Living in the South, you will inevitably come to love some hole in the wall, middle of nowhere, run by an old married couple barbecue joint. They always have the best food, and there’s never a wait. There are a few places like this in my hometown, and I love driving down a road and seeing an sign or restaurant that reminds me of one of these places.
There’s absolutely nothing like home, but a good ole’ barbecue place with great fixin’s and lots of sauce can run a close second.
The moment you’ve all been waiting for! Appetites whetted by our insightful post about cinematography, you’ve returned for our dissection of possibly the most popular of all the Oscar categories: Art Direction!
This year the nominees are as follows:
Alice in Wonderland (Robert Stromberg & Karen O’Hara)
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part I (Stuart Craig & Stephenie McMillan)
Inception (Guy Hendrix Dyas, Larry Dias & Doug Mowat)
The King’s Speech (Eve Stewart & Judy Farr)
True Grit (Jess Gonchor & Nancy Haigh)
This is a tricky category. Do you want to reward movies who did a wonderful, and wonderfully subtle job of making their worlds look real? Or do you reward spectacle and particular effort? Well we’re wishy washy on that. Go with you heart, we tell ourselves (and our cats). Evaluations:
True Grit is a movie that takes place about 75% outdoors. While many of these outdoor shoots are of course art directed to within an inch of their lives, the directors and DPs have a lot more control when it comes to shooting in the open air. But there is a great little room created in the film, where Rooster makes his bed – it’s real and charming and, bizarrely, Chinese.
The King’s Speech is not a bad movie. But it is not a great movie. And there is nothing about it, aside from possibly costumes, that has any relationship to visual art. And even the costumes are simple; the King only wears a few clothes, all of which have been photographed to within an inch of their lives.
I will fight my gag reflex and talk about Harry Potter now. Forget that the cute kids first drafted into the franchise have aged into bad actors and a fashion plate; forget the awful dialogue, the interminable length of the dreary films, and the total lack of realistic behavior from the teen-aged protagonists. Let’s talk about the sets, which are very good. Dark when need be, whimsical when need be, and consistent across 7 lumbering atrocities, the sets are quite good.
Alice in Wonderland. What to say about the modern incarnation of Tim Burton? That he is trite? Trapped in a terminally cute faux-goth adolescent pose? That his movies are no longer any good at all? All of the above, if you’re grumpy old me. I watched this film recently, hated it, and took note of the sets in particular, which are almost uniformly computer generated and very fake-looking. The whole thing is queasy and stupid, with no zip, no humor, and no attempt to be faithful to Carroll. Get lost. (Except for you, Mia Wasikowska. We love you and can’t wait to see you in Jane Eyre!)
Now let’s talk turkey; let’s talk about the clear winner in this category, in our always humble opinion.
Let’s talk about Inception.
Was it all a dream?
Inception is a masterpiece. This is true in obvious ways; it’s a great action movie, the special effects are mind-blowing, and the story is immaculate. But it’s also a great entry in the canon of art films disguised as popular entertainment. This is a movie about filmmaking, about consciousness, about memory, and about the human condition. And it’s also got a James Bond section, a Last Tango in Paris section, a treatise on the nature of obsession… I could go on.
For the purposes of this article, it has some of the best art direction I’ve ever seen. Paris folding in on itself. The snow fortress. The Asian Mansion. The street riot. The vast and ruined dream city. On and on and on. This is the winner. Props!
It is important, every now and again, for us here at Basis to point our readers not only toward the envy-causing, the beautiful and the unobtainable objets d’art, but also toward the envy-causing, beautiful and altogether attainable objets d’arts. Behold: The Herman Miller Embody Chair.
Well-designed, erudite, healthy for your back, beautiful, a breakthrough for ergonomics married to aesthetics; to this list you may now also add affordable as from June 4th to June 14 Smart Furniture will be offering the chair, as well as other Herman Miller products, for 15 percent off. Don’t say we never did anything nice for you.
We here at Basis love crossword puzzles. The mental exercise, the satisfaction of a puzzle solved, the constant inventory taken of the facts and figures collected in the mind, and the ingenious, meticulous design all form an extremely pleasant way to pass the time.
