sundance

Bikes as accessories: Freewheelers

We greenies tend to view the bicycle in purely practical terms: as a low-carbon, healthy form of transportation. Nothing wrong with that… but also no reason we can’t promote biking as sexy. That’s the idea behind Babelgum’s Freewheelers, “a series of documentary portraits about hot-looking bikes and the people who ride them…”

Kim Jong Il looking at things

Kim Jong Il Looking At Things is a single serve Tumblr site devoted to The Dear Leader…looking at things. As my high school friend Jason commented, “It’s kinda beautiful in a way. Too bad he’s a tyrant. And he lives on Mars.” I really do wish China would step in and put him and his [...]

It’s the most materialistic time of the year…

We’re as guilty as anyone else of promoting gift-giving at this time of year. (Then again, who else is going to tell you about that perfectly tasteful vibrator that will fit in a Christmas stocking?) To find a bit of inner calm amidst the gift-wrapping storm, here are five ways to give back, whether with time or money.

1. Give to the National Breast Cancer Foundation: We know you tinted your Facebook profile picture pink and did a cutesy status update about where you keep your handbag, but did that really do anything to help the cause of women with breast cancer? Donate money; run a race (or jump out of a plane) so you can ask your friends to donate sponsor money; or just donate your time.
   
   
2. Get Involved with Planned Parenthood: Thanks to the mid-term election results, things are looking pretty dire when it comes to reproductive rights. Help Planned Parenthood keep fighting the good fight by donating your money or time — and sign up for their newsletters so you know when they need you to write to your representatives (usually it’s as simply as cutting and pasting and clicking your mouse).
   
   

Funny literal response to homework question

I’m not sure of the exact provenance of this, but this student’s literal answer to this homework question cracked me up. My friend Steph asked her brother to translate the answer. My life here has sucked. Work environment is no good; Pay has been low. But don’t worry, only about 10 people get seriously injured [...]

The Urushi: a new instrument is born

Urushi Musical Interface from Yuri Suzuki on Vimeo.

The Urushi Musical Interface was created by designer/electronic musician Yuri Suzuki in a collaboration between several UK-based designers and the renowned lacquer craftsmen of Wajima. Lacquer craftsmanship is actually a pretty big deal in Wajima, where the trade dates back to the 1400s and even the most basic objects involve at least 20 processes and sometimes more than 100.

Sex books for people you’re not sleeping with

Books make awesome holiday gifts: They can be mailed directly from Amazon et al if you remember someone at the very last minute; they won’t cause weight gain or allergy attacks; they show more thought and insight than a gift certificate; and they’re easy as anything to wrap (ever try gift-wrapping a cactus plant?). We’d like to think that our manual SEX: How to Do Everything makes the perfect gift for everyone, but we know we don’t live in that sort of world. So here are our ten best suggestions for sex-related books to give to those special folks in your life whom you’re not sleeping with.

1. Our Bodies, Our Junk by the Association for the Betterment of Sex: This book won’t do much to improve your sex life, and your partner might not appreciate the message of receiving a sex manual that makes for ideal bathroom reading. But your roommate/best friend/gym buddy certainly will.
   
   
2. Good Porn: A Woman’s Guide by Erika Lust: Not for your kid’s pre-school teacher or your outstanding female employee…obviously. But for your best female friend since grade school who knows more about your sex life than you do and who is always lamenting the lack of good porn out there? Check. FYI, single and coupled female friends alike will benefit from this book, though the latter gals — particularly if they are on the sensitive side — might not necessarily agree with you. Then again, they’re the ones who need it most.
   
   

Radio-controlled model airplane tour of NYC

The Internet is abuzz over this f’awesome video of YouTube user “nastycop420″ (lolz) piloting a RC airplane (with a POV camera attached to it) over Manhattan and Brooklyn on a nice clear day. It’s even more remarkable considering that this wasn’t shut down by the post-9/11 NYPD. I was also struck by how the close-up, [...]

2011 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL: Films in NEXT (<=>), Spotlight, New Frontier, and Park City at Midnight

Festival Adds New Native Showcase: As Previously Announced, SLACKER to Screen From “The Collection”

PARK CITY, UT – Sundance Institute announced today the lineup of films selected to screen in the 2011 Sundance Film Festival out-of-competition sections NEXT (<=>), Spotlight, New Frontier, Park City at Midnight, as well as a new Native Showcase. The 2011 Sundance Film Festival runs January 20-30 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. The complete list of films is available at www.sundance.org/festival.

2011 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL: Documentary Premieres Section Debuts

Documentary Premieres Section Debuts: Dito Montiel’s Highly Anticipated The Son of No One to Close Festival

PARK CITY, UT — Sundance Institute announced today the lineup of films selected to screen in the out-of-competition Premieres and new Documentary Premieres sections of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. The Festival runs January 20-30 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. The complete list of films is available at www.sundance.org/festival.

“2011 sees the majority of films in the Premieres section coming from outside the studios, illustrating that independent film is both robust and broadening its scope,” said John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival. “The decision to create a Documentary Premieres section was a natural evolution to shine a light on films with prominent filmmakers or anticipated subjects without distracting from documentaries in competition. Sundance Institute has since its inception been one of the leading organizations in the world in support of nonfiction film, and our Festival remains a platform for both first-time and established documentary filmmakers.”

World leaders bicycling

Discovered amongst all the newly leaked State Department diplomatic cables made available by WikiLeaks (who are so NOT being invited to the government’s Holiday party this year) is this old photo of world leaders hanging out on those touristy bicycles. Okay, it’s actually an art piece by Eric Staller titled “PEACETANK.”

Newspapers: not dead yet

Robert Gober’s “Newspaper” (1992)

Ever since the birth of online news, we’ve heard endless forecasts of the supposed doomsday of the newspaper industry, so now that web media is a daily part of most former newspaper-reader’s lives, is it true? Are newspapers really on the outs? It’s likely that even more local papers will go under – many already have. Big guns like The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post are all down a couple of percents – a slower decline than what was predicted three years ago. The future is still uncertain, but it’s not the quick death a lot of us feared it might be.

Green tech finds (12/2/10)

Google Earth’s new “tree view,” state-by-state run-downs on solar power, and LED holiday lights… your green tech finds for the week.

• Energy Star Plus: Paul Smith at Triplepundit profiles Energy Forward, a Northwest-based electronics efficiency standard that claims to exceed Energy Star standards by 30%.
  
  
• Missouri a great state for solar? That’s right… as are Arkansas, Mississippi, and Wisconsin. A new study out of Arizona State University ranks the optimal state for solar development based on environmental and economic factors.
  
  

Love & sex in YA lit: THE GOOD

Our friends, Em & Nora (who we like to call “Em & No”), recently launched a site for grown-ups about young adult literature called LoveYALit.com*, since (according to the New York Times) more and more people 18-and-over are enjoying books originally intended for the 18-and-under set. Of course, books about teens, the most hormonal among us, often deal with issues of first romantic relationships and sexual awakenings — and reading them as adults can emotionally transport us back to our own teenage years, when those things were really new and exciting, dramatic and traumatic. So we asked Em & Nora to give us a sampling of the good, the bad and the complicated of YA love and sex. First, the good (then tune in over the next two Thursdays for the bad and the complicated):

THE GOOD:

Proponents of abstinence-only education may not approve, but there are several literary examples of young adults having empowering, exciting, safe sex as well as healthy, loving relationships with their bodies and their partners.

Forever… by Judy Blume (1975) — The Blume classic of a girl who discovers her sexuality and — get this — finds it pleasurable! Afterwards, there are no disturbing or negative consequences; she’s not punished in any way. She simply comes to the mature realization that high school relationships aren’t forever. Amazingly (and unfortunately), there is nothing else like this in YA lit.

Cookie Monster’s SNL audition tape

The Internet (and my Facebook News Feed) ate up Cookie Monster’s audition tape for SNL, which went rapidly viral. I’m sold. Lets start a Cookie Monster as SNL Host campaign.

