Tag Archives: movies

Thoughts on “Bill Cunningham New York”

Bill Cunningham New York

This was a pleasant documentary following the legendary Bill Cunningham. It gave a few details about his history and his personal life, but it mostly just showed Bill being Bill. What struck me about this movie was all of the dichotomies.

Bill Cunningham is the godfather of the street fashion photography. But it was clear in this movie that he’s still a man of the people. He’s still on the street every day. He does other things too, but his primary thing is taking pictures of clothes. He’s the ultimate recorder of the people, working for one of the biggest institutions. Meanwhile so many of the people he inspired started on free blogs taking pictures of the street and moved to a little fancy pictures of celebs and models, and writing books and only taking pictures of fancy people. Bill is the people’s street fashion photographer, even with the clout of the New York Times. Which stands in contrast to all of the street fashion photographers on the web, which use the people’s platform (i.e. internet) to be sort of elitist.

[Rambling, I had a point somewhere in there, but it fell apart pretty quickly.]

Lots of good from Kotte

Haha, I really should just wholesale copy his site in an embedded window or something.  Links from Kottke.org.

Typographica’s 2007 favorite typefaces.  And this great bit about the difference between font and typeface:

“The physical embodiment of a collection of letters (whether it’s a case of metal pieces or a computer file) is a font. When referring to the design of the collection (the way it looks) you call it a typeface.” – Mark Simonson

Haikuvies – Haiku movie reviews.  I don’t know if I like them better than Four Word Film Reviews, they are certainly more detailed, given that the haikus are stanzas long.  Both are interesting, fun, creative review of movies.

Finally, English is stupid.  Ghoti = fish.

Movie review

So I finally watched Helvetica last week.  I wanted to see it since it was announced.  I had tickets when it was local, but I couldn’t make the show.  So watched the DVD.  Yes it is a movie about a font.  It’s mostly in praise of, but does have some of the detractors.  It’s a good movie.  And if you are into typography, whether or not you like Helvetica, or design, you should probably watch this movie.

I take offense

High-Def Digest’s review of Oldboy

It’s a great flick.  It’s challenging on any number of levels.  It’s visually impactful.  I’m not bothering to post my issues with the review at HDD’s site because they are all video/audiophiles and my issues aren’t with that.

In his review, Kenneth S. Brown writes:

Even “ordinary” scenes contain bizarre and often disturbing imagery, including swarming ants, gouged eyes, stark nudity, a nightmarish hotel room, incest, and the actual consumption of a living octopus.

I agree with almost EVERYTHING in that statement, but one part I don’t.  Consumption of live octopus isn’t anything strange in Korea.  Hell I’ve had it here in the States.  Okay, hey, I get it.  This is the United States.  What is normal to a lot of other places is weird and strange, and I guess disturbing, here.  And the scene in question was played for visual impact.  But visually impactful doesn’t mean disturbing.  And even in the context of the movie, I’d not classify that particular scene as disturbing.  I do admit that how the scene plays out in the movie isn’t the traditional method of eating live octopus.  So maybe that’s the disturbing part.

It’s so tasty though!

from the movie, a behind the scenes: