sundance

FULL FRONTAL FASHION roundup

Think of this as your FULL FRONTAL FASHION cliff notes. Design sketch for Halloween ’09 Prepare for Halloween, the biggest amateur fashion show of the year, as Bradford Shellhammer designs his costume. Check out the runway looks south of the border at Mexico Fashion Week. Have you ever been arrested for making art in a [...]

10 very scary movies

There are a lot of top ten lists for “scariest movie of all time,” but from box office hits to oddball cult classics, there are some movies that turn up again and again. You’ll notice a few favorites are missing, namely HALLOWEEN (1978), which has great 70s kitsch value and hands down more naked boobs than any movie on this list, but as a movie, it’s really not all the frightening, right? And no, I didn’t forget THE EXORCIST (1973) either, but buckets of green puke are more gross than scary. You’ll notice, too, that there aren’t a lot of new scary movies, and that’s not because I don’t like them, but I think we should let them stand the test of time a bit before we start putting them on all-time lists.

10. WAIT UNTIL DARK (1967)

This oft-forgotten gem stars Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman terrorized by Alan Arkin and his gang of thugs who think she has a doll full of heroin. Bet you never thought a refrigerator light would save your life.

9. NOSFERATU (1922)

Greatest vampire movie of all time? Michael Myers stole all Nosferatu’s best moves in HALLOWEEN (the white face, the lurking) but the original is still the bone-chilling best.

The “Vulva Love Lovely” Etsy store

If the news we reported recently about Betty Dodson’s Genital Art Gallery being forced offline really got you down, here’s something to brighten your day: There’s an Etsy retailer called Vulva Love Lovely dedicated exclusively to women’s genital and reproductive artsy craftsy thingies. We’re fans of the more lighthearted, graphical stuff: the little cartoon uterus [...]

FrightFest 2009

The annual UK FrightFest is serious about scary movies. So serious they screen them all year long. But if you’re like me then you need Halloween as an impetus to indulge in all things poltergeist, zombie, monster and mutant. Fortunately, FrightFest is good for that too. All night long on Halloween, from 7pm to 7am, [...]

Bon Qui Qui for kids

The gays love their cult classics. In film we’ve worshipped John Waters, BABY JANE, SHOWGIRLS, and GLITTER. TV: Absolutely Fabulous and The Comeback. Sometimes the television and films we embrace become mainstream hits. Sometimes, the straight world ignores them completely.

Paper cutout of NYC

An impressive meticulously detailed large map measuring 6 feet x 8 feet of New York City cut out of paper by hand. It’s separated into four panels each representing the main boroughs (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens), except for the Rodney Dangerfield of the boroughs: sorry, Staten Island. Along with a Paris version, this unique [...]

Green tech finds (10/29/09)

Wind-powered techies, energy-capturing pavement, and DIY hybrid electric sports cars… it’s time for your weekly green tech finds.

• This light rocks: Literally… kinetic energy from rocking the Murakami chair powers an attached OLED lamp. (via Gizmodo)
  
  
• Plug-ins aren’t so weird: CNET editor Martin LaMonica takes note of the strides automakers are taking to make electric vehicles perform in a similar manner to their gas-powered counterparts.
  
  

Ce n’est pas un livre

“World Series,” Brian Dettmer’s take on the encyclopedia

Of the artists profiled in Gestalten’s recent release Papercraft, Brian Dettmer steals the show. All the artists are doing interesting things with paper, but Dettmer is on another level altogether. More than an artist who works with paper, Dettmer is a book sculptor, or maybe book surgeon is more accurate. He’s so meticulous in his execution, it’s more like he’s performing a book autopsy than working as an artist in a studio.

Peter Greenaway – J’ACCUSE the cinema!

Peter Greenaway, famously known for his film THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE, AND HER LOVER has a new film at the Film Forum this week – REMBRANDT’S J’ACCUSE. The pseudo-documentary follows Greenaway, acting as a kind of art history forensic expert, as he dissects Rembrandt’s painting “The Night Watch.” He catalogues 33 mysteries of the painting, unearthing evidence that Rembrandt intended for it to be an accusation of murder and that this act in fact provoked Rembrandt’s ultimate downfall and death. Greenaway’s “talking head” appears in a little box within the frame, speaking with a Hitchcock-like authoritarian tone and uses facts, supposition, and a little false logic to make his case. In his precise and slight absurdist way, he rebukes both mainstream cinema and the history of art, and one can’t help but get the impression that Greenaway is just having so much fun…

“T-1000 jumps out & drops the shocked copper then he steals the cops wheels & investigates John Conner”

DJ Mayhem and MC Mouthmaster Murf, the duo behind the band The Anomolies have gained some fame and the adoration of nerdcore hip hop and action film fanboys alike in the past for their epic rap summarizations of classic blockbuster movies such PREDATOR and ROBOCOP. They’re back brilliantly again and this time apply their lyricism [...]

Top 10 reasons why the First Marriage totally rocks our world

photo by cliff1066

This vampire thing has gone too far.

You know, we were fine with “True Blood,” and we even tolerated “Twilight”–but we’ve now officially reached our limit with these vampire shenanigans. What was the straw that broke the proverbial (and fanged) camel’s back? This week, Fleshlight–the company behind those flashlight shaped masturbatory devices–announced a new release, the Succu-Dry. From far away, the Succu-Dry [...]

Interview with the creators of THE CAPTIVE

Sundance Channel recently sat down for an interview with Karin Diann Williams & Stuart Hynson Culpepper, creators of THE CAPTIVE. Watch THE CAPTIVE now at Sundance Channel Digital Shorts.

What was the inspiration for The Captive?

Karin: Believe it or not, we started with just the idea that we wanted to make a web series. We had an inkling that the microseries was about to find its audience and really explode as a popular form.

Stuart: We saw all the activity blossoming on YouTube and sites like it and knew a huge audience was there and they were wanting something beyond the user-generated content, something thoughtful and well produced. So we took the plunge. Part of the idea for the themes and action in The Captive came from studying the kind of person we thought were going to engage: someone fairly tech literate and independent in their thinking.

How to butch up your gay son this Halloween

How To Find A Masculine Halloween Costume For Your Effeminate Son The Onion is rather hit-or-miss these days. But the above video really made me laugh. And as a gay guy, who was once an effeminate little boy, it also resonated. All over this great land of ours on Saturday night moms and dads will [...]

Princeton bike sharing program gets special delivery

Bike sharing programs are popping up all over the place — cities, corporations, and universities are all investing in making bikes available to commuters to ease traffic congestion and pollution. With almost all of these services, you can assume that the bikes themselves were delivered by trucks to their respective locations. This past Sunday, though, fourteen Worksman bicycles (based in NYC) were delivered by the most obvious method: cyclist rode the 55 miles from the factory to Princeton University.

Obama Invests $3.4 Billion in Smart Energy Grid Grants

President Barack Obama today announced the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history. The federal government has awarded $3.4 billion to 100 private companies, utilities, manufacturers, cities and other partners to fund technologies intended to move America towards what the President called “a smarter, stronger, and more secure electric grid.”

P.S.1 goes back to 1969

Swingeing London 67, Richard Hamilton

1969 was a big year; so big, in fact, that people like me, who weren’t alive at the time, have vicarious memories of what it was like. Things like Vietnam, Civil Rights, sexual revolution, and the moon landing spring to mind. To commemorate not only the year itself, but its lasting impact on artists today, P.S.1 has devoted its entire 2nd floor to what it meant to live in 1969. “By juxtaposing the meditative space of the white cube gallery of the transplanted MoMA exhibition with the tumult of the outside world, 1969 reflects the expansive concerns held by artists of the time” like Lee Friedlander, Gary Winogrand, Robert Irwin, Joseph Beuys, Robert Morris and Sol LeWitt, including brand new work from Bruce Nauman, Mel Bochner and Robert Barry.

More candy art (in Boston)

On display through the end of this month at the Bunker Hill Community College’s art gallery is a group show “Eat the Art.” As the theme implies the artwork on display is (deliciously) food inspired. If you don’t know what to do with all those extra jelly beans leftover from trick or treating, try building [...]

100% green electricity potential exists in thirty US states

Arizona has massive solar power resources. Texas, Kansas, and South Dakota together could power the whole country with wind. And the Rocky Mountain region holds vast potential for geothermal power generation. Traditional thinking in renewable energy development holds that we should tap these resources, and then move the power generated around via a next-generation national electric grid.

A new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance challenges this conventional wisdom, though, and makes the rather startling claim that 30 of the 50 US states could meet their own electricity demand entirely from in-state sources; seven more could generate 75% of their electricity needs this way. Thus, major (and expensive) improvements to the national grid may not be the most efficient use of resources.

Barbie just wants to have fun

Barbie, long a brand that epitomizes wholesome, American values, has switched gears with the announcement of a new line of dolls in the likeness of 1980s pop music icons. Women, who were little girls during that decade of greed and outrageous fashion, assuredly will approve. Gay guys, who secretly worshipped both pop stars and Barbie dolls, will scream like little girls.

Science of candy

Artist and New York Times contributor Kevin Van Aelst finds a way to put all that Halloween candy swag to good educational and artsy use. Not that shoveling as many Raisinets as you can into your mouth (37) isn’t educational per se, but Van Aelt’s gummy bear periodic table and gummy worm chromosomes are a bit more visually appealing to look at. Check out his website for more of his fantastic and clever work.

How to have sex with a vampire*

image by King Chimp, from “Nosferatu” Don’t eat any garlic for at least 72 hours beforehand. Don’t give blood for at least a month beforehand: you’ll need all your reserves. Get your blood work done beforehand and make sure you bring condoms: while the undead can’t give you any STDs, infections you might have (especially [...]

Craig Hodgetts, Playmaker

In 1978, architect Craig Hodgetts was commissioned to design a sustainable utopia of the future based on the book “Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston,” by Ernest Callenbach. Some credit the book with anticipating the use of videoconferencing (one of the technologies of the future the characters use selectively so as to not [...]

Russian Winnie the Pooh

“Return to the Hundred Acre Wood” by David Benedictus is the first authorized sequel to A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh tales and many commented on Benedictus’ introduction of a new character, the otter “Lottie.” Some are not a fan. I haven’t looked at it so can’t say whether this is a positive addition or yet [...]

Is screen direction overrated?

Screen direction – one amongst many rules in visual storytelling. This one dictates the direction in which people look at each other, or the direction in which they walk, implying that on the two- dimensional screen, the characters are engaged by their looks, or walk away or toward one another.

I’m editing a film right now, and okay, some mistakes were made on the set. Not many, granted, but a few. In other words, we thought an actor should have been walking or looking right to left and as it turns out, when we cut it together, there’s a jump where we’ve crossed the 180 degree “line” – the actor should have been looking or walking the other way. In the last week, I’ve asked myself, in this age of very sophisticated film viewing, does it even matter anymore? Should we just sort of, get over it?