Tokyo Subway manners PSA for the holidays

Just in time for the start of the winter holiday season is this vintage Tokyo subway PSA from 1976 warning Japanese strap hangers on the follies of over-indulging in drinks or “dranks” as the (21 and over) kids say nowadays. The translation supposedly says: “I look like Santa because you’ve had too much to drink. [...]

Vimeo of the Week: [scattered flurries]

[scattered flurries] from felt soul media on Vimeo. I have just returned from London, where it is snowing! Even though it is not snowing here in Manhattan, it has indeed gotten colder here in New York. I wore my parka to work today. This chilling of the air is getting me all anxious for winter [...]

THE NEXT THREE DAYS and the sentimental thriller

I saw THE NEXT THREE DAYS over Thanksgiving (Hello, Atlanta! What a welcome sight you are from the wilds of Ohio), and it was a crazy ride – I hesitate to say fun, because it’s really not – but exciting, thought-provoking, a serious film with serious performances, yet wrapped in the gloss of genre-Holiday-big-budget-excitement? Yes! I would also deem it falls into a new category, one I welcome: the sentimental thriller.

2011 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES FILMS IN COMPETITION

PARK CITY, UT — Sundance Institute announced today the lineup of films selected to screen in the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competitions for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. In addition to the four Competition Categories, the Festival presents films in six out-of-competition sections to be announced on December 2. The 2011 Sundance Film Festival runs January 20-30 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. The complete list of films is available at www.sundance.org/festival.

On Day One, the Festival will forego the convention of one opening night film and instead screen one narrative film and one documentary from both the U.S. and World Cinema competitions, as well as one shorts program.

John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival said, “The Festival is a challenge to narrowly define. It is all at once exciting, fun, crazy, engaging, visceral, and sometimes even painful. We can explain storylines, we can share what we know of each artist’s unique journey, but ultimately what we will experience for 10 days in January is different for each of us. It’s the spark from the filmmakers – their passion – that brings 200 unique worlds to life and, in turn, ignites the audience. The films, conversations, encounters are there to experience. And that’s what makes Sundance so magical.”

Sundance Film Festival follow up: CATFISH

In the last year since its debut at the Sundance Film Festival’s Spotlight section, filmmakers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman have spent some of their time basking in the overwhelmingly positive reaction to CATFISH, but most of their time defending its veracity. CATFISH documents the relationship between Schulman’s brother Nev and Megan, a girl he [...]

Sundance Film Festival follow up: THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

When director Lisa Cholodenko’s THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT debuted at the festival, it sparked audience enthusiasm so great it was matched only by one of Sundance’s most intense bidding wars ever. Eventually snapped up by Focus Features, KIDS went on to win Best Feature at Berlin International Film Festival’s Teddy Awards. It also topped [...]

Fabio: the new face of the electric vehicle?

If challenged to do so, you’d likely have no trouble coming up with a short list of eco-celebs: Ed Begley, Jr., Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Woody Harrelson, and, oh yeah, Robert Redford may all to come to mind. But Fabio? Yep, the Italian superhunk who’s graced the covers of many a romance novel, and pitched butter substitutes, is adding his look (if not his voice) to a green cause: electric vehicles.

2010 Bad Sex in Fiction Award

Rowan Somerville is the latest author to join the ranks of Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Sebastian Faulks in this year’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award, the annual prize from British magazine Literary Review. In Somerville’s novel, The Shape of Her, he describes sex as something akin to “a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.” Yowza. To be fair, Somerville’s first novel, The End of Sleep, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, and he accepted the Literary Review’s distinction gracefully. “There is nothing more English than bad sex,” he said, “so on behalf of the entire nation I would like to thank you.”

Interactive art: One Hundred and Eight

One Hundred and Eight – Interactive Installation from Nils Völker on Vimeo. Nils Völker created “One Hundred and Eight,” a neat interactive wall installation made from common trash bags inflate and deflate giving it an organic quality. The artist explains: Although each plastic bag is mounted stationary the sequences of inflation and deflation create the [...]