A colleague of mine recently went on somewhat of a diatribe about how the movie industry has gone to crap, that he couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a good movie. I suggested that he was only partly correct; that perhaps he was simply looking in the wrong direction and that in actuality it would seem there has never been such an abundance of quality filmmaking coming out of a single era. It simply exists – surprise – outside of the realm of the big budget Hollywood blockbuster. …

Jeroen dropped me a line today to let me know that he has a new series posted on his site called Untitled Days. As timely and thought provoking as ever.
More info on Jeroen can be found here.

I have just returned home and begun an intensive recovery that is befitting of the work hard / play hard ethic with which I tackled these past four days at ICOGRADA’s Design Week in Seattle. The news has been on the television all evening: looping footage of the escalating tension between Israel and the Hezbollah; of blown out Lebanese neighbourhoods and clips of Anderson Cooper chasing after the next ground zero. After dinner, we rent Syriana, remembering its scenes of a claustophobic and heavily armed Hezbollah-occupied Beirut; trying to make …

“Something had gentled the rain, taking the madness out of it.”
From today’s New York Times: the “unmistakable prose” of Micket Spillane (1918-2006).

Here’s a new one for the daily visits: Feanne’s Daily Drawings is exactly what the title promises. Well, sort of. It actually seems to be more like once a week or so with a sporadic entry of two or three drawings at a time. But what does get posted is worth checking out. Even more great work can be found on her main site.

Apparently Henry Rollins has his own show on IFC. Which is cool. Even cooler still is this performance on the show by Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Yorke’s solo album, The Eraser comes out tomorrow – and, of course, there is a strange & dislocating website to go along with it. The art work for the album is from woodcut prints by Stanley Donwood inspired by the floods in Cornwall, England, two years ago.

“[The] conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or …