In 1946, Spanish surrealist icon, Salvador Dali, formed an unlikely friendship with American animation legend, Walt Disney, and they spent some time collaborating on a short film called Destino. Unfortunately, only eighteen seconds of Destino were ever shot, the project was postponed because of financial reasons, as well as word of it being too extreme for the time. In 1999, Roy Disney reconstructed the entire short using computer rendering and hand-drawn imagery based on the original sketches and storyboards. The result was released in 2003. (via Lost At E Minor)

Maybe Disney should do more collaborations with fine artists given the outstanding quality of Destino. I imagine there’s not enough money to justify such an endeavor for a mega-corporation like Disney, but a dude can dream can’t he?

posted by: Brent Carter

The Extra Lens (John Darnielle of Mountain Goats and multi-instrumentalist Franklin Bruno)
“Only Existing Footage”
From the duo’s second album Undercard, out 10/19 via Merge Records
Download here (right click + save link as). Stream the entire album here

Download audio file (03-Only-Existing-Footage..mp3)

The Moondoggies
“It’s a Shame, It’s a Pity”
From Tidelands, out 10/12 on Hardly Art
Download here (right click + save link as)

Download audio file (01-Track-01.mp3)

The Super Vacations
“Be Glad”
From the band’s second full length Thicker Milk, out 9/14 via SHDWPLY
Download here (right click + save link as)

Download audio file (02-Be-Glad.mp3)

Craft Spells
“Party Talk”
From the forthcoming 7″ of the same name, out later this September via Captured Tracks
Download here (right click + save link as)

Download audio file (02-Party-Talk.mp3)

Summer Camp
“Veronica Sawyer”
From the duo’s debut Young EP, out now via Moshi Moshi Records
Download here (right click + save link as)

Download audio file (03-Veronica-Sawyer.mp3)

Heavy Hawaii
“Teen Angel”
From the band’s debut EP, out later this month via Art Fag Recordings
Download here (right click + save link as)

Download audio file (Teen-Angel.mp3)

Women
“Narrow With the Hall”
From the band’s new album Public Strain, out 9/28 via Jagjaguwar
Download here (right click + save link as)

Download audio file (03-Narrow-with-the-Hall.mp3)

Bonus: Download Radiohead: Live in Praha, a live bootleg put together by Radiohead and their fans here. Watch it on Youtube here.

Bonus: Download All Tiny Creatures‘ An Iris Mixtape Side A here (right click + save link as) and Side B here (right click + save link as)

Bonus: Download Damien Jurado and Richard Swift’s collection of cover songs, Other People’s Songs Vol. 1, here

posted by: Harold Johns III

To showcase their Fall 2010 line, Proenza Schouler teamed up with legendary cult filmmaker Harmony Korine to create Act Da Fool. With the influx of short fashion films in early 2010, designers now seem to be stepping it up a notch in the video department – and in my opinion Act Da Fool takes the cake (followed by Poppy de Villeneuve’s How You Look At It and David Lynch’s Lady Blue Shanghai).

Watch Harmony Korine’s Act Da Fool here

Q & A with Harmony Korine:

How did the collaboration with Proenza Schouler come about?

Transistor radio and Morse code. They asked me and of course I said yes.

What about Proenza Schouler’s fall collection inspired “Act Da Fool”?

The patterns and paint drips on their clothes spoke to me. I said “go fuck up the world, burn shit, blow it up, eat mud, snort glue, drink a lot of malt liquor and eat some fried chicken, watch some strippers throw down the booty and find god.”

How familiar were you with Proenza Schouler before the film?

Very familiar. I think they are great.

From what I understand, you don’t work too often “in” fashion, for lack of a better word. What about Proenza Schouler appealed to you?

I just like them and I always really like what they do.

Where was the location for the film?

The projects of Nashville. A school for the blind. A school for kleptomaniacs.

Why did this location make the most sense for “Act Da Fool”?

It just had to be that way.

What was the casting process like for the film? How did you decide on this group of characters?

I just asked around. I wanted to know who the greatest living delinquents were. These girls appeared.

How much of a “character” did you intend Proenza Schouler’s clothes to play in the film?

In the same way Groucho Marx’s moustache plays a role in his face.

Jack and Lazaro told me that they were inspired to do a short film, in part, by 90s-era music videos from the golden era of MTV. What are some of your favorite music videos?

Anything from 2 Live Crew or the Geto Boys.

Towards the middle of the film, the narrator says, “It’s us against the world” – which is both a very romantic and nihilistic thing to say. It reminds me of those old girl groups from the1960s, like The Crystals, who sang wistfully about being abused by their boyfriends and stuff like that. Do you see the film as being optimistic or more pessimistic, like when the narrator calls the earth “a big ball of shit”?

It’s actually a religious movie. It’s like my version of The Ten Commandments.

posted by: Tricia Rock

Magic Kids aren’t goofing around. Or are they? When “Phone Song” opens their debut album Memphis, mental flourishes of The Foundation”s “Build Me Up Buttercup” and Harry Nilsson’s “Best Friend” (most recently known as the Rob & Big theme song) surface. As the track unfolds, the giddy playfulness of the seamless instrumentation creates an audible milieu akin to 1950’s California malt shops. At first glance Magic Kids appear as another obvious Brian Wilson disciple, however, upon further analysis their pure talent shines through. Everywhere strings, organs, horns, co-ed vocals and crisp drumming melt together to create something skillfully sunny.

Magic Kids’ interest arises in their theatrical scope and choice to package their music alongside a dose of feel good, be-happy-and-in-love sunshine. Throughout Memphis, over-lapping layers of well-executed woodwinds, pianos and easy-on-the-ear vocals flourish. For instance, “Sailing” is a charming number about escape. The themes are simple but the instrumentation skilled. In the middle of the song, horns and offbeat keys dovetail back into the verse where strings and wood winds provide the ocean fresh backdrop for easily digestible lyrics.

The conundrum is this, with so much talent why do the Magic Kids choose to approach such happy-go-lucky, throw your cares to the wind, lovey dovey themes? Perhaps it’s in the name. Although they possess a whimsical ability to utilize their musical talents, deep down the Magic Kids remain carefree children. And maybe that’s just what we’re looking for. In this day and age, when most are opting for dreary, self-indulgent arrangements, it’s easy to be sad, much harder to be happy.

Memphis is out now via True Panther Sounds

Download audio file (09-Sailing.mp3)

Download Magic Kids’ “Summer” here (right click + save link as)

by: Bene Garcia

Berlin-based Boessert/Schorn know how to create an amazingly interesting shape. And although I’m not always in love with their over-the-top styling combinations, the cuts and draping alone are enough to keep me coming back for more. These looks come from their latest Spring 2011 collection (images via She Breathes).

posted by: Tricia Rock

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 3

• Draw What You Dig
{:m Gallery – Chartwell Realty (2014 Main Street in Kansas City, MO)
Friday, September 3, 6-10pm
Featuring works of David Pjecha, Sarah Anderson, Colin Walsh, Brian Stokes, Tuesday Schmidt, Lauren Andrews, Amy Kligman, Ron Ahrens, Amanda Raymundo and Samantha Lewis.

• Art Fair to Benefit the Kansas City Rescue Mission
Kansas City Rescue Mission (1520 Cherry Street in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 6-10pm
From the organizers: This is an annual event to raise money for the Kansas City Rescue Mission. Please come down and support us by purchasing items from local artists and participating in our silent auction. We will have live music and great food.

• Dr. Sketchy’s Group Show Extravaganza
Czar Bar (1531 Grand in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 6-11pm
Featuring some of the best drawings of area artist from Dr. Sketchy’s last season, pop trio Minstrel Periods will perform, and the evening will include drawing sessions with burlesque and pinup models. The cover is $5.

• Hung Liu: New Works Opening
Byron C. Cohen Gallery for Contemporary Art
(2020 Baltimore Avenue in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 7-9pm
From the organizers: Artist Hung Liu, who will be visiting from San Francisco, is set to unveil a new series created from the aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake of 2008. Additionally, new work from her Za Zhong, or Bastard Painting, series will also be on display.

• Spectacle: Blue Gallery’s 10th Anniversary Exhibition
Blue Gallery (118 Southwest Blvd in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 6-9pm (Ongoing through September 25)
Featuring work by Jhina Alvarado, Nicole Cawlfield, Joe Gregory, Dale Jarrett, Bernal Koehrsen, Ann Piper, and Brad Williams.

• Russell Shoemaker Paintings
The Late Show Gallery (1600 Cherry in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 6pm (Ongoing through September 30)
Painter Russell Shoemaker shows his works that are a range of abstracted scenes to full abstracts that have a collage/Photoshop filter feel. From what we have seen of his work, we highly recommend this show.

