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.

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.

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....

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!

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.

Gondry. You magnificent bastard.

Anderson/Coppola Influence

This is nice.

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."

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.

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

Blur awesomeness

Oasis killed it short term, but failed to match Morning Glory's greatness. Ever.
Blur went long term and Damon Albarn got diverse, their place in rock folklore assured.
What do you do now?
Shit, you get the band back together, film it in HD and release the hell out of it.
Cue slow-mo, orchestral arrangement of classic song and Albarn with arms outstretched over a see of people.
If this trailer doesn't stir the cockles of your heart I don't know what will.
Universal never sounded as good as this.

Wedge Cars. Pt 2.

As the American auto industry began it's slow and steady progression into irrelevance with poorly built and even worse designed vehicles, this gem, straight from Malaise Era Chevrolet was earmarked to be the next Corvette. A mid-engined stunner and essentially a second stab at a design from three years earlier was canned because the new layout would be too costly and too difficult to re-engineer from the existing front engined platform.
Wedge cars were all the rage and the Aerovette represents a pretty decent attempt at a halo car and a way out of the malaise.
At least in spirit.

Pininfarina for Chevrolet '63

I understand that it gets a little car heavy around these parts but I make no apologies for that.
This one is a beautiful early, optimistic piece of Pininfarina design. This gorgeous rear engined Corvair Coupe Speciale was a sleek one off from the Italian House. The road going version, was still a lovely looking car but with the accountants in charge, there were cut-corners and cut-pricing which resulted in Ralph Nader's strong consumer warning piece Unsafe at Any Speed. This led to major reforms in safety and regulations, changing design and engineering forever. A significant car any way you look at it and went on to sell one and a half million variants of the Corvair name.

The year 2000, the year 2000

This is straight from Jalopnik and if you've got a spare 8:47 take a look at what Disney proposed for the future of highways in a George Jetson-esque year 2000. Granted our energy sources are finite and until we get those pesky quirks and kinks sorted out on the nuclear fusion thing, we haven't got a hope in hell of air-conditioning our roads for the desert.
Still, enjoy for the ultra-cool Arts and Architecture type graphics and ponder their predictions. Some are remarkably accurate and others, while in graphic form seem cool are absolutely shocking. Environmental concerns are so real year 2000 and don't make for cool animations but roads through the Acropolis and The Sphinx are no problem.
But for all their futurist fortune telling black magic (Rear-view T.V. and GPS anyone?) they couldn't of predicted just how trick the new Range Rover's dashboard treatment would be.
Take that 1950's animator.

Supersonic Flight. Check. Cool Jazz. Check.

This comes straight from the Central Office of Information for the Air Ministry (circa 1960's) and courtesy of the Guardian U.K. from a couple of years ago. It's an amazing piece of English history when throwing in a little cool jazz with your propaganda was, well, cool.
Pour yourself a scotch and check it out.

Trainspotting Porsches

In the course of the 356's lifespan (and only on the export to America models) Porsche introduced a unique badging response to the New World's uncertainty of where this small sports car came from.
The answer would be found on the front quarter panel behind the front wheels.
They stopped this after about 18 months. I guess they worked out it wasn't coming from Detroit.

Dorothea Lange Photos