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Trailer

  • Joywave, a rad indie band that hails from Rochester, New York is known for their penchant for the meta and the weird. Just watch their 2015 music video for Somebody New and you’ll see what I mean. In 2019, Joywave released the single Obsession, in preparation for the full-length Possession slated for March 2020. The single came with goodies, a delicious music video that is oozing with nostalgia and American culture.

    Here’s a few of my favorites stills from the music video:

    The music video is well produced. It’s also very visibly Los Angeles. THat’s not a slight either. It’s really beautiful. It has the weight of a hundred films, and shows just how flexible the Los Angeles landscapes can be for filmmakers. Check it out:

  • The Tree of Life

    I spent some time this Sunday evening hopping around on Letterboxd. It’s a lot of fun jumping from film to film. Or hell, even list to list, discovering and collecting movies and classics to my watchlist. Give it a try, and join Letterboxd. You won’t be disappointed. I promise.

    Eventually I came across Terrance Malick’s supposed magnum opus: The Tree of Life on a list. The film left a considerable impression on me. It was released in 2011. A time of youth, tumult, and personal maturity for me.

    I don’t really have much to say about it. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, it’s just there’s so much too say. You really need to watch this film. It’s just really something, so very dense. Here’s the trailer:

  • Mid90s Trailer

    From Miles Surrey at The Ringer:

    Hill said in 2016 that while making a coming-of-age drama is a cliché in and of itself, he’s hoping to give fans a skateboarding movie that avoids the “’80s cowabunga kind of trope,” and instead takes cues from the films that inspired him to tackle the subgenre, like This Is England and Kids. First appearances can be misleading; trailers aren’t always sincere reflections of the art itself. But Hill is clearly mining from a very personal place, and if nothing else, Mid ’90s looks like an aesthetically pleasing piece of childhood nostalgia for his generation.

    And who knows? While Hill has bounced between some really fun, absurdist comedies, he’s also a two-time Oscar nominee. Perhaps his first grasp of Oscars gold will come from the director’s chair. It certainly wouldn’t be the wildest thing we’ve seen from Jonah Hill. Mid ’90s hits theaters October 19. 

    This looks hella-good. Some thoughts:

    My memories from the 90’s mostly include watching cartoon programs such Pokemon or Power Rangers or whatever was on Nickelodeon — basically late-nineties things. However, after 9/11, and as I entered my teenage years things changed. Skating became a rudimentary means to explore my neighborhood, bond with new friends, impress girls and an opportunity to do something fun with my younger brothers when we were bored (which was often). Remember CCS Catalogs? Oh man.

    I ditched the skateboard when I was 17 or so. For a car and a MacBook no less. Then one day, I discovered I was in college and I no longer owned a skateboard.

    While I own a deck now, it’s really just symbolic for me at this point. Though, I never outgrew my love for skateboarding. I think it’s because the sub-culture is so forgiving and so ancestral. It felt like everyone who bled together, stayed together, y’know? Everyone is a misfit in their own right as a teenager, but there was this common heritage we all felt emotionally. It was powerful stuff.

    Not sure if this was a visceral emotion I tied to skating, or if it was just a side-effect of being a teenager — at any rate, those years were jam-packed, complex and nostalgic to reflect upon.

    As you can probably tell, I’m excited to check out this Jonah Hill’s new movie and re-live some of that coming-of-age nostalgia. This film feels genuine. It doesn’t feel campy like Grind or culture-bleached in the ways the Lords of Dogtown felt. Mid90s feels, just right.

  • From the filmmakers website:

    But it wasn’t until 1980 that Dorfman found her ultimate medium: a rare large-format camera devised by the Polaroid Corporation. The instant photographs it produced were enormous—20 inches wide and 24 inches tall—with saturated colors and unparalleled detail. Dorfman was bewitched by the scale and clarity of this magical camera. The B-Side traces Dorfman’s love affair with the 20×24, while also presenting the wide range of formats Dorfman’s portraits and self-portraits haven taken over the years—from early 2-¼” negatives to prints produced by Polaroid’s even larger-format 40×80 instant camera.

    If you’ve owned the magic of an instant camera, you probably understand Dorfman’s love of instant photography. What you’ve probably never seen, is a 40x80inch instant photograph.

    Truly remarkable. Dorfman’s whimsy traits are literally the physical manifestation of the instant format itself. Excitable, fun, playful and true. This is going to be a fun doc to watch.

    You can rent or buy the film from iTunes, Amazon, Vimeo or Google Play at bsidefilm.com

  • Through the lens of graphic design, Design Canada follows the transformation of a nation from a colonial outpost to a vibrant and multicultural society.

    Cast (Designers): Burton Kramer, Rolf Harder, Fritz Gottschalk, Hans Kleefeld, Stuart Ash, Heather Cooper, and more

    With Commentary by: Massimo Vignelli, Douglas Coupland, George Stroumboulopoulos, Hannah Sung, and more.

    designcanada.com

    This looks so great. I’m glad to see Vignelli is in the documentary as well. He (and the infamous Helvetica documentary) were huge inspirations to me in high school. May he forever rest in peace.

    I’m also a huge rail-nerd. So seeing Vignelli critique the 1969 CN logo is going to be mind-blowing for me. You can read more about the Allan Fleming re-branding here, and more about CN’s history, here.