Blogbook

Pirelli’s 2018 Calendar is out – and it’s a star-studded all-black take on Alice in Wonderland. Beautiful! If only we could get our hands on a copy… Via Vox:

The Pirelli calendar, known for its exclusive readership and tantalizing imagery, is defying its own conventions with its 2018 theme.

First published in 1963 by an Italian tire company of the same name, the Pirelli trade calendar has historically been home to sensual and evocative images of women, often captured by the photo and fashion industries’ most prominent photographers. However, its latest 12-page spread is going in a fantastically different direction.

Photographed by Tim Walker and styled by British Vogue’s new editor Edward Enninful, the 2018 calendar will reimagine characters from Lewis Carroll’s beloved tale Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — specifically, with an all-black cast. Celebrities such as RuPaul and Naomi Campbell, rappers Sean Combs and Lil Yachty, and actors Whoopi Goldberg, Lupita Nyong’o, and Djimon Hounsou are among those who will grace the monthly spreads, breathing new life into characters like the Mad Hatter, Caterpillar, and Queen of Hearts.

“The story of Alice has been told so many times and in so many ways, but always with a white cast,” Walker, whose work is famous for its eerie and surrealist fantasy and romanticism, told the New York Times. “There has never been a black Alice, so I wanted to push how fictional fantasy figures can be represented and explore evolving ideas of beauty.”

Disney has released a Behind the Scenes video for the Last Jedi, an emotional look at the next film, including clips of the late Carrie Fisher. Via the Guardian:

The Last Jedi panel at Disney’s D23 event in Anaheim this weekend added little to the picture, beyond confirming that John Boyega’s Finn is likely to fight Gwendoline Christie’s Captain Phasma at some point, and that Mark Hamill has clearly been told to say nothing if he can’t find anything nice to say about Johnson’s script. But the newly-released behind-the-scenes video that debuted does at least offer genuinely fresh footage from the production. Here’s what we found out after going through it with a fine tooth comb.

[…]

Daisy Ridley, Boyega and Hamill take it in turns to hype up the freshness, originality and unexpectedness of Johnson’s script during the video. But might Carrie Fisher’s seemingly throwaway line – “it’s about family, and that’s what’s so powerful about it” – ultimately end up being more telling?

The original Star Wars trilogy and the prequels charted the Skywalker clan’s descent into infamy and back to redemption. But we don’t yet know whether the new films will continue with the same theme, or work to establish a new one. Does Fisher’s line hint that Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren – the last remaining Force-sensitive Skywalker scion, as far as we know – has his own path of redemption to follow?

Might other families begin to play a part? Some reckon Del Toro’s “DJ” might be Rey’s father, while Rose has a sister who’s a gunner in the Resistance. Then there’s Luke and Leia themselves: can we expect to see them reunited in The Last Jedi? If Johnson’s movie really is all about family, you’d assume that’s a given, especially as Hamill has moaned he didn’t get to see Han die.

Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow has made a VR conservation short called the Protectors, about people who defend against poachers. Best viewed with something like Google Cardboard, but Chrome will do in a pinch. Via Short of the week:

360 documentaries suffer in that they are not able to replicate some of the features that have made modern short docs so good—the display limitations of mobile phone 360 dulls the cinematography, and the medium greatly restricts what one is able to accomplish through dynamic editing. From a technical perspective, the camera in The Protectors is often situated too high for my liking, giving a floating sensation I’ve encountered in other 360 documentaries like the similarly-themed experience, The Ark. Additionally, the camera is often placed on a boom pole and held out in front of groups as they patrol. Navigating the bush from a 1st person perspective is a transporting POV, but the camera shake this introduces is mildly nauseating, and Bigelow and Imraan Ismail (The Displaced, Valen’s Reef) are not always thoughtful in their cuts, which can be disorienting.

Still, the influence of Bigelow, a cinematic action filmmaker of the highest order, expresses itself on more than a few occasions. Rapid z-axis movement of the camera through grass is exhilarating, and a scene where a helicopter drop occurs directly overhead is a stunner, providing a sensation that no 2D film can recreate.The emotional climax of the film, a scene beside a dead and decaying elephant, tusks removed, is heartbreakingly composed, and accomplishes the project’s goal of imparting in the viewer a feeling of immense sadness and outrage. If the project’s mission strikes a chord with you, continue through to their website to see how you can help the cause.

Is Game of Thrones secretly about Climate Change? Is the creeping tide of white walkers kinda like the collapse of icebergs but in reverse? Vox thinks so:

For starters, the White Walkers are a threat to all humanity: Their zombie minions are equally happy to rip apart people of all nations and noble houses. Yet instead of uniting to combat the shared threat to human existence, the houses in the show spend basically all their time on their own petty disagreements and struggle for power. White Walkers are generally ignored; some nobles deny their existence outright.

Swap climate change for White Walkers and “countries” for noble houses, and it starts to sound a lot like the real world.

Specifically, it sounds like the problem of international coordination on climate change. No one country can prevent catastrophic warming on its own: Every country that’s a major greenhouse gas emitter is part of the problem.

Yet the biggest emitters, like the United States and China, are also geopolitical competitors: Both are wary of the other’s intentions, making it hard for them to see any kind of deal that limits their emissions as win-win. And even if you get over the US-China hurdle, you have to get a deal that’s acceptable to most every other country in the world — including developing ones that need cheap energy to fuel economic growth.

The big wars in Game of Thrones — the Baratheon-Targaryen-Stark-Tyrell-Lannister free-for-all — are basically supposed to stand in for these complications. All of these noble houses are focused on their short-term interests, but pursuing them is blocking the real problem: stopping the White Walkers and their zombie army. Likewise, CO2 emissions skyrocketed in the past 100 years — with potentially catastrophic consequences for the human race.

For Tourism Ireland, Publicis London created a 77m Game of Thrones tapestry depicting the many, many tangled plots of the franchise. Via Adweek:

Of course, Game of Thrones is not set Ireland, but much of the show’s filming takes place there. The country’s tourism department has collaborated with HBO for the past four years on projects ranging from a tour of key locations to last year’s “Doors of Thrones” project, which won gold and silver Lions in Cannes last month.

A digital version of the tapestry includes sections dedicated to each episode, complete with tools for easy sharing on social media. And yes, one can quickly search for the series’ most epic battles along with its most well-deserved deaths.

True dorks in the audience might also be interested to know that, unlike the Bayeux, this object actually is a tapestry, since it was woven by hand before the artists embroidered additional flourishes. The Medieval version was completely embroidered, leading some historians to refer to it as the Bayeux Embroidery.

Tourism Ireland will be sharing elements from the tapestry via its social media channels, all of which link back to a page on Ireland.com. For a flashback, here’s a closeup of Jamie Lannister pushing young Bran Stark from the Winterfell tower’s window in the pilot episode

Is this the best political ad you’ve ever seen? Randy Bryce’s rival in the Democratic Primary thought so (and dropped out). It was produced by Acres New York, which had also made an ad for Bernie Sanders before, and is the inaugural work of WIN, an agency that creates political strategy around video campaigns. Via Longreads:

Q: A lot of people who watched the Randy Bryce spot said it felt like they weren’t watching a political ad. Some were even surprised by the announcement of his candidacy at the end.

Matt McLaughlin: Traditionally, political ads in my opinion are terrible. They don’t resonate or connect with anyone. Give people a real story, something that is interesting and valuable, especially to people in Wisconsin. Allow them to fall in and connect with the story. Our goal was to grab the attention of the country — reporters, celebrities, everyone —and also to get a message out there. The tie-in for us is healthcare, to connect Trump, Paul Ryan, Randy’s mother and her struggles to something much bigger.

Paul Hairston: From a filmmaking standpoint, I have to agree with Matt. Watching the last two presidential campaigns, even local and municipal campaigns, the ads are creatively not ideal. A lot of them are devoid of any emotionality.

You can read the full interview on Longreads.

She Makes Comics is a film about women leaders in the comics industry and their history within it since the medium’s beginnings in the 19th Century. Via ScreenAnarchy:

Though there are two comic book shop five minutes away from my house I will hop on the subway and go into downtown Toronto to shop at a particular store because I trust their opinions over anyone else I have spoken to. There is one young miss who has never led me wrong, making solid suggestions whenever I tell her what kind of book or series or artist I am looking for. She is better than the boys.

Some of what she has helped me find are female driven or centric series, books written or illustrated by women like Lumberjanes, the work of Tamra Bonvillain and Tess Fowler in Rat Queens, and Fiona Staples` Saga. Yet, according to Marisa Stotter’s documentary She Makes Comics I am barely scratching the surface and that is both exciting to me and troubling for my wallet.

Screen Anarchy has an exclusive clip from it to share with you. We have also included the trailer as well as a collection of stills from the film.

She Makes Comics traces the fascinating history of women in the comics industry. Despite popular assumptions about the comics world, women have been writing, drawing, and reading comics since the medium’s beginnings in the late 19th century. And today, there are scores of women involved in comics and its vibrant fan culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unXv3O3gMiA

Michael Madsen promotes a multiplayer AR shooter called Recoil on Universal’s old Desperate Housewives set by playing a tough-as-nails hardass. Via Adweek:

Tough-guy actor Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, Sin City) portrays a grizzled military hardass named Striker to introduce Recoil, a multiplayer battlefield game that drops today from Skyrocket.

You play Recoil outdoors rather than sitting in front of a computer or TV screen, stalking around your back yard (or wherever) with AR-enhanced, smartphone-enabled “weaponry” in search of the “enemy.” According to product materials, you’ll “feel the kickback of your weapon as 3D-positional audio lets you hear exactly where enemy fire is coming from.”

No more wasting time pointing fingers at opponents and shouting out, “Bang! You’re dead!”

What’s more, the game’s GPS technology lets you track other players’ movements, and you can use voice chat to “coordinate attacks or taunt your enemy.”

Now, doesn’t that sound like fun?

To promote Recoil, ad shop Battery cast Madsen in the short film below. It’s the first of a series, we’re told, notable for its faux-intensity and Madsen’s hypnotic gravel-voiced delivery. At times, he sounds like a hoarse George C. Scott playing Patton, or Peter Stormare slowly building toward an existential freak-out.

“Sometimes, you see what you want to see, not what battle demands you see,” he begins, delivering his lines in eerie semi-darkness. “I remember seeing—I mean, truly seeing, for the first time … I saw the world like a soldier. When you’ve walked along the perimeter of sanity and peered over the edge, you see things for what they truly are.”

Viral “hi, i’m steve” animation is a simplistic short film by Bill Wurtz that racked up over 1.5 mil views on YouTube in a day. Via DesignTaxi:

You don’t have to possess impeccable drawing skills to capture the internet’s heart—all you need is a healthy dose of positivity and a, “’Cuz that’s the way I like to live my life!” attitude.

Musician and YouTuber Bill Wurtz, who previously blessed the earth with the delightful 19-minute ‘history of the entire world, i guess’ video, has unleashed an amusing clip—created in his signature deliberately amateurish style—about a random guy named ‘Steve’.

Unlike the unusually optimistic cartoon characters you might be used to, ‘Steve’ knows that reality can sometimes be a pain in the neck. Rather than educate viewers about rainbows and unicorns, he simply reminds them that crap happens, but life still goes on and you can live it the way you want it.

At the time of writing, the animation titled ‘hi, i’m steve’ has chocked up over 1.5 million views on YouTube—and it’s only been a day.

Wurtz’s previous short film was called possibly the best online video of 2005 by the Verge:

But while Wurtz’s channel is largely filled with random 10-second ditties, his most popular piece was “History of Japan,” which originated the high-velocity, jingle-filled, history documentary format that returns in a far grander scale in “History of the Entire World, I Guess.” It’s hard for me to pin down what exactly about Wurtz’s videos make them so good, but the combination of the rapid fire, witty delivery, and clever graphics all link together perfectly, into a mesmerizing sort of sensory overload. And those sing-songy jingles he scatters heavily throughout the piece keep me humming hours later.

“I heard destiny calling… I was going to be a cheesemaker.” In this short film, War and Cheese, Oleg Sirota discovered Russia was banning cheese, so he decided to be a cheesemaker. Via Short of the Week:

Sweet dreams are made of cheese. At least that’s the case for almost impossibly goofy Oleg Sirota, the star of Ben Garfield’s 9min documentary War & Cheese. A large dose of humour and a pinch of conflicting emotions are mixed together in this tale of high hopes and perseverance, so full of flavour and charm, it’s an experience to savour.

When Oleg Sirota learnt that his beloved motherland Russia was banning the import of all Western cheese, he sold his house and cars, took out a loan and built himself a cheese factory, with the ultimate goal of creating the perfect “Russian Parmesan”. A scrappy entrepreneur, Sirota also exhibits ideas and attitudes that are at odd with most of his audience, and Garfield’s film is an engrossing and honest character study, stripped of directorial flourishes such as music or fast-cut sequences, laying bare Sirota for the audience to judge and laugh along the way.

The idea for War & Cheese was born when Garfield’s friend, and future producer of the short, Audrey Kurganov returned from Moscow with a suitcase full of cheese. After he explained about Russia’s ban on Western cheese, the director thought it’d make an interesting documentary. When he heard about Sirota and his cheese farm, the duo knew they had found their guy. ‘The name of Oleg’s factory – Russian Parmesan – is an oxymoron to me, though to him it makes perfect sense. I wanted to understand this better, and get an insight into his worldview’ – Garfield explains.