This is renowned poet/singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen performing “The Stranger Song” from his debut album The Songs of Leonard Cohen live on the Julie Felix Show in 1967. The Songs of Leonard Cohen is a poetic masterpiece as much as it is a musical one, and remains to be one of the high points of not only folk but pop music in general.

Take some time and read the brilliant lyrics from “The Stranger Song” here

posted by: Harold Johns III

Streetwear label LRG highlights the technique of Chicago-based graffiti giant Pose in their two-part “Artist Driven Series”.  Pose based each piece on the graphics he originally designed for LRG t-shirts.  Watching Pose wield a spray-can is like watching poetry in motion.

See more of Pose’s work via the Known Gallery.

Check out Pose’s blog here.

Read a recent interview he did with Juxtapoz Magazine here.

posted by: Harold Johns III

Synopsis:

Thirty-eight years after it was completed, a 1972 documentary following Leonard Cohen—the enormously influential poet, folk musician and, since 2008, member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—on tour in Europe finally has its moment. Originally made as a promotional film for the artist, whose record sales were meager at the time, Bird on a Wire was produced and edited by Tony Palmer, then famed for his seminal 1968 documentary All My Loving, an eye-opening dissection of rock n’ roll that featured, among others, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Donovan. In Bird on a Wire, Palmer neatly captured the tour itself––threadbare, fraught with technical difficulties and emotional upheavals––but on first viewing, Cohen balked at the bare bones honesty of the film and demanded a complete re-edit from another source. The result was so disastrous that the film opened and closed on the same day, was forgotten about, then lost. In 2009, 294 cans of celluloid labeled Bird an a Wire were found locked in a Hollywood warehouse and immediately shipped to Palmer, who set about re-creating the original film he made all those years ago. The work is a visual poem—Palmer’s camera followed Cohen without judgment, opening the floor to the man as well as the artist. Today’s exclusive clip shows the music legend during an abortive attempt to ask a young German fan out on a date.

Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire by Tony Palmer is available now on DVD.

Synopsis:

Mesrine: Killer Instinct – the first of two parts- charts the outlaw odyssey of Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel), the legendary French gangster of the 1960s and 1970s who came to be known as “French Public Enemy No. 1″ and “The Man of a Thousand Faces”. Infamous for his bravado and outrageously daring prison escapes, Mesrine carried out numerous robberies, kidnappings and murders in a criminal career that spanned continents until he was shot dead in 1979 by France’s notorious anti-gang unit. Thirty years after his death, his infamy lives on. Mesrine was helped along the way by beautiful and equally reckless Jeanne Schneider (Cecile de France), a Bonnie to match his Clyde. Mesrine made up his own epic, between romanticism and cruelty, flamboyance and tragedy. Both a thriller and a biopic, Killer Instinct explores the man behind the icon.

In select theaters now. The sequel Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 hits select theaters on September 3.

Synopsis:

In his feature–length documentary The Big Uneasy, humorist and New Orleans resident Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap, The Simpsons) gets the inside story of a disaster that could have been prevented from the people who were there. As we approach the fifth anniversary of the flooding of New Orleans, Shearer speaks to the investigators who poked through the muck as the water receded and a whistle–blower from the Army Corps of Engineers, revealing that some of the same flawed methods responsible for the levee failure during Katrina are being used to rebuild the system expected to protect the new New Orleans from future peril.

In short segments hosted by John Goodman, Shearer speaks candidly with local residents about life in New Orleans. Together, they explore the questions that Americans outside of the Gulf region have been pondering in the five years since Katrina: Why would people choose to live below sea level? Why is it important to rebuild New Orleans?

The Big Uneasy is laced with computer imagery that takes you inside the structures that failed so catastrophically, and boasts never–before–seen video of the moments when New Orleans began to flood and the painstaking investigations that followed. The Big Uneasy marks the beginning of the end of five years of ignorance about what happened to one of our nation’s most treasured cities — and serves as a stark reminder that the same agency that failed to protect New Orleans still exists in other cities across America.

The Big Uneasy was only in theaters for one night on August 30, it will eventually make its way to DVD sometime this month. Check the film’s Facebook page for more information and updates.

Bonus: Chloë Sevigny co-stars in Barry Munday, the story of a suburban wanna-be ladies man who loses his testicles after he is attacked at a movie theater.

posted by: Brent Carter

In honor of 9/02/10, here’s some 90210. Check out our 90210 Style Trends post from back in the day here.

Note: Watch for Tori Spelling’s intro scene, while everyone else got to come off looking relatively cool, poor Donna just eats a sandwich.

posted by: Tricia Rock

Blonde Ambition, POP Fall/Winter 2010, photographed by Jamie Morgan

If Warhol’s ‘Marilyn’ defined an untouchable height for blonde cool, a detached silverscreen/silkscreen perfection, then that hasn’t stopped others returning again and again to the template with a renewed passion. For 2011 the blonde is powerful, cultured, independent, self-aware… and ubiquitous.

See the entire editorial on Fashion Gone Rogue

posted by: Tricia Rock

Banksy hits England’s Brighton Pier with a “reconditioned dolphin ride with crude oil and a tuna net.”

Click here to see it in action.

Click here to see more of Banksy’s new work.

posted by: Brent Carter