PIKAPIKA

Check out this page of neat slow-shutter flashlight animations:
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Found via KozynDan

Drop Dead Gorgeous Beauty Pageant @ The Beauty Bar Austin, Sun 7/30

I'll be judging at the Austin Beauty Bar's "Drop Dead Gorgeous" beauty pageant on Sunday at 11 pm. Doug Mellard is hosting and there will be free pabst blue ribbon and Tito's vodka from 10 to 11. This months theme is "Swinging Sixties" "Bad Girls", so I'm assuming there will be a glut of cute 60's mod girls to appreciate. So, I guess they'll all be... uh.. bad. You can still enter the pageant if you are interested in competing. I promise to judge everyone on their inner beauty, really.

First Prize of this Monthly Competition is $ 250.00 This competition will be held the last Sunday of Every month thru October The LOCAL Semi finals will be held the last Sunday in November with the Austin finalist winning $ 500 & the runner-up winning $ 200!! The 2 Local winners will compete in LAS VEGAS for the Beauty Bar NATIONAL Drop Dead Gorgeous Pageant & the chance to become the 2006 MISS BEAUTY BAR!! Cash prize is.... $ 2,500.00!!

film ick: Death Ray

Dan Clowes is adapting his excellent comic Death Ray for the screen.

From Film Ick:

The key role is getting a makeover, no loner being a superpowered teen but a superpowered 40-something. Jack Black is to take a role, though not this lead, and produce.

And from Comingsoon.net:

Death Ray was published in the most recent issue of Clowes' "Eightball" comic. Clowes plans to update the protagonist from a teenager to an older man who has to deal with having super powers while living a normal suburban life.

"I like the idea of him as a cranky 48-year-old man," Clowes said. "Using his powers to throw kids off his lawn."

No helmer is officially attached yet.

Clowes is also developing an adaptation of Rudy Rucker's Master of Space and Time, with helmer Michel Gondry, who owns the rights. He most recently wrote Art School Confidential and was nominated for an Academy Award with Terry Zwigoff for their Ghost World screenplay.

This is a little sad, since the teen angst of the comic was pitch-perfect and one of its biggest strengths. I'll obviously withold any judgement until the picture is realeased though.

Included for fun, Clowes' response to my gentle suggestion that I would be a good pick if he ever made a film out of David Boring (probably my favorite of his books).



film ick: Death Ray For Black
Comingsoon.net Daniel Clowes Shoots Death Ray

bfi | Sight & Sound | Animation: Timeline

Sight & Sound has run a timeline of Animation advances and milestones from 1832 to today. Link

mikons.com beta

Mikons.com is a cool web application from Mark Smith, using a vector drawing app written by Alan Watts (of 16 Color fame) that lets you easily make and share little icons.. It's a simple idea that's strangely addictive.

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"He was abducted by two horrible old women, and a monkey."

Paul Giamatti stars in The Amazing Screw-On Head, a pilot for an animated series of the same name to appear on the Sci Fi network. Like batman, if batman was a bouncing metal head and the commisioner was Abraham Lincoln. Ok, it's not anything like batman.

Sheena is a Parasite

It's kind of lazy and obvious to post something that has already made it to BoingBoing, but Chris Cunningham and Samantha Morton working together on a video is too good to not note.
The Horrors- Sheena is a Parasite

Caveh Zahedi - Blog (A Scanner Darkly)

Caveh Zahedi on A Scanner Darkly:

When I read the novel, I remember thinking, 'This book is so narratively obdurate and unconducive to a film adaptation. How is Linklater going to pull this off?' Philip K. Dick's simultaneously paranoid and speculative turn of mind makes narrative cohesion and resolution anathema to his worldview, and makes any film adaptation particularly fraught.

And yet, Linklater somehow makes it work. The film is a Dickian mishmash of ideas and feelings that feels more authentically Dickian than any of the previous film adaptations of his books. In Linklater's adaptation, there is more feeling, more imagination, more paranoia, and more despair. And the spirituality is not the ersatz spirituality of a 'Blade Runner' or 'Total Recall,' but the imminent and lived spirituality of ordinary existence.

Hollywood has a way of sanitizing everything it touches, and this film eschews such sanitization to a remarkable degree. Even 'Blade Runner' was only 'Hollywood' dark. This film is truly dark. It's a remarkable achievement, and doubly remarkable that Linklater was able to pull this off within the studio system and using bona fide stars.

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Luke Savisky- D/x

Luke Savisky's multi projector performance D/x will be showing at the Harry Ransom center tomorrow. Luke writes:

This will be a loose overview/Q and A of and about some past and recent work, then a 10-15 minute multiprojection demo using some new material from current and upcoming projects. The event is free and will be kindly brief, lasting not more than an hour starting at 7pm. It would be nice to see you there.

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Steve Brudniak Home

Steve Brudniak's website, which I host and helped out a little on, is finally live! There are hundreds of new or rescanned and cleaned up pictures of art and it's definitely worth spending some time in.

steve brudniak

Guardian Unlimited Arts | Syd Barrett 1946 - 2006

Link:

The Love God Trailer

Thanks Nick!

Parents recap

I jotted down a couple of video notes after the movie tonight before I went to sleep. It's a little rambly (I was a little toasty), but give it a listen.

PARENTS Tonight at Terror Thursday

Bob Balaban's criminally underappreciated horror masterpiece Parents is playing for free tonight at the Alamo Drafthouse downtown's Terror Thursday. I am so broke right now that I will probably get stuck downtown for want of cab fare, but I am totally going anyway. You should too. And buy me a beer while you're at it.

Filmstalker: Oscar voters gain new blood

According to Filmstalker, Werner Herzog has been invited to join the Academy. It's a drop in the bucket, but that's one more voice for some better Oscar votes.
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The RU Sirius Show - Show #51 - The One Year Mark with Richard Linklater

R.U. Sirius interviews Linklater about A Scanner Darkly.
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