Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
INTO THE WILD
Christopher McCandless: I will miss you too, but you are wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from the joy of human relationships. God's place is all around us, it is in everything and in anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at things.
Ron Franz: Yeah. I am going to take stock of that. You know I am. I want to tell you something. From bits and pieces of what you have told me about your family, your mother and your dad... And I know you have problems with the church too... But there is some kind of bigger thing that we can all appreciate and it sounds to me you don't mind calling it God. But when you forgive, you love. And when you love, God's light shines through you.
Christopher McCandless: Holy shit!
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
MR. ED DEAD
The brand new humor book Mr. Ed Dead: And Other Obituaries of the Most Famous People Who Never Lived by Barry Nelson and Tom Schecker is a hilarious parody of famous characters and their imagined obituaries. Mr. Ed: Dead recounts, in laugh-out-loud detail, the lives and deaths of hundreds of illustrious characters, including dozens of advertising icons. These characters had a fictional life, and, darn it, they deserve an equally creative death. Check out a few items from the book.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
hollywood_logos
cool article I found on Neatorama:
You see these opening logos every time you go to the movies, but have you ever wondered who is the boy on the moon in the DreamWorks logo? Or which mountain inspired the Paramount logo? Or who was the Columbia Torch Lady?
1. DreamWorks SKG: Boy on the Moon
In 1994, director Steven Spielberg, Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, and record producer David Geffen (yes, they make the initial SKG on the bottom of the logo) got together to found a new studio called DreamWorks.
Spielberg wanted the logo for DreamWorks to be reminiscent of Hollywood's golden age. The logo was to be a computer generated image of a man on the moon, fishing, but Visual Effects Supervisor Dennis Muren of Industrial Light and Magic, who has worked on many of Spielberg's films, suggested that a hand-painted logo might look better. Muren asked his friend, artist Robert Hunt to paint it.
Hunt also sent along an alternative version of the logo, which included a young boy on a crescent moon, fishing. Spielberg liked this version better, and the rest is history. Oh, and that boy? It was Hunt's son, William.
The DreamWorks logo that you see in the movies was made at ILM from paintings by Robert Hunt, in collaboration with Kaleidoscope Films (designers of the original storyboards), Dave Carson (director), and Clint Goldman (producer) at ILM.
Photo courtesy of Robert Hunt - Thanks for the neat story, Robert!
2. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM): Leo The Lion
In 1924, studio publicist Howard Dietz designed the "Leo The Lion" logo for Samuel Goldwyn's Goldwyn Picture Corporation. He based it on the athletic team of his alma mater Columbia University, the Lions. When Goldwyn Pictures merged with Metro Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures, the newly formed MGM retained the logo.
Since then, there have been five lions playing the role of "Leo The Lion". The first was Slats, who graced the openings of MGM's silent films from 1924 to 1928. The next lion, Jackie, was the first MGM lion whose roar was heard by the audience. Though the movies were silent, Jackie's famous growl-roar-growl sequence was played over the phonograph as the logo appeared on screen. He was also the first lion to appear in Technicolor in 1932.
The third lion and probably most famous was Tanner (though at the time Jackie was still used concurrently for MGM's black and white films). After a brief use of an unnamed (and very mane-y) fourth lion, MGM settled on Leo, which the studio has used since 1957.
The company motto "Ars Gratia Artis" means "Art for Art's Sake."
Sources: MGM Media Center | Wikipedia entry on "Leo The Lion"
3. 20th Century Fox: The Searchlight Logo
In 1935, Twentieth Century Pictures and Fox Film Company (back then mainly a theater-chain company) merged to create Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation (they later dropped the hyphen).
The original Twentieth Century Pictures logo was created in 1933 by famed landscape artist Emil Kosa, Jr. After the merger, Kosa simply replaced "Pictures, Inc." with "Fox" to make the current logo. Besides this logo, Kosa was also famous for his matte painting of the Statue of Liberty ruin at the end of the Planet of the Apes (1968) movie, and others.
Perhaps just as famous as the logo is the "20th Century Fanfare", composed by Alfred Newman, then musical director for United Artists.
4. Paramount: The Majestic Mountain
Paramount Pictures Corporation was founded in 1912 as Famous Players Film Company by Adolph Zukor, and the theater moguls the Frohman brothers, Daniel and Charles.
The Paramount "Majestic Mountain" logo was first drawn as a doodle by W.W. Hodkinson during a meeting with Zukor, based on the Ben Lomond Mountain from his childhood in Utah (the live action logo made later is probably Peru's Artesonraju). It is the oldest surviving Hollywood film logo.
