sundance

Salt and pepper shaker collection

Gail Anderson wrote a short essay over at Design Observer about her pre-Internet hobby collecting salt and pepper shakers (criteria was that they be originals and not reproductions). It’s interesting that she writes that she doesn’t actively collect them anymore because eBay has made it too easy. Click here to see a slideshow of some [...]

Festivals SUNcovered: Front Row Access

SUNcovered takes you beind the scenes of the 2011 Sundance FIlm Festival with Chase Sapphire. Want to see more? Check out clips from the festival here. Be sure to satisfy all your festival needs with the latest buzz, top stories, and celebrity interviews from Sundance Channel’s coverage of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Festivals SUNcovered: Matthew Chapman

SUNcovered joins director Matthew Chapman for the premiere of THE LEDGE. Want to see more? Check out clips from the festival here. Be sure to satisfy all your festival needs with the latest buzz, top stories, and celebrity interviews from Sundance Channel’s coverage of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

100 Things to Watch in 2011

JWT released their 6th annual forecast of 100 trends, movements, and developments to anticipate in 2011 (more details here). It’s a list that ranges from the predictable (E-Book Sharing, Group-Manipulated Pricing, Mobile Blogging) to pop culture (Michael Jackson Lives On, NKOTBSB, OWN) to what Ann Mack, director of trendspotting at JWT says “counter-trends—for instance, to balance out our growing immersion in the digital world, people will increasingly embrace face-to-face gatherings and digital downtime.”

Gaga versus Britney

Now that Cher’s been snubbed by Oscar, Christina’s career is in a slump, and Madonna’s gone silent, it is safe to say that the world’s stereotypical gay homosexuals can be lumped into two camps: Gaga and Britney. Some queen, who obviously speaks English as a second language, is well aware of this division in our [...]

ROBERT REDFORD (Festival Updates 2011)

Robert Redford sits down for an interview at the Honda Power of Dreams Studio, Sundance Channel HQ. Want to see more? Check out clips from the festival here. Be sure to satisfy all your festival needs with the latest buzz, top stories, and celebrity interviews from Sundance Channel’s coverage of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

James Franco’s World Domination

Actor James Franco attends the ‘Homework’ Premiere at the Library Center Theater during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2011 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Sonia Recchia/Getty Images)

James Franco’s world domination, or at least his Where’s Waldo-like ubiquity continues unabated in Park City. Today he’s featured on a banner ad on the cover of the Salt Lake Tribune: Six Oscar Noms for 127 HOURS! (Lotta hometown pride for that film, which is set in Utah.) And even though he doesn’t have a film at Sundance, the actor-documentarian-performance-artist-PhD-student-Oscar-co-host does have, naturally, an art exhibit.

Actor James Franco (right) hosts the Playboy Party on January 21, 2011 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Tiffany Rose/WireImage)

It’s called Three’s Company: The Drama, and it is not (in the vein of his General Hospital-MOCA shenanigans) performance art. No. We were quickly corrected upon entering the New Frontier space-where dozens of multi-media, and every other kind of media (“transmedia,” “new media”) exhibits are on display-that Three’s Company is “immersive” media. As the placard on the wall outside of the installation explains: “By pulling apart the individual story elements of the show Three’s Company, and reconstituting them into a fully immersive (see?) experience, Franco allows viewers to activate the body in the act of remembering and reliving the iconic sitcom.”

Sundance Film Festival Documentaries That ‘Expose and Inspire’

The filmmakers behind the more than two dozen documentary films being showcased at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival may have different reasons for being there, notes Reuters’ Christine Kearney. “Some are competing for prizes and aiming to score distribution deals, others are seeking media hype to gain traction with audiences, and still more simply want [...]

Fashionable Festival Females

Kate Bosworth Photo by Jeff Vespa/GettyImages FULL FRONTAL FASHION shows you which ladies are leading the way with their hot winter style at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. See what stars like Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks and Ellen Barkin wore to beat that frosty Park City, Utah weather. Click here to view all the exciting [...]

Sundance Film Festival Deals: THE DETAILS, PERFECT SENSE, THE GUARD, ANOTHER EARTH

The Sundance Film Festival deal-making continues. Recent acquisitions: IFC Films has nabbed the North American rights to director David Mackenzie’s romantic thriller PERFECT SENSE, starring Ewan McGregor and Eva Green, which debuted at the festival in the Premieres section on Monday night. (Just announced; see trailer below) The Weinstein Company has picked up the worldwide [...]

What you remembered about the State of the Union

Immediately after President Obama’s State of the Union address, NPR asked its listeners to describe his speech in just three words, which were all then compiled and put into Wordle, a fun word cloud generator. NPR received responses from over 4,000 people and the result above is a graphic representation of how in tuna people [...]

Raves for Miranda July’s THE FUTURE

What is the Sundance Film Festival’s “buzziest film (so far)”? Miranda July’s THE FUTURE, according to The Week. These three rave reviews alone would seem to prove the point: “Miranda July’s THE FUTURE is narrated by a stray cat that mid-thirties couple Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) take in, and like that fragile kitty, [...]

Artist Marthalicia Matarrita, live at Sundance

Marthalicia Matarrita in the Sundance Channel HQ studio.

Harlem-based artist Marthalicia Matarrita specializes in a very specific medium, one that mixes street art, hip-hop and performance into what can best be described as live painting. She currently represents New York City at ART BATTLES, pioneers of the Live Art Movement. Often called the “Iron Chef” of the art world in that it’s a live, timed competition, ART BATTLES pits artists who favor bold, graphic, street-style visuals in theme-based showdowns. In Matarrita’s latest battle (which you can see still images from above), the artists were asked to interpret Picasso’s “Guernica.”

Miranda July. Painting by Marthalicia Matarrita.

But before the next round of battles begin, Matarrita is stopping by Sundance HQ in Park City, UT this week, where she’ll create live illustrations of festival-goers who drop in. Whether she’s painting on a large canvas backed by loud DJ music at a battle or working on smaller-scale illustrations, Mataritta maintains the same hip-hop-inspired fluidity in all her pieces. In fact, music has been such a major part of her life that she founded M-Squared Art Productions in 2006 with her brothers Tomas aka Atomic and Jorge based on what she calls “the four elements of hip-hop: music, graffiti, art and dance,” especially breakdance. “What hip hop does for breakdancers is the same for graffiti-writers and painters. My performances are influenced by it.” Performance, or process, is key for Matarrita. “The process in creating the artwork is both therapeutic and meditative. The end result is the satisfaction in my labor of love, my art.”

Waste heat recovery from a crematorium: green or ghoulish?

Waste heat recovery isn’t nearly as sexy as solar panels or wind turbines… but it’s a concept already proving its worth, with a lot of room for growth. It’s also an idea that might strike most of us as pretty non-controversial; however, when the waste heat is coming from a crematorium, battle lines appear.

Ed Helms, Now and Then

“Is it too early to declare 2011 as the year of Ed Helms?” wonders the Hollywood Reporter, citing the former Daily Show correspondent’s first starring role in the warmly received comedy CEDAR RAPIDS, which just debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as roles in the forthcoming HANGOVER sequel and what is sure to [...]

Font geeks, rejoice!

FF Blur by legendary designer Neville Brody

MoMA has been on something of an acquisitions spree of late, following up their recent purchase of artist David Woknarowicz’s controversial “A Fire in My Belly” (that’s the video of ants crawling over Christ’s body that the Smithsonian took down after it ruffled some feathers in the Catholic League) with 23 digital typefaces for its Architecture and Design collection. Before this, Helvetica was the only font in the 30,000-piece collection, but it’s now joined by equally famous brethren like Verdana and Gotham as well as less common fonts like Walker, Template Gothic and even OCR-A, which is used only in bar codes.

Vimeo of the Week: Small World Energy

Small World Energy from Niles Heckman on Vimeo.

Niles Heckman‘s Small World Energy is a wonderful little film telling the story of energy. Starting with the worst types of energy and finishing with the cleanest types of energy, his film shows what appears to be aerial views of these things. In actuality, it is a combo “of hand painting, photo collage, morphing, and texture projections.” He wrote of the film:

Being extremely passionate about clean energy and a sustainable future for the planet, I felt obligated to do my version of a public service announcement. The concept was to start dirty and end clean. Beginning by showing the most destructive forms of energy (deforestation, coal, oil, shale) in addition to some of their side effects and then transition to systems that are cleaner but still have major downsides associated (nuclear, bio fuels, hydro) and conclude with renewables (geothermal, tidal, solar, and wind) which have very minimal negative side effects and impact on our ecosystem.

Robert Redford on Career ‘Irony’

You might be surprised to learn, as we were, that Sundance Film Festival founder Robert Redford, who has nurtured the work of countless filmmakers over the years, doesn’t have a scrum of those filmmakers clamoring to cast him in meaty roles. “I ask the question — I say, ‘Hey I’d like to be [in that [...]

The light bulb ban that wasn’t

Heard the news? Incandescent light bulbs will be banned come 2012. The government will force you to buy mercury-laden CFLs or expensive LED bulbs… so better start stockpiling the light bulbs now!

You may have run across this rhetoric, especially now that California has chosen to implement upcoming federal standards a year early (they started on January 1). You may be tempted to pick up a case or two of incandescents. But if you dig just a bit deeper, you’ll find that much of the rhetoric surrounding these new regulations is just that…

Repeat after me: there is no light bulb ban on the horizon.

Baseball Card Hall of Fame

I got some quality lolz from Baseball Card Hall of Fame, a website highlighting and paying tribute to various baseball cards. [Via]

CEDAR RAPIDS: A Film With Heart

Miguel Arteta’s CEDAR RAPIDS, which premiered Sunday night at the Sundance Film Festival, is garnering positive, if not rapturous, reviews. General consensus: The insurance-industry fish-out-of-water comedy, which stars Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, Anne Heche and Isiah Whitlock Jr.,  is slight, but sturdy, sweet and funny, with a lot of heart. A sampling of responses: [...]

Festival Update 2011 with Kyle Gallner, Kay Panabaker, Juno Temple and Elgin James

The cast of LITTLE BIRDS sits down for an interview at the Honda Power of Dreams Studio at Sundance Channel HQ. Want to see more? Check out clips from the festival here. Be sure to satisfy all your festival needs with the latest buzz, top stories, and celebrity interviews from Sundance Channel’s coverage of the [...]

THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED (Festival Update 2011)

The cast of THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED sits down for an interview at the Honda Power of Dreams Studio, Sundance Channel HQ. Want to see more? Check out clips from the festival here. Be sure to satisfy all your festival needs with the latest buzz, top stories, and celebrity interviews from Sundance Channel’s coverage of [...]

And the Nominees Are … Sundance Film Festival Veterans

About those Academy Award nominations announced this morning, Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan has noted a trend: If you add up the number of [Oscar] nominations [for films] from last year’s [Sundance Film] festival — 14 all told — it’s a more impressive total than the dozen for THE KING’S SPEECH. The two [...]

Festivals SUNcovered: Cosmopolitan HQ Activation

Host Ellen Fox tours the Cosmopolitan Experience at Sundance Channel HQ. Want to see more? Check out clips from the festival here. Be sure to satisfy all your festival needs with the latest buzz, top stories, and celebrity interviews from Sundance Channel’s coverage of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.