The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Details about Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox have been scarce until a trailer recently surfaced showcasing a lot of impressive stop motion animation and design in the film. The animals and set pieces look wonderful and the cast a pretty classic line up of great actors. The approach to the material seems classy and sober without pandering to a particular kind of audience. I think this is highlighted by a lot of the deadpan humor in the trailer. Count me in. Should be a rewarding experience to sit through.

When you have great children's books being picked up by guys like Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson you are in a special time and place.

1930s-40s in Color

Kitchen utensils hanging below a spice rack with mint, caraway, tyme, and sage jars

between 1941 and 1945.

Marine lieutenant, glider pilot in training, ready for take-off at Page Field,
Parris Island, S.C. 1942 May.

"Backstage" at the "girlie" show at the Vermont state fair,
Rutland, 1941 Sept.

Women workers employed as wipers in the roundhouse having lunch in their rest room,
C. & N.W. R.R., Clinton, Iowa 1943 April.

Woman aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, Calif.
Shown checking electrical assemblies 1942 June.

Mind boggling images from The Library of Congress' photostream on Flickr. The original images are color transparencies ranging in size from 35 mm. to 4x5 inches. The Library of Congress also has a huge and free assortment of some of the earliest films ever shot in the iTunes U Store. Check out the Edison Companies section. Thanks to Karl for renewing my interest in these remarkable photographs.

Lamb Shawarma

Posts have been scarce these days. I've been enjoying this summer so much that it has left me unmotivated to blog. However, I would like to take this time to point out that Hallava Falafel in Seattle is one of the break out hits of the season for me. Get the lamb shawarma. I'm telling you.

Being unemployed for most of the summer has not worked in favor of some of my artistic pursuits. It has in fact thrown a large wrench into the plans I had made. Thankfully I managed to test shoot with my Super 8 camera; the footage should hopefully become available to capture soon. As of a few days ago I've been fortunate enough to catch a break and find some temporary employment. The contact which I've made via craigslist could be more valuable then the actual brief amount of work I'm required to do. Mark Tribe is an artist and curator whose interests include art, technology, and politics. He has tasked me to assist him in retrieving some video footage of police surveillance from another contact here in Bellingham. From the project description:

The Utopia Files is an experimental video project that examines contemporary forms of political activism through the lens of police surveillance. The project will premiere as a multi-channel installation at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA as part of their New England Biennial in January 2010. The project will also be presented as a single channel video.

From "Democracy in America" video installation. Mark Tribe, 2008.

I'm pretty interested to see how this project forms and to hopefully continue working with Mark.

In other news, some of my good friends from Syracuse made their way to the Pacific Northwest. Jeff, Shimpei, and Caleb have embarked on a journey across the continental United States and I had the pleasure of co-hosting them in Seattle for a couple days with the great Mike Wilson. We hopefully captivated them with the sights of Ballard, Gasworks Park, and Dick's, both in Wallingford and Capitol Hill. They are attempting to produce a larger portrait of their travel experiences through various photography projects. Both Jeff and Shimpei are MFA candidates in photography at Syracuse University while Caleb is an MFA candidate for film at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. You can follow their activities over at The Epic Buffet.

Jeff's Portrait at the base of the Freemont Troll.

Terri Timely "Synesthesia"

Via Design You Trust

Synesthesia is “a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.” A short film by Terri Timely. Thanks to Karl for the heads up.

One Year of Sandwiches

Here we are. 

Shining on a year later after launching this blog. It's the summer season now and I'm in Bellingham basking in the comfort of taco truck burritos and the company of close friends. This was a breakout year and a lot of experiences poured in. We here at open face sandwiches are excited to continue on posting and eventually move the blog officially to a new, sexy web portfolio. In the meantime, I'd like to commemorate a year of documenting various activity with this short video anniversary card. Metaphor and space exploration fully intact:

thanks for reading.

Join Or Die

Justine Lai - Artist Statement:

In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.

I approach the spectacle of sex and politics with a certain playfulness. It would be easy to let the images slide into territory that's strictly pornographic—the lurid and hardcore, the predictably "controversial." One could also imagine a series preoccupied with wearing its "Fuck the Man" symbolism on its sleeve. But I wish to move beyond these things and make something playful and tender and maybe a little ambiguous, but exuberantly so. This, I feel, is the most humanizing act I can do.

March 2009

Via justinelaie

Super 8

I plan to explore the world of super 8 filmmaking this summer with a few projects in mind. The camera pictured above is what I have purchased recently. It's part of a solid line of Braun Nizo cameras  that are compact and light offering a lot of freedom to move and film. There is something foundational to the super 8 format that I think will be a tremendous help in the overall composition of my shots in later film or video projects. Here are some technical specs of the camera in case you're interested:

• Film speeds: 9,8,24,36 fps, single frame
• ASA daylight: 25 - 100
• ASA artificial: 40 - 60
• Lens: Schneider Keuznach 7 - 56mm (8x zoom) - f/1.8

Aside from some planned ideas I think documenting things in general will be a pretty entertaining experience. I plan to shoot mostly with Ektachrome 64T. From what I've gathered it produces some rich colors and the grain is pretty fine. I found a couple of videos that test out the filmstock with two different cameras: