Blog Posts: March 2010
Star Wars ABC
Illustrator Michael Fleming has a great set of artwork on Flickr that has characters from the Star Wars universe representing the alphabet. Check out the rest of his artwork as well.
RunPee
RunPee.com is a site that tells you when during a movie is the best time to go take a whiz. It not only tells you when, through a visual timeline, but what happened while you were gone. So, by the time you get back and wipe your hands on your seat, you didn’t miss anything worth seeing and you’re still up to date with what’s going on.
RunPee.com. One of those sites that make you slap your forehead and think “why didn’t I think of that?!“.
New Album from Danger Mouse: Blank CD-R
DJ Danger Mouse, one half of Gnarls Barkley (as well as producing albums for the Gorillaz and Beck, and one of my personal favorite mashups, The Grey Album), was set to release a new, highly anticipated album, Dark Night of the Soul. But due to legal disputes with their recording label, EMI, they are prohibited to officially release it.
Instead, they’ve decided to include blank CD-Rs with every album-accompanying book (photographs by David Lynch) or posters that fans purchase, and encourage them to burn the album themselves. And since the album isn’t officially released, the only way to get it is through ‘sharing’ (a.k.a. ‘illegal file sharing’, depending on how you look at it).
Right now, you can stream and preview the album at NPR.
How To Make A Movie Poster
When I grow up, I wanna be just like this dude.
Behind the Scenes: Georgina Wilson
When we first met top commercial and print model Georgina Wilson at the cogons of Manila Polo Club, we weren’t so sure she’d like our moody, dramatic concept. She looked fresh and bright in a flowing white day dress, perfectly suited for spring—unassuming, yet undeniably chic.
Our inspiration: a carnival. Not the campy, generic variety but something more authentic, like the lavish shoes of the early part of the 20th century.
We wanted to capture the vibe of a theater actress in the Montmarte district of Paris.
Needless to say, Georgina loved the idea. What girl wouldn’t want to evoke Nicole Kidman in her landmark role in Moulin Rouge?
While we love our natural looking shoots with cover girls looking nonchalant and gorgeous like those of Angel Locsin, Amanda Griffin, or Anne Curtis, the Rogue team jumped at the chance to do something more elaborate with a little bit of production design.
We shot at one of the studios of Unitel Productions. Here’s a little sampling of the “PD” we did for the shoot. We filled this dresser with vintage perfume bottles, print outs of old black and white circus photos, and a bunch of other knickknacks a showgirl would have in her dressing room.
Speaking of the dressing room…
Here are make-up artist Solenn Heussaff and hair stylist Jeff Aromin. If you remember, Solenn was the cover girl for the maiden issue of Rogue. In addition to being an in-demand model, she is also an accomplished make-up artist for the brand Make-Up Forever.
Georgina and Solenn are very good friends, so the atmosphere of the shoot was one that was very friendly and familiar.
Our gifted lensman, Mark Nicdao.
To balance the soft prettiness of some of the shots, we wanted to put Georgina in dark ensembles, like this structured black blazer and sheer tulle skirt, topped off with a wool trilby.
We found this awesome looking wooden carnival horse, the kind you would find at an old Parisian carousel, in the extensive prop room of Unitel.
Also found in the Unitel prop room was a dilapidated antique looking chandelier. We loved how it looked like it was salvaged from an old, derelict theater or ballroom. It also played nicely against the flirty soft, delicate tulle petticoat borrowed from famed atelier, New Yorker.
TV host (and Georgina’s bosom friend) Raymond Gutierrez dropped by for some moral support.
Our cover girl hanging on for dear life.
It was great working with Georgina. The pictures speak for themselves; she understood and embraced our concept, giving it her all, and trusting our judgment completely throughout the shoot. From the ethereal lights to theatrical ambiance, Georgina put on quite the show. Looking at the final product, it’s no wonder she has often been referred to as Gorgeous George.
