I saw a very great movie last night, adapted from a very great book: Jane Eyre. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga and starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, it’s a gothic, moody period piece with mystery, romance, etc. But look at those clothes!
Going for tousled here.
Looking sharp, and sharply unpleasant.
Formaly informal.
Ahh, love and fashion.
A finer group of executive and conference room chairs you will not find in the whole of the last century. Allow your eyes to feast – and if you want, click over to Smart Furniture and make these Eames Aluminum Chairs yours for the keeping.
This is the most recent album from one of my favorite bands, Cheap Girls. I saw them open for Against Me! in Hunstville, Alabama in January, and it was rather extraordinary. Check out the art work:
I love the faded photograph within the faded photograph, and I love the title even more. The music? Greater still. Check them out:
Presented in all it’s glory with no further comment:
Kind of a twist on the Eames Molded Plywood Chairs:
What do you guys think?
One of our favorite bands here at Basis Design is The Decemberists. We love the music, we love the folklore, and we love the language. Incidentally, we also love the art. Specifically, the cover art:
This is gorgeous, first of all. But it’s also married very closely to the themes of the album, as well as the setting and language used within it. The Hazards of Love is a concept album concerning the lovelorn fates of a maiden, a shape shifter, a forest fairy queen, and an evil rake. It takes place in the taiga, old and cold forest far north. The starkness of the color, the simplicity of the black night and the grey trees, conveys both beauty and menace on the cover of the album. I love it. The density of the “trees” is a mirror of the density of the songs, the repeated and overlapping musical themes, and the often challenging old-english style wordplay. A success.
This cover fits into the stark and foreboding mood of one of their E.P.’s, The Tain.
Another concept album folktale, another stark and lovely design.
The second (of three) categories for Decemberists album covers is olde-timey-ish folk art send-ups. Yeah, that’s right. Check out Picaresque, Her Majesty the Decemberists, The Crane Wife, and Castaway’s and Cutouts:
All the covers are a reflection of the band’s self-conscious literary flavor. While the music is generally contemporary and folk-rock oriented, the lyrics, the stories, and the stage banter is straight from an earlier century. I like the feel of these “jokes on us” covers, because they work as excellent (and funny) art just as well as tongue-in-cheek self identification from the band.
Then there is a third category, only broached by their most recent album. Not coincidentally, this new album is fresh and new for the band; it’s more country than anything else, and about as happy sounding as a jaybird. The title, The King is Dead, might just refer to their medieval and pre-modern preoccupations. Or it might be a play on The Smiths’ masterpiece, The Queen is Dead. Who knows? We’ll see where they go next.
Introduce yourselves, friends, to the Vibram Five Finger Shoe.
Pretty awesome, right?
It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen such a startling and attractive shoe design. Specifically, this is a running and outdoor shoe – with each toe getting its own little pocket the wearer is going to get more balance, more grip, and more traction. And it’ll feel like you’re barefoot the whole time!
I know I’m gushing, but this is really quite a brilliant shoe. I tried a pair on up at Mountain Outfitters in Monteagle, TN, and I loved the way they felt as much as I love the way they look. Check out the Vibram Five Finger Shoe here.
Bill Simmons is the James Cameron of sports columnists. He makes more money than anyone else, everyone on the internet reads his work, and he’s the de facto favorite sportswriter of the general population. He has a feel for the pulse of the nation, if you will, and a middle brow sensibility that brings in readers of all stripes. His recent (and second) #1 New York Times Bestseller is titled The Book of Basketball. It’s Simmons’ exhaustive take on the history of the league, the best players and coaches and teams. It is a very entertaining 700 page list in the guise of a book. And now, thanks to enthusiastic fans, it even has a poster. Check it out:
Pretty slick. Simmons fans will notice many of the inside jokes, and everyone can appreciate the mustache on Larry Legend.
So it has come to this: it is down to you, and it is down to me. The final category in our exhaustive Oscars week coverage of arcane design categories: Costumes!
The nominees are:
Alice in Wonderland – Colleen Atwood
The King’s Speech – Jenny Beavan
True Grit – Mary Zophres
I Am Love – Antonella Cannarozzi
The Tempest – Sandy Powell
I am tired of disparaging Alice in Wonderland, so let me just say No and that be the end of it.
I am equally tired of explaining why The King’s Speech is not great art, and the costumes couldn’t have been easier to reproduce, so let me just say Good Try.
And now we come to the real candidates.
I Am Love features costumes in the stylish vein, supplied by an Italian, natch. The clothes are indeed beautiful; do we reward subtle and effective? The age old question. You will have to wait on my answer.
The Tempest was another Julie Taymor “radical” re-imagining. The product was kind of blah, but the costumes were surely inspired. Something to think on.
True Grit featured costuming so lived in, so definitive of character, and so divorced from showy-ness, that it has to be the winner. The over-sized coat of the heroine, Rooster’s billowing coat and distinctive eye patch, and the tastled dandyism of the Texan all put this movie over the top for me. So there you have it! The best of the least appreciated, Basis Design style!
Now enjoy the Oscars, new betting and rooting interests discovered!
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!