sundance

Shredded money, money, money

“Shredded Money” is an older piece by Christodoulos Panayiotou, but I think it’s relevant to the current times with the controversy over the Eurozone bailout fund and related financial crisis plaguing Europe. There’s more than meets the eye to this dune-shaped installation which stands 5 meters high and 7 meters wide. It’s a pile of shredded Cypriot pounds from the Central Bank of Cyprus that were of no value after the country entered the Eurozone by adopting the transnational Euro currency on January 1, 2008.

Lars von Trier talks about MELANCHOLIA

Though Lars von Trier’s MELANCHOLIA doesn’t come out in wide release until November 11, 2011, the anticipation for his seemingly more accessible follow-up to 2009′s ANTICHRIST is mounting. (For me, it’s the combination of the end-of-the-world theme/people looking up at outer space in wonder, the mystery of melancholia and my girl crush, Charlotte Gainsbourg.)

In case you have no idea what movie I’m talking about:

Berliner Liste: 126 galleries in an old power plant

Continuing their recent tradition of up-cycling abandoned nuclear centers, Berlin hosted a three-day art fair, dubbed Berliner Liste, in a former power plant with works from 126 galleries in 26 different countries. For those of you who didn’t see my review of Wunderland Kalkar, the amusement park operating inside a giant nuclear reactor, Germany announced it will close all of its nuclear facilities by 2022, many of them repurposed as public centers. So, this is kind of their thing.

A GOP glossary

Our friend Geoff Rice, a nimble Facebook poster and hilarious bleeding-heart liberal, recently began a GOP/Tea Party glossary in public “Note” form, defining such terms as “freedom”, “immigrant” and “socialism”, and calling for additional entries from readers. Here was our contribution:

Pro-Life

1. A belief in and dedication to the sanctity of life, except in the cases of women who might die from childbirth, prisoners on death row (even those with new evidence that may exonerate them), animals who are hunted for sport or tortured on factory farms, poor people who can’t afford healthcare, and doctors who legally perform abortions (see “George Tiller”).
2. The ability to believe that God creates all life at conception while simultaneously ignoring the fact that (when you consider the number of miscarriages women go through) God is the biggest abortionist of them all.

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Weekly movie trailer roundup: I MELT WITH YOU

This week we’re featuring just one trailer, and yeah, full disclosure, it made its debut at Sundance, but with record walkouts and a tangle of incredibly divisive reviews, it’s not exactly what you would call a Sundance success story. It could be argued, however, that the notoriety its initial screening incited is only to its benefit, and now that the trailer is out and it’ll be On Demand in just about a month, the people are talking…

Best of London, Milan Fashion Week – now Paris (!!!)

Fashion week in NY may be a thing of the past, and the designers who showed at London and Milan are now breathing a sigh of post-show relief, but the runways of Paris are just starting to heat up. Paris Fashion Week may just be the most exciting of all, and a daily check-in at Full Frontal Fashion will ensure that you don’t miss a thing….

Spider-Man’s new identity

It wasn’t just the (literally) life and death drama surrounding the Spider-Man Broadway musical that people were gossiping about this year, but its upcoming celluloid cousin – a reboot of the Spider-Man film franchise that re-imagines the possibilities of a Marvel universe with a non-white Peter Parker – was also a source of chatter around the Internet water cooler amongst Marvel, sci-fi, and oddly enough Donald Glover fans.

John Madden’s THE DEBT: old people kicking ass

The greatest thing about THE DEBT, and this is no spoiler, is that it features older people acting out through violence. When’s the last time you saw that? Real ass-kicking and blood by the 50+ club? I loved David Edelstein’s review in New York Magazine, which doesn’t exactly talk about the violence enacted by retired-set, but he instead writes about the film’s somewhat maudlin properties and how they’re somehow forgiven. The second half of the film “turns into one howler after the other … yet it’s still gripping.”

Green tech finds, 9/29/11

Lots of green tech on wheels this week: Ford’s concept e-bike, Peugeot’s tiny electric car, and the Air Force’s big move towards EV adoption.

Ford getting into the bicycle business? Maybe: the company released an e-bike concept at the Frankfurt Auto Show. The frame weighs in at a very light 5.5 pounds, and the electric assist motor can run for 53 miles. (via Matter Network and Rodale)

The printed bicycle: The Aerospace Innovation Centre‘s bicycle concept on display at the London Design Festival is made from nylon and created by a process similar to 3D printing. The result: a lightweight frame that’s supposedly as strong as steel. (via Do the Green Thing)

Abramovich’s art island to include outdoor hot tub

Roman Abramovich, the billionaire Russian businessman who owns (among lots of other things) the Chelsea Football Club, recently purchased an island off the coast of St.Petersburg – like ya do when you’re the 11th richest man in the world. Last winter, Ambramovich announced he would dedicate $400 million to converting the island – previously used as a military base – into an enormous art center, complete with offices, hotels, restaurants and boutiques along with a new museum. A “Starchitect” search soon followed, with submissions from top architects all over the world. Just last month, New York-based firm, WORKac, was given the nod – probably because theirs was the only design to include a giant jacuzzi in the courtyard.

Get into Garo

If you haven’t tuned in Fridays at 9p and seen Garo and his tireless team whip up fabulous, fearless (and sometimes downright insane) costumes and gowns for his clients, honestly, you’re missing out. Get into the spirit of things and check out Garo’s favorite burlesque stars, goth girls and drag queens…

When parents text

“Some people worry that technology is hindering human communication, creating more distance in relationships, but we think When Parents Text is evidence to the contrary,” write co-authors Lauren Kaelin and Sophia Fraioli about their new book.

We’re Getting Rood on the Dance Floor

Patrick Rood AKA The Captain. Photo Credit: Hexed And Vexed.

Did you wear out your dance pants with last week’s mix tape? Yeah? Good!

The third installment for all you ladies, gents and gender benders is here — The Captain. Coming to you once a week as tribute to couture fashion designer Garo Sparo, all thanks to our lovely friends over at Garo’s workshop.

Watch as Garo, part-time psychiatrist and full-time dream weaver, helps his clients battle their inhibitions and unleash their true selves in our all new original series UNLEASHED BY GARO, Fridays at 9p!

Quirky answers: where do today’s inventors live and what are they inventing?

We wanted to share this brilliant infographic from the Quirky site that maps out where today’s inventors hail from and answers the question: “Does innovation flow from cities?”

“Obviously, most of the ideas seem to be flowing from the big cities around the country: New York, L.A., San Francisco, Washington, etc. But adding up those figures, over half of Quirky’s submissions come from states with mega-cities (NY, CA, IL, TX, PA, AZ, TX, GA, VA, MA). Doing a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, about half of America’s 300 million people live in those same states. In other words, the innovations seem to be flowing at a steady per capita rate; cities are not over-represented…

An open letter to Eddie Murphy from Steve Martin

In a sign that the Academy is taking itself slightly less seriously or that it’s really out of touch with the zeitgeist, Eddie Murphy was announced as the host of the 84th annual Oscars, which ABC will broadcast on February 26. The New York Times argued that “Mr. Murphy’s agreement to host the show marks the Academy’s apparent return to a formula that worked well a decade ago, when masters of live comedy — Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and Steve Martin among them — kept the crowd laughing as it watched often somber films…” It makes sense to select people who thrive onstage and are at their funniest commanding a live crowd, and it’s definitely a win-win for Eddie Murphy…

Dead Drop your files into random USB flash drives

Not sure if you’ve heard this around the water cooler, but apparently we’re living smack in the middle of the Free Information Age, which means we have unprecedented access to (random, often incorrect) knowledge and ideas more than any other generation. Go us! To give the whole “free knowledge” concept a more literal twist, Berlin-based media artist, Aram Bartholl, launched his latest project, “Dead Drops,” by mounting USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs. The idea is that folks can come plug-in and download goofy, anonymous files, or share a few of their own.

Method’s “Ocean Plastic:” green or greenwash?

The idea of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a massive island of plastic garbage swirling around in the ocean – has captured the imagination of both die-hard greenies and concerned citizens alike. Our visions aren’t quite in line with reality (it’s more of a “soup” than an island), but we’ve generally got it right on the massive part: it may be twice the size of the continental United States. So when the home cleaning products brand Method announced the launch of “a bottle made out of plastic collected from the North Pacific Gyre” (aka the Great Pacific Garbage Patch), those of us in the green media jumped at the notion of a company making an effort to clean up this mess. As it turns out, we probably should’ve looked just a bit closer before we leaped (he wrote sheepishly).

Autotune mash-up of Stephen Hawking and his science buds

I know the autotuned thing jumped the Internet shark awhile ago, but I couldn’t not share this “musical investigation into the nature of atoms and subatomic particles,” created by sampling autotuned clips from science documentaries that examine the minute and infinitesimal quantum world and universe.

Driverless airport Pods make their London debut

Going to the airport is among my least favorite things. There’s always a weird carpet smell, people are generally jerks, the food sucks and there’s no way to feel comfortable in those crappy, plastic waiting area seats. Then, once you actually arrive at your destination, you have to wait forever for a shuttle bus to come and jerkily transport you to a rental car while your duffel bag strap digs into your shoulder. But thanks to a fancy new invention by Advanced Transport Systems, the last part of this otherwise totally annoying process is getting kind of awesome, dare I say fun?

Remembering activist Wangari Maathai through film

It’s been a tough couple of months for heroes of the environmental and sustainability movements. Sustainable business pioneer Ray Anderson passed away from cancer in August, and now Wangari Maathai, Kenyan Nobel peace prize laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement has also lost her own battle with the disease. Described as “a force of nature” by the executive director of the United Nations’ environmental program, Maathai recognized connections between environmental degradation, poverty and women’s rights in her home country, and she aimed to address all of these issues through one of the simplest of acts: planting trees.

A poem called “Promiscuous”

It’s not often that you wake up to NPR and hear Garrison Keillor saying “slut” over and over again, but today was a lucky day! His AM installment of The Writer’s Almanac, a five minute collection of poetry and literary history, concluded with the poem “Promiscuous” by William Matthews, from Search Party: Collected Poems, which is like Wheaties for feminist linguistic nerds who majored in English and keep deep-thought journals. Here’s the first half. Read the rest at Writer’s Almanac:

Best of Kickstarter, 9/26

We scoured the pages of Kickstarter to bring you this week’s best projects. Have a great Kickstarter project of your own or see one you think deserves some extra attention? Let us know about it the comments and we may just feature it in our weekly roundup.

FILM

Herb and Dorothy 50×50: You probably remember the Vogels from the moving 2008 documentary, HERB & DOROTHY, about how one couple with an extremely modest income managed to amass one of the most impressive and expansive art collections in the world. Now the same director, Megumi Sasaki, is trying to raise funds for a new documentary about the Vogels’ latest undertaking, “a historic gift project to give 50 of the Vogels’ works to one museum in each of the 50 states – a total of 2,500 works.” Apparently, their collection, which they donated to the National Gallery, has grown to include some 4,000 worls, more than the Gallery can handle. So they’re giving them away to museums around the country.

Most expensive scene in silent film history

The above cinemagraph is from the 1926 silent film, THE GENERAL, starring and co-directed by Buster Keaton. And this climatic shot is believed to the single most expensive scene in silent film history, at a cost of $400,000. Considered “one of the greatest of all silent comedies (and Keaton’s own favorite) – and undoubtedly the best train film ever made,” this epic scene, filmed near the town of Cottage Grove, Oregon, used a real train (with a “dummy” conductor) and was shot in a single take.

Olaf Brzeski’s solid plume of smoke

Poland got a pretty bunk deal as far as the 20th century is concerned: reconstituted as an official country only after the First World War, citizens suffered through Nazi invasions before being jammed behind the Iron Curtain for decades. This summer, an exhibit at Brussels’ Palas des Beaux-Arts showcased work exclusively by Polish artists who grew up under Communism, but only began working after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Entitled “The Power of Fantasy: Modern and Contemporary art from Poland,” the exhibit tried to engage with Poland’s painful history in a new way.

Now arriving at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport: garden fresh food

Airport food is generally only memorable for the high prices we pay for such lackluster fare. We don’t expect much more than this, and we’re happy if we can get it quickly enough to make our connection. That’s been the standard for as long as I can remember, but it turns out that as of mid-September, you can now add “fresh” and “nutritious” to the options at one US airport. Chicago’s O’Hare now has four restaurants that buy local produce for their menus, and, in these cases, “local” means “grown at the airport.” The airport has opened the world’s first “aeroponic” garden in Terminal 2, which grows “44 different types of organic herbs and vegetables” for use at Tortas Frontera, Wicker Park Seafood and Sushi, Blackhawks Restaurant and Tuscany.