The original logo has 24 stars, which symbolized Paramount's then 24 contracted movie stars (it's now 22 stars, though no one could tell me why they reduced the number of stars). The original matte painting has also been replaced with a computer generated mountain and stars.
Paramount logo history, for more details, see: CLG Wiki
5. Warner Bros.: The WB Shield
Warner Bros. (yes, that's legally "Bros." not "Brothers") was founded by four Jewish brothers who emigrated from Poland: Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner. Actually, those aren't the names that they were born with. Harry was born "Hirsz," Albert was "Aaron," Sam was "Szmul," and Jack was "Itzhak." Their original surname is also unknown - some people said that it is "Wonsal," "Wonskolaser" or even Eichelbaum, before it was changed to "Warner." (Sources: Doug Sinclair | Tody Nudo's Hollywood Legends)
In the beginning, Warner Bros. had trouble attracting top talents. In 1925, at the urging of Sam, Warner Bros. made the first feature-length "talking pictures" (When he heard of Sam's idea, Harry famously said "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"). That got the ball rolling for the studio and made Warner Bros. famous.
The Warner Bros. logo, the WB Shield, has actually gone many revisions. Jason Jones and Matt Williams of CLG Wiki have the details:
Warner Bros. Logo History - see the full details at CLG Wiki
If you're interested in WB cartoons, you can't go wrong with Dave Mackey's Field guide: Link
6. Columbia Pictures: The Torch Lady
Columbia Pictures was founded in 1919 by the brothers Harry and Jack Cohn, and Joe Brandt as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales. Many of the studio's early productions were low-budget affairs, so it got nicknamed "Corned Beef and Cabbage." In 1924, the brothers Cohn bought out Brandt and renamed their studio Columbia Pictures Corporation in effort to improve its image.
Vintage Columbia Pictures Logo (Source: Reel Classics)
The studio's logo is Columbia, the female personification of America. It was designed in 1924 and the identity of the "Torch Lady" model was never conclusively determined (though more than a dozen women had claimed to be "it.")
In her 1962 autobiography, Bette Davis claimed that Claudia Dell was the model, whereas in 1987 People Magazine named model and Columbia bit-actress Amelia Batchler as the girl. In 2001, the Chicago Sun-Times named a local woman who worked as an extra at Columbia named Jane Bartholomew as the model. Given how the logo has changed over the years, it may just be that all three were right! (Source)
The current Torch Lady logo was designed in 1993 by Michael J. Deas, who was commissioned by Sony Pictures Entertainment to return the lady to her "classic" look.
Though people thought that actress Annette Bening was the model, it was actually a Louisiana homemaker and muralist named Jenny Joseph that modeled the Torch Lady for Deas. Rather than use her face, however, Deas drew a composite face made from several computer-generated features (Source: Roger Ebert, Photo: Kathy Anderson)
If you like this article, please check out Neatorama's articles on logos:
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
little_white_lies
Little White Lies is a bi monthly movie magazine which in very broad simple terms digresses everything under the realms of cinema and 'proposes that movies don’t exist in a vacuum, and aims to venture beyond the boundaries of the big screen, exploring the worlds of music, art, politics and pop culture to inform and illuminate the medium of film.'
Little White Lies sells out pretty quick, however they’ve made EVERY ONE of their back issues available to read online.
really cool magazine!! I already read one online :)
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Friday, December 25, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
100 FACTS ABOUT PANDAS

100 Facts About Pandas from 100FactsAboutPandas on Vimeo.
For example, did you know that if a panda gets struck by lightning,
its black hair turns white and its white hair black? A spread from the
book shown above reveals this affliction. These bears are known to
pandologists as negative pandas
Another fact revealed by the book is that at the height of the cold war,
American Special Forces deployed six robot pandas equipped with
advanced surveillance equipment into the forest of eastern China to
spy on rural military bases (image of one of the robot pandas shown
above). Apparently half of these robo-bears were shot by commercial
poachers in the first week of deployment. The others were adopted
by a cupboard of real pandas, and based on readings from tracking
devices, were still roaming the forests until their batteries wore out
in 1998.
Pandas have no fingerprints. This is believed to be why they are used
as accomplices in many jewel and bank robberies. International law
enforcement agencies arrest around 700 pandas every year.
The book also offers advice in the event of a panda attack. As the
images above show, the following procedure should be followed:
1. Wrap the animal's torso in a towel or blanket so its front legs are
bound to its body. 2. Slap it hard across the face. 3. Deliver the animal
to the authorities.
VIA






