Nothing Like A Memory To Open Up A Broken Heart

Photo from Interview magazine, by Craig McDean

I have a confession to make: I never understood the success of Girls. I’m not referring to Lena Dunham’s growing, impressive and flawed oeuvre of episodes (because really, that’s a whole ‘nother story, for reals) - I’m talking about the San Francisco pop band that released Album out of nowhere and got people super horny about ‘Lust for Life’ etc. Like, admittedly I really liked their stuff – it was sunny and sad and honest (I’m not sure if it is actually honest, but to me the lyrics didn’t feel contrived, perhaps owed to their simple and confessional nature.) To me, at the time, the response was disproportionate to the material itself. When Father, Son, Holy Ghost was released I didn’t even bother checking it out, and had skimmed an article about the band breaking up with nothing more than a cursory interest.

Davy Evans’s Metallic Degradation

Unless you have the veritable excuse of living on another planet, you’ll know that The xx released a new album a couple months ago, Coexist. I didn’t realize that Davy Evans and The xx had collaborated on the showreel for the band’s live shows until very recently. But given the accompanying album art for their sophomore effort, I don’t see why the partnership should surprise me.

Read on about the impressions of Evans’s work, as well to check out a sample showreel used in The xx’s live performances!

Be@rbrick: Toys Anyone Could Want

(From left to right:) Honen & Shinran, Mika Ninagawa, NEXUSVII

If you lurk around the Internet as much as I do (which is, uh, a totally healthy amount…) chances are you’ve probably come across an image of Medicom Toy‘s Be@rbrick toy. The former part of the toy’s name derives from the figure obviously resembling a bear, and the latter part refers to the use of parts from another Medicom toy, called Kubrick. These toys only started being made in, like, 2001, and is now totally a hugely prestigious thing to collaborate on a design; collaborators include Karl Lagerfeld, Disney, Ren & Stimpy, The Kill Bill franchise, etc.

Read on after the jump.

The Lady From Shanghai’s Masterful Resolution

Truthfully, I didn’t really like The Lady From Shanghai too much. The handling of the film noir genre seemed confused, Rosalie Bannister (Rita Hayworth) was too passive for the plot to make sense, and Michael O’Hara’s (Orson Welles) Irish accent was unconvincing, distracting, and campy. All this aside, it was an interesting film and was visually engaging: I liked the representation of Acapulco and the Shanghai district of San Francisco, and finally the funhouse mirror scene.

Read my thoughts on the final scene of The Lady From Shanghai, and watch the actual video sequence below.