Monday, June 7, 2010

The women of 80's video clips

You know when you were younger, but before you could put your finger on it, a time when the sight of a beautiful woman was something innocent like looking at a poster of a Lamborghini Countach, probably also on your wall? You knew it was great, you knew the proportions were correct and true, but anything more than that... who knew? Did they like Super Mario and Big M's? I hope so, because those things are great too.
Well today these woman don't really exist, I mean they are out there, but in popular culture, these curvy, tall and completely out of reach woman have been replaced with skinny girls, albeit beautiful, but girls nonetheless. These Kelly Le Brock style women are quite literally what dreams are made of and I miss them.
What I also miss are the tight, short dresses they seemed to always wear, the whole 'thing' that came with that too, that was pretty special.

Fun Fact. For the Coutach, Lamborghini broke with the tradition of using bullfighting terms and was named for the word you use when a beautiful woman walks by, as in "whew, did you see her?"
Italians pretty much make and do things with one thing on their mind. Nice.

This perfect example is Playboy Playmate '88 India Allen in front of her prize for the yearly honour. The thing was, that she actually received a kit car, not a Lamborghini, so it's pretty much rubbish.

Ahhh, the eighties. Good times.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

BMW + Koons = Fast car

BMW have continued their tradition of hooking up ridiculous artists with ridiculously fast cars. This new collaboration with Jeff Koons and the M3 GT2 is certainly no exception and the paint job will look equally at home on the race track as in the Pompidou.
Oh, it is in the Pompidou? Cool.

Here it is.



Sunday, May 9, 2010

Storyboards



I don't know if you know this, but Ridley Scott is an amazing illustrator and he always does his own storyboards. His work for Bladerunner is famous and more recently his drawings for Black Hawk Down showed that even from the get-go he knew how, where and why he was shooting what he was shooting. Impressive.

Here's a few from Bladerunner. Always worth a revisit.
If you have another spare 6 hours, the directors cut and epic documentary is worth the time too.

For trainspotters and know-it-alls, Syd Mead, the futurist and illustrator was also responsible for some amazing still lifes that were pretty much built to the nearest brushstroke under Ridley's maniacal grip of the film.

I'm back baby

It's been a while and you know, there aren't enough blogs out there, but I'm back and we're going to start with this....

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Soloman Burke. Big is an understatement

Again with the blues and coincidentally on Later with Jools Holland too.
Soloman Burke is a big man, but Don't Give Up On Me is a bigger song.
Watch it in all it's glory and ponder, how the hell did he get to the U.K.?

Al Green is the real thing...





No seriously, how?
If anyone has the clip of Al performing Lay It Down on Letterman, let me know, one of the best performances on the show. Ever!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Hip revision

Phew, got a little hip around here didn't it.
Gondry, Coppola/Anderson and the godfather of hip angst, J.D. Salinger.
It's 'gettin' real' time.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

J.D. Salinger died today. He was 91.




"I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around-- nobody big, I mean-- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-- I mean if they're running and they start to go over the cliff-- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all."

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

PEACE

Porsche 928.


Let's admit it Porsche have never really had any trouble with looks from the front. The idiosyncratic upright eyes have kept them in good stead for over 50 years, the Cayenne is of course the great exception. Then came the Panamera, we wanted to love it, wanted it to be amazing, but it was MEH. Truth is, even with all the slick campaigns, Porsche can not do 4 doors and when they do they can't do rear ends, so their 2 door mantra can not be argued with. Case in point, these renderings of what the 928 of 2012 will look like. A Porsche, true to their own rules and their own history that has a rear end to die for and enough family resemblance to slide straight into the starting line-up.

The Panamera hasn't exactly exploded as the Cayenne did a few years earlier and the talk is that following a second gen version it will be scrapped and Porsche will return to it's roots of making 2 door sports cars only. But what to do with all the development and costs of extensive new infrastructure? Using the engine and platforms from the saloon the 928 will have a short gestation and we'll hopefully be seeing it on the streets as promised sliding in above the 911 to do battle with Aston, Ferrari and various other uber-tourers.
Nice.



Thanks to Autoexpress.co.uk for the classy pics.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Belushi. The Man, the myth.




So the story goes, Marcia Resnick was given the task of photographing John Belushi. He wrestled and wriggled and was restless until he found a balaclava. She couldn't get the shot but as soon as he put the hat on he found himself and settled down.
He was a funny man with more than a few problems.
Resnick's photograph captures a little of his madness.

Check out some more of her work here