What we liked, and to hell with Joan Rivers:
Vera Farmiga - Up In The Air
Anna Kendrick - Up In The Air
Zoe Kravitz - Precious
On March 5, 2010, In Food, By Wes
These are images from the world famous Alinea restaurant in Chicago, owned and operated by Grant Achatz, pioneer of the molecular gastronomy movement. If you’ve got $300 bucks weighing you down, Alinea is a good place to unload it. The presentation is gorgeous.
A selection of only the finest movie posters. Some of these we have on the walls here at Basis Design. Yet more in our ambitious coverage of the impending Academy Awards in Hollywood, California.
Full disclosure; a few of these are cheats, as they represent the modern day Criterion posters, and not the originals. We’ll let you know.
Let me commit film-lover heresy here by saying I’ve never thought of The Birds as one of Hitchcock’s better films. Even worse, the famed “Tippi Hedren watches in horror as the flames lick backward up the gasoline spill to explode the car” sequence leaves me cold; her reaction shots are poorly timed, static, and unconvincing. Whatever, this poster kicks so much ass.
From Criterion. Drop-dead gorgeous, and chilling if you know what happens in the film. Ang Lee is somewhat under-appreciated, in my view; I thought this was a fantastic film, and I rate his recently released (and NC-17) chinese-language feature Lust, Caution, as one of the best of the last half decade.
Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder, a really cool look at a particular type of design/art-work. You can see this re-hashed on the covers of dozens of dime-store vintage paperbacks from the fifties and sixties.
One of the weirdest, wildest films to emerge in the last half century. Calling back to the equipment, editing strategies, and acting of the bygone silent era, mad-Canadian Guy Maddin produced a lucid dream that engulfs viewers in a visual storm.
For my money, the creepiest, most stomach-turning movie ever. And the poster matches it sense-of-pervasive-dread for sense-of-pervasive-dread.
This poster is perfect for the film within. Not at all for the faint of heart or stomach, this is a documentary on the holocaust by the great French director Alain Resnais (Hiroshima, Mon Amour).
A chilling and iconic snapshot of dystopian science fiction, early century one-sheets, and German Expressionism through the lens of the great Fritz Lang.
Funny, dark, sarcastic, ironic. Describes the poster, describes the movie. One of Basis’ favorites, and hanging proudly on our wall.
Our favorite movie poster of all time. One of our favorite directors of all time, and probably the greatest. There is nothing about this poster that isn’t cool, ahead of it’s time, and gorgeous. Hanging on our wall as well.
More Oscar coverage from your friends at Basis Design!
Quick: Which female has won more Oscars than anyone in history? (No, it’s not the person who’s name sits atop the article.)
Okay, yes it is. Edith Head, ladies and gentlemen, Costume Designer extraordinaire!
Grace Kelly and Cary Grant - To Catch A Thief
Audrey Hepburn - Roman Holiday
Paul Newman and Robert Redford - The Sting
Grace Kelly, surely one of the more beautiful creatures ever to live, in Rear Window
Yul Brynner and Anne Baxter - The Ten Commandments
On March 2, 2010, In Film, By Wes
I watched Ridley Scott’s Alien recently, and was struck, as always, by the deeply unsettling design for the alien creatures. H.R. Giger is the man responsible, a Swiss artist who won the Academy Award for his work, which played on the latent human fear of alien rape, colonization, and twisted, threatening phallic imagery. Check out Giger’s original concepts and try not to think about the face-hugger when you go to bed tonight.
The second in a continuing series on board-certified Great American Thomas Jefferson, or, as I call him, board-certified Greatest American.
Jefferson’s interest in and skill at design weren’t limited to architecture. He was an extremely accomplished scientist, naturalist, and inventor, all of which led to numerous designs for machines and objects both divine and banal. In common they share a bent toward usefulness, and a spirit pointing to a richer way of living. To wit:
In 1794 Jefferson designed and built a new and better plow. This new plow, composed of iron and mould board rather than the simple wooden plows in common use, was able not only to dig deeper into the soil but also to turn the furrow to the downhill side of sloped land. This was vital for hilly agriculture, (and Monticello certainly qualified) because it drastically cut down on the erosion that threatened hundreds of farms every spring.
Jefferson was also a lover of food and wine; his Whitehouse dinners were legendary for their length, the amount and diversity of cuisine, and the total absence of servants or seating arrangements; Jefferson wanted conversation first and foremost, so he never used waiters and formal structures unless he had to. Below is his design for a macaroni machine, a pasta he’d been exposed to during his international travels:
Here, a photograph of the dumbwaiters Jefferson invented so he and his guests could serve themselves wine from the cellar without leaving the table:
His design expertise ranged beyond the mere mechanical however, and into the merely ingenious.
When he was Secretary of State under George Washington, Jefferson invented a completely secure (at the time) encoding device for sending secret messages. It was especially important for American officials serving in Europe, as European postmasters opened and read all international correspondence without exception. Here’s the wheel:
The sender of a message would merely turn all the cylinders until they spelled out a sentence. Then, they would choose another line of text on the cylinder and copy it down; for example CGHY TSOU AWQC KLIGU CLIO. This is the message they would send. The recipient would then use their own encoder to copy the sent message, then search around the cylinder for the spelled out sentence. Trixy, as they say.
