Royksopp Daisy Chain

Royksopp has an incredible--and incredibly creepy--new video:

ROYKSOPP - WHAT ELSE IS THERE
"...seven days..."

But then, Royksopp always has great videos...

ROYKSOPP - EPLE
Okay, well, this video isn't actually that great--I keep waiting for it to turn into a HP ad at the end--but I do love the song. Good luck getting that earwig out of your head anytime in the next three weeks.

ROYKSOPP - POOR LENO
That's Lee-no, not Len-o. Doesn't the little guy in this video look just like David Foster Wallace? Something about this video reminds me of Lambchop's beautiful "Is A Woman." And since I only need the slightest provocation to link to that:

LAMBCHOP - IS A WOMAN
It begins solemn and sad, then turns absurd, then surprises you with a "blink your eyes a few times and clear your throat" ending. This is my favorite video ever...I'm not going to be emo and claim that I choke up every single time I watch it, but almost always. This was directed by a design company called Shynola, who also did...

JUNIOR SENIOR - MOVE YOUR BODY
and also...

STEPHEN MALKMUS - JOJO'S JACKET
How would I even begin to describe what happens here? But I will say that, like the Lambchop video, it transcends its absurdity and becomes unexpectedly touching just at the end. (Or maybe it's just me.)

BLUR - COFFEE AND CIGARETTES
Okay, I didn't want to post this because we're really going off on a tangent here--believe it or not, I'm still talking about Royksopp--and also because I'm sure everyone reading this has seen this video before. But how can we talk about music videos whose endings touch you deeply and NOT post this?

Q: Blur or Oasis?
A: Pulp!

ROYKSOPP - REMIND ME
Ah, there we are. This video is fun and infographical (?), but I think it actually has a pretty profound message about how all of us fit into a larger picture. It makes an interesting companion to the very similar video for...

THE FAINT - AGENDA SUICIDE
Your homework: compare and contrast this video with the "Remind Me" video above.

THE KNIFE - HEARTBEATS
The girl floating around and singing in the original Royksopp video is the vocalist for the band The Knife, another Swedish group like Royksopp. These pictures don't do it justice, but The Knife has a genuinely unsettling live show. This video is pretty cruddy, but this is easily one of the best songs of whatever we end up calling this decade.

JOSE GONZALEZ - HEARTBEATS
That last song sounded a little familiar, right? But you couldn't place it, maybe? That's because it was covered in an Iron & Wine-like fashion by Jose Gonzalez--who, despite his name, is also Swedish--and used to score this pretty popular commercial.

IRON & WINE - NAKED AS WE CAME
There's something really simple and profound and ultimately mysterious happening in this video, directed by the artist..the kiss, the rain, the food, and all leading up to the last shot.

Children's Book Illustrations

Arthur Rackham

Grimm's Fairy Tales
page 1
page 2

Alice In Wonderland


Edmund Dulac

Edgar Allen Poe

Hans Christian Andersen
part 1
part 2

Tanglewood Tales


Gustaf Tenngren

Grimm's Fairy Tales
part 1
part 2

Three Early Books (Heidi, Tanglewood Tales, Juan And Juanita)

Small Fry And The Winged Horse

The Little Trapper


Kay Nielson

East Of The Sun And West Of The Moon

Twelve Dancing Princesses

Hansel And Gretel (hi res!)


Frank Reynolds

The Pickwick Papers


Tibor Gergerly

A Day In The Jungle

Bobby And His Airplanes


Mary Blair

Little Verses
part 1
part 2

The New Golden Song Book

Baby's House


Ben de Nunez and Al White

Rocky And His Friends


Mel Crawford

Rootie Kazootie Joins The Circus

Banners & Minotaurs

Wow! What a good idea!

Have you ever wondered where all the advertising banners for art shows go when the shows are over?

Better Wall works with over 20 major art museums and sells them as large scale wall art (with portions of the proceeds going back to the museums). Any damaged banners are recycyled as raw materials and keep vinyl out of landfills, and you can feel good about that.

The stock is always changing (obviously) and is definitely limited edition.

Too bad the posters are 1. pretty banal, 2. covered in ad stuff (obviously), and 3. cost as much as the original artworks.

*

Beth Carter is a UK-based sculptor.

Monkey & Hare
Minotaur Sleeping
Bull & Jester

My second favorite: Minotaur Reading.
My favorite: Minotaur & Moth (The webpage is mis-labeled.)

More info, and many more sculptures here, here, here, and here.

The prices seem quite shockingly affordable. (You can get either two of those beat-up museum banners, or an original sculpture...)

Picasso

Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a woman approached him.

"It's you Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist."

So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art.

"It's perfect!" she gushed. "You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?"

"Five thousand dollars," the artist replied.

