happy hallowe'en everybody!

In honour of my favourite holday (which I hope you're already celebrating since it's one of those rare occasions where the fun gets a many-night extension in the buildup to Saturday eve's all-out hauntfest!), here's Army of Darkness in 5 seconds. OK, 48. Whatever.

stimulingual

The 'Received Pronunciation' affected accent spoken by all on-air personalities of the BBC is such a turn on, I swear I must live in the wrong country. I think was supposed to have been born in the English countryside circa 1900. But it's not an entirely natural sound, it's actually a completely fabricated way of speaking tracing its use back to the ivy league types who assumed an exaggeratedly-proper sound while posted up at Oxford studying to be Lords and Chamberlains and stuff. I guess phonetics was the last bastion not separating them from the lower classes. It wasn't until the 1950s when 'The Queen's English' had a cemented rep for total snobbery, and the BBC adopted it, noses jettisoned firmly up into the air for all time.
When an English person hears RP, they think 'snoot', when I hear it, I'm happy in my pants.

Accents! Stop motion! Nice BBC promo piece shot entirely in-camera from Director, Sean Pecknold.

got a minute? grab a corona

More goodness shot with a Canon 5D [have I mentioned the terrific crush I've got on this camera already? Of course I have]. Floridian Director/Cameraman, Ryan Lightbourn uses simple pans and pushes to tell a story of colour and viewpoint with the glorious bright blues and greens of the Bahamas as a backdrop. Broad-strokes slowly focus in on the details. It's oh-so-pretty. There's an abrupt switch mid-way through to imagery not usually associated with 'paradise'. I'm not sure there's an underlying comment here, but the theme continues to visually seduce. Ultimately it's really a gorgeous expression of the type of creation the Canon's capable of.

this is slightly awkward for both of us

I have an instant newfound [renewed?] love for Luke Perry after he posed for Sears-style portraits with his fans [airquotes] at DragonCon this year.

My inner fourteen year old is squealing with lovesick glee right now.







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tripods and tearjerkers

Love-your-pet day at the Shift Show continues with Phos Pictures beautiful mini-doc, 'Last Minutes with Oden' about a dog.... well, really, it's about life.

I bawled.

Won best vid and doc at the Vimeo Festival + Awards.

more ireland, as if i needed convincing

It's only noon-ish but I can already tell you that the four minutes I spent watching this surfing vid shot at Mullaghmore Head by Peter Martin has been my time best spent all day.

miaou

MiCha is a cat. a lamp. a cat-lamp. I'm sure they took some inspiration for their design idea from Pixar's anthropomorphic logo-lamp, but they've really made a leap and created an extremely adorable whiskered real-life gadget complete with its own video. I want to cuddle one without getting burned somehow. I should also point out that despite the misleading video evidence, I'm thinking it can't actually reposition itself without your help and imagination.
Made in France, where all chic things are made.







the softest sell?

I'm not sure what to be more offended by - the fact that The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas (a hotel marketed towards today's lucre-dripping luxury-chasing gal-of-privilege) seems to think the typical woman mostly just wants to treat handsome men as objects - quite literally furniture - and cuddle baby animals while being photographed, or that they're sort of right. Either way, great spot. Bring on the kittens.

"i'm meant to be tall in my body"

I don't want to steal any Chilean miner thunder or anything, but if you really want to reflect on the triumph of the human spirit and meditate on long-term social innovation that'll impact lives, get a tissue right now, especially if you used your legs at all today.

c'est vieux, c'est mieux

Montreal, shot with Mr. B.Hawkeye.






speaking of bttf

Back in July, Back To The Future marked the actual date of its 25th Anniversary.

In case you're missing all the online action that's trickled down since commemorating the sheer awesomeness of that fact, consider this post and that last one a little round up for you.

BTTF Lea Thompson and Michael J. Fox Reunion Photo Shoot for Entertainment Weekly



Michael J. Fox recreates the original trailer scene for scene for the 2010 Scream Awards

from hollywood's 'holy sh*t' vault

Did you know Eric Stoltz was almost 'Marty McFly'? Nice save, Robert Zemeckis!

what what

What do you do with a few Canon DSLRs, a wicked team of bikers, free-runners and breakers, a pond jump and a summer afternoon?
Devin Graham did this.
Sick.
Get it.

trailerrific tempest

OK, this is looking a wee bit wacky, and the FX are very - what can I say - Taymor. But I think I'll choose to continue going bananas adding to the hype, and reserve my disappointment for after its release at christmas (when I can roll multiple post-holiday disappointments into one tight convenient little repressed anger ball).

giving thanks to canon

Thanksgiving spread at mine shot with the 5D.






simpsons + banksy

Kind of spot on.
But I kind of don't understand what he actually did. Illustrate? Direct? Conceptualize? Anyway, win.

guess what i've got for the weekend?

sid lee comes to toronto

Montreal-based ad peeps Sid Lee (famous for bringing you such goodness as Darth Vader in Adidas commercials, and singlehandedly responsible for making the Pilooski edit of 'Beggin' the most overplayed remix of the summer) have opened shop in TO.

If you're wondering why Sid Lee's always markedly at the top of the awesome list in the ad world, it's really because they were the first to evolve advertising's tradition business model towards something more... experiential. They teamed with a zeitgeist-grabbing architecture firm to boost brand aesthetic spatially, creating a touch-and-feel type of advertising, and making a whole new soup out of the ingredients long reserved for a sight-and-sound-only tradition. They reformed themselves as an art collective - not the typically talent-structured hierarchy. They've been known to set a group of interns to a task as whimsical as 'hey, make a cool sculpture out of these running kicks'.

They turned the whole shebang on its head and got attention by putting inspiration first, form second and application last.

They celebrated their pretty gorg new digs in Toronto's Distillery last nite.

There was an epic art battle! And enough poutine to clog all the arteries in the western hemisphere! It was coolio. Here are some pics.


oh noes

Who did The Gap pay to do their redesigned logo? A twelve-year-old with a new macbook?

mag-neato

Flash on the Beach is a speaker series held in Brighton, UK at the end of September, self-purportedly for anyone who's a 'designer, developer, coder, student, manager, game developer, artist, animator or a newbie' (covering all the bases there, I take it).

This year's promo/titles vid was a beaut - beautifully art-directed magnetic materials shot entirely in macro get their freak on.

When I was little, my Dad used to bring home the magnets veterinarians would stick in the [first] stomachs of beef cattle to catch anything they shouldn't eat but couldn't help sucking up in their great mow across the pasture. (The magnets were pre-cow of course.)

We used to rig up all kinds of Rube-Goldberg machina and neat sprung traps and tricks with those things, and magnets still hold a fascination for me. A great gift to get me for xmas would be a set of Bucky Balls, you know, if someone were getting me something. Just sayin.

look at these scary/awesome shoes

Just look at them.
In the grand tradition of pushing the fashion envelope a la Elsa Schiaparelli, Kobi Levi blurs the line between art and fashion with [maybe NSFW] footwear like no one and nothing I've seen.
I wouldn't wear ANY of these, but I LOVE them!






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just try to resist this sad little cuteness

DDB New Zealand pulled an epic homeward-bound for New Zealand Lotto with this spot, which I had to post since they winkingly used Nick Cave's heartstring-tugging tune, 'To Be By Your Side' as the soundtrack.

on october 1, 1958

Hunter S. Thompson applied for a position at the Vancouver Sun.

"[I've] developed a healthy contempt for journalism as a profession. As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you're trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I'd like to work for you."

Read the whole crass and brilliantly candid letter here.

happy october 1!

It's my favourite month of the year and you're welcome to it.

I spend most mornings running the track at private school on Avenue, this morning I shared it with some varsity players out training, it was crisp enough that we all contributed to a thin cloud of steam rolling up into the clean air.

October reminds me of 'back to school' more than September does - it's the month when you really register the season change, the cooler weather is like balm after the stink heat of this summer. Today I retired my open-toed heels and pulled out my scarves and my suede boots.

But I didn't pull out any books.

If I would've, I wish they were for this curriculum - I love Wired Mag's illo of '7 Essential Skills you Didn't Learn in College'.


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tempestry

A while back I posted my excitement over Julie Taymor's new Shakespearian adaptation flick - The Tempest.

Criterioncast.com posted some stills today.

Zomg, excited again!




*just wants to be cuddled

I saw this stuffed pigeon and I was like, 'ew' because even stuffed pigeons seem gross.
They also have rat finger puppets!




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