Portobello West

I finally got around to browsing around the Portobello West Fashion and Art Market today. It's held at the Rocky Mountaineer Station (near the Home Depot off Terminal Avenue) on the last Sunday of every month 12-7pm.

The market features a great selection of merchandise by various local artists, designers, jewellers, photographers, potters, and other creative types all under one roof. It leans mostly towards women's fashions, but I still found it well worth checking out.

I picked up a couple of things (pictured above): a 60s-ish print fabric panel ($20) and a pretty cool T-shirt (only $10!). In addition, I found myself pretty inspired by the amount of creativity in this city - lots of talented people. I'll definitely visit again.

More info about Portobello West here.

By the way, House of Blues had a booth there too. I also ended up picking up a ticket to the Mando Diao/Pop Levi/The Films concert at The Plaza this Saturday. Should be good!

Evil

Another one of my photos has been featured on the Beyond Robson site. I noticed this creative bit of vandalism some time ago, and finally got around to capturing it. It's actually a closeup of the 'VII' on the King Edward VII memorial fountain outside the Vancouver Art Gallery.

The Beyond Robson photo feature can be seen here.

Excuse me while I pat myself on the back.

A little nephew/uncle bonding time

After a really miserable rainy week, we were finally rewarded with a sunny weekend. I had a great few hours yesterday babysitting my nephew Jack. Got in some good quality nephew/uncle bonding time and actually got a picture of him not making a silly face.

Double the pleasure and double the fun

I went to see Grindhouse this past weekend, which was a bloody great way to spend 3 hours for a movie-geek like me. The film is a double feature of two exploitation style movies (completed with distorted film-damage effects and fake trailers) directed by two other bona-fide movie-geeks, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. The whole experience was pretty much as it should be - sleazy, gory, trashy and fun. The directors obviously had a blast with the premise and much of it translated to the big screen. If anything, the film confirmed two things to me - Robert Rodriguez is a great action film director and Quentin Tarantino is a great director, period.



Rodriquez' Planet Terror was the first film - a pretty straightforward genre piece about zombies invading a small town. Despite some far superior splattery effects, the film definitely felt like an old fashioned 80s zombie movie. Even the cheesy synthesizer soundtrack felt like something out of Dawn of the Dead or one of John Carpenter's horror flicks. Lots of gross-out scenes too - definitely not for the faint of heart.

Rose McGowan gave a terrifically campy and sweet performance as Cherry Darling, a go-go dancer who loses a leg to a zombie attack. The film also features lots of familiar faces to fans of the genre (anyone else remember Michael Biehn from Aliens and Terminator?) plus an unbilled Bruce Willis as a tough army general.



Tarantino's Death Proof was the second film. Kurt Russell plays a sadistic ex-stuntman serial killer who uses a Cheva Nova as his weapon of choice. It was nice to see Russell playing a badass again; lately many of his performances have been feel-good roles like befuddled fathers or inspirational coaches. I suppose that's what living in Vancouver and being married to Goldie Hawn does to you. With his leathery scarred face and greasy shelf of hair he was perfect for the role and clearly had a lot of fun doing it. There's a great moment where, just before climbing into the driver's seat to pursue some fresh victims, he stops, looks straight at the camera and gives a killer smile.

Tarantino's love for long scenes of dialogue got a little frustrating at times. At some points you felt like saying 'Just get on with it!' Ultimately though, the character-driven scenes worked in the movies favor, setting you up for the action sequences. By the time the shit finally hits the fan, the movie goes full-throttle. The final scenes (and especially exhilarating final frame) were probably the most exciting I've seen for quite some time. Tarantino definitely knows how to wind up an audience.

Special credit must also be given to the directors of the fake movie trailers in the intermission. Rob Zombie tackled a trailer for 'Werewolf Women of the SS' (starring Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu!). Eli(Hostel) Roth directed a trailer for 'Thanksgiving', a depraved throwback to the slasher films of the 80s where every killer seemed to base his murder spree around a particular holiday or toolbox implement. The funniest though, was probably Edgar (Shawn of the Dead) Wright's trailer for 'Don't'. "If you're thinking of going into that castle... Don't! If you're thinking of going down those stairs... Don't! If you're..." Well you get the idea.

Seems like everyone involved in the film were movie-geeks like me. Thanks guys.

Hail to the Chiefs

I went to see The Kaiser Chiefs last night at The Commodore and had a really great evening. The first band on were The Little Ones, who were pretty tight, pleasant and poppy, but I kind of forgot them after the evening was done. Second band was The Walkmen, who can best be described as having 'flashes of brilliance' - some songs I thought to myself "Hey these guys are really good!" others I thought "Hey these guys really suck!". Maybe they'd sound better on CD - kind of a Strokes meets Velvet Underground meets Bob Dylan (circa late 60s, early 70s) kind of sound.

The evening pretty much belonged to The Kaiser Chiefs though. They have a very cool sound, much like some of the British bands who fell just outside the realm of punk in the late 70s (eg: XTC, Boomtown Rats, Stranglers) plus a little of the cheekiness of early Blur. I don't know what it is about Britain, but nobody can do boozy singalong anthems like Brit bands. I've had the chorus to "Oh My God" stuck in my head ever since.

Just one black mark against them though; on the back of the concert shirt, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal were listed under their US Tour Dates. We're North American dammit, NOT American.

Public art

I know it's always been there, but it's only recently that I've started to fully appreciate the amount of great street art there is in Vancouver. I came across this piece by 'cameraman' on Union Street while wandering around on my lunch break.

Incredible news

It was recently announced that two-time Academy Award nominee Edward Norton is going to play the next Incredible Hulk. Seriously.

MiniVan

Here's a quick attempt at experimenting with a faux miniature model effect that I recently discovered. It involves using Photoshop and a combination of layer masks, curves and lens blur to create a strong depth of field effect. Didn't turn out too badly, but I think the degree of blur could use some work. I'd be interested to play around with some other other images.

Here's the original photo that I used, taken from the roof of the channel m building:



Here's where I found the tutorial for this technique.

Forms in paper

Icosahedron II

Richard Sweeney makes incredible sculptures out of sheets of paper. Some are created through a process of cutting, scoring and folding - others by slicing and interlocking a variety of sheets.

You can see more of these incredible forms at his Flickr page here.

A small world after all

Ever feel small and insignificant? Here's a blog from London artist Slinkachu featuring his 'Little People - A Tiny Street Art Project'. He customizes miniature models from a variety of sources such as model sets and architectural dioramas, and arranges them into mini tableaux of everyday life. They're placed discreetly at various locations around London and left behind to fend for themselves.

My favorites include the Gallery set (seen above), plus Office Politics (a businessman beating another with his briefcase outside an office building) and Coke (a guy snorting coke with a massive five pound note in the bathroom).

You can check them out here at www.little-people.blogspot.com.

Wild at heart

Director David Lynch shares his thoughts on product placement in movies. Come on David, tell us what you really think...

A bright idea

I love this lamp. Nice innit? You can find more details here.

Found on newstoday.

Children of Men

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
-Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)

A few nights ago I saw Children of Men, a very bleak, but powerful 'what-if' film directed by Alfonso Cuarón. It begins in the year 2027, a time when the world is facing a fertility crisis and the world's youngest person has just been assassinated at the age of 18. The wonderfully melancholy Clive Owen plays a former activist who finds himself entrusted to escort a young woman to a mysterious organization known only as the Human Project.

It would be unfair of me to give away much more of the plot than that. What I did love about this film is that you feel like you're thrown into the story with Owen's character and are with him every step of the way. You feel his sense of apathy and numbness at the beginning of the film and you share his sense of confusion and deperation as the story continues. A large part of this is due to how the film is shot; Owen inhabits nearly every frame of the film. There are a couple of masterful documentary type shots that really pull you into the action without being overly showy or slick. One spectacular one-take shot, follows him for nearly ten minutes as he lurches and stumbles through a chaotic battlefield. At one point, as somebody is shot, even the camera lens is spattered with blood.

I also liked how they depicted the London of tomorrow. It depicts this particular future as if technology had peaked at around 2010 and had slowly begun to decline along with mankind. There are a few hints of changes (different car designs, slimmer computers and animated billboards) but the surroundings are painted in shabby blues and browns. There's also an incredible attention to detail - just check out the London 2012 Olympics fleece in the picture above. The imagery borrows a lot from the depressing footage we see of terrorism and warfare everyday, but brings them closer to home. London is filled with detainee prisons similar to the pictures we have seen of Abu Ghraib, and the streets evoke images of cities like Beruit or Iraq.

The bleakness, however, is softened by an underlying tenderness and feeling of hope. I noticed that there were a few points in the movie that reflected the idealism of the sixties and early seventies. Michael Caine shows up as a pot-smoking former activist, and in a flashback photo of his character, he looks remarkly like John Lennon. The soundtrack makes great use of songs such as The Stones 'Ruby Tuesday', Deep Purple's 'Hush' and in one particulary appropriate scene, King Crimson's epic 'Court of the Crimson King'. Other references include a surprise cameo by the Pink Floyd pig from the 'Animals' album cover and memories of a long dead child named Dylan.

As a piece of grafitti says in one scene, 'The future's a thing of the past'.

David Lanham

There's a lot of great stuff to feast your eyes on at David Lanham's website. He's one of those uber-talented illustrators who is equally adept with both a pencil and a mouse. In addition to his sketches and illustrations, he also creates sculptures, animations and desktop icons. You can see his work at www.dlanham.com.



Found at www.k10k.net.

Stranger Than Fiction

"There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor." - George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

I saw Stranger Than Fiction the other weekend. You may have seen the ads; it's about Harold Crick, an IRS auditor who suddenly finds his life being narrated by a voice that only he can hear. However, rather than being a one-joke movie, like a Saturday Night Live skit stretched out to feature length, it turned out to be surprisingly thoughtful and touching.

I'm glad that the story wasn't overpowered by the whole "narration schtick", but instead focussed on the main character's attempts to make sense of his life, break routines, and take control of his destiny. Will Ferrell gave a great reined-in performance, making the transition from a blank bewildered slate to a man finding the joy in the smallest things. There's a very sweet scene with him and Maggie Gyllenhaal, when he quietly serenades her with his guitar in an attempt to win her over. Emma Thompson was also great in the film, playing against type as a bitter suicidal author who needs to break some routines of her own.

I think a lot of us are guilty of being creatures of habit; I can't start my day without my usual grande dark roast and blueberry bar. Routines give us the illusion that we are in control of our destiny. It's only when we start making small deviations from our routine that we begin to enjoy life. Lately, as I have begun experimenting more and more with photography, I have started taking alternate routes home from work. I've started to really look at the city I live in with a fresh eye, and as a result, I appreciate it more.

That said, I'll always enjoy the typical comedic obnoxious egomaniac Will Ferrell characters, even if the movies are starting to follow a pretty standard formula. For proof, just check out the Will Ferrell Movie Generator here.

Happy Vaisakhi

Here's some frames from an animation I recently completed for our upcoming Vaisakhi Parade coverage at channel m. Vaisakhi is a harvest festival celebrating the coming of Spring throughout much of India. It is also a day that Sikhs celebrate the day they acquired their identity.

In the past, we relied fairly heavily on footage of past parades for our graphics. This year, we used more symbols of the spring harvest - flowers, trees, wheat, birds, butterflies, blossoms, etc. The intent was to make the animation celebratory yet traditional.

You can find out more about Vaisakhi here.

For info on channel m's parade coverage, click here.

I love you Alanis

Alanis covers The Black Eyed Peas' 'My Humps'. And in the process, steals my heart.

Triple feature

Another one of my photos (Film Strip 1) was featured again today on the Beyond Robson blog. It was basically just one of those 'wait-and-see' shots, but I was happy with the way the double imagery came out. You can see can see the post along with some other great photos here.



And earlier this week, Beyond Robson used one of my photos (Bird. Watching.) as a header for one of their Morning Brew posts. I'm also quite happy with this one. Crows seem to be everywhere in Vancouver, just sitting there watching. You can see the post here.



And if that wasn't enough, just last week, one of my Burrard Skytrain blossom photos appeared in another great Vancouver blog, Metroblogging Vancouver. By the looks of it, everyone's taking photos of the blossoms lately. It's very hard not to. You can see the photo in the post here.

In any case, thanks for posting my photos guys. And, as always, you can view more of my Flickr photos here.

Photoshopping

(Click image to view larger)

Put this together in Photoshop this evening. Had the idea already in my head, so it took very little time to put together - maybe 30-40 minutes. Sometimes it's nice to slap something together quickly rather than overthinking it too much. Inspired partially by descriptions of the Raven King in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

I used the following Flickr photos of mine to bring it all together:

April Fools

In honor of all the fools out there (and apparently, there are a lot of them), click here to see a list of the top April Fool's hoaxes of all time.

One of my favorites:

Noted British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on the radio in 1976 that at 9:47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event, in which Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, would cause a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth's gravity. Moore told listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment of the planetary alignment, they would experience a floating sensation. Hundreds of people called in to report feeling the sensation.

Never underestimate the stupidity of the public.