I’ve been watching the oft-criticized The Tudors on Netflix, (so far I like it) and I’ve been really impressed with the costuming for King Henry VIII. As far as historicity goes, I’m clueless on the finer points of royal fashion, but it would have pretty fun to walk around in duds like these:
Wouldn’t be so bad to be a king, eh?
Here’s a Russian-doll type of post; a new building in Chicago (urban architecture capitol of the world) that isn’t just a showcase of great design itself, but is also meant as an incubator for design students and their work.
The brand-new Media Production Center at Columbia College Chicago, complete with sound stages, up-to-the-minute editing facilities, and first rate sound and video equipment:
What lies within...
The MPC is just one of about a dozen Columbia College building scattered throughout the south loop of downtown Chicago. Beyond it’s outward beauty, the building is also LEED certified, and has a lovely green roof; as in vegetation grows upon it, creating energy and serving as natural insulation (which the press file has no photograph of, bizarrely).
And they built it just in time for my graduation! In May 2009! Blerg.
What we liked, and to hell with Joan Rivers:
Vera Farmiga - Up In The Air
Anna Kendrick - Up In The Air
Zoe Kravitz - Precious
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
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.
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