Archive for February 2018
Profile of 21-year old film student Ryan Coogler

Profile of 21-year old film student Ryan Coogler

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In 2007, the East Bay Times profiled a 21-year-old Ryan Coogler, director of Creed and Black Panther.

He graduated this year with honors from Sacramento State University. Next month, he begins a three-year master’s program at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.

He wants to write and direct movies and he wants to direct them in Richmond and Oakland, the nation’s fourth most dangerous city. He lived in Oakland with his family until he was 8.

“My goal is to start a (film) business in this area, something that can employ people,” he said. “It will be something the people can point to and kids can see it, saying ‘I can do that,’ instead of doing things that are glaring to the environment.”

Ryan and his father Ira were interviewed for the story at the Century Hilltop 16 theater, “where they hope Ryan’s films will be shown one day”. I’m sure Creed and Fruitvale Station both played at the Hilltop 16 when they came out, but a look at today’s showtimes at the theater reveals that Coogler has achieved the dream of his youth many times over:

Black Panther Movie Times Coogler

(via @alexismadrigal)

Tags: Black Panther   movies   Ryan Coogler

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Trailer for Wreck-It Ralph 2

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The original Wreck-It Ralph came out in 2012 and was the first inkling of Disney Animation’s revival that has continued with Frozen, Zootopia, and Moana. In Wreck-It Ralph 2 (which is properly titled “Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2”), the arcade gets an upgrade in the form of a modem, which gives Ralph and his pals access to the internet. And if you watch the trailer, the movie’s view of the internet is pretty dystopian (but sadly not all that inaccurate). They’re dumped into a a massive shopping mall where they’re constantly interrupted by the IRL equivalent of the chumbox, attend an eBay auction for bad cat-related art, and digitally overfeed a video game bunny until it explodes, perhaps a sly metaphor for how relying on digital treats such as likes or retweets for self-esteem is problematic.

But the movie looks fun! I guess? Like the internet! The internet is fun! I guess? Right? Hello…

Tags: internet   movies   trailers   video   Wreck-It Ralph

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The cool futuristic typeface from the Black Panther ending credits

The cool futuristic typeface from the Black Panther ending credits

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If you’ve seen Black Panther, you likely noticed the distinctive typeface used for the location labels and, more prominently, in the ending credits:

Black Panther Font

The typeface is called BEYNO and was designed by Swiss designer and illustrator Fabian Korn. It looks like some of the letters were slightly modified for the movie (the “E” and “Y” for example). You can buy the original font from Korn for $5 on Creative Market so you can make your own captions from the movie:

Black Panther Font

Tags: Black Panther   design   Fabian Korn   movies   typography

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One Hour One Life

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Jason Rohrer, one of the most well-regarded indie video game makers out there (he made Passage, which is incredibly poignant for a video game that lasts only 5 minutes), has just released his latest game, One Hour One Life. Rohrer bills the game as “a multiplayer survival game of parenting and civilization building”. Here’s the trailer:

This game is about playing one small part in a much larger story. You only live an hour, but time and space in this game is infinite. You can only do so much in one lifetime, but the tech tree in this game will take hundreds of generations to fully explore. This game is also about family trees. Having a mother who takes care of you as a baby, and hopefully taking care of a baby yourself later in life. And your mother is another player. And your baby is another player. Building something to use in your lifetime, but inevitably realizing that, in the end, what you build is not for YOU, but for your children and all the countless others that will come after you. Proudly using your grandfather’s ax, and then passing it on to your own grandchild as the end of your life nears.

And looking at each life as a unique story. I was this kid born in this situation, but I eventually grew up. I built a bakery near the wheat fields. Over time, I watched my grandparents and parents grow old and die. I had some kids of my own along the way, but they are grown now… and look at my character now! She’s an old woman. What a life passed by in this little hour of mine. After I die, this life will be over and gone forever. I can be born again, but I can never live this unique story again. Everything’s changing. I’ll be born as a different person in a different place and different time, with another unique story to experience in the next hour…

That sounds kind of amazing, like a cross between Passage and something like Spore or Everything. And dare I say it’s a little Game Neverending-ish as well?

And check out the “thinking behind One Hour One Life” section at the bottom of the home page. It includes links to videos on the meaning of human life, Milton Friedman’s views on market capitalism (a riff on I, Pencil), and the Primitive Technology guy. (via andy)

Tags: Jason Rohrer   video   video games

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How the US women won gold in the women’s cross-country team sprint

How the US women won gold in the women’s cross-country team sprint

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One of my favorite moments from the 2018 Winter Olympics was the US team of Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall winning the women’s cross-country team sprint. In this episode of How the Race Was Won, Cosmo Catalano deftly breaks down how the pair did it, from start to finish (along with a little social commentary about how shitty parental leave policy is in the US). As Matt Haughey said, “This is a better explanation of the women’s sprint cross-country ski race than any Olympics TV coverage anywhere.”

I’ve watched the end of the race about 20 times and that shot (at 4:07 in the video) of how hard Diggins charges coming off that final corner gets me every fucking time. She just wanted it more. Maximum effort. So hardcore.

Tags: 2018 Winter Olympics   Cosmo Catalano   Jessie Diggins   Kikkan Randall   Olympic Games   skiing   sports

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3000 years of art in just three minutes

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This short film from 1968, set to Classical Gas, shows 3000 years of fine art in just three minutes. As the final frame of the film says:

You have just had all of the Great Art of the World indelibly etched in your brain. You are now cultured.

As mesmerizing as the film is, especially for 1968, the backstory is perhaps even more interesting. Mason Williams, who wrote and recorded Classical Gas, saw this film by UCLA film student Dan McLaughlin and arranged, with McLaughlin’s permission, to have the original soundtrack replaced with his song and to have it aired on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS, then the number one show on TV in America.

The impact of the film on television opened the door to realizations that the viewer’s mind could absorb this intense level of visual input. It was a double shot of a hundred proof music and video that polished the history of art off in three minutes! It was also the beginning of the fast images concept now called kinestasis (a rapidly-moving montage technique set to music) that has over the years been exploited so effectively by television commercials, documentaries, etc.

Curiously, a similarly produced film called American Time Capsule also aired on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour that year. Directed by Chuck Braverman, it showed 200 years of American history in less than 3 minutes:

McLaughlin’s film was produced and aired first (he made it in 1967) and was the inspiration for Braverman’s film (see the relevant snippets from David Sohn’s Film: the Creative Eye) but Braverman made a career out of the technique.

I was actually working in the same building as [Tommy Smothers], at CBS as an assistant — really as a messenger — trying to get into the cameraman’s union in the news department. They literally made the Comedy Hour just upstairs. I called, made a meeting, and Tommy looked at my other work and we discussed doing a film on the history of the United States — American Time Capsule. I made it and it aired on the weekend before the November ‘68 election and it was a huge hit. It catapulted me into a career. Not only did it appear on the Smothers’ Brothers Show, which was huge, but it appeared on The Tonight Show within a few weeks and then 60 Minutes picked it up. So I got a reputation right away for being the king of the fast-cut montage. I ended up doing dozens of commercials and lots of title sequences.

My favorite use of the technique is in the trailer for A Clockwork Orange:1

But anyway, getting back to Mason Williams and Classical Gas, after the success of the 3000 years of art video, he wrote a sketch about video jockeys playing music videos on TV:

As a result of the response to the CLASSICAL GAS music video, in September of 1968 I wrote up a piece for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, projecting the idea that someday VJ’s would be playing hit tapes on TV, (as well as DJ’s hit records on radio), a prophesy of what was, 13 years later, to become MTV.

All this film and media history, just barely surviving in YouTube videos, video descriptions, partial scans of out-of-print books, and interviews & obituaries scattered willy-nilly all over the we, what a mess. What a fascinating mess. (via open culture)

  1. Who made this trailer? Kubrick? His editor? Braverman? A Warner Brothers employee who was in charge of making film trailers and was a fan of Braverman? I couldn’t find any info on this.↩

Tags: art   Chuck Braverman   Dan McLaughlin   Mason Williams   music   remix   video

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Dazzle camouflage

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In a new video for Vox, Phil Edwards talks about one of my favorite low-tech technologies: dazzle camouflage. Instead of trying to hide warships with paint the color of the ever-changing sky or sea, dazzle camouflage aimed to confuse the enemy by disguising the silhouettes and headings of ships.

World War I ships faced a unique problem. The u-boat was a new threat at the time, and its torpedoes were deadly. That led artist Norman Wilkinson to come up with dazzle camouflage (sometimes called “razzle dazzle camouflage”). The idea was to confuse u-boats about a ship’s course, rather than try to conceal its presence. In doing so, dazzle camouflage could keep torpedoes from hitting the boat — and that and other strategies proved a boon in World War I.

More recently, this strategy has been used on people’s faces to thwart facial recognition and on Cristiano Ronaldo’s football cleats to confuse opponents as which way he’s moving his feet.

Tags: art   Phil Edwards   video   World War I

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Rihanna with a Pearl Earring

Rihanna with a Pearl Earring

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Shusaku Akaoka

Shusaku Akaoka

Shusaku Akaoka

Japanese graphic designer Shusaku Takaoka takes famous artworks and cleverly incorporates them into movies scenes or celebrity photos. If you scroll back through his earlier photos,1 you can see him experimenting with various techniques before hitting his stride around September of last year.

  1. One of my favorite things to do is scroll back through Instagram accounts like this to see the evolution not only of the work but of their self-presentation. You can often see the moment where they go, “oh shit, I’ve got lots of followers now, I’d better think more about what I post here”. See also the unbearable lightness of being yourself on social media.↩

Tags: art   design   remix   Shusaku Takaoka

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All the typefaces used on the iconic Huy Fong sriracha label

All the typefaces used on the iconic Huy Fong sriracha label

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Fonts in Use took a crack at identifying the crazy quilt of typefaces used on the label of Huy Fong sriracha.

Sriracha Fonts

The most prominent Latin text elements are rendered in a variety of informal script typefaces released by American Type Founders in the 20th century, namely Balloon and its shaded counterpart, Balloon Drop Shadow, as well as Brody. Smaller text on the back of the bottle is set in Impress and Tekton.

And they threw Arial in there for good measure. Oof. Don’t miss the first comment about the label’s Chinese fonts; “In the West, PMingLiu has become a prominent component of what some might call the “Asian diaspora aesthetics”. In East Asia, it is seen as the signature for those typographically unenlightened.”

P.S. No one knows who drew the label’s iconic rooster. And remember when people were stockpiling Huy Fong sriracha due to shortages? Simpler times.

Tags: design   food   typography

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A Winter Olympics wrap-up written with a predictive text keyboard

A Winter Olympics wrap-up written with a predictive text keyboard

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The folks at Botnik used their Predictive Writer app to write an article about the 5 Most Memorable Moments of Pyeongchang 2018.

Botnik 2018 Olympics

People couldn’t stop talking about all the flawless jewels scattered on the ground: Whose jewels were they? Did they want them back? Why did the sound of Bob Costas turn them to ashes?

The world watched in shock as a nation called the Horror Zone swept every single event: It was tense as they too advantage of sports to win medals. The world squandered the chance to capture the unstoppable Ice Elvis who stole all the wine from the Olympic village. The result was a reminder that nothing is ever guaranteed in winter.

The Predictive Writer is a word processor that offers word suggestions based on any text you give it. You can try it out yourself to write Radiohead lyrics, Seinfeld dialogue, John Keats poetry, or upload your own text. (via imperica)

Tags: 2018 Winter Olympics   Olympic Games

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Jelly Super Mario Bros

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What if World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros was made entirely of Jello? It would look a little something like this:

That’s from Stefan Hedman’s Jelly Mario, a playable demo of Super Mario with really elastic in-game physics (up arrow to jump, left and right to move). It’s not exactly compelling gameplay, but it is super fun to pilot a drunken Mario around to off-kilter SMB theme music. (via prosthetic knowledge)

Tags: Stefan Hedman   Super Mario Bros   video   video games

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Fahrenheit 451

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Coming to HBO in May is an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451. It stars Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon.

In a future where the media is an opiate, history is rewritten and “firemen” burn books, Jordan plays Guy Montag, a young fireman who struggles with his role as law enforcer and with his “mentor”, played by Shannon.

The book, which got its title from “the temperature at which book paper catches fire, and burns”, begins like so:

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

The previous film adaptation was by Francois Truffaut in 1966, who cast Julie Christie in two of the main roles. It was Truffaut’s only English-language film and the first one in color.

Tags: books   Fahrenheit 451   Michael B. Jordan   Michael Shannon   movies   trailers   video

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Famous scenes from 2018 Oscar-nominated films recreated by three young girls

Famous scenes from 2018 Oscar-nominated films recreated by three young girls

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Oscar Reenact 2018

Oscar Reenact 2018

Oscar Reenact 2018

Since 2015, the Storino sisters have been reenacting scenes from Oscar nominated films. This year, Sophia, 7; Sadie, 5; and two-year-old Sloane, have recreated stills from Get Out, Call Me By Your Name, The Post, The Shape of Water, and several others. Vanity Fair showcased the project and ran an interview with the girls’ mother, Maggie.

By helping her three daughters emulate the year’s most-celebrated movie characters, Storino has grown aware of how often her girls are tasked with portraying Hollywood’s many male leads.

“What started as a lark has taken on additional meaning as the conversation around representation has evolved in Hollywood,” says Storino. “In the past, it’s been a struggle to find stills that are identifiable by the female lead. This year felt much different. The future is female, and increasingly so are the films. My girls had so many strong actresses to emulate in 2018, from Saoirse Ronan to Frances McDormand to Sally Hawkins to Meryl Streep. I also loved being able to show them Greta Gerwig in the director’s chair. What I’m most conscious of now is how much imagery matters.”

I wonder if they have had similar conversations about race? You can follow their recreations on their website or on Instagram.

See also Oscar nominated films reimagined as Winnie the Pooh adventures.

Tags: movies   remix

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Tiny origami

Tiny origami

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Tiny Origami

Tiny Origami

Tiny Origami

Origami artist Ross Symons makes tiny origami creations and posts them to his Instagram account, White on Rice. The account became pretty popular and Symons was able to turn his hobby into his full-time job doing installations, exhibitions, and social media campaigns featuring origami.

Over the weekend, Symons’ art was featured on Noticing, kottke.org’s free weekly newsletter. You can read the full issue here: Lobsters Considered, Superteens Against the Autocracy, The Mister Rogers Fan Club or subscribe here to have it land in your inbox each week.

Tags: art   origami   Ross Symons

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We’re all addicted to the smartphone slot machines in our pockets

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In a new video series for Vox, Christophe Haubursin talks to Tristan Harris, a former Design Ethicist at Google, about how our phones and apps are designed to be addictive and some strategies for breaking their hold on us:

1. Turn off all non-human notifications.
2. Change your screen to grayscale.
3. Restrict your home screen to everyday tools.

Ezra Klein recently did an interview with Harris that includes more of his views on the ethics of technology, phones, and social media.

Silicon Valley is reckoning with having had a bad philosophical operating system. People in tech will say, “You told me, when I asked you what you wanted, that you wanted to go to the gym. That’s what you said. But then I handed you a box of doughnuts and you went for the doughnuts, so that must be what you really wanted.” The Facebook folks, that’s literally what they think. We offer people this other stuff, but then they always go for the outrage, or the autoplaying video, and that must be people’s most true preference.

Tags: Christophe Haubursin   Ezra Klein   Tristan Harris   video

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Becoming, an upcoming memoir by Michelle Obama

Becoming, an upcoming memoir by Michelle Obama

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Obama Portraits

Michelle Obama is coming out with a memoir this fall. It’s called Becoming, it’s out on November 13, 2018, and you can preorder it here.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her — from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it — in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations-and whose story inspires us to do the same.

The image above is Amy Sherald’s portrait of the former First Lady and would make an amazing book cover, no?

Tags: Becoming   Michelle Obama   books

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