Surreal video out of Russia where wildfires are ravaging central and western parts of the country following the hottest July on record. A car-full of volunteers helping residents of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast village of Tamboles find themselves very nearly trapped on the road leading out of town. What follows is, as one of the participants notes, a tense car ride through a Dante-inspired landscape. Don’t be surprised if you breathe a little sigh of relief along with these gentleman as they burst through into the sunlight at the end.
Want to reach out and touch… um… something… the next time you call a beloved family member or friend? Meet the Telenoid R1, a communications android brought into existence by famed Japanese inventor Hiroshi Ishiguro, a man who has, in the words of Daily Mail UK, “made his life’s work coming up with increasingly creepy robots.”
Ishiguro has, in the past, tried to exactly replicate living humans and once developed an eerie robot replica of himself that he named Geminoid HI-1. He also came up with a terrifyingly lifelike female robot called the Geminoid F. But the new Telenoid is something of a departure for the eccentric inventor.
Ishiguro designed the Telenoid R1 to be a robot that could appear like many different ages and that is easily transportable. It is intended to be used as a communication device so that people can ‘chat’ from long distances: the robot is supposed to be able to “transmit the presence” of a person from a distant place.
There is a weirdly compelling sort of attraction to the exaggerated melodrama present in Josef Fenneker’s work. Inky backgrounds of blackest shadows and murky, moody gloom provide stark contrast to bloodless facial expressions, vivid with violent emotion – whether delirious passion, or murderous lunacy – and it is not difficult to imagine oneself mesmerized, whipped into a maelstrom of sympathetic mania when confronted with such imagery.
Toten Tanz, Marmorhaus
Fenneker, a German artist in 1920s Berlin, “became the eye of the cultural and political hurricane that was Weimar Germany”. A painter, graphic designer, and stage designer, he worked in a “mixed style, strongly tinged with expressionist characteristics”, and there is the foreboding of gathering storms and imminent, though decadent, doom in almost all his work.
Born in 1895, the son of a grocer, little of Josef Fenneker’s early life in Bocholt is known. Perhaps inspired by his uncle Anton Marx, a church painter and architect, Fenneker studied at the Arts and Crafts schools in Munster, Dusseldorf and Munich, and became one of Emil Orlik’s master-class students at the school of the Berlin Arts and Crafts Museum.
First employed by Berlin theaters – most notably the Marmorhaus, the “paramount movie palace of Germany” – Fenneker designed numerous film posters, between 1919 and 1924. A “ combination of Radio City Music Hall and Graumans Chinese Theater”, any film premiering there gained “instant prestige”. Thus, Fenneker was not just another movie poster designer, but THE movie posterist of his day, in whose hands the “art of the film poster arguably reached its zenith,” and in the postwar years he became “one of the most sought after designers of film posters. “ Fenneker went on to create stage designs for theater and illustrations for such magazines as Simplicissimus and Jugend.
Josef Fenneker died in Frankfurt in January1956 of heart failure. In the obituaries of the regional and national press, he was noted as one of the most important and most original German set designers of the 1920s and 1930s. More than 300 works have been preserved from his vast oeuvre by the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, several more of which can be seen below the cut.
In this hilarious Sunsweet commercial from 1967, stylish space mod people frolic through a seri3z ov to0bz, and an indignant Ray Bradbury finds himself hawking The Prunes of Tomorrow. (Tomorrow being the year 2001, natch.) Prune fart-powered jet-packs are not envisioned in this scenario BUT THEY SHOULD BE, DAMN IT.
No doubt, if you are Brazilian, have kin from Brazil, or you’re just generally fascinated by the brief, impassioned revolution of Tropicália/post-Tropicálismos, you’re already familiar with Secos & Molhados. Otherwise, all you really need to know before you chug your morning smoothie is this: S&M were a scrumptiously plumed and glittering glam-rock trio fronted by a sexy sopraniño beast named Ney Matogrosso, and they were fuhhuhHIERCE. Enjoy a sampling of their performances –and a few of Matogrosso’s solo clips– below:
Bear in mind, those trio clips are all pre-Rocky Horror, pre-KISS, and pre-Nomi.
Last week, the Coilhouse crew and extended family – Courtney, Mer, Mildred, Stephanie Inagaki and Andy Ristaino – got together with Zo on the roof of the Standard Hotel in LA after Mer and Zo had joined forces to prepare a particularly juicy Coilhouse blog feature that will be revealed at a later date. I couldn’t be there, but the picture from that night filled me with joy. Next month it’ll be three years since we all started working together, and to me, the photo speaks volumes regarding how much we’ve grown together, and all the changes we’ve been through. This is especially true in Zo’s case. An epic wedding, a house move, and a full transition into a freelance career – that’s a lot for anyone to handle, but our co-editor makes it look effortless. So in lieu of being able to wish her a happy birthday in person, I present Zo with the cake above (with a little bit of help from R. Stevens). You are a vital, talented, creative force of nature, and the world is more strangely beautiful with you in it. We luff yoooooo!