Caleb Taylor

• Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Awards Exhibition
Grand Arts (1819 Grand Boulevard in Kansas City, MO)
Friday,  September 3, 6-9pm (Ongoing through October 30, with a gallery discussion by the artists on Saturday, September 4 at 2pm)
From the organizers: Celebrating its thirteenth year, having granted nearly half a million dollars in unrestricted cash awards to 70 artists living and working in the Kansas City Metro, the 2010 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards Exhibition honors three artists: Ari Fish, Sonié Ruffin, and Caleb Taylor.

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SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 4

• Benjamin Dory: Yellowheart
The Invisible Hand Gallery (801 1/2 Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, KS)
Saturday, September 4, 7-10pm
Lawrence artist Ben Dory will show his illustrations on paper, copper jewelry, and other objects.

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FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 10

• Earthwork Public Screening
Lawrence Arts Center (940 New Hampshire Street in Lawrence, KS)
Friday, September 10, 8pm
From the organizers: This award-winning film tells the story of Kansas crop artist, Stan Herd, who in 1994 traveled from Lawrence to New York City and risked everything to create a massive environmental artwork on land owned by Donald Trump. In dealing with the difficulties of bringing his unique, rural art form to an urban canvas, Stan unexpectedly encountered the true meaning of his art and its ultimate, lasting rewards. The film, by KU alum writer/director Chris Ordal, has won a staggering number of awards at film festivals across the country. The Arts Center is proud to bring it home for its local premiere. Friday, September 10 8pm: Public Screening (tickets $10.50). Saturday, September 11 10am-2pm: Film Intensive Workshops for Youth and Adults (prices vary), 8pm: Premiere Party featuring cast and crew of the film, music, wine, and hors d’oeuvres (tickets $50) .

posted by: Scott Stewart

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

Loving The Angels Betrayed editorial for the October 2010 edition of Vogue Nippon. The spread features model Mathilde Frachon in looks from Marc Jacobs, Celine, Alexander Wang and more styled by Beth Fenton and photographed by Lachlan Bailey. Clean, classic cuts with a bit of attitude – part vintage, part modern – perfect inspiration for fall. See all the images on Fashion Gone Rogue.

posted by: Tricia Rock

“The Girl and the Bear, 2008″, c-prints on archival card and foamcore, 108 x 108 x 22 in

Artist’s Approach:

Through her tri-dimensional works designed to evoke the virtual modelings simulating reality, Susy Oliveira questions our habits of replacing nature with fabricated replicas. In her works, there is a playful dynamic which associates the characteristics of photography with those inherent to sculpture. Their structure incorporates the angles and features of some giant origami. The photographs are mounted on each face of a volume to restore the three dimensions of the image. Through this process, the shape is both simplified and amplified, giving the photography a volume, an ambiguous character oscillating between reality and fiction. (via)

“Night eyes open”, 2007, c-prints on archival card and foamcore, 20 x 24 x 6 in

“Time is never wasted”, 2006, c-prints and foamcore, 144 x 58 x 15 in

See more of Oliveira’s work here

posted by: Brent Carter

Bonus: You can also download Clinic’s 2001 live set from WMFU’s Scott Show here

Sufjan Stevens
“I Walked”
From Steven’s latest full-length The Age of Adz, out 10/12 via Asthmatic Kitty
Download here (via Steven’s Bandcamp page)

Download audio file (01-I-Walked-1.mp3)

Glasser
“Home”
From Glasser aka Cameron Mesirow’s debut full length Ring, out 9/28 on True Panther Sounds
Download here (right click + save link as)

Download audio file (02-Home.mp3)

Laetitia Sadier (of Stereolab)
“One Million Year Trip”
From Sadier’s first “proper” solo album The Trip, out 9/21 on Drag City
Download here (right click + save link as)

Download audio file (01-One-Million-Year-Trip-1.mp3)

Coma Cinema
“Business as Usual”
From the upcoming album Blue Suicide, out soon via Wonder Bread Tapes
Download here (right click + save link as)

Download audio file (01-Business-As-Usual.mp3)

Houses
“Endless Spring”
From the forthcoming album All Night, out 10/19 via Lefse Records
Download here (right click + save link as)

Download audio file (02-Endless-Spring.mp3)

El Guincho
“FM Tan Sexy”
From El Guincho’s aka Pablo Diaz-Reixa’s second album Pop Negro, out 9/14 via Young Turks
Download here

Download audio file (06-FM-Tan-Sexy.mp3)

Zola Jesus
“Sea Talk”
From her latest EP Valusia, out 10/12 via Sacred Bones Records
Download here

Download audio file (03-Sea-Talk..mp3)

Bonus: Surfer Blood’s Daytrotter session

posted by: Harold Johns III