The original crossword puzzle was published in 1890, in Italy. Featuring only a four by four square it was titled “Per passare il tempo,” or “A way to pass the time.” It was written by Giuseppe Airoldi, a full 23 years before the commonly referenced “first crossword” penned by Arthur Wynne in 1913 and appearing in the New York World. Interesting side note: the New York Times, undoubtedly our preeminent creator and purveyor of quality crosswords, published many scathing editorials calling the puzzles a waste of time, and even sinful. It was not until 1942, half a century after the puzzles made their first appearance, that the NYT deigned to include them within it’s pages. Underneath is what has been considered the most difficult puzzle of all time, published in the December 26th Saturday edition of the New York Times:
| ACROSS | 4 | Leaflet-base appendage | ||||
| 1 | Benchley novel | 5 | Rosary bead | |||
| 5 | Harsh | 6 | O.S.S. successor | |||
| 10 | Levantine coffee cup | 7 | He, in Tarantao | |||
| 14 | He was: Lat. | 8 | Space | |||
| 15 | Kepi part | 9 | Sultanate in Borneo | |||
| 16 | Coloratura Mills | 10 | Buddhist sect | |||
| 17 | Cause disappointment | 11 | Schoenberg’s “Moses und —–” | |||
| 20 | Vale of —–, near 71 Across | 12 | Lavabo | |||
| 21 | Hawks’ arena | 13 | Trilbies | |||
| 22 | Insect catcher | 18 | Japanese kombu ingredient | |||
| 23 | Tyrrhenian Sea island | 19 | Annuli | |||
| 26 | Elway target | 24 | Oswego tea | |||
| 28 | Certain estimates | 25 | Direction from Levine | |||
| 36 | Midianite ruler | 27 | Defunct Russian parliament | |||
| 37 | Fabulist | 28 | Father of King Hadad: Gen. 36:35 | |||
| 38 | Silvery fish | 29 | Dispatch boat | |||
| 39 | Beanie | 30 | Great Wall town | |||
| 41 | Hills | 31 | A U.N. member: Var. | |||
| 43 | —– spumante | 32 | Raisin capital of the world | |||
| 44 | “—– Like It” | 33 | Remnants, in Roma | |||
| 46 | Scarf | 34 | Author of “The Augustan Ages” | |||
| 47 | High fashion | 35 | Bee bite | |||
| 48 | Gambler’s plunge | 40 | Honshu port | |||
| 52 | Abstract being | 42 | Kind of steward | |||
| 53 | The Cornish Wonder | 45 | Cubiti | |||
| 54 | Sharp turn | 49 | Portuguese dollar | |||
| 57 | A-one | 50 | Rail supports | |||
| 60 | —– salts | 51 | Swinger in the 40′s | |||
| 64 | Avenges | 54 | Eastern Roman emperor | |||
| 68 | English river | 55 | He played Big Daddy | |||
| 69 | Catfish | 56 | Roman family group | |||
| 70 | Trammell of baseball | 58 | Poetry of a people | |||
| 71 | Thessaly peak | 59 | Sights on the Atl. | |||
| 72 | Georgian Aryan | 61 | One-man shows | |||
| 73 | Sharp point | 62 | City having a casbah | |||
| DOWN | 63 | Ancient wall word | ||||
| 1 | Rigoletto’s forte | 65 | Teachers’ org. | |||
| 2 | Prada offering | 66 | Have, in Haddington | |||
| 3 | Cordial | 67 | N.Y.C. time zone |
Behold, the cover of one of the great albums of all time. Of course, if you’d never seen it before, you would never know what it was. Can you guess?
Released with no title, no writing on the cover, and no identifying names or symbols, Led Zeppelin’s 4th album would go on to be their most successful of all time. Selling over 37 million copies worldwide and bringing the band roaring back from the tepid reception given Led Zeppelin III, the 4th album contained gems like “Black Dog,” “Rock and Roll,” “Stairway to Heaven,” and “When the Levee Breaks.”
This beautiful cover was chosen as one of the top ten iconic covers of all time for a series of stamps in the UK, and stands here as a testament to substance over marketing, content over branding, and the triumph of the worthy. Rock on.