicycle commuting:

Health: No need to worry about making time for the gym: “Ride your bike to work, and you no longer need to make time to exercise.”

The Auteurs: Netflix goes to art school

Who doesn’t love the Netflix “watch instantly” option? You thought you had it good when you didn’t have to leave your house to rent a movie. Now you don’t even have to make the long walk to your mailbox. But there’s still one thing “watch instantly” doesn’t have. Sure, it’s great for those late night [...]

Wu-Tang is for the designer

Designer Logan Walters redirects his “mild OCD” (his words) tendencies into something awesome: Walters has begun re-creating new covers for all 21 Wu-Tang albums with a nod and fist pound to the Blue Note jazz art style. The result is a surprising but fantastic mash up. Side note: My headline pays homage to an infamous [...]

Naked News (05-05-09)

From the book I’m Glad I’m a Boy! I’m Glad I’m a Girl! The new documentary OUTRAGE, opening this Friday, exposes closeted gay politicians who publicly oppose gay rights. The theory being, why should they get to stay in the closet if they’re actively holding back the gay rights movement in their day job and [...]

Obama gives biofuels a presidential jumpstart

WASHINGTON, DC, May 5, 2009 (ENS) – To spur biofuels research and commercialization, President Barack Obama today signed a Presidential Directive establishing a Biofuels Interagency Working Group. He announced his administration’s notice of a proposed rulemaking on a national Renewable Fuels Standard and announced $786.5 million in additional Recovery Act funds for renewable fuel projects. [...]

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world at Atypyk

Formed by French duo Ivan Duval and Jean Sebastien Ides, Atypyk creates witty and eccentric designs and projects that tickle, amuse, and confound. Some are available for purchase, and some are free as “a ready to use and abuse collection of ideas.”

California’s Prop 65 must list chemicals known to harm workers

SAN FRANCISCO, California, May 4, 2009 (ENS) – California’s right-to-know and safe drinking water protection law, Proposition 65, must be extended to toxic chemicals known to cause cancer and reproductive harm that are already identified under worker protection standards, the Alameda County Superior Court has ruled. On April 24, the court held that California has [...]

Cruelty-free, lactose-intolerant condoms

Being a vegan is hard sometimes: going out to restaurants with friends makes you as high maintenance as Meg Ryan in WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, stand-up comedy is usually not a career option, and finding a condom made without animal by-products like milk protein is damn near impossible. Thank goodness for Glyde Condoms, then — [...]

Roxy Paine on the Roof

Whether you like Roxy Paine’s work or not, you probably want to touch it. You can’t help it. Since 1990, Paine has created irresistibly tactile sculptures, installations, and even the occasional painting (like the one with the paint literally dripping off the canvas) that almost always reference some aspect of the natural world. His latest [...]

Greensburg, Kansas celebrates “Better, Stronger, Greener” on second anniversary of tornado

On May 4, 2007, the western Kansas town of Greensburg was almost completely destroyed by an EF5 tornado (one of only two ever recorded). This past weekend, the town, along with supporters, well-wishers, and likely lots of media, came together to celebrate Greensburg’s commitment to rebuild itself as a “model green community.” The event’s theme, [...]

Ruben Ochoa, Collapsed

I finally made my way this past weekend to view Ruben Ochoa’s Collapsed installation showing currently at Peter Blum Gallery in Soho. Upon entry into the austere space, the viewer is confronted with an intimidating concrete freeway divider slab propped at a 45 degree angle against the gallery wall which is juxtaposed against an immense [...]

H.2O: Environmental questions with Maude Barlow of the United Nations, part two

In part two of this three-part interview, Maude Barlow expresses her opinion on many environmental issues beyond H.2O. In case you missed it, here lies part one of this interview, where water rights are discussed. Question 5: What people alive today or in the past deserve to be called environmental heroes and why? Maude Barlow: [...]

Modern architecture + ice cream

I scream, you scream, modern architecture themed ice cream! Natasha Case and Freya Estreller have combined apparently three of their interests, architecture, ice cream, and puns into a cheeky ice cream sandwich business called “Cool Haus.” Its cold and presumably delicious concoctions will be sold out of a truck that will be roaming the streets [...]

Map of US built from geo-tags

Click on image to enlarge. A research paper (pdf) out of Cornell University, written by David Crandall, Lars Backstrom, Daniel Huttenlocher and Jon Kleinberg, created the above map of the US by using geotagged photos uploaded by Flickr users. As their abstract explains: Our approach combines content analysis based on text tags and image data [...]

15th annual Seoul Living Design fair

Dwell has a nice slideshow of some of the pieces displayed at the 15th Annual Seoul Living Design Fair which is “part of their lead-up to their one-year term as the World Design Capital in 2010.” I was particularly struck by Youngse Kim’s work seen below. I’m so proud of my peoples!

Endangered Grand Canyon native fish starts to recover

FLAGSTAFF, Arizona, April 30, 2009 (ENS) – Numbers of an endangered fish called the humpback chub in Grand Canyon, Arizona have increased by about 50 percent between 2001 and 2008, according to a new analysis by scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey. The humpback chub, Gila cypha, is a freshwater fish that may live to [...]

Xavier Chassaing, SCINTILLATION

SCINTILLATION from Xavier Chassaing on Vimeo. A mesmerizing short by Xavier Chassaing. This stop motion film was pieced together from over 35,000 photographs!

Science is Fiction, the films of Jean Painlevé

He may not have been the very first person to take a camera underwater, but Jean Painlevé was definitely the first to bring the life aquatic to cinema. Painlevé made over 200 short films in his lifetime, the first in 1927 (nearly 30 years before Jacques Cousteau’s SILENT WORLD) and last week Criterion released 27 [...]

David Hockney’s iPhone paintings

The Daily Mail tells of how the celebrated artist David Hockney has been creating mini-paintings on his iPhone and emailing them to friends.  Pretty tech-savvy for a 71-year-old: [via TUAW]

World’s largest solar power tower starts generating in Spain

SEVILLE, Spain, April 30, 2009 (ENS) – Abengoa Solar has begun commercial operation of the giant new PS20 solar power tower located at the Solucar Platform, near Seville. With a generating capacity of 20 megawatts, the new power tower will produce enough solar energy to supply 10,000 homes. During a three-day production and operational testing [...]