Had to share this video because I LOVE Sophie Blackall, she has become one of my all time favourite illustrators. Her work is just so filled with exquisite little details. Watching this video is worthwhile for a number of reasons, but in particular for what she says about drawing animals (I feel the same way).

I don’t yet own her Missed Connections book, but I plan to. However, I’ve been waiting for the serendipitous moment when I come across it while out and about. I think, given the subject matter, serendipity is far more appropriate than boring old ordering it online, don’t you think?

What am I up to these days, you ask? Not a whole lot. Still slogging away at my personal projects (I may have some things to show on that front quite soon). January tends to be slow here in Toronto, I think everyone just hibernates until about mid February. This has been an abnormally warm and brown January as well, and that has put me in a dreary state of mind – the one thing I can usually count on is some sparkly, fluffy white snow to pretty things up a little. No such luck this year.

I do turn thirty at the end of the week. Not entirely sure how I feel about that. I may even be looking forward to my thirties – I think it’s quite possible I’ll be able to accomplish a lot more in my life with my twenties out of the way.

My sister is visiting, and we both remarked on how much we LOVE this Rihanna video. I know it’s a big pop thing, not exactly news to anyone, but it’s still super pretty (and catchy). I want to lounge around in a balloon filled, pink, desert; wearing expensive lingerie; hugging giant, plastic roses.

The Rainbow House, London from Ab Rogers Design on Vimeo.

Want. To. Live. Here.

So, so, so pretty.

My good friend Shaan just shared this on his tumblr, and I knew I had to share it with you. It reminds me of the eighties, in a really good way… And the intro sequence to the Edison Twins. Did any of you watch that show when you were a kid? Or just me?

Anyway, the the video and the song are awesome.

Oh and by the way I am in Vegas!

So far its all very… Vegasy? Lots of lights and everything is on a grand scale. I’m not sure it’s really my kind of place, but I’m certainly going to attempt to make the best of it.

Any suggestions of things to see? I’m on my own for the next few days, as Liam runs a conference.

Right now, I think I’m going to head to Paris to see if I can find some Parisian-ish brekkie (how awesome is it that I can just trot off to Paris on a whim? Only in Vegas, right?).

I have loved Mad Men since before it even aired – advertising, and the early sixties long being two of my biggest fascinations.

But I was a little let down by the shallowness, darkness, and the seeming lack of humour of the last two seasons. A parade of pretty vintage dresses interspersed with misogyny was not so entertaining for me. I missed the complexity and subtlety, punctuated and contrasted by hilarity of the first season. I missed the real story telling, the character studies – especially on the women of the show who weren’t Betty.

My main disappointment, was that it seemed to be refocusing on the sixties as an extremely exaggerated pre-enlightenment dark ages, when all the men were boors, and all the women were victims. It was becoming a cartoon, a parody of itself.

So, if you’ve been watching this season so far, you’d know that it has me so very happy, and re-enthused!

And Peggy! Oh my little Peggy! How I love her again. She has definitively, and finally gotten her groove back, and I love everything she, does, thinks, says and wears, no matter how flawed (and can we talk about her hair – finally a cute haircut for her!).

Which doesn’t even address how in LOVE I am with the new Sterling Cooper Draper Price offices, as filled with mid century fantabulousness as they are.

So why am I posting this Malcom Gladwell Ted talk from 6 years ago?

Because it touches very much on some themes brought up in the last few episodes. Particularly last weeks episode focusing on coming up with a campaign for Pond’s Cold Cream. Don Draper will turn out to be prophetically right  (not simply arrogant) when he said that people don’t know what they want, and that it is his job to show them.

(Although, it is interesting  to note that it increasingly seems the real prophetic at SCDP is Pete Campbell.)

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.

Not that he isn’t normally…

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.

Knitting? And Kirby?

That’s all I need to know.

Sold!

Happy Captain Picard day, everybody!

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.

(via twitchfilm.net)

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.

Rhett Miller – Come Around (via paradisedub)

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.

Micmacs: trailer HD 1080 (via jaumem9)

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.

Paper Moon Trailer (by Infinite Ammo)

This little indie game is actually free to play right now on blurst.com.

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.

Vampire Weekend – “Cousins” (via XLRecordings)

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.

Machinarium Trailer (via jdamanita)

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.

The Bird And The Bee – Again & Again (Video) (via emimusic)

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.