The Making of: HBO Feature Presentation (1983)
What you’re looking at is one of the most precisely-constructed model cities ever built. It was made as part of HBO’s new on-air look and is one of over sixty visual elements that were combined to create HBO’s new program opens. This film is a peek behind the scenes at how this new look was achieved.
God, that music is still spine-tingling after all these years. If you were a child of the 80s, you may recall the excitement of this intro and the anticipation it built in you, waiting for Ladybugs to start. The image below probably even conjures spacey sound effects (“pew pew, pew pew pew”) and the epic anthem’s climax in the culmination of what HBO refers to as the Stargate Effect, which is my favorite part of the documentary, 5:30 in:
In the finished effect, they appear to be a giant HBO space station floating towards you. It bursts forth following the Stargate Effect…
via Quipsologies
John Alvin, Movie Poster Designer 1948-2008
The man who designed the Blade Runner poster (and many many others including this one for Young Frankenstein) died last week at the age of 59.
via NY Times
The Good Word: Pimp
Many older speakers think that any positive use of pimp is sexist or demeaning. But you can’t make someone feel a certain way about a word. Younger people will continue to use suck (“to be notably bad”) or gay (“lame, boring, terrible, stupid”) heedless of what their elders think; it’s just as hard to get people to reject something they think is OK as to get people to accept something they’ve been taught is wrong.-Jesse Sheidlower, Slate
The Clinton camp’s reaction to David Shuster posing the question on MSNBC, “Doesn’t it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” makes a lot of sense. Not because I agree with the furor, but because this seems to be the reaction of someone unfamiliar with the evolved meaning of the word, someone who may not be convinced of its other applications.
I can understand the Clinton’s instinct to protect their daughter (remember the hellfire spit at Wayne’s World and SNL in the early 90s when Wayne and Garth called out Chelsea’s tween awkwardness?). But geez, bend a little with your interpretation of a word. Did none of your staff or advisors offer alternate viewpoints before the press release went out? Is this the kind of attention you want drawn to your campaign?
Am I my beard?
TIME on the growing popularity of beards:
“Beards are back,” says Allan Peterkin, a pogonologist (a.k.a. beard scholar) and author of One Thousand Beards. “It is an act of rebellion. Men are trying to prove that they are no corporate slave.”
And later:
“Once beards become completely acceptable, they are no longer a statement of individuality,” says Phil Olson, founder of Beard Team USA, which competes in international facial-hair-growing competitions.
Answer to titular question: no, I am not my beard. But I don’t see myself getting rid of it anytime soon. I have big eyes and long eyelashes and I rely on the beard to defeminize my face (not that a swarthy brow and receding hairline doesn’t contribute to the cause).
If beards were to become too, too common, I suppose I could join the National Nosehair Squad or turn my eyelids inside out.
via Chris Glass
RETURN OF A CLASSIC
This man has a story and I want to hear it.
via another party I wish I had been around for via indierockbakery
Daft Punk’s Electroma (2006)
This is the trailer for a Daft Punk movie to which I would’ve been oblivious if not for Future Shipwreck’s Rad Films of 2007. Featuring the music of Brian Eno and Curtis Mayfield?! If the drone is a semitone too high in pitch, try the higher quality version at the official site and a link to buy on DVD.
Also new to me on Graham’s list is Wild Tigers I Have Known (2006) (trailer at Apple) with some of the most stunning imagery I’ve not seen in a while.
thx, Mimi for a link to the newest member of my RSS gang
The actor Johnny Depp performing in a movie
“Not ‘change’ as a slogan, not ‘change’ as a bumper sticker, but ‘change’ we can believe in.