One of Jefferson’s coolest inventions was the so-called Great Clock, which is still in working order at Monticello. The clock has two faces, one on the inside and one outside. It is driven by weights (Revolutionary war cannon balls weighing 18 pounds) which hang on the end of two long wires, which lead from the sides of the clock to the nearest wall, where they drop down and descend, eventually, into the cellar. The balls serve not only as gravitational mechanics, they also mark the month and day of the week, as well as approximate time of day.
The day/month is indicated by the labels on the wall.
Jefferson also invented the first copy machine (and made it portable), developed the first true polygraph (not the lying test, but an ingenious contraption that hitched two pens together and made it possible to write a second copy of a letter simultaneously as you were writing the first). Jefferson invented the first spherical sundial, as well developed a rotating closet, mirroring the mechanical tie racks of today but on a much larger scale. He developed a folding, rotating, five-surfaced book stand upon which five books could be opened and read from. He also invented a new type of furniture, adding lounge and desk accoutrements to traditional chairs.
In a highly specialized world, it’s always interesting to reflect on the renaissance men of the past. Jefferson was possibly the best (Franklin-ites go home!).
On February 26, 2010, In architecture, furniture, By Wes
If you follow this blog for any length of time, you’ll very soon become acquainted with my extreme obsession with everything Jefferson. There are a lot of things you can say about the man; Great Writer, Great Scientist, Great Inventor, Great Philosopher, Great Statesman, Great President, Great Naturalist, Great Musician, etc. But one thing you can say about him that resonates particularly well with us here at Basis is Great Architect, Great Designer, and Great Decorator. Behold Monticello, the greatest private home built in America. (Note to haterz: I said Fallingwater was the most beautiful, not the greatest).
It took Jefferson decades to build Monticello. He kept changing his plans, re-working them to incorporate new duties, new family, and new architectural models and ideas imported from his travels and extensive reading all over the western world (fun Jefferson fact; Jefferson’s personal library, donated to the government, was the foundation of the Library of Congress. The man was well-read) . He especially loved the dome in conjunction with Georgian symmetry.
He would use the dome again in his design for the world famous Rotunda at the University of Virginia, the “House that Jefferson built.” He also designed the original classrooms, grounds, and housing. The man was a stud.
This is Jefferson’s bedroom. He cut out a space in the wall for his actual bed, neatly bisecting the room into two spheres; his office and living quarters. Visible is his magnificent desk, itself featuring some extremely cool design. (That’s another post. Oh, you think this is all the Jefferson you’re getting this week? Please.)
Another gorgeous room. The furniture, the french doors, the busts and views; really breathtaking in person. A trip to Monticello is never a wasted trip, btw.
Here, finally, an aerial view of this part of the property:
Monticello, a regal and lyrical name, means “Little Mountain” in Italian. The man spoke languages.
Tune in on Monday for more Jefferson fetish objects! See you then! Oh, and just because we’re such pals, here’s some UVA architecture titillation!
Wes Anderson movies, apart from their charm, their ironically barbed New Yorker humor, and their endearing human quality, are a tour de force of set design, presentation, framing, and costume choices. There is no director working in America or across the globe whose sense of style, whose taste for design, so completely and beautifully informs his work.
Recently Anderson’s latest creation, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, was released on DVD, and second and third viewings of his thrilling and original use of animation and stop-motion photography are well worth the cost. The dollhouse-level control and placement of detail, the use of symmetry and the emphasis on balanced compositions within wide-screen formatting, in addition to the ubiquitous dolly shots, long takes and focused, mid-shot slow motion effects used without exception in all of his films, mark him not only as the American cinemas premier auteur, but also as that rare director whose style is so personal, so pervasive, and so beguiling, that it becomes a kind of cinematic prose. Anderson’s films are so good they’re literature, and there is no higher complement that can be paid to a director reared in the French New Wave, and riding the crest of the American.
The proof in the proverbial pudding:
Some of these may seem a little familiar to lovers of the Anderson oeuvre. They are in fact semi-photographic archetypes; they speak to the way he likes to frame families, performances, and offices. More compositional brilliance here:
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Rushmore
Bottle Rocket
The Darjeeling Limited
On February 24, 2010, In Fun, architecture, By Wes
We all remember LEGO fortresses, castles, ships, planes trains and automobiles, don’t we? In fact, you may even say that they were the building blocks of many gen-x and y (and millennial) households.
Anyway, for those of you too proud to continue building the ingenious little Star Wars vehicles and rugged desert outposts with 7+ printed on the corner of the box, LEGO has something new, and entirely cool: LEGO architecture.
That’s the Guggenheim, designed by the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Here’s the real thing:
Here’s a slightly more accurate, and equally cool, Frank Lloyd Wright piece: Fallingwater, the most beautiful private home anywhere in the world (IMO).
The real deal:
When I say canti, you say levered!
Don’t act like you’re not impressed. In addition to just the building blocks and instructions, LEGO also provides biographical and historical information and booklets on the buildings. And there’s more; for your edification, the long-legged lasses of the LEGO Architecture skyscrapers!
Two of these buildings reside in the world capital of urban architecture, Chicago, Illinois. Or, if you prefer, the Chi.
What I’m saying is, Chicago FTW.
Just because I love her.
O at Reading.
O at tea.
O at Lollapalooza.
If you don’t know, Karen O is the charismatic lead singer for art-punk/disc0-junk noise band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, bringers of good tidings of great joy and primal screams of feminist ilk. They’re a handful, but you won’t mind.
The clothes are generally made by O friend/fan Christian Joy, whose work can be found here: http://www.christianjoy.us/.
And now, the video for Basis Design’s most-favored YYY jam: