I seriously only have one more update of cartoons that I made nearly 7 years ago. This has been my favorite things to post when I was running low on content… like today when I spent most of my day and night trying to get my life in order.
Way back in January when I was at Sundance I photographed an alumni event for NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. They asked me not to put up any images until they put theirs online. They did. So now you get to see them. It was only two hours work and it paid for my plane tickets and I got to eat some pretty amazing food at Robert Redfords’s restaurant. There were some NYU Alumni celebs in attendance like Clark Gregg who directed the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke, Jason Ritter, actor and son of the late John Ritter, Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck who wrote and directed Half Nelson, and Marley Shelton from Sin City and Grindhouse. I was talking to Marely Shelton for probably 15 minutes before realizing she was a reasonably famous actress. I knew she looked familiar but I couldn’t really place it. I started telling her about shooting celebrities holding products for gifting lounge things and told me how weird it was for her to have to hold the products for pictures. We talked for a long time, defiantly longer than anyone else at the party. She seemed like a rad lady, but I still couldn’t place where I knew her. When I got back to the hotel one of the girls working working with me at the gifting lounge told me who she was. Neat. Anyway, other than a few famous faces, these photos are pretty uneventful.
A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.
Since I just wrote up Be Kind Rewind I decided it would be a good time to do a Favorite Things about one of my favorite directors, Michel Gondry. The first time I saw Eternal Sunshine I became obsessed with Gondry. I started trying to track down all his music videos. I got a big help when PALM released their Directors Label series which featured Gondry. It had a pretty good collection of his videos. When comparing it to the Spike Jonze DVD I realized that I was not as into the musicians Gondry worked with. I loved the videos though and I found myself watching Bjork videos despite hating her music. His videos got me into several bands and complete inspired me. I couldn’t come up with just three favorites, but I tried to do my best… so keep reading to see three of my favorite Michel Gondry videos.
Comments (0)Be Kind Rewind is the new film from Michel Gondry. It is about a video store clerk (Mos Def) who has a moronic friend (Jack Black) who accidentally erases all the movies. So they start making new movies themselves based on the erased movies. For those who insanely don’t know who Michel Gondry he is the man who directed Eternal Sunshine On The Spotless Mind. He is probably the most brilliant living film director who’s name is not Werner Herzog. That being said, Be Kind Rewind meanders. It drops some random plot points and a number of things don’t make sense. (For example, the movies they make are called Sweded versions, but no reason what so ever is given for that.) It is not exactly the best story telling on earth. Gondry is probably a much stronger director than he is a writer (this is the second film he has written, his last film, Science Of Sleep he also wrote, while his first two films were written by Charlie Kaufman. Anyway, the amazingness of the film more than makes up for it. It is extremely funny, completely inventive and overwhelmingly touching. Mos Def is sort of incredible playing a roll that is not only very out of character for him, but very different from any character I have seen anyone play. I had read some slightly negative reviews of it so I went in with slightly lowered expectations, but I have to say it blew me away and I was almost in tears at some points. Also, Danny Glover played the store owner and while I was not overwhelmed by his performance or anything, I did meet him and he was extremely nice.
Check out these two trailers. The first is the actual trailer, and the second is Michel Gondry’s Sweded version of the trailer.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62CZL9Rhz8Y[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B0dJQ35rDs[/youtube]
Comments (2)I was sitting in my room, working on this site, when I realized it was nearly 2 AM. I jumped up and got on the Train and made it to Trash just after two. For some reason everyone just left around 3, so I did for a second, and then I came back. When I came back I suddenly had a bunch of friends there, including Sarah 2.0 who’s birthday it was so I bought her a crepe for her birthday and we hung out with a large bearded man who paid for my cab ride home and was a pretty awesome dude. He also is a big fan of the artichoke crepe, which is my personal favorite. Anyway, none of this is the point. I don’t know what the point is, but if you figure it out… let me know. I gotta go see Be Kind Rewind now, I’ll let you know how it is.
So I recently posted about how I took the official Agyness Deyn Wikipedia photo… well I am back and this time I took the photo of my personal hero, Takeru Kobayashi. I have personally witnessed him break the hot dog eating record in 2004, break it again in 2006, and I finally saw him lose to the great Joey Chestnut. It was a sad day for Kobayashi, but a great day for America. Anyway, last year at the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest I had back stage passes and I took a shot of Kobayashi massaging his jaw that he supposedly injured (likely story). We all knew he was just afraid of Chestnut and making excuses… but I snapped this shot while he was rubbing his face… I put it on my Flickr account and a Wikipedia editor contacted me and now you can see my photo on the official Takeru Kobayashi Wikipedia page. I guess Flickr has been good for something. Hip hip hurray!
The whole reason I took my unreasonably long trip to Richmond was to see the band I manage The Gaskets play a show. It was a benefit show for my friend Kellie Brown who had some minor surgery but she had no health insurance so she had to drop out of school to pay her medical bills. The show raised over $1000 for her, so that was great. Anyway, it was a pretty good show and I got to see a lot of my old friends. Pictures go here.
Three years ago The Gaskets were playing a show in Houston, TX and the opening band were these guys called De Novo Dahl. They pretty much blew me away. A year later at SXSW I saw them at a bar called The Chugging Monkey in Austin. Then later that year I saw them at CMJ in NYC. Then randomly I was looking at their MySpace page and saw that they were going to be playing in Richmond, VA at a record store while I was there. I went there with a few of my friends and watched them play a very short set. They were still pretty amazing and after they played their album on the store sound system. It sounds great. I think they actually just played NYC again but I missed it because I didn’t get back in town in time. Anyway, I didn’t shoot much, but what I did you can find here. And download their track Shout here. It is fucking awesome.
I was at Lit for a minute then I went over to see my friend DJ at 40c. They closed early because someone vandalized the bathroom or something. Then we all just stood around throwing snow balls at cabs. I seriously spent 45 minutes wandering around the city with a bunch of guys throwing snow balls and causing general ruckus. I felt like I was 15 or something. Then we headed over to lit for about an hour. Some fun was had and I then went over to these girls house to take naked photos on their roof in the snow, but that didn’t ever happen, although there are a couple of topless shots taken on their fire escape. (Update: No they aren’t.) After I left their house I went over to my friends place on Ludlow and we hung out until 7 AM at which point we tried to get McDonalds from the McDonalds on Delancey and Essex which is about one dropped soda from a full scale riot. There was no one in line when we got there but it took roughly 15 minutes until they took our order despite there being 8 people working there. When we got our food they didn’t have any drinks and four people just stood around the soda machine looking at it and pressing the buttons. It never got fixed and we did not get the Sprites we paid for. Fucking bastards.
You can see the photos from NC-17 here.
