I attended South By Southwest this past weekend and was so jazzed at the convergence of innovation and new ideas at the interactive and film conferences. Some of the quick highlights:
- Opening Night film was KICK-ASS and it was, well, kick ass! One of the best comic book movies ever and totally no-holds barred. Chloe Moretz as HIT GIRL is a starmaking performance. The countless fanboys in attendance vowed to save themselves until the 11-year old turns legal.
- Other highlights were COLD WEATHER, a mumblecore detective story, BEIJING TAXI about three laborers living in China leading up to the Beijing Olympics, and A SERBIAN FILM, one of the most fucked up midnight movies I have ever seen. Catchphrase from that film, “newborn porn.” Yeah. Read more...
Here’s a bizarre incident that happened in Lancaster, CA over the past weekend during a packed screening of SHUTTER ISLAND. A man was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer after he exchanged some words with a woman who was talking on her cell phone during the screening. The attackers were two men who were with the women. The victim is currently in a coma, but expected to have a slow and promising recovery. The perpetrators are still at large. Here’s a KTLA news story about this heinous attack with purported security camera footage of the victim and the attackers before the screening.
I am sure this is coicidence, but movie-going attacks have occurred during other horror and thriller film screenings. Here’s a quick rundown:
We Offenders are all fans of Yuna Kim, the Gold Medal Winner and reigning world champion of Women’s Figureskating. Roger has professed his love here. Her athletic prowess is unmatchable and she has a few more good years to dominate the sport. Commentators are amazed at her sheer speed. So how does she do it? NYT produced a great segment, breaking down the physics of Yuna’s skating. I particularly love this because it’s told in her own words and is outlined in a very geeky way. Very cool!
3/9/10, 1:18am PST Update: OK, found the film again and you can now view it after the jump….
Update: Whoopsy, looks like the film was taken off line. Probably a new strategy to exploit the film, post-Oscar win. We’ll post it up again, when it pops back online.
This Short Film Spotlight edition presents LOGORAMA, the winner of the Best Animated Short at the 82nd Academy Awards that aired tonight. Think Grand Theft Auto but in a world populated and represented by brand logos, and I mean hundreds of logos. Hey, kind of like West LA! Directed by the mysteriously named H5, LOGORAMA has a quick paced energy and inventive imagery that just sucks you in. I especially like the Jokeresque Ronald McDonald turned Evel Knievel. You can watch the film after the jump. Enjoy! Read more...
YouTube dancing sensation Yiming Wang, who we’ve blogged about, was invited and flown over by Ellen DeGeneres to appear on her show. We find out the kid is only 4-years old and does a mean Jacko impersonation! Here’s the clip, where the crowd goes wild: Now I can go to the very obvious snarky remark about Michael Jackson’s dream come true in embodying a child or the late Man-Child is now just “Child” (I kind of did that with the title of this blog), but you have to admit that this was a cool tribute to the late icon, crotch grab and all! Read more...
OK Go, a cool, indie band that gained prominence thanks to their internet sensation music video for “Here It Goes Again”, is back with another inventive doozy. Just released online earlier this week, “This Too Shall Pass” (Rube Goldberg Machine Version) has already garnered over 5 million views on YouTube. Holy shit! OK Go has become the go-to band for kick ass music vids! Collaborating with director James Frost and Syyn Labs, a cool outfit that blends art and technology to make nifty contraptions, gizmos and whatzits, produced this amazing video and no one had to do the Truffle Shuffle! Check it out: Rube Goldberg would be proud.
Check out this CNN Report on the making of this music video. Echo Park, reprezent!
When fellow Offender, Alfredo, wrote about Tina Fey in his post about loving women who are hot messes, it provided me with the opportunity to announce that I may have a problem. A fetish, if you will. I love women with glasses! There, I said it. Big weight off my shoulders. In Japan, there’s a term for this sickness: MEGANEKKO or “glasses-wearing girl.” It’s huge in anime and manga. If you did a google search, your mind will be blown away at the amount of sites out there devoted to this “attractive trait.” Mainly, it deals with anime, like here and here (NSFW).
So yes, I’ve always loved girls, err, women who wear spectacles. They’re something about how they frame a face. It’s also a character quirk, because most likely, women who wear glasses tend to be intelligent, or read a lot; they don’t wear contacts, therefore are not too vain. Well, that’s what I think. It’s a signature trademark that I just immediately notice. In fact, celebs that I have crushes on, tend to be women who wear frames. Charlyne Yi from PAPER HEART is too darn hipster cute, for example. But here are my personal bespectacled faves. Hey lady, need me to massage your nose pad marks? Ooh, that was creepy…. Read more...
Who loves THE SIMPSONS and LOST? Well, you can love them both with this great mashup:
I think Sawyer and Juliet are best captured here, especially Juliet’s permanent smirk. Sun and Jin are pretty accurate too. Credit goes to the Springfield Punx site, which does fan inspired Simpsons art.
Pretty cool, huh? This comes from U.K. artist Julian Beever and German artist Edgar Mueller are two dudes who independently make some pretty amazing 3D chalk sidewalk murals. Here are a couple of more examples:
When it comes to sex culture, Berlin is the place to be. With the very comprehensive Erotic Museum, with its collection of 5,000 sexual artifacts from around the globe, there’s pretty much something for every everyone. You’ll see sex toys, lubes and other paraphenalia sold in restroom dispensers at movie theaters, restaurants, shopping malls, etc.
Sometimes you go to a party (and there are many during the Berlin Film Festival) and you just don’t expect to see glass bowls of lube peppered throughout the club like centerpieces at a banquet table. Or my personal fave, a French distributor’s after party with completely naked dancers wearing space helmets. Now that’s a nifty image.
Even walking down the street, racing to screenings, you come to signs like this:
This edition of the Short Film Spotlight intersects with our Oscar week; my fellow offenders have been writing primarily about films that should have won the most coveted award in the film world. All eyes and ears will be concentrated on the big awards, mainly two ex-spouses vying for Best Director or if any of the other 9 nominees has a fighting chance to win Best Picture against the biggest film in history, is where all the drama will be.
But lest we forget that there are other categories that I find just as compelling, especially the short film nominees. You can definitely check out the next generation of filmmakers, as they go on to making their mark in cinema history. Therefore, I’d like to highlight one recent Oscar winner in Best Animated Short.
Here is LE MAISON EN PETITS CUBES (The House of Small Cubes) by animator Kunio Kato. It is quiet, subtle but full of real emotion, as an old widower attempts to save his house from a rising flood. Magical realism that only animation can transport you to. Watch the film after the jump… Read more...
11 year old Steven Purugganan is training for the upcoming Sports Stacking Championship in April. He’s the reigning world champion.
His speed breaks down to one move every 1/10 of a second. Is he an android, like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation? Ah, those precocious Asian kids. Check out previous blog posts on other amazing young talents like guitar maestro Sungha Jung and other overachievers.
Guten tag from Berlin! I’m currently wrapping up my annual jaunt at the Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival). Watched a lot of films and warming up my lower extremities because of one of the coldest winters in Berlin in a decade. For such a well run, beautiful place with rich history, their city services in salting sidewalks and streets is left to be desired. The sidewalks are ice rinks and many people have slipped and fell around the festival. A poor Indian film buyer actually broke his leg on his first day at the fest and had to travel back to India the next day because he was immobile. Read more...
How was your Lunar New Year? This past weekend, in Westminster, CA aka Little Saigon, the Tet Parade was mired in some controversy. Local councilman, Andy Quach, and some religious leaders urged a Vietnamese LGBT group to not participate in the parade, since it was a “family” event. The gay advocates refused and walked anyway, proudly.
But, that’s not the topic of this blog post. Councilman Quach participates in the parade annually, and he surely has the best car in the parade, showing his Viet OG style. Check out the trunk of his ride:
A couple of weeks ago, I went on a field trip with some Offenders to check out the various coffee shops in Westminster, CA or Little Saigon. With over 300,000 Vietnamese residing there, it is the largest Vietnamese population outside of the motherland. It was a fun excursion and at our last stop, Cafe Miss Cutie, I left with a parting gift:
Yes, I got a calendar, which you can order online. It hangs next to my other calendar of Yoshitomo Nara. Yeah, it’s kind of incongruent, but hey, I can deal with the dichotomy of mutant big headed babies and tasteful shots of Vietnamese pseudo-models overseeing my workspace. Read more...
Hey true believers (to quote Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee), YOMYOMF is finally on Twitter. That’s right, now you can follow your favorite bunch of irascible blogging fiends, who just so happen to be Asian American. Aside from getting tweets of new blog posts, we’ll be tweeting about non-blog stuff as well. Maybe even doing a contest or two. So what are you waiting for? Hey, if The Situation can tweet, so can we, right?
With the passing of author J.D. Salinger last week, I revisited his seminal novel, The Catcher in the Rye. The last time I read it was back in high school (as pretty much every American teen in English class). I revisited the character of Holden Caulfield, who became an icon for teenage rebellion. How did the book stand up, 15 years later for me? It was still an enjoyable read, quick and the prose was witty and snappy. And although Holden was a spoiled rich WASP who ran away from boarding school and full of ennui over his privileged life, teen angst is a universal experience, especially for a middle class kid from Hawaii (me). Read more...
This edition of the Short Film Spotlight is a bit different. It’s not a short film, per se, but a video mural for the Standard Hotel in New York. Civilization depicts a journey from hell to heaven interpreted through modern film language using computer-enhanced found footage. This epic video mural contains over 300 individual channels of looped video blended into a multi-layered seamless tableau of interconnecting images that illustrate a contemporary, satirical take on the concepts of Heaven and Hell. It’s postmodern, stunning and haunting, like a mixed tape version of Dante’s Inferno. Also, do yourself a favor and expand this video to fullscreen to really appreciate the visuals. Read more...
The Hollywood Reporter reports that longtime Italian erotic film director Tinto Brass is set to direct his next film in 3-D. Brass, 76, best known for his 1979 film CALIGULA, which he directed in collaboration with noted author Gore Vidal and magazine publisher Bob Guccione (publisher of Penthouse), said the time is right for 3D technologies to be used to create an erotic film. He noted that the project, which he said will be the world’s first 3D erotic film, will also be the first 3D film of any type made in Italy. Read more...
When fellow Offender, Alfredo, wrote about Tina Fey in his post about loving 
This edition of the 
With the passing of author
