It’s pretty neat to see a great design project completed right in your own neighborhood. Our new Sugar Beach sure is adorable.
The beach chairs look mint green (!) against the off-white sand and pink (!!) umbrellas. And they’ve brought in big hunks of Canadian shield and given them candy stripes (!!!).
It helps of course, that Christopher Hume and the dutch designer of this space star in this video in their minimalist designer uniforms of black and white suits. It’s a nice complimentary contrast to the vintage pastel hues of the beach itself.
Hmmmm… I’m picturing a lovely mid-century photo shoot down there… Pastel poufs of dresses (mirroring the swooping circles of the umbrellas), all in sugary candy colours, escorted by mono-chromatically clad Mad Men…
We were at my family’s cottage this sunny, warm weekend, and every once in a while the lovely Meaghan Smith’s buttery vocals would come on the play list.
This adorable video is a pretty good recreation of our weekend (just add more cocktails and swimming).
The perfect song for a hot-hot-hot summer day like today…
Even if it was the OC theme song. I like to forget all about that, and focus on the Jason Schwartzman. That gets me through a lot of things.
Plus we just watched Fantastic Mr. Fox and Funny People (both of which I love, and we own). So Jason’s running around my inside my head a little bit right now.
I love Studio Ghibli, as any self-respecting gal with an interest in illustration and animation would. The Japanese studio that brought us Totoro, Spirited Away and most recently (my favourite) Ponyo is branching out into video games!
To my mind, it is an incredibly natural progression. Their first outing (in collaboration with Level 5 – who makes the Professor Layton games, which I have heard nothing but good things about) is Ninokuni, a RPG for the DS and (thank goodness!) Playstation 3.
Fingers crossed for a timely North American release people!
Yeah, I’m a sucker for bright colours being splashed about. So are most human beings (with the exception of those poor suckers who happen to be colour blind) which is why Dulux’s “Let’s Colour” project is so neat.
Now I bet you’re wondering, how best to celebrate this wonderful holiday?
Well, you should check out the lovely illustrator Rosemary Travale‘s Captain Picard Day blog! She’ll be posting art all week long, including a little something by yours truly. I’m pretty honoured to be able to participate, as Jean-Luc is definitely my favourite Star Ship Captain.
This is a knock-out clip from the new movie by the director who made The Triplets of Belleville.
I’m personally astounded by the movement in it – the way the bodies of the characters moves, the way the fabric swishes, the expressions on the faces. The animation is so evocative, an almost tangible recreation of reality.
This is actually one of my all time favourite songs.
I think it (and this sweet and simple little video) has an appropriate feel for the weather we’ve been having. So hot that the heat is heavy and palpable, something you can kick around. Long faded from the sun.
I have been waiting to see this movie for what seems like forever, and last night I finally got to watch it. When we were in Paris, it had just opened, and we really wanted to go see it, but were worried we wouldn’t understand enough of it. That was 7 long months ago!
It was directed and written by Jean-Pierre Jeunet – who is the guy that also made Amelie – and who is the guy that also happens to be my favourite director of all time.
I’ve had people brush me off when I tell them that, because all they know of Amelie, is that it is some twee foreign movie that is every lonely, sixteen-year-old girl, and lonely twenty-something-year-old guys favourite movie – mostly because they think Audrey Tautou is sooooooo pretty/hot.
I do love Amelie, and when we were in Paris we hunted down all the spots in the movie… but Jeunet is so much more than Amelie!
He is dark, and twisty, in the best possible way. That unexpected way that juxtaposes the beautiful, the adorable and the unassuming; right next to the black, the creepy, and the weird, which makes his movies all the more intense an experience. That creepy/cute way that I’ve mentioned I love before.
A great example of this is the fact that Jeunet’s first movie was set in a post-apocalyptic world where everyone struggles to survive, to the extent that people start eating each other. Yeah, it was about cannibalism. French cannibals! How can that not be awesome!
Jeunet also has that great French cinematic ability to take Hollywood films, and filter them through his own sensibilities, and come up with something totally fresh and new. It’s the same thing that made the French New Wave so great – the ability to both comment on, and be approachable to audiences of, Hollywood movies.
So, Micmacs in some ways was a return to form for him. It’s definitely a black comedy. At it’s heart, it’s a classic Hollywood band-of-misfits caper/grift film, and in my experience those are pretty universally entertaining. In other ways though, it inhabits a much more real world than he’s ever dealt with before. A world with collateral damage, in the most bloody, depressing, ripped-from-the-headlines sense.
However, within that world where innocent bystanders get shot for no-reason, Jeunet tells us we can band together, create our own family, and fight against it in our own way. That’s actually the message at the core of all of his movies – that being unique isn’t just a-ok, it’s a weapon we can use against things like mediocrity, boredom and even evil. Which is yet another reason why I love him so much, because he doesn’t just believe that, he lives it through his movies.
So, if any of that intrigues you (and it really should), you should go check out Micmacs. I don’t think I loved it quite as much Amelie (but there is little in this world I love more than Amelie) and it was still a lot of fun. It would be a great introduction to Jeunet for the Jeunet-neophyte.
The game makes it look like it was made up of little paper puppets in a monochromatic paper puppet theater. Just like the song says – there is literally a paper moon hanging over a cardboard sea. It’s gorgeously inventive.
I’ve attempted it a couple of times, but I always run out of time. Not as easy as it looks.
It is hot. Very. It’s pretty strange weather for May in Toronto.
I feel like it’s Vampire Weekend weather.
I liked their previous album better than their new one, but I still like it, particularly this single.
I know a lot of people hate their inherent preppiness, but I think it’s mostly just an affectation they find funny – I mean would you rather these Ivy League grads (like many bands before them – the Strokes certainly come to mind) pretended they were scrappy working class gents?
I’d rather they do things their own way, with a wink and a nod.
Now that Valve’s Steam has officially launched for Mac, we bought the (massively on sale!) indie game pack, specifically to own a copy of this heart-wrenchingly beautiful game. It is another really good example of that creepy/cute combination I am so drawn to.
So now that’s it’s on both PC and Mac, you’ve got no excuse not to own it either.
I’ve taken a stab at it over the last couple days, and if you remember ye olde point-and-click Adventure games with any fondness, this is the game for you. It is also – despite it’s unassuming cuteness – not at all easy, but there is a ingenious, built-in, hint system that has the potential to makes things a little less difficult, if you choose to use it.
I do love things that are twee, and cutesy, yes that is true, but I like those things to have an edge to them.
To me, it’s like a twisty ribbon of dark chocolate running through your favourite vanilla ice cream. It makes things more complex which makes them more interesting (and delicious).
This pretty little song by the Bird and the Bee is undeniably creepy, just below the surface.
We went to go see this last night, and I quite enjoyed it. I think you probably have to have a high threshold for communism jokes, Canadiana, Canadian Indie films, and Jay Baruchel (I just happen to love all of those things). The Ben Mulroney snub (to his face, I might add) is worth the price of admission.
At its core though, it’s a movie about teenagers in high school. It actually reminded me of my own experiences in high school a lot more than your average Hollywood movie. There was definitely a vein of social consciousness running through my youth. I can’t help but think if the Trotsky had shown up at my high school, I might just have associated closely with the fellow – especially if he was as endearing as Jay Baruchel. Between his performance as Trotsky, and Geoffrey Rush’s in Frida, I think I might be starting to have a bit of a romantic fascination with the Trotsky.
I know this songs pretty old at this point, but it’s pretty catchy. Plus, Robyn is coming out with a new album soon, so that’s topical.
But more than all that, I’ve never seen the video before, and I am very much digging it. Something about big, colourful, watercolour messes is very compelling to me right now.
When I first listened to Broken Bells, I didn’t realize it was Danger Mouse and the lead singer of the Shins.
It makes sense to me now, but I think (as talented as they are apart) their divergent talents come together here to make something larger than the whole:
Lovely, melodic, emotional, indie-rock – with an epically electronic back-beat.
They, at long last, have a new album (produced by Mark Ronson) but I will always love this song off their first album…
Actually, I love all their songs. They’re poppy as all get out, and awful pretty too (not to mention being super fashionable and having semi-famous parents), but who cares when the music is this good?
A time lapse video of Mark Ryden painting Incarnation. Paints that are not watercolors mystify me. Also, Ryden is just incredible. Here is the final product:
