Maybe Red vs. Blue: The Script Will Fare Better

But gee, people really eat this stuff up at E3…
After skimming the bullet points in Trade Show Product Launches For Dummies, Microsoft and their Hollywood assistants at CAA did a quick find-and-replace to kick off the studio auction of the Redmond-funded script for Halo.
The Halo armor-clad bike messengers who delivered the scripts looked so rad, several studio execs got confused and, thinking this was the Quicksilver 2 auction, and bid the price into outer space.
Supposedly, the script somehow manages to suck and blow at the same time, a talent Alex Garland might need when this game is over.
Halo: The Studio Stunt [defamer]
Previously: Waiting for Halo
Virtual Warriors Have Feelings, Too [nyt, my interview with rvb’s Burnie Burns]

Seeing Cy Twombly Naked

Actually, when I saw Cy Twombly, he wasn’t naked, and neither was I. I’d gone to Houston for work, right after graduating from college, and I had an extra day, so I set out to find this Rothko Chapel I’d heard about. No luck, or maybe it’s that low-slung grey clapboard building. With the blackboard Twombly in the lobby. Holy moley, what is this place?
It was, of course, the Menil Collection, and while I was standing in front of one of my favorite paintings, a tall, elderly man came around the corner from behind it and stood there, too. I looked at him, then at the painting, then back. “Excuse me, are you Cy Twombly?” “Yes I am.” I babbled something—I was obviously clueless but well-meaning–and he was gracious, then he left.
I later learned he had come to do an interview for the exhibition catalogue of “Rauschenberg: The Early 1950’s,” a tremendous show which was organized by Walter Hopps at the Menil, and which traveled to the Guggenheim. (Remember when the Guggenheim used to have good shows?)
I was reminded of this incident by the article in the Times about the panoply of Twombly shows in Houston at the moment. The artist told of a Menil guard who came upon a French woman standing naked and transfixed in front of a large Twombly canvas.
A Celebratory Splash for an Enigmatic Figure [nyt]
Buy Hopps’s 1991 Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s catalogue for –sheesh, $255?? [it’s that and more–up to $400 on abebooks]

Just Don’t Do It

While I smirked at the transparent publicity-hounding of Nike’s store-you-can’t-go-in-unless-you’re-cool-enough when I first saw it a few weeks ago, I figured it couldn’t work; no one’d fall for it and actually care because–hello!–it’s such an obvious stunt. I mean, the craptrap restaurant Jekyll & Hyde on 57th & 6th never lets people in immediately, either, but lines them up on the street. If tourist maroons fell for it, I always figured New Yorkers could spot a Barnum-level manipulation a block away. I guess I was wrong.
In this week’s NYT Magazine, a writer accompanies three celebrities in whose reflected glow NikeID wished to bask: an artist, a designer, and an NBA shoe salesman. [Never mind that the whole thing is fraught wtih publicist-paper complicity issues. This ain’t On The Media, folks, and I have a lot of room to talk, anyway, what with the Times picking up about a quarter of my Jamba Juice tab each month.]
What I got from the Times piece, though, was how hermetic NikeID’s own design concept for customization turns out to be, and how thoroughly at odds it is with the influencers and outside creatives’ tastes. I mean, “despite some gentle urging from the design consultants,” Vince Carter replicated the archetypal Nike shoe–white with a Carolina Blue swoosh–and both Sarah Morris and Narciso Rodriguez chose monochrome designs; Morris even chose the putty grey sample shoe.
Customizing Nikes is to expressing your individual creativity what rhythmic gymnastics is to sports. Whatever the people who actually do it obsessively say, most sensible people can see it for what it is after a couple of colorful swooshes.

Just Do It Yourself
[nytmag]
Note: this post was inspired by Jen’s inspired takedown on Unbeige

Just Don’t Do It

While I smirked at the transparent publicity-hounding of Nike’s store-you-can’t-go-in-unless-you’re-cool-enough when I first saw it a few weeks ago, I figured it couldn’t work; no one’d fall for it and actually care because–hello!–it’s such an obvious stunt. I mean, the craptrap restaurant Jekyll & Hyde on 57th & 6th never lets people in immediately, either, but lines them up on the street. If tourist maroons fell for it, I always figured New Yorkers could spot a Barnum-level manipulation a block away. I guess I was wrong.
In this week’s NYT Magazine, a writer accompanies three celebrities in whose reflected glow NikeID wished to bask: an artist, a designer, and an NBA shoe salesman. [Never mind that the whole thing is fraught wtih publicist-paper complicity issues. This ain’t On The Media, folks, and I have a lot of room to talk, anyway, what with the Times picking up about a quarter of my Jamba Juice tab each month.]
What I got from the Times piece, though, was how hermetic NikeID’s own design concept for customization turns out to be, and how thoroughly at odds it is with the influencers and outside creatives’ tastes. I mean, “despite some gentle urging from the design consultants,” Vince Carter replicated the archetypal Nike shoe–white with a Carolina Blue swoosh–and both Sarah Morris and Narciso Rodriguez chose monochrome designs; Morris even chose the putty grey sample shoe.
Customizing Nikes is to expressing your individual creativity what rhythmic gymnastics is to sports. Whatever the people who actually do it obsessively say, most sensible people can see it for what it is after a couple of colorful swooshes.

Just Do It Yourself
[nytmag]
Note: this post was inspired by Jen’s inspired takedown on Unbeige

These Are A Few Of Todd Purdum’s Favorite Things

A big sloppy kiss on the lips for The Sound of Music on the upcoming occasion of its 40th birthday, courtesy of the NY Times.
I still can’t believe the same guy edited Citizen Kane, directed West Side Story and Sound of Music, and then directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Robert Wise, I KISS you.
Oh, and then totally shilled for Chicago. I take it back. Kiss this, Bob.
The Hills Still Resonate [nyt]

These Are A Few Of Todd Purdum’s Favorite Things

A big sloppy kiss on the lips for The Sound of Music on the upcoming occasion of its 40th birthday, courtesy of the NY Times.
I still can’t believe the same guy edited Citizen Kane, directed West Side Story and Sound of Music, and then directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Robert Wise, I KISS you.
Oh, and then totally shilled for Chicago. I take it back. Kiss this, Bob.
The Hills Still Resonate [nyt]

Decline and Fall?? Dude, he was pushed

So according to the NYT, Helmut Lang’s business sucked so bad, that sales dropped 60%–from $100 million to $37 million–over five years, and Prada rattles off a whole host of reasons why. It’s terrorism, Lang’s lack of business sense, he just wasn’t friendly, he cared more about art than fashion. And then there’s the possible effect of Bertelli’s decision to cancel the company’s jeans licenses “which were responsible for more than half of the brand’s revenues.”
Prada and Bertelli bought and killed a major one-time threat to their own power, and now they spin and cover it up with the willing help of the Times and the rest of the kiss-ass fashion press. They’re the Bush & Cheney of the fashion world. I have a feeling Karl Rove’ll be dressing better real soon.
I said it before, but damn, those people piss me off.
Decline and Fall of Helmut Lang [nyt]
Previously: Miuccia Pravda

Decline and Fall?? Dude, he was pushed

So according to the NYT, Helmut Lang’s business sucked so bad, that sales dropped 60%–from $100 million to $37 million–over five years, and Prada rattles off a whole host of reasons why. It’s terrorism, Lang’s lack of business sense, he just wasn’t friendly, he cared more about art than fashion. And then there’s the possible effect of Bertelli’s decision to cancel the company’s jeans licenses “which were responsible for more than half of the brand’s revenues.”
Prada and Bertelli bought and killed a major one-time threat to their own power, and now they spin and cover it up with the willing help of the Times and the rest of the kiss-ass fashion press. They’re the Bush & Cheney of the fashion world. I have a feeling Karl Rove’ll be dressing better real soon.
I said it before, but damn, those people piss me off.
Decline and Fall of Helmut Lang [nyt]
Previously: Miuccia Pravda

Imagine Paul Goldberger Stepping Out Of The Shower

bobby_shower.jpgLike some architecture critical version of Bobby Ewing. [Or is it Pamela? Whichever.] In this week’s New Yorker, Paul Goldberger writes about the horrible dream he just had: Pataki and the Port Authority were railroading their 10mm sf uber alles program through at the WTC site, resulting in pointless, tenantless, characterless office buildings with marginal cultural facilities wedged in around their base, and a memorial that was little more than a front yard for some jingoistic, politicized ego-booster called the Freedom Tower.
Not only that, but Goldberger’s own master plan–an “Eiffel Tower for the 21st Century”; acres of experimental, affordable, and much-in-demand housing by innovative young architects; built around a deep, solemn, Libeskind-esque void of a memorial–had inexplicably not moved any closer to realization.
How did this happen? [note to any SVA Parsons students, apologies for making you imagine your dean naked.]
A New Beginning/ Why We Should Build Apartments at Ground Zero [ny’er, via cut-n-pasting monkey at wiredny]
Previously: “The Eiffel Tower for the 21st Century” [PG on Studio360 01/13/2003]

Imagine Paul Goldberger Stepping Out Of The Shower

bobby_shower.jpgLike some architecture critical version of Bobby Ewing. [Or is it Pamela? Whichever.] In this week’s New Yorker, Paul Goldberger writes about the horrible dream he just had: Pataki and the Port Authority were railroading their 10mm sf uber alles program through at the WTC site, resulting in pointless, tenantless, characterless office buildings with marginal cultural facilities wedged in around their base, and a memorial that was little more than a front yard for some jingoistic, politicized ego-booster called the Freedom Tower.
Not only that, but Goldberger’s own master plan–an “Eiffel Tower for the 21st Century”; acres of experimental, affordable, and much-in-demand housing by innovative young architects; built around a deep, solemn, Libeskind-esque void of a memorial–had inexplicably not moved any closer to realization.
How did this happen? [note to any SVA Parsons students, apologies for making you imagine your dean naked.]
A New Beginning/ Why We Should Build Apartments at Ground Zero [ny’er, via cut-n-pasting monkey at wiredny]
Previously: “The Eiffel Tower for the 21st Century” [PG on Studio360 01/13/2003]

On PT Anderson’s Use of Color

The latest issue of Senses of Cinema includes Cubie King’s intriguing look at PT Anderson’s use of color in Punch-Drunk Love. In addition to the interstitial abstract animations by artist Jeremy Blake [which were originally meant to represent–is that too strong a word?–Adam Sandler’s character’s state of mind], King cites Anderson’s recurring, particular use of red, white, and blue, and his inclusion of in-camera effects like washout lighting and lens flares. That’s a lot.
King asserts that Anderson truly comes into his own in P-DL. But I recently rewatched Magnolia, and yeah, it’s Altman-esque in its structure, but damn, that is one uniquely intense film. Tom Cruise is actually good, unnervingly so, [although the schtick gets tired when he tries it for real on Oprah; suspension of disbelief, my butt] and Julianne Moore, wow, what a sustained performance. Macy, too, now that I think about it.
FYI, Blake’s latest trilogy of video work, Winchester moves to incorporate more representational and narrative elements than before. It’s showing at SFMOMA through October 10. P-DL screens June 12 at the Museum as the last of a damn-I-missed-it Blake-curated film series.

Punch-Drunk Love: The Budding of an Auteur
[sensesofcinema.com]
Winchester, by Jeremy Blake [sfmoma.org]
Buy the Punch-Drunk Love 2-disc edition DVD or this sweet little Winchester exhibition catalogue [amazon.com]