Make sure to grab a copy of our May issue for Paolo Lorenzana’s profile of our cover-girl, “Show & Tell.“
GUNS ‘N’ PROSES: Rock Star Lit
Chelsea Horror Hotel: A Novel
Authored by Dee Dee Ramone
Chelsea Horror Hotel is about an ex-punk rocker named Dee Dee Ramone who resides with his wife at the vermin-infested Chelsea Hotel. Ramone’s approach to fiction—all first thoughts and indifference to writerly cultivation—is punk to the core. Though the latter half of the book descends into pure nonsense, Ramone deserves credit for beating others to the eponymous protagonist bit. Ramone is so postmodern that he even predicts his own death in the novel’s climactic scene. Let’s see Jonathan Safran Foer do that.
READABILITY 4/5
ENLIGHTENMENT 0/5
A Spaniard in the Works
Authored by John Lennon
Unfortunately, Lennon’s 1966 book of short stories and prose falls far short of the genius he displayed as a songwriter. What’s dismaying is Lennon’s ceaseless Joycean punnery and spoonerisms, the scream-of-consciousness babble dolled up as stinging social satire, and the nonexistence of a story.
READABILITY 2/5
ENLIGHTENMENT 1/5
LOTSA DE CASHA
Authored by Madonna
Hans Christian Andersen, Roald Dahl, Madonna! There may be something wince-inducing about the phrase “Madonna, children’s author,” but you can’t doubt her loyalty to the kiddie-book format. Lotsa de Casha, the fifth and final title in a series she began in ’03, is the story of a rich yet unhappy greyhound who learns the value of sharing when he finds himself stranded without any money. Enchanting illustrations by Rui Paes and unanimous thumbs-up from youngsters queried by the press at Barnes & Noble stores make it hard to hate.
READABILITY 5/5
ENLIGHTENMENT 3/5
This Is Not A Love Story
(500) Days of Summer
In this anti-romantic comedy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt looks back at his relationship with Zooey Deschanel’s Summer, a woman who doesn’t believe in true love.
The awesome teaser trailer hit the internet a few months ago and it seems to have worked in putting this movie on everyone’s radar. Fox Searchlight recently asked fans to help choose a poster.
They finally went with this design :
I wouldn’t have chosen final version, I would’ve rather gone with any of the first three. The big 500 collage is far more striking than the headache inducing collage of the final one and the clean design and simpler fonts of the other two are more pleasant to look at! Which would you have voted for?
Paper Heart
I don’t know what genre this movie falls into. It’s half documentary, half fiction. Charlyne Yi of Knocked Up started out filming a documentary about love and figured it won’t quite work, so she incorporated a fictionalized account of her real life romance with Michael Cera (who’s been so typecast as the lovable geek he can already be his own genre) into this film. It sounds like an impossible pitch for a movie but based on the trailer and poster she made it work.
Here’s the new poster and I kinda like it :
All That Jazz
I love this 1986 French commercial of Yves Saint Laurent’s “Jazz” fragrance for men, directed by famous French Jean Baptiste Mondino.
It stars a 16-year-old Naomi Campbell lip-synching the French song, “C’est si bon.“ Classic! I love how Europeans have no qualms about putting a teenager in just a black smoking jacket. Just look at those gazelle legs!
Though the scent is totally old-school and quite dated, the sleek cool-cats vibe of the video is timeless and surprisingly minimal for an era known for gauche and over-the-top fashion. The black and white theme makes this ad visually striking and stimulating. Each frame of the video can stand alone as a solo print ad methinks.
Most designer fragrance ads today tend to take the intense and highfaluting route. Perhaps more campaigns should evoke the same fun and snazzy mood as this 80s nod to jazz.
The Tech Behind Benjamin Button
I knew there were digital effects involved for the head of Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. But I didn’t know that the entire head (from the neck up) is completely CG!
If you look at the footage again, it’s pretty amazing how they pulled this off.
Ed Ulbrich, Executive VP of Production at Digital Domain, talks about the whole process in this TED talk.
While you’re at it, please go through more TED talks here. It’s really the only thing worth watching on the Internet.
Vancouver Gigapixel
Perhaps you’ve seen the Obama Inauguration Gigapixel photo. This one is of the Vancouver skyline.
Both the Obama Inauguration photo and the Vancouver skyline was taken with the Gigapan System. A surprisingly affordable ($450) device that couples with a DSLR or even a point & shoot, to capture and stitch photos seamlessly to make these gigapixel photos. Good stuff.
