We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

A nice behind the scenes video of Andy Jenkins and Mike Carroll talking about the Girl Skateboards collab with (RED) to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

High school noir mystery Brick propelled director Rian Johnson into cult status four years ago, but The Brothers Bloom is poised to introduce a much wider audience to the filmmaker’s anachronistic charm. Depicting the bond of brotherhood through a team of fraternal con artists played by dramaturgical heartthrobs Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo (who also appears in Where the Wild Things Are), the film is an epic adventure pastiche spanning the globe, chock full of aesthetic eye candy. In the process of pulling off “one last con” on bored millionaire mark Rachel Weisz (who actually turns out to be kind of hilarious– who knew?), the titular Blooms weave a twist-filled tale that’s just plain old-fashioned fun. If only all action-packed popcorn films were as exciting and stimulating as this! Check out the trailer, and while you’re on that page, note the weird Photoshop chop-job some marketers did on the production still posted above– who shoulders are those, really, Ruffalo?

Also check out the clip below of the opening sequence in which Max Records AKA Max from WTWA plays young Ruffalo. Mark Recommended him for the job after working together on Wild Things. We love Max!

Images and pre-orders for the collectible WTWA Kubrick set made their way around the internets today. Strange feeling these toys are going to get scooped up very quickly.

If only breakfast cereal came in James Siena shapes. This would mean corn pops that resemble distorted spirals and shaded hooks, and wheaties in the shape of combs and slices and forks. Delicious. The artist uses humble materials– graphite, gouache, enamel–to create works that are like Magic Eye stereograms for the aesthetically aware.

I love this guy. Lance Bangs told me about him. Great voice. Great brain.

Look what our sound department found at the Marin Library rummage sale!

INTERVIEWER: Do you have any beliefs in otherworldly things—spirits around the house, etcetera?

MAURICE SENDAK: No.

INTERVIEWER: What are your beliefs in afterlife?

SENDAK: Death.

INTERVIEWER: Death? Blackness? Void?

SENDAK: Yes. 

What you’re looking at is graphite trapped between layers of resin– carbon-based artifice entombed within the unforgiving sands of time. This is the work of Brooks Salzwedel, and it all seems to take place within the purgatorial swirling mists of a coniferous forest. Coupled with the comatose canopies of somnolent saplings, the only inhabitants of this cold gray place are towers of heavy-duty machinery that’s been left to rot by a populace long since vanished, Cormac McCarthy-style. The effect is simultaneously spooky and bewitching.

Salzwedel will be presenting new work at the Tinlark Gallery is Los Angeles, in a show opening Saturday, May 16th.

Vintage Eggers! Or maybe not vintage, but also not newish. This is Dave Eggers accepting his 2008 TED Prize and giving a little talk about his wonderful organization 826 Valencia. I like TED talks because they remind me of the Google headquarters, lucid dreaming, evangelical Christian rock concerts and school all at once. But in a great way.

Carter Burwell’s one of those rare science-meets-art geniuses who could easily—if he were the wrong type of man—sell his vast intellect to the aerospace industry, trading doomsday machine schematics jotted down on cocktail napkins for millions of dollars and a life of cushy excess. Luckily for us, he’s instead used all that massive brain power to score some the most innovative American films of the past quarter-century with music that consistently defies expectations. Boasting a Harvard degree and resume bullet points like “protein analysis software designer,” “pioneer in the field of digital animation,” and “new wave session musician,” it was almost blind luck that found Burwell writing music for films in the mid-80s.

Best known for his collaborations with the Coen Brothers, Burwell has been involved with plenty of bizarre and rad projects from the experimental theme song to cable TV’s first “post-modern” game show in 1990 to, of course, Where the Wild Things Are. Browsing through the anecdotes on his personal website is like meeting a Hollywood veteran on a random studio backlot who’s more than willing to let you in on the joke. For instance: Burwell recalls working on the Anthony Perkins-directed Psycho III and being forced by Universal to record an MTV-friendly pop song tie-in, resulting in an “unbankable” single called “Scream of Love.”

It clearly had no potential for radio play, but it was the only solution Universal was going to get so they went with it. They had Arthur Baker do some dance remixes on 12″ vinyl and we even made a music video featuring me, Tony and a Hitchcockian blonde. Eventually Tony [Perkins] presented the video on MTV as a guest VJ.