Big Screen
Just taking a little coffee break here at the office to enjoy another animated short from London’s Yum Yum studio. Like all the other great stuff they do, the video is brimming with suspense and humor. If you fall in love with the characters (hard not to) don’t fret, you can pick up the soft vinyl toy versions of some of Yum Yum gang here.
How does an artist move forward without forsaking his past? Take something he’s already made and give it new meaning? Over the course of one year, filmmaker Jim Helton documented New York-based artist Chris Rubino as he explored these paradigms and new direction in his work…
Aside from being visually breathtaking (and goosebump-inducing), this film pretty much showcases some of the best things in life: science, nature, education, experimentation, and… good times with the fam! The film documents the build, release, and recovery of a video- and iPhone-rigged weather balloon that, in the span of a wee 70 minutes, managed to climb nearly 100,000 feet (hitting the upper stratosphere) before bursting and frantically dancing its way back to earth — landing in a tree a mere 30 miles from the launch site!
Eeek! Big fat thanks to Nami for putting a little shell named Marcel on the Lo’s List’s radar! This stop-motion animation (by Dean Fleischer-Camp and SNLer Jenny Slate) is a cornucopia of quotidian wisdoms and life questions.
While the Americans are still cranking out duct-tape wallets, the Slovenians have gone above and beyond. (Tape wallets? That’s sooo ’90s Janeane Garofolo at a Pavement show.) En lieu of spray-paint, the ten-person ORTO collective relies on neon-toned industrial tape — the material best known for fixing disasters — taping over the city’s dull streets with scream-worthy graphics…
It was at the local ice skating rink where I first battled Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde. I would feed the game’s coin slot with a bottomless pocket of quarters while destroying my pearly whites with Mike and Ikes and Hot Tamales.
It’s hard to imagine that cold weather season is upon us when it’s a whopping 90º here in Los Angeles today. But, back home in New York (and in other corners of the world), autumn is on with winter at its heels. This killer montage by Bart Van Der Gaag entitled “Autumn by the Lake” has all the nose-biting and romantic feel of this time of year — plus some very white swans…
What a kick-ass and creepy new video from totally-not-Japanese band, The Japanese Popstars!! The trio — Decky Hedrock, Gary Curran, and Gareth Donoghue — hail from Northern Ireland and have gathered a near-cultish following of fans in the few years since they began their musical collaboration. This latest video, for the track Lets Go off the Destroy EP, is illustrated by upcoming T-Shirt Tuesday-er…
We mentioned Lo’s List’s soft spot for podcasting gem Radiolab in our Complete Carry-On post from last year but the love just keeps growing for Jad and Robert. For those of you who aren’t up-to-snuff with the program’s format, the premise is as follows: each episode dissects — whether scientifically or philosophically — a topic, from Parasites to Parabolas, Mortality to Morality…
“Unfortunately in America, babies are not found in cola cans. I asked my mother when I was four and she said they came from eggs laid by rabbis. If you aren’t Jewish, they’re laid by Catholic nuns. If you are an atheist, they’re laid by dirty, lonely prostitutes. So this is where babies come from in America.”
Despite all our efforts here at Lo’s List to bring you the best of art, design and commerce on the internet, there should be little doubt of what the world-wide-web, regretably, is really for: the sharing of sneezing pandas, short-sighted manatees and, now, these adorable, tottering baby sloths. Shot at the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica, this video features our Folivoran friends doing what they do best: sleeping, yawning, falling over, eating, sleeping, hanging from stuff while asleep, eating stuff while apparently asleep, scratching their butts and sleeping. No other creature that we know of has evolved quite this degree of somnambulatory excellence.
Last night I dreamed I was at the finals. I was dressed in full Oranje regalia with a cheese wedge hat. With an hour to go before the finals, nerves at all three Martin-Verhoeven camps are high and I keep getting random bouts of the goosebumps. I’ve been practicing my Roger Milla-inspired goal dance (with the hopes that I will be calling upon it at least once this afternoon) and am so hopped up on coffee I can’t quite complete a sentence. The final day of the cup is here and, although I clearly want my Dutch peeps to come out on top, it’s just a thrill to watch them fight for the chance.
The World Cup gets plenty loud (thank you, vuvuzelas) without the usual crop of blaring, testosterone-driven, slow-motion mashups that clog the half-time advertising slots, so we at Lo’s List were delighted to discover PepperMelon’s new ad for The Observer and The Guardian. The cleverly designed characters skittering around on their tiny legs, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, capture all of the gentle, obnoxious joy that we feel every four years when the Beautiful Game takes over our lives.
Yesterday, while frolicking through the visual wonderland of Nowness.com I found The White Room: an eerie & inspired video by Sharif Hamza which brings to life Kris Van Assche’s impeccable, desaturated fall 2010 Dior Homme collection. The sequence is choreographed to Sisters of Mercy’s “Temple of Love” which beside the terrible band and track names fits perfectly with the collection’s austere trenches, tailored tops, and rugged, Gangs of New York-ish leather boots.
I’m just loving Gravité, a visually breathtaking spin on beatboxing by Renaud Hallée (with the help of DP Simon Allard & PA Laurent-Dominic Chantal-Fortin). Ping pong balls, cutlery, glow sticks and sparklers — just goes to show that pretty much anything can be transformed into music!! Remember when you were a kid smashing the bejeezus out of the kitchen pots? Well, this seems to be the grownup rendition of that… Be sure to check out Renaud’s other music-in-motion video Sonar as well!
