Archives for August 2008

“Although it may be an interesting and memorable history lesson, these are very different times, and re-enacting a violent day in history will do nothing to change the status quo. ” - Technoccult on the proposed re-enactment of the protests at the Democratic Convention of 1968.

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of Katrina. Check out what happened during Banksy’s NOLA visit. And here’s Life Without Buildings on preserving Modernism in New Orleans.

Audrey Tautou is set to play Coco Chanel. And Karl Lagerfeld will recreate her original wardrobe. There are so few fashion movies although most of them, even the behind-the-scenes documentaries, are very good. I recently watched Robert Altman’s Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter) again (the first time I saw it was in junior high.) I think I enjoyed it more, because in retrospect, 1994 was a great year for fashion. The models, the designs, the everything. Even more remarkable is how most of the people featured in the film are still around, if not more famous: Christy Turlington, Björk, Ute Lemper, Forest Whitaker, Rossy de Palma, Carla Bruni…

Alejandro Jodorowsky originally wanted to direct Dune. “[Salvador] Dalí agrees with much enthusiasm the idea to play the Emperor of the galaxy. He wants to film in Cadaquès and to use as throne a toilet made up of two intersected dolphins. The tails will form the feet and the two open mouths will be used one to receive the “wee”, the other to receive the “excrement”. Dalí thinks that it is of terrible bad taste to mix the “wee” and the “excrement”.” Wow! I very much recommend his graphic novel The Metabarons. Also, I’m looking forward to checking out the recent translation his memoir The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Harvard University Press lists their favorite books at the moment published elsewhere.

Until 1948, Olympic medals went out for “oil painting, sculpture, architecture, music and literature.” (via.)

Here’s a rendering of the UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico. (via.)

Are we already living in the Death Race-age if you can get Dale Earnhardt Sr. footage on YouTube at “three angles amassing 88,251 views in just the first result, complete with a user-generated, slideshow-mashup hagiography to the tune of Freebird.”I tend to side with the Crashman on these matters. Yet the number of people who have accessed this site by searching “Christine Chubbuck” never ceases to amaze me. In the words of Frankenstein in the original Death Race 2000, as quoted by Jackson West, “Sure it’s violent, but that’s the way we love it — violent, violent, violent!”

Iain Sinclair at the 2012 London Olympics site. (via.)

Sao Paulo is creating a registry of street art to be preserved. The city accidentally painted over a number of beloved murals, even when the art was officially sanctioned. (Previously.)