The Rogues are a new design of papercraft that camouflage their true personality. Click on the bottom left of the images on the site and watch them transform. I can’t wait to build them. Free! (tip BoingBoing)
Author: Ted Hope
Lee Seong-kang’s MY BEAUTIFUL GIRL MARI (2002) was one of our great film discoveries this year. The animation is beautiful and inventive. It’s the story of a young boy who seems to have everyone around him always leaving him. He seems to find a solution by entering a dream world, where he meets Mari. Seeing it’s set during his summer vacation there’s no better time to watch it than right now. We’d say appropriate for age 7+.
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Wanted: New Database
I have a child. I am always looking for new films to explore with him. It’s hard to find truly age appropriate films. I have a pretty good handle on the classics, but we like to explore too (Check out our blog Bowl Of Noses).
How sweet it would be to have a database that sorts all of the films by the age of the protagonists? Does it exist? Will you build it for us?
Michel Gondry has changed culture many times over. His Lego video may be the greatest video ever. And his Rubik’s Cube series are among the YouTube Hall of Fame. I look forward to the day when “Sweded” films take over from the corporate. Homemade always tastes better. This Star Wars trumps any thing Lucas did after the first three (and that is the TRUE first three, not the alternately titled first three). And the soundtrack ranks with John Williams’ best work.
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The Other TED
Still ranking right below BLU as my favorite clip of the year, is the TED Talk by Jill Bolte Taylor “A Stroke Of Insight”. Now TED has posted enough of their lectures to warrant a Top Ten (via BoingBoing).
I still remain grateful that we don’t have to run out and have a stroke to gain this sort of insight, just like we don’t need to run out a practice the methods of others, like Timothy Leary, who had remarkably similar realizations as Taylor, albeit not quite as succinct. To quote TED: “Neuroantomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientist would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.”
Maybe I am a few years behind, but 2008 feels like The Year That Lectures Broke on the Internet. It’s pretty great that ideas have finally become a pop form.
In my dreams, NYC transforms overnight. Manhattan is no longer the island of the super-rich. The ubiquitous advertising is gone. Everything is art. In fact it looks a lot like The Heidelberg Project outside of Detroit. This alone is a reason for a trip to Michigan.
The Heidelberg Project was started in response to the homes left abandoned after the ’67 Detroit Riots. Tyree Guyton (and his wife and father) got the kids together and went-a-decorating. It’s truly inspiring.
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Psychedelia Redux
EncyclepdiaPictura seem to be part of a growing wave of mind-blowing filmmakers and artists hellbent on accessing the deep recesses of our lizard brain. When Corbin slipped me the first taste of their work (knife) I time travelled back to my march through Utah’s Paria Canyon in my late teens when I was covered in mud and feeling akin to the Yeti as I scared the various more sane hikers who expected to commune with common nature. Awww, fond memories. Bjork since found them and they gave her a great 3D vid too.
Others in this wave include the band MGMT (check out “Time To Pretend” — if you haven’t been already among the 2.5M who did on YouTube or their interactive video game) & Assume Vivid Astro Focus (featured above). For a taste of the past, there is Hipgnosis. Turn on the love light baby. thanks Mr. Reynolds!
