Likes & Likes

In Linas Philips’ new film “Bass Ackwards”, a man, recently kicked off of his friend’s couch and dumped by his lover, finds a chopped up 1976 VW van on a farm and decides to head east. Official selection at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the movie hits theaters February 1st. However, bypassing theatrical and other traditional distribution avenues, the film was made available for purchase nationwide even before it’s Sundance premiere on January 23rd. It can now be viewed in it’s entirety through YouTube Rentals.

“Spacious Thoughts” by Tom Waits and Kool Keith. Video by Montreal’s Fluorescent Hill. Interview about the video on boingboing. Slick.

This is part of the N.A.S.A. (“North America/South America”) music project, which is a collaboration project put together by Squeak E. Clean (brother of Spike Jonze) and DJ Zegon. You might have already heard the single “Whachadoin?” which features M.I.A., Spank Rock, Santogold (Santigold?), and Nick Zinner. The album, Spirit of Apollo, features names like David Byrne, Chuck D, Kanye West, Method Man, Lykke Li, George Clinton, Chali 2na, Amanda Blank, the RZA and more. Think Dark Was The Night mashed up with Brazilian funk.

Check out more videos on the project’s MySpace page.

First look at fashion designer Tom Ford’s directorial debut, “A Single Man.” The film is based on the Christopher Isherwood novel of the same name.

Visual design for the film is done by the same creative team that creates the sets for Mad Men. This combined with Ford’s stylish aesthetic, it should be pretty good.

Recently, the boy and I saw Zombieland. I fully expected a run-of-the-mill Halloween slasher flick. I hadn’t really bothered to look at the trailer, but was just turned off at the thought of an hour and twenty three minutes of zombies running amuck.

I’ll be the first to admit, I was totally wrong about this film. It was good, but the title graphics were even better. The way typography was integrated throughout the film was awesome. I can’t really do them justice explaining it here, but would urge anyone to go view it for themselves.

Below is an excerpt from an interview I found from the director speaking about the collaboration with the designers responsible for the work, Logan:

“I’ve done a lot of stuff with motion graphics in the past, and obviously music videos are inherently visual, and so I tried to bring that aspect to the film. I mean, I love comedy, and I’ve always tried to do things that were funny, but what this film allows was a very visual component that maybe a traditional, straightforward comedy wouldn’t allow. Yeah, I just was really excited, with my first feature, to really show what I can do, and so I used every opportunity, I worked with a lot of really talented people that raised the bar… I mean, the titles and the rules that you responded to were done by this company called Logan. I’ve been a fan of their work for a long time, so getting to work for them was an exciting thing for me, and I think that it’s one of the signatures of the film and I really have them to thank for it because they brought them to life and made them so dynamic. I think the filmmakers that I love are ones that cross genres and do different thinks, the way that David O. Russell can do something like Flirting With Disaster but then go do Three Kings which is like an incredibly visual film—that’s a huge reference point, Spike Jonze is one of my all-time favorite directors, and I love his music video work as well as his feature work, and he always makes things so visually interesting that I just wanted to be in the same playing field as them and try to do whatever I could to elevate the material and make it as cool, and something I would want to watch if I were going to go see the movie.”

Multiple likes on this one. I’m a big fan of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward’s musical collaboration She & Him. In the music video for their song “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”, Deschanel teamed up with her co-star from “500 Days of Summer”, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It was also shot by the film’s director, and pays homage to the bank heist/movie musical dance sequence.