"B-b-but, what? the woman sputtered. How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!"

To which Picasso responded, "Madame, it took me my entire life."

Babies With Rabies

El Perro Del Mar - God Knows
I'm totally in LOVE with this song, and I think you will be, too. The video, though, is so evocative, with its very 70s-European-children's-book vibe.

Badly Drawn Boy - Year Of The Rat
Along the same lines, except this video is more mid-80s-French-children's-book. I was always so-so about this song, but the video really makes it shine. (Also, it's notably better than the thematically identical video for Dave Matthew's "Everyday.")

Classic games recreated using household items and stop-motion. (This is many times cooler than it sounds.)

Sesame Street on How Crayons Are Made.

Peter Sellers effortlessly demonstrates roughly ten different British accents in about 45 seconds. (direct link to an mp3)

B+N is an interior decoration company that apparently focuses on trendy boutiques. Their site actually has some pretty cool stuff on it, but none as cool as their Iconic Panels, which are giant wall-mountable laminate panels. It goes without saying that I love Carnaby most of all but I could live with Versailles as well...though in some other color than "I like to kiss other boys" baby blue. NOTE: After clicking all over their site and downloading a pdf, you find out that this stuff costs $600-$1000 per panel, which seems reasonable for what it is, I guess, but a bit out of the price range of human beings.

Ringborg, Mueck, and Hammett

Lovisa Ringborg
I like Lovisa Ringborg's work so much that I'm posting it here even though her site uses that totally tacky "right-click disable" javascript. Normally I wouldn't want to give someone like that the publicity, you know?

Some of my favorites:
Disguised
Embracing The Tyrannus (sic)
No Title
Sleepwalker
No Title (my favorite)
No Title (NSFW)
No Title (No, wait, this one's my favorite)
Alice And The Goldfish
Wonderland
Untitled


Ron Mueck
Sculptor Ron Mueck is currently being featured at the National Galleries of Scotland. Here's some more information about him, as well as some freeeeeeeaky pictures. (somewhat NSFW: artistic nudity and some graphic childbirth images)

Washington Post gallery
National Gallery Of Scotland gallery
Creative Pool gallery
Russian gallery
James Cohan gallery
Guardian article, alternately illuminating and infuriating.


Dashiell Hammett
Black Lizard, the "vintage crime" imprint of Random House, has republised some classic Dashiell Hammett books with some very attractive covers:

The Thin Man
Red Harvest
The Maltese Falcon

Superman Returns review

Superman Returns
a review based on a dream of going to see it

Superman Returns, the newest entry in the long-running Man Of Steel franchise, proves to be one of the oddest films in Bryan Singer's distinctive career. The movie begins in total darkness, and using audio clues only, the audience must decipher the following information: Superman and Jimmy Olsen are hanging out with their scientist girlfriends on a dock on Lake Michigan, when Swamp Thing surfaces near them. Swamp Thing has the ability to emit human pheromones, and the two girls (both played by Erika Christensen) become very aroused, and plead with their boyfriends to let them have sex with Swamp Thing. However, Superman rescues them by grabbing them and flying away, I would guess.

After the rather spartan opening credits, we're whisked back to Clark Kent's teenage years, which take place in an idyllic Smallville curiously similiar to the Austria of The Sound Of Music, except that all the farms are connected by an intricate network of waterslides. The Kents are visiting family friends, who have twin three-year olds. Clark's told that one of the twins is "big." Big how? he asks, only to turn around and discover a twelve-foot tall proportional toddler in a British schoolboy outfit (Carson Kreesley). Clark, his mother, and the toddler begin to ride a waterslide and discuss the toddler's sister. It's here that Singer's script really shines:

MRS KENT: He's a big boy.
CLARK: A big one, all right.
MRS KENT: You should see his sister.
CLARK: She's bigger?
MRS KENT: Nope.
CLARK: She's smaller, like atom-sized?
MRS KENT: Nope.
CLARK: She's normal?
MRS KENT: No, she's...a photograph!

Flash forward to the present, where Superman has a terrific fight scene with Boba Fett, who uses a dynamic fighting style not seen in the Star Wars movies to bring the match to a draw. Superman, though, is preoccupied with remembering four bunsen burners which are heating a giant vat, somewhere far away.

After the fight, look for a cameo from me, as I sit in the produce section and write a rough draft of this review using a laptop and one of the advertising TVs mounted on the wall. (My initial complaint about the movie is that Lois Lane doesn't show up at all.) The film then shifts tones and becomes a stunning meditation on paternity, as I give my stepfather a ride home from the theater, and he gives me a $100 bill. Then I wake up.

Though not the spectacular film many "Supes" fans were waiting for, Superman Returns is a great, if puzzling, popcorn flick, and is highly recommended if you have a couple of hours to kill sleeping on the couch in your clothes, only to wake up after dark, confused and sweaty.

My grade: B

Superman Returns: (Action/Adventure) 2 hrs. 34 min. Rated PG-13 for some intense action violence and hallucinogenic imagery.

If You Could Read My Mind

On my list of Totally Embarrassing Songs That Completely Break My Heart, Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" has always had a special place. None of the other songs on the list--Lionel Ritchie's "Stuck On You," Carole King's "So Far Away"--have the overachieving quality of Lightfoot's song.

On one hand, it's absolutely one of the most wretched examples of the worst period of contemporary music--the mid-70s faux-country AM radio hit--all high-school-literary-journal lyrics ("a ghost from a wishing well"?) and cloying string section.

But on the other hand, there's that completely heartbreaking chorus, when the singer tries to make sense of a dying relationship, using an almost Raymond Carver straightforwardness: " "I never thought I could act this way, and I've got to say that I just don't get it. I don't know where we went wrong, but the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back." (Note that the singer indicts himself for losing that lovin' feeling as much if not more than his partner.)

But...right, it was Gordon freakin' Lightfoot. So I was cheered to discover that Johnny Cash had covered the song on the last American album, out this week. Now I'm no Johnny Cash cultist--I knew dudes who CRIED when he passed away--and I don't think that his cover of something is automatically more authentic somehow; I still prefer the originals of "I See A Darkness" and "I'm On Fire." However, if I have to choose between Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot, well...

However, I was completely unprepared for his cover of the song. It's still heartbreaking, I'll give him that...but not in the way that I meant up above. It's heartbreaking because it's the sound of a blind diabetic with only weeks left to live gasping through a last handful of songs.

Frankly, it's hard to listen to...and not because it's bad. If anything, it's a weird reversal on the so-bad-it's-good genre: it's so good it's bad. It's tough to hear Cash sing it. A lot of people think that "Hurt" is the ultimate memorial, but Cash seems out of place in the fussily art-directed (and embarrassingly literal) video of the hipster cover. "If You Could Read My Mind" seems like a much more fitting tribute to him; it's a song reminiscent of his decades in the Nashville pap industry, but sung with the intensity of of an old man raging against the dark.

Eastern Bloc

Check out these amazing movie posters done in the style of medieval Russian illuminated texts.

As far as anyone can tell, the movies are:

1. a Russian film starring Mickey-Mouse rip-off, Russian Olympic Mascot, and "sovok" icon, Cheburashka.
2. Terminator
3. The Matrix
4. Lord Of The Rings
5. Another Cheburashka film, this one starring his friend Crocodile Gena.
6. Spiderman
7. Star Wars
8. Harry Potter
9. Firewall, maybe?
10. No idea.
11. Fahrenheit 451
12. Anaconda 2: The Search For The Blood Orchid. (LOL!)
13. War Of The Worlds.

BUT...

Even better than those are these truly awesome (and totally real) Polish posters for movies from the early 80s. I'd point out some of my favorites, but really this whole page is amazing.

Adam Green's "Emily"

Maybe you guys know Adam Green as half of The Moldy Peaches, or maybe you know him as "that guy who did that song about Jessica Simpson just before she became a super-star."

Anyway, he has a newish album out, with a great single called "Emily."

Please watch this video for Adam Green's "Emily."

(Much smaller, but much clearer, version here.)

Okay, listen: this video is GENIUS. It so perfectly captures the vibe of roughly 1981, but not in any sort of obvious or retro way, so that it ends up triggering a memory of our childhoods, but in a way we can't...quite...put our...fingers on. You know?

Some obvious touchstones for the video include late-early-career Billy Joel (post-Captain Jack, pre-Uptown Girl), Joe Jackson, Taco, Graham Parker, footage of an Alice Cooper performance, and the video for the Steve Miller song "Abracadabra". I'm sure we could think of about fifty more. Oh, and some video we only saw once on, like, USA's Night Flight that we rememebered because it had a pre-Letterman Paul Schaefer on piano.

I really can't say enough about how awesome that video is! Some of the best parts include: the feathers, the white gloves, the harpsichord, the bust of Julius Caesar, the completely bare stage lit starkly from above, Adam Green's outfit, and that absolutely perfect fish bowl.

But the most amazing thing about it is how insanely perfectly it captures the early 80s version of "elegance." I'm surprised there was a chrome ball or one of those amber infinity mirrors.

I'm not exactly used to being positive about stuff here on MFN, and I can't quite articulate what is so great about it, how the director (Roman Coppola) just totally replicates a vibe THAT I NEVER REALLY UNDERSTOOD EXISTED until I saw his re-creation of it. Does that make sense?

(Also highly recommended: Nat King Cole and Baby's Gonna Die Tonight.)