Cuddle puddle: Courtney, Zo, Mer and original fourth co-editor Mildred Von.
So… any Mad Men fans in the ‘haus? No spoilers in the comments, please, because I’m not sure if Mer and Zo have had a chance to catch last Sunday’s Season 4 premiere. But without giving away any plot points, I just want to ask: what was up with Don Draper pulling a Dov Charney with his horrible Jantzen pitch? Our colleague Copyranter eats this kind of American Apparel shit for breakfast. The Portland-based swimwear company was portrayed as a stodgy, conservative business to whom Draper declares angrily, “you’re too scared of the skin your two-piece was designed to show off.” I guess he (and/or the show’s writers) never saw Jantzen’s Vargas-inspired campaign, which ran in LIFE in 1947 (below). Dear readers, I proudly tag this post “Stroke Material” and present you with my stash of vintage Jantzen advertisements from the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. Sun-kissed beauties with Bettie Page smiles and space-age swimsuits – as well as a few clever parodies – after the jump.
Ryan Francesconi‘s wonderful music has been lilting around the edges of my life since 1995 when I briefly worked together with him and Dan Cantrell in the Toids, an experimental folk group that riffed off various Eastern European idioms in tandem with Francesconi and Cantrell’s eclectic compositional styles. Back then, Francesconi was one seriously intimidating guitar/tambura/bouzouki shredder! He reveled in playing faster, smarter, better than anybody. He’s a shredder still, and no one can approximate his style… but over the years, wisdom seems to have smoothed over some of the sharper, more Malmsteinish edges of his virtuosity. Lately, the music he makes has deepened into an expression of something more present, and pure.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on a quietly stunning record Francesconi released earlier this year, called Parables. A series of songs for solo acoustic guitar, it reflects his interest in American bluegrass, Bulgarian folk, jazz improvisation and Baroque lute music. Recorded live (no overdubs!), the music is graceful and green with nods of kinship to everyone and everything from Nick Drake to Herman Hesse to the forests of the Pacific Northwest– which is where Francesconi lives when he’s not trotting the globe.
Speaking of– if you’re a fan of Joanna Newsom, the name Ryan Francesconi is probably already familiar to you, since he’s been one of her key players for several years, leading her live touring performers in the Ys Street Band and arranging/playing on just about every song on her new triple album, Have One On Me. They’re kicking off their summer West Coast tour of the States tonight in San Diego, California. Newsom had this to say about Parables:
“Ryan Francesconi is one of the most awe-inspiring musicians I’ve known. On “Parables,” he distills his many realms of artistry […] into a beautifully minimalist, poetic, intricate, emotionally realized study of themes, variations, organic counterpoint, and such devastating forays into fractal-metric out-lands that it is nearly impossible to believe he’s picking those strings with just one hand. This is solo music that sounds like an ensemble, an ecstatic and measured reconciliation of West African / Balkan / Baroque / bluegrass influences, which ultimately resembles nothing I know.”
Pick up Parables on vinyl over at Drag City (they’re currently sold out of the CD), or in Mp3 format from CD Baby or iTunes.
Nick Cave’s participation in the remake of the new Crowhas been confirmed, and I’m finally starting to get excited. The Crow, a film based on James O’Barr’s eponymous comic book series, was a sort of holy grail to me and my darque little crew back in the early nineties. Unapologetically dramatic, The Crow had everything an angsty kid could want: love, destruction, hot bloke in makeup, great villains, pretty girls. There was one year when I watched the film at least five times.
Now, I haven’t actually seen it in over ten years, for fear that it won’t hold up. I’m told it doesn’t. Still, the concept of a shiny new remake of my childhood/adolescence favorite is an uncomfortable one. Nostalgia and Brandon Lee’s death on the set veil The Crow in shimmery, inviolate mystery, and, had it been anyone other than Nick The Stripper doing the re-write, I would have probably shunned it. As things stand though, I think there’s reason to get at least a little fired up, especially with new rumors of Cillian Murphy possibly signing on to play Eric – almost as weird as casting Brandon Lee! If only Stephen Norrington could be replaced… Yes, then I can almost picture it. Until we know more, let us remember The Crow that once was. I leave you with a question: who would you cast as the ideal Eric?
