Rivers flow like blood

Last week the NYTimes Lens blog posted some photos taken by NASA astronauts from space. Included in the slideshow is the above, a 1984 shot of the red sediment from teh Betsiboka River in Madagascar.

Baby you invade my car

THC hasn't quite fully announced this Space Invaders Mini Cooper, but I couldn't wait to link to it (scroll down to see a Pac-Man Mini as well).

Wayne Liu, photographer

ICP colleague Wayne Liu has a new website, including some impressionistic black and white photography from China.

Agaetis Byrjun at 10

It was 10 years ago that Sigur Ros released their breakthrough album. In celebration of Agaetis Byrjun, they've released this live performance from the original launch party, when no one outside of Reykjavik knew who they were.

Skies after Thai

This evening after dinner the clouds over Queens took on shapes I had only seen in pictures.

Michael Jackson

I can't tell you how many times I've watched this from the time it first aired until now.

Coke is it!

What with the recent retro packaging revivals (hello, General Mills), here's some photos of actual vintage Coke cans.

Land of the lost (color) regained

Will has posted a few sets of photochromosomes (set one, set two) culled from the LOC photochrome archive and the NY Public Library's postcard archive. They're lovely and surreal, at times feeling like collage, at others like some new stereoscopic process.

Swimming away

Disney is set to release the new Hayao Miyazaki film Ponyo (dubbed, rather unfortunately. I ended up not watching the trailer; partially so that I may see the film knowing nothing, partially because I can't stand the dubbing). Miyazaki's Spirited Away is one of my favorite films of all time.

A screaming comes across the sky . . .

I recently finished reading Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow . I've been wanting to read it for some time now; I finally bought the paperback partially because of the Frank Miller cover. I read it without the help of a companion volume; I'm reading the companion volume soon to figure out what happened.

Zak Smith was so moved by the book that he made an illustration for every page of the book. Smith's book can be found here.

William Eggleston's Democratic Camera

My brother just sent me a link to this NPR story about William Eggleston on the eve of his retrospective exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. The show had previously been exhibited at the Whitney in NYC.

Fly me to the moon

Nothing brings back the past like a vintage video game. And it's been a while since I posted a game, so here's Lunar Lander!

Art of Up

Color script by Lou Romano

Illustrator Lou Romano has posted some of the development and production work he did on Up, spanning the years 2005-2008: The art of Up. He did the work to help inspire the look of the film, a job he also did for The Incredibles. The photos of the actual tepui in Venezuela as inspiration are illuminating, as are the initial lighting animation studies.

Circle and square

Initial sketches of Kevin, Disney/Pixar

The NYTimes has a short feature on the character design for the Disney/Pixar film Up. Director Pete Doctor and production designer Ricky Nierva speak. A related article can be found here: Well-rounded boy, meet old square.

New work by Sebastião Salgado

The NYTimes has an article and accompanying slide show about Salgado's most recent work, Nature, Nurtured.

Adventure is out there!

Eric Tan does it again with a beautiful series of posters for the Disney/Pixar film Up. I just saw the film and it's amazing. it's rare that a film is so transporting. I forgot about the 3D effects, the animation, and everything save for the characters and the story. The humor is so immediate it's amazing to think of how much time it took to create every gag and grimace. It's a really wonderful piece of filmmaking.

I'm also amazed that Pixar can keep getting better and better. The bar they've set is already stratosphereic. Tan's posters (and some of his comments on working with Disney/Pixar) can be found here, here, and here.

I came, I saw, I got the luggage label

I can't say I've stayed at any of these hotels (though I've sat on the patio of the Raffles Hotel Singapore). If they still gave out luggage labels like these however, I might have had to inquire at the front desk. The only labels my beat-up backpack rain cover can boast are some customs stickers from Lebanon or Syria that have managed to fuse themselves to the plastic.

When I want to get away, I drive off in my car

Painting by Ed Ruscha

I had hoped to get away for my birthday. I had thought of driving to the Catskills or the Finger Lakes region to do some fresh-water canoeing, but the weather forecast calls for rain. Turns out the Finger Lakes region is among National Geographic Traveler's "most beautiful, interesting, and off-beat road trips".

Neville Brody's New Deal

Neville Brody and Research Studios have recently created a new typeface for Public Enemies, a Michael Mann film to be released later this year. The typeface uses Works Progress Administration posters as inspiration, and will be featured in the titles as well as in posters advertising the film. Some more examples (and some inspiration) can be found at Creative Review.

New forms from a desert capital to an island one

Left: Jean Nouvel; right: Zaha Hadid, photograph by Virgile Simone Bertrand.

Construction has apparently begun on Jean Nouvel's Louvre Abu Dhabi. The LATimes has a short story with some renderings. I'm particularly taken with the dome, which at once reminds me of Independence Day and the star-shaped openings in the domes of traditional bath houses I've visited in the Middle East. I can't wait to see how the light will describe patterns on the floor.

In other architecture news, Zaha Hadid has opened the Neil Barrett flagship store in Tokyo. I was introduced to her work through a friend who encouraged me to see the survey of her work at the Guggenheim a few years back. I became a fan immediately. Yatzer has more photos of the store along with some text by Zaha Hadid Architects.