sundance

Woody Allen’s SHADOWS AND FOG turns 20

2011 marks the 20th anniversary of Woody Allen’s SHADOWS AND FOG, meaning, among other things, that the prolific filmmaker has made 20 films since (actually, he’s made 21, but who’s counting?). In 1989 Allen made the much-loved CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, followed by the slightly less loved ALICE, and then SHADOWS AND FOG, which was, unfortunately, even less of a hit amongst audiences. The early 90s New York Times film critic Vincent Canby actually ended his review with a ridiculous “note of caution: SHADOWS AND FOG operates on its own wavelength. It is different. It should not be anticipated in the manner of other Allen films.”

Green tech finds: 8/4/11

Would you live in an old Hummer? Could solar power be available even when the sun’s not shining? These and other questions answered in this week’s green tech finds.

Harvesting ambient energy with paper antennas: Researchers at Georgia Tech are experimenting with pulling electromagnetic energy from the air with “antennas” printed on paper with inkjet technology. (via Grist)

Biodegradable sneakers that sprout flowers: Amsterdam-based OAT Shoes creates sneakers that not only biodegrade in soil, they even have wildflower seeds embedded in the tongue, so you can add to your garden once the shoes are worn out. (via Yahoo! Green)

It’s official: your insurance provider now has to cover your contraceptives

We reported last week that a leading U.S. medical advisory panel recommended that all insurers be required to cover contraceptives for women free of charge. Well, guess what? The Obama administration went for it! And we don’t mean the kind of “free” where you have to pay an annoying co-pay or other deductible. We mean 100% on the house. Let the celebratory protected boot-knocking begin!

Sailing the Hudson with adventurer Reid Stowe

Photo from New York Magazine

Within the first ten minutes of boarding the Anne, Reid Stowe’s hand-built, 70-foot-long gaff-rigged schooner, he’s telling me about the tantric exercises he first practiced in his early twenties, while traveling between four continents on his first boat, a hand-built catamaran. “I channelled my sexual energy into spiritual energy,” he said. Just how does one do that? “You don’t ejaculate,’” he said. “You keep it all in.” He brings it up for a legit reason (though I’d wager Reid could wax tantric without prompting). We’re talking about how even though he has a literary agent no one will publish his book. “That might be kind of a tough sell,” I said, trying to reason with him. “You know, to men – to not ejaculate.” He comes right back with, “Not if they see how it helped me.”

Application for art reality TV show

For Frieze Magazine, Jen Dalton created this pitch perfect application (Click here to see the enlargement) for artists interested in being cast for an imagined art-focused reality TV show titled “The Biggest Ego.” In defense of the artists I’m friends and acquaintances with, not a single one fits the narcissist, pedantic stereotype that Jen humorously suggests in the application’s questions. However, this might just mean I actually don’t know enough artists. It does recall the art-focused reality show on Bravo called Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, where artists competed for a $100,000 prize and an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. The show was on my pop-radar at the time, but alas did not make my to-do list. However, I did read this essay by Jerry Saltz, one of the show’s judges, that was published in New York Magazine a month after the show’s finale. Saltz writes:

The Perennials Project: building bridges in a shifting world

Those of us in the green space may tend to equate the term “sustainable community” with practices like the growth of neighborhood farmers markets, the integration of renewables into a town or city’s energy mix or the presence of innovative green businesses. Behind all of these practices, of course, are people committed not only to a more environmentally benign way of life, but also to the viability of their communities.

An eclectic group of young creatives has redefined the word “perennials” to describe the people at the forefront of creating healthier, more livable communities. The Perennials Project will explore these people who, according to the project’s website, are “working toward a sustainable future by bridging divides.”

A digital, serialized, erotic novella for the month of August

On July 31st we got a press release about “29 Days of August,” a “digital novella of appetites” meant to be read throughout the month on “the social networks you already use.” Here’s the scoop:

Exercise makes you ugly, and other important lessons from photographer Sacha Goldberger

French photographer Sacha Goldberger assembled an indoor studio at the Bois de Bologne in Paris, a park two-and-a-half times the size of Central Park, where he stopped joggers mid-workout and asked them do a sprint and then pose for a portrait immediately afterwards. The result? We look wretched when we work out, a fact anyone whose eyes have ever wandered in the gym can attest to. But that wasn’t the only point Goldberger wanted to make. After immortalizing his subjects’ blotchy, red-faced, sweat-soaked visages on film, he asked them to come to his studio the following week, where, using the same lighting, the same pose and similarly-colored clothing he took another portrait.

The hidden skeletal frames of common objects

This Canadian artist carves amazingly detailed skeletal designs into everyday objects, including the axe shown above as well as wooden picture frames, tables, bed posts, and even stacks of newspapers. Considering his subject matter, the artist, Maskull Lasserre, is aptly named. Speaking of appropriate names (slight tangent alert!), it reminds me of this lawyer’s name which I blogged about a few years ago. Anyhow, Lasserre’s sculptures look like something from the imagination of a Guillermo del Toro film, and I find their effect rather uncanny and eerie, especially the way the bones are partly revealed. As cool as the artist’s carved coat hangers look, I think it would freak out my special lady guests if I was to have these hangers hanging in the closet of my bedroom (or as I now call it after The Bachelor/Bachelorette series on ABC, the “Fantasy Suite”).

Local ingredients for genuine Gulf-region comfort food

Watch LUDO BITES AMERICA Tuesdays at 9P

“Why don’t you go back to your double-wide and fry something” isn’t just a great line from SWEET HOME ALABAMA, it also sums up the view of Gulf Coast cuisine & culture held by many not from the region. Okay, there’s a lot of deep frying that goes on inside Southern kitchens, but as anyone who’s spent time there (or lived there) knows, that doesn’t encapsulate the region’s food, even the “comfort food” with which Ludo will experiment when he and Krissy do their pop-up restaurant thing at Mobile, Alabama’s Queen G’s Cafe tonight.

Buffaloes and Bison and Ludo, Oh My!

Watch LUDO BITES AMERICA every Tuesday at 9P

More savory wit from our featured food blogger Diana Hossfeld, who writes the food blog Diana Takes a Bite.

“There’s buffalo by my house!” I piped up in the middle of Mrs. Johnson’s fifth grade U.S. History lesson about Native Americans. Heads whipped around to stare, Mrs. Johnson swallowed what I immediately identified as a skeptical snort and guffaw, and my confident declaration rapidly disintegrated into a physical declaration of embarrassment. My cheeks burned as I tried to explain how it was conceivably possible for there to be buffalo roaming around near my house in Newport Beach, California. I did not do well in pleading my case.

Planking in the 1950s

This old LIFE Magazine photo of students partaking in “phone booth stuffing,” which was all the rage in the 1950s, also foretold the lying down game and later the planking phenomenon that went wildly viral this year. I think it demonstrates how memes, like fashion, are derivative of one another. As a big fan of the documentary format, someone needs to produce a TV series or film on the history of off-line and online fads and memes. In fact, I’d like to see a Ken Burns treatment on this topic (I’m not joking at all). BRB: Creating a Kickstarter campaign to hire Ken Burns.

Helix, a card game based on your DNA

Among the many ooh and ahh-inducing technological wonders on display in MoMA’s current “Talk to Me” exhibition is the card game, Helix, or rather its prototype. Why does a card game need a prototype, you ask? Because Helix is unlike any other game you’ve ever seen – seriously. For starters, it requires your DNA. Yep, before you can begin the game players send a swab of their saliva to a lab to be analyzed. From that data, the game’s designers create a customized 50-card deck based on the traits and tendencies revealed by your DNA. One card might be for obesity, another for depression and another for curly hair. The game begins when each player lays their cards on the table and engage in duels that “reward strategy and decision making but are limited by genetic reality.”

PostSecret tells aliens everything they need to know about (loving) the human race

Some – okay, most – photo blogs are funny for about as long as it takes you to read their gimmicky title and first post. And others continue to be funny, moving, inspiring, entertaining, or heartbreaking years later, like PostSecret, which is all of these and more. The website is an ongoing community art project where people anonymously submit their secrets on a 4-by-6-inch homemade postcard – and it’s a lovely little uncorrupted corner of the internet. (Not so little, though: They claim to be the largest advertisement-free blog in the world.) Every time we go back to check in on PostSecret, we’re blown away all over again. If we wanted to explain to alien visitors what humans are like, what they need, what they love, and what they fear, we’d send them here. Here are some of our recent faves:

Organic bottled water… really

Bottled water companies have had to get imaginative to distinguish their products from one another, because, as many watchdog groups have pointed out, all of it is pretty much just water (often filtered tap water) in a plastic bottle, and it’s often not as “pure” as tap water. That hasn’t stopped vendors from using everything from school spirit to New Age-y interpretations of quantum physics to position their products as unique.

The latest marketing trend for bottled water? Organic. Yep, that’s right. A number of companies now market “organic water.”