sundance

NuRide rewards UVA community for green transportation choices

Colleges and universities are at the forefront of experimenting with transportation alternatives to drive and park: car sharing and bike sharing services are popping at campuses all over the US to provide greener transportation alternatives… as well as hold off on parking lot expansions.

Crochet beanie beard

The downside to my boyish good looks (Right? Right? Hello?) is an inability to grow a sweet beard. Here’s one solution for guys like me: an ingenius crochcet beard plus beanie combo by Etsy user taraduff. This is not creepy at all, right? Right? Hello?

1922 Kodachrome film test

From the George Eastman House collection is this video compilation of tests from 1922 of some of the earliest color film. The music that the video is set to makes it seem very poignant and artsy. In these newly preserved tests, made in 1922 at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, actress Mae [...]

Trapped inside HD

Recently my whole existence has changed. You see, my household has acquired a 47″ flat screen HD monitor (TV? I guess you could call it that), and our minds are being blown. The question is, is HD really better? It certainly is … strange. Sports? Sure. Amazing. But my tried and true film look? It’s gone, to my eye. A friend and I watched MAD MEN the other night and she kept saying, “I feel like we’re watching rehearsal. [and then again] It feels like we’re watching rehearsal.” Try watching an old classic or two — you probably have. I tried CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1958, Richard Brooks). Holy crap. (The image above? Nuthin. Pixels. Chunks.)

I had a good childhood and all, but in HD with a modern transfer using advanced digital noise reduction, it’s not like I’m “really there,” it’s not “more than reality,” I’m living INSIDE Big Momma’s internal organs, and it ain’t pretty. “Big Daddy got a clean bill of health!” Help me, I’m inside her liver. Elizabeth Taylor slinks around as Maggie the Cat, Paul Newman limps around with his drink, and Mae and Gooper’s children run in with their guns, frightening everyone. It’s a wonderful film, even though apparently Tennessee Williams despised it. But in HD? I had to rethink it. The late 50s was not the hey day of creamy shallow-depth-of-field imagery in film, and so the Metrocolor crispness is now, well, singed. Orson Welles’ deep focus? Let’s call it deep deep deep focus. You can see what Brick is thinking about.

Good bye, Tony Curtis

When I was a little girl I swooned over Tony Curtis as The Great Leslie in THE GREAT RACE, the 1965 screwball comedy costarring Natalie Wood and Jack Lemmon as competitors in a turn-of-the-century car race from New York to Paris. Older now, I appreciate Jack Lemmon’s contribution to the film more. Actually, he steals the show with one of the best comedic performances of his career, but to a young girl a pretty face and a soft voice somehow makes more of a lasting impact. Curtis had a chance to show his comic abilities six years earlier in SOME LIKE IT HOT, another screwball he starred in opposite Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. Here, Curtis got to play dress-up as both a woman and as a Cary Grant-inspired millionaire bachelor (see clip above).

NYC’s 4th Annual Naughty Auction benefiting the National AIDS Fund

If you’re in New York City next Thursday night and want something fun and fabulous to do, go to the 4th annual Naughty Auction benefiting the National AIDS Fund (which leverages resources, develops leadership and advocacy, and fosters community innovation to prevent new HIV infections and care for people living with HIV/AIDS). The party, held [...]

Watch this music video: Zowie’s Broken Machine

Zowie — Broken Machine from Special Problems on Vimeo. I’m backlogged with new music videos that I’ve been meaning to share with all y’all, but I’m trying to rectify that. Lately I’m really liking this new video directed by creative agency Special Problems for Zowie’s indie pop song “Broken Machine.” The music video has a [...]