To pluck some things from the list, while ignoring others, strikes many Buddhists as absurd. McMahan said, “It would be as if somebody went to the Catholic Church and said, ‘I don’t buy all this stuff about Jesus and God, but I really dig this Communion ritual. Would you just teach me how to do that bit? Oh, and I want to start a company marketing wafers.’
Viktor & Rolf, Couture, AW15, Paris. In a show that saw artworks exploding off the wall to form couture gowns, Viktor and Rolf created garments that exaggerated the balancing acts that lie at the heart of all clothing. On everyday clothing, common pattern shapes are regurgitated so that designers don’t have to deal with pesky things like gravity. However, once materials become harder, heavier or stiffer the ability to shape and control the structure of a garment to form extreme silhouettes becomes more and more important. Keep reading
“You’re about to get an exclusive here,” Bonner said. “I hate to make excuses, I was raised to never make excuses, but I went through a two-and-a-half month stretch where I had really bad tennis elbow, and during that stretch it made it so painful for me to shoot I’d almost be cringing before I even caught the ball like, ‘Oh, this is going to kill.’ ” […] “Everybody is going to find this hilarious, but here’s my theory on how I got it,” he said. “When the new iPhone came out it was way bigger than the last one, and I think because I got that new phone it was a strain to use it, you have to stretch further to hit the buttons, and I honestly think that’s how I ended up developing it.”
Loved this essay from Clive Thompson. The part about exporting his marginalia into a little mini-book is very intriguing. And how compelling reading changes our habits:
The phone’s extreme portability allowed me to fit Tolstoy’s book into my life, and thus to get swept up in it. And it was being swept up that, ironically, made the phone’s distractions melt away. Once you’re genuinely hankering to get back to a book, to delve into the folds of its plot and the clockwork machinations of its characters, you stop needing so much mindfulness to screen out digital diversions. The book becomes the diversion itself, the thing your brain is needling you to engage with. Stop checking your email and Twitter! You’ve got a book to read!
“When you’re an actor, you can act on your own, but you kind of need to get hired. You need to be chosen. And when you’re chosen to act in something, the thing itself is already validated—it’s already real in some way. But for the most part, people who are creators—writers and directors—are always starting from zero. Nobody is asking them to make what they make. Every time you set out to create something from nothing that nobody has asked for, you feel the void more than you do in any other art form. I do, anyway. I’d never experienced that with a film before Frances Ha, where at first there was nothing, and then there was something because we made it. Frances Ha felt like I gave birth to it. And then I realized that that’s what you have to do on every single project for the rest of your life, if this is what you want to do.”
Reading Amazon reviews of MAGIC MIKE reinforces my view that it might be one of the most incredible acts of cinematic subversion of our time. Soderbergh tricked a bunch of horny Midwestern housewives into watching a super dark treatise on modern American culture by cloaking it in the trojan horse of a “sexy Channing Tatum movie” (and made a bucket of money while doing it).
FURY ROAD getting a bunch of bro’s to watch a dystopian, feminist revenge flick and SPRING BREAKERS tricking tween Disney fans into seeing a fucked up Harmony Korine neon fever dream are the other other recent examples that come to mind.
I read Lily King’s Euphoria, and loved it. A love triangle among anthropologists on assignment in the jungles of New Guinea! Loosely based on/inspired by the life of Margaret Mead, who seems fascinating after doing a bit of side reading. Finding lovely turns of phrase like this is one of the reasons I read:
One woman had bright gold hair, the other eyelashes like black ferns.
“I asked him, how does it feel when people say [Phil Jackson] won only because he had Jordan, Pippen, O’Neal and Bryant? He brightened. “Feels great!” he said. “I’m so glad I had those players. Made all the difference.””
Michael Clayton. Third viewing (second, first). Something about this movie just really clicks with me.
I read Lily King’s Euphoria, and loved it. A love triangle among anthropologists on assignment in the jungles of New Guinea! Loosely based on/inspired by the life of Margaret Mead, who seems fascinating after doing a bit of side reading. Finding lovely turns of phrase like this is one of the reasons I read: