Amanda Lucas wins.

I'm surprised this didn't get more press in the U.S.

Amanda Lucas (George Lucas' daughter) defeated Hikaru Shinohara (daughter of the man who murdered Japanese wrestling legend, Rikidozan) on 8/26/11 in Japan.

The fight is far from a classic and Hikaru Shinohara's post fight rage really steals the show.

If you want to see Amanada Lucas get beat up by Cyborg Cris Santos at the 2011 IBJJF World Jiu Jitsu Championships look below.

 

(via Cage Potato)

 

Oprah's bees.

My favorite gif of all time.

Daily poster: The Brown Bunny.

 

The Brown Bunny was released in the U.S. seven years ago.
The film is good if you are in the right, slow, grinding, mood. The various controversies surrounding the film are vastly more interesting. Wikipedia has all the dirt.

Van Gogh.

Frauenfelder in Playboy on Google.

 

While clearing out stuff for our massive yard sale this weekend, I passed along the Sable issue of Playboy to Chris P. He came back later in the day with this funny blast from the past from Mark Frauenfelder.

I AM DIVINE!

Here's the link to the IndieGoGo campaign page:
http://www.indiegogo.com/I-AM-DIVINE-Fan-Fundraising-Campaign

 

Senate hearing on steroids.

(via icelandbob on Whitechapel.)

More Grime time.

Part one is HERE.

Doesn't show a lot of Grime's work, but if you'd like to know more about the man, eyeball it.

 

Daily poster: Knife of Ice.

Knife of Ice.
Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.
This trailer does not make me want to see Knife of Ice at all.

Cobain's biggest fan.

 

via imgur

Timpromptu featuring Eric Wareheim.

Street Rothko.

 

Speaking of Rothko.
Lord Jim has a set on Flickr that he's named "Street Rothko." Turning grafitti cover-ups into art. I've seen this kind of thing before, but the title just throws it into a new realm.
I love this stuff.

Matter of Rothko.

When Mark Rothko died in February, 1970, he had 798 paintings in his studio. His star was rising.
Matter of Rothko is an article written by the son of one of Rothko's executors. It's an interesting story of the three men charged with executing Mark Rothko's wishes. More artists disappear after their deaths than rise to become legends. Rothko's intentions also seem pretty unclear from this article. Anyway, the entire collection was sold off. Some of the works went for ridiculously low prices. Rothko's children, who were young and not involved in the aftermath grew up and grew resentful. They sued. Rothko's value also rose dramatically, and the three executors became world class supervillains.

The story has some interesting twists and no one comes out looking good. Executors crawl into bed with institutions they sold paintings to. Rothko's daughter is quoted as having said that she hated Rothko's paintings to his face. Even the author's father switched sides and made enemies of all involved.

"Why are we all fighting so fiercely on behalf of bad fathers? Rothko was, by all accounts, a terrible parent, who alienated his teenage daughter to such an extent that she told him she hated his paintings. So he responded as any narcissistic, alcoholic, monomaniacal abstract expressionist would, and he left the paintings in the hands of his friends. Once he’s dead, she’s sorry, and wants to take it all back. But by now the paintings are with others, who have their own interests and their own understanding of his priorities. And they are villainized. And they lose. And my father dies. And I barely notice, because as far as I know, he’s a loser, and a jerk, and then thirty years later someone brings me a failure’s blessings from beyond the grave, and suddenly I feel as though my father’s memory is being betrayed. And suddenly I find myself a loyalist, because apparently it’s more important to like your father’s memory than to like your father."

(Story via Longform. I took the photo above at SFMOMA.)

Jon count to 100,000.

Rainntacular.

@rainnwilson

"I was going to create all these new jobs but my new, slightly increased tax bill came so now I'm not" -No-Billionaire-Ever-In-History

The Titanic Taxonomy of Wrestler Names.

Pop Chart Lab presents this taxonomy poster of professional wrestler names. It's 18"x24" and only $20.

Happy VJ Day.

VJ Day, Honolulu Hawaii, August 14, 1945 from Richard Sullivan on Vimeo.

My mom sent this video to me a couple of months ago.

Amazing footage of VJ Day in Hawaii.

I remember my dad telling me about being in San Francisco on VJ Day. He and a friend were playing on the hill where they controlled the fifty, or so, air raid sirens. He remember a group of soldiers coming up the hill and telling him that the war was over and then setting off the sirens. The whole city was one big party after that. Amazing.

There is a quick shot of a man grabbing a woman's head and directing it at the camera. It's so physical and inappropriate. Were people more physical with each other in general back then?

I have some old footage from the 1930's and there are several incidents of men jerking women around, physically forcing them to be on camera. Not something you commonly see nowadays. Interesting.

The Adventures of Thomas and Nardo.

The Adventures of Thomas and Nardo shorts premiered in season two of MTv's Liquid Television. The show was an incredible anthology of animated shorts which ran from 1991-1994. All together, there were five Thomas and Nardo shorts.

Thomas and Nardo was created by one of my favorite artists, Mark Beyer. Beyer is probably best known for his Amy and Jordan comic strips (where Thomas the House first appeared.)

When Charles Burns came into town for a signing a while ago, someone asked him about Mark Beyer. He said that Mark Beyer has essentially disappeared, no one that Charles Burns knows had heard from him.

I would provide links to all the information on Mark Beyer, but there really isn't much. Even his Wikipedia entry is entirely too sparse.

Above is my favorite of the shorts and below is the first one, where Thomas and Nardo meet.

 

Longest crash.

John Waters on Dancing With the Stars?

 

“I’ve been asked to do Dancing With the Stars a couple of times but I turned them down. Could you imagine? What would I do? The Twist, the Mashed Potato? I don’t think they want me doing my Hairspray dances. Also, my mother said if I did it, she’d disown me – of all the things I’d done, that would be the one!”
starobserver.com.au has an article/interview with John Waters regarding his upcoming trip to Australia in October, Hitchhiking's a Great Way to Have Sex.

666 Salve.

File this under "Fun Things My Dad Gave Me."

 

Daily poster: Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place.

Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place.
Magic Trip is taking a magic trip around the country during August and September. The theater schedule is HERE.
The film chronicles Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters first trip across the country in Kesey's bus, nicknamed Further. Along with Kesey, Neal Cassady, and The Grateful Dead, are the usual band of creatures known as The Merry Pranksters. If you're interested in the culture at all you will recognise the names: Wavy Gravy, Mountain Girl, Ken Babbs, and the list goes on.
The Pranksters shot the film themselves. Apparently, the raw footage was lost all this time, found a couple of years ago, and edited down.

The Bus in MAGIC TRIP, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo © Ted Streshinsky, CORBIS.

My mother was one of about ten people to sit in a classroom at San Jose State when Ken Kesey got the film back from the lab and watched it for the first time. I asked how she received the invitation and she said, "I was going to San Jose State at that time and I was cute and those guys asked me to all sorts of parties and events." They watched the films all day and into the night. She remembers that Luis Valdez, founder of El Teatro Campesino, was one of the handful of people there. She used to babysit for an artist named Iver Flom (I could have that name wrong) and his girlfriend from Switzerland, Sidney, who actually had a child out of wedlock (oh, the shame) and she thinks they may have been there as well.

Interrogation: Justin Russell.

We have featured Justin Russell's Death Stop Holocaust and his upcoming, The Sleeper in Daily Poster posts.
I was attracted to his films through the amazing posters.
I was excited about his films through the super duper cool trailers.
Now, I will finally get to actually see one of Justin's films; on August 16th, Death Stop Holocaust will be slashing it's way to DVD. Pre-order your copy TODAY.
I asked Justin six questions and he was kind enough to answer.

1. It feels like you finished Death Stop Holocaust a long time ago. The DVD is set to be released August 16th. What has been going on with the film?
Distribution works in a lot of different ways. We spent a lot of time just trying to find a distributor for Death Stop. Once Media Blasters picked up the film, late last year, they did a pretty good job with the turnaround for DVD. It has felt like a long time for myself as well.

2. Both Death Stop Holocaust and your new feature, The Sleeper, have incredible posters. Can you talk about that process and who is creating these VHS box-worthy pieces of art?
My brother, Aaron Russell, is responsible for all the art for my features. Unfortunately his wonderful design for Death Stop was not used for the final box art. Aaron and I have always shared a similar vision with the horror genre, so when it came to the design we both put our heads together and come up with a concept. He always blows me away with his style and ability to create such great retro designs.

3. The Kickstarter for The Sleeper did not meet it's goal. How were you able to make The Sleeper? Did anyone that contributed on Kickstarter contact you outside the site, to help out?
Kickstarter was a way to grab some extra money for the production. The budget was already in place for the film, but I was hoping that Kickstarter could generate some extra funds. Unfortunately it didn't pan out, but I just went forward with the project anyway.

4. The poster is clearly a play on 80's slasher films and I saw on Facebook that you were collecting props from the 80's. However, the color grading and texture looks less stylized than I expected it to be in The Sleeper's trailer. Can you talk about your aesthetic choices with The Sleeper in terms of lighting, post effects, and color?
In reference to the style of the film, I wanted it to look as classic 80's as possible. If you look at all of the Slasher films of the 80's, they were all muted and desaturated. Death Stop Holocaust is a very vibrant and colorful movie. With The Sleeper, I made the aesthetic choice for a muted, dark/grainy look. It fits the winter/slasher feel perfectly in my opinion.

5. Can you talk a little bit about the crop of 1980's throwback films? It seems to have taken off from Tarantino and Rodriguez's 70's throwback, Grindhouse, continued, in theme, with the "80's in spirit" Hatchet, and masterfully done with House of the Devil. What's the allure?
I think the allure of 80's style films in the last 5 years is coming from a lack of good horror being generated by Hollywood. I have been a huge fan of all the retro films, Grindhouse, House of the Devil, Hobo with a Shotgun, etc. The style and feel of the films from the 80's is something that has been lost by horror filmmakers today. I think audiences are ready for this retro aesthetic. A lot of horror fans will tell you the golden age of horror was the late 70's through mid 80's. As a horror filmmaker, I just hope to recapture some of that magic that was lost so many years ago.

6. Where are you at with The Sleeper? Any touring plans for the film? Distribution?
The Sleeper is currently shopping for distribution and has been entered in a few festivals. I hope to have a deal locked with the film soon. I am eager to show this film to the fans and hear whether or not I was successful in taking you back to 1981.

Thanks so much to Justin for indulging me. Now, I can't wait to get my grubby mitts on a copy of Death Stop Holocaust on the 16th.



Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.

Six Bunnies.

Six Bunnies.

Acrylic and oil on canvas. 20”x16”

Cap's vice.

Did you know that Captain America smoked a pipe?
I'm rereading all of my Tales of Suspense comics and came across this last night.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb.

Daily poster: Doctor Mordrid.

Doctor Mordrid.
Are you kidding me? This looks so rad. I'm ashamed to admit that I've never heard of this film. I WILL find it.
Jeffrey Combs as Dr. Strange. Brian Thompson. It's 'R-rated'. battling dinosaur bones. This may be a perfect film.

Tour of Miro at the Tate Modern.

"Joan Miró's works come to London in the first major retrospective here for nearly 50 years."

I love how quietly and gently these gentlemen tell Miro's story.

(found at Curated.)

Yuki 7 and the Gadget Girls.

The most stylish video of the year.

Yuki 7 and the Gadget Girls: Looks That Kill is an animated short taken from Elizabeth Ito's book. Pre-order the book and DVD HERE. The DVD also includes the short, A Kiss From Tokyo, see below.

Yuki's page is HERE.

 

Game of Thrones RPG.

This video has hecka spoilers, naked 8-bitness, cussing, and is rad.

Remember Vestron Video. Remember Netflix.

The Scholarly Kitchen has an interesting article about Vestron's Law HERE.

"Vestron’s Law, which covers all media types and market segments, states that when publishers or content producers in non-print media license rights to third-parties, over time the pressure builds to revert those rights."

If you watched VHS tapes in the 1980's you'll remember the Vestron logo at the beginning of many tapes. Vestron was a giant in the VHS distribution world. They were the middleman between the studios and the thousands of video stores across the country. The studios saw that they were making a lot of money and decided to distribute themselves. Vestron attempted to make their own films, starting with Dirty Dancing. Unfortunately, the studios could play in Vestron's yard, but Vestron had a lot of trouble playing in the studio's yard and the quality of the films they made went downhill, fast.

It is interesting to watch the studios squeeze Netflix the same way.
"More dramatic is the way Vestron’s Law is playing out in the high stakes world of entertainment video. See, for example, the strong statements reported in the New York Times by executives at TimeWarner and its HBO division about the growing strength of licensee Netflix. Netflix was just fine when it provided incremental income for the movie studios, but now that it’s substantially enlarging its market share, the studios are objecting to the terms. Netflix is the new Vestron — but there is this important difference:  the Netflix CEO operates with the lessons of Vestron’s Law before him."

While I don't completely agree with these cartoons on the subject, they bring up some interesting points. The bottom one is particularly funny to me because I worked in a video store through most of the 1990's. I have a HUGE collection of VHS tapes, many pirated. At that time I was seeing VHS tapes thrown away from damage and due to a lack of space in the shop. Warriors of the Wind (before I, and probably you, knew Miyazaki's name) was just gone one day, "No one rented it," my boss said. Carnosaur with the only trailer of Corman's Fantastic Four film was tossed to make room for one of six copies of Powder. UGH. I horded because I never knew what was going to disappear. I horded because I wanted to watch, what I wanted to watch, when I wanted to watch it. Netflix's library basically cured me of that hording mentality. The films were safe. Netflix had it under control. I could get them fast.

A couple of months ago I heard that Netflix would no longer be carrying the Criterion Collection. I puked a little inside my mouth. The films aren't safe.

(I found the Scholarly Kitchen article from VHS Wasteland, which is a fantabulous site for old, genre, VHS covers.)

Daily poster: Ace High.

Ace High.
Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.

Le Merde leftovers.

Le Merde has some leftovers from San Diego Comic-con. He will be putting them up for sale at his store on Friday at noon PST.
Visit his store HERE.

Grime style.

"Next in the Tattoo Age line up is Grime. Known for his ability to put his own stamp on every tattoo he makes, Grime might be the hardest working man in the business. Join the conversation about this series on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/neweracaps "

Yubiwaza.

Skye Zanzibar's powers.

Daily poster: The Sleeper.

The Sleeper.
I'm not even sure if this is out yet. It looks like they failed to achieve their goal on The Sleeper's Kickstarter page.
The Sleeper comes from the good folks who made Death Stop Holocaust (which I have yet to see, because I am 90% chump.)
This poster is just as good as the Death Stop Holocaust one we featured back when that film came out. The guy on this poster is directly from one of my nightmares as a kid.
They have a Facebook page HERE.
"The Sleeper is an 80's slasher film. It follows one new pledge, Amy, as she learns the in's and out's of Alpha Gamma Theta. Little do her and the other sisters know, a stalker is watching them. As the girls shower, study, eat and sleep he lurks in the shadows studying them. One by one he finds the girls when they are at their most vulnerable, asleep, and kills them brutally. As each remