Disfigured, the movie we did title design for a while back, just got a very good review in the New York Times. An excerpt:
Remarkable for its brutal honesty, fine acting and emphasis on personal accountability, “disFIGURED” recognizes societal norms of appearance but refuses to whine about them. When Lydia nervously asks Darcy what she thinks of Lydia’s body, Darcy doesn’t hesitate. “I think it’s disgusting,” she says without apology, and the exchange hangs in the air with shocking authenticity. In this weight-centric world, truth trumps political correctness every time.
This comes to the attention of Bunny Blog via my colleague Nahil, who shared this article on Slate with me via various acts of Facebookery.
The problem of charging iPods seems to my relatively armchair self to be something far too much of the world is devoting time to finding innovative solutions for. For perspective, I’ve owned an MP3 player nonstop since the introduction of the Diamond Rio. I love music and listen to it constantly, and I defy you to find too many photos of me in which a pair of slim headphones is NOT around my neck with a grey wire leading into my pocket. Somehow, only about twice in my iPod ownership have I ever exclaimed “damn, the battery’s dead!” and not been able to do something about it fairly quickly.
You mean to tell me you’ve got your life together enough that you have the discipline to jog or bike regularly enough that you need music to relieve the monotony but you can’t apply the same regimen to charging a device with a 10-hour battery? And you further mean to tell me that of all the things you hope to bring to human understanding with a scientific inquiry into the nature of breast movement the one you remain extra excited for is the ability to charge an iPod?
Steve Jobs, you claim to be making computing devices sexy. But those devices are bleeding the sex out of the rest of our lives.
Yep, that’s right — Travel and Adventure!!
This email blast I just got from Spirit Airlines is pretty racy:
Obviously they’re playing on the alternate meaning of T&A, but they’re playing it smart. If anybody gets angry, they can calmly reply “What? We had no idea it meant that!”
Even Virgin America, which brands itself as the new “hip and cool and sexy” airline, doesn’t go that far. Spirit, on the other hand, had a Mother’s Day sale entitled “MILF.” As in, “Mothers I’d Like to Fly.” In an email Spirit has said these promotions are “designed to be entertaining, humorous, and of course, impactful.” And you know what? I think they’re dead on.
Yes, I know it’s been a while since I updated the blog about this trip, but can you really blame me for having such a good time in Tokyo that I only got about 4 hours of sleep each night, if I was lucky? Actually, it’s pretty much like it was at SXSW– stay out all night partying with other filmmakers, wake up early for panels and screenings. I managed to meet this schedule all week until I completely crashed out on the flight back. Now that I’m back at work, I’m reliving my trip through these blog posts. YEAH!
For those that don’t know, my film “The Golden Egg” was selected for the Short Shorts Film Festival, and they invited me (and paid for me) to fly out to Tokyo. They even paid for my hotel, which was an incredible room…
Our friend and sometimes co-Producer Jeff Beard has completed his political doc, “Split,” about our great nation’s current political divide (I’m looking at you, Barack “Joker” Obama). He asked me to do some art for their viral campaign based on the movie’s highly designed versions of the ol’ Donkey and Elephant, and here are the results:
Click below the fold to see the inspiration for this highly patriotic image. (more…)
Okay, so normally I stay out of politics.
I do occasionally, weigh in on matters of policy, such as my near-constant assertion that many of our cities, Los Angeles included, would be far better off if lawmakers would wise up and pass some legislation to create a government-sanctioned Batman. The fact that I was mugged with a shiny gun to my temple by a pair of punks last December and went through the most horrendous ordeal of the cops failing to show up, finally showing up, failing to care, calling me to say they’d recovered some of my stuff, mysteriously having no knowledge of finding my stuff when I went to claim it (you KEPT it Detective, you and I both know it) and in all ways failing me in my hour of need only strengthens that.
But I keep my politics to myself. HOWEVER, this photo of Senator Obama “clinching” the democratic nomination (which graced the front page of the LA Times) scared the living crap out of me.
Something about that smile… I can’t quite put my finger on it… Wait. What does Batman do when he can’t quite figure out who someone reminds him of? He usually gets out a red pen and traces over the photo… OH HOLY CRAP!
See what happens when we don’t have Batman?!!
In all seriousness, the good senator would make a fantastic Joker. What a dead-on perfect smile structure.
Arrived in Tokyo yesterday, and the entire Short Shorts Film Festival crew has been extremely organized and on the ball! After a couple volunteers met us at Narita airport, we came back to the Oakwood Apartments, where we’re staying. Our room is extremely nice.
The film festival is apparently a big deal here. Lucas and Ford were here earlier in the week promoting Indiana Jones, and today Diablo Cody is here promoting Juno, which is only now premiering in Japan.
I went to my first screening here at the Laforet museum.
It was a really great selection of shorts. I’ll try to blog about some of them later on. People seemed to like my film. I have to admit that I wasn’t particularly witty at the Q&A session afterward, I’m sad to say. Much better at spending an hour writing one line of dialogue than coming up with something funny on the spot. Ah well.
The one question everybody asks about the movie is how he lays the eggs while his pants are still on. Velcro egg hatch, baby. How else?
This series of webcomics about the recent earthquakes in Sichuan province are touching and very well executed. A wonderful use of the graphic medium to tell stories that bring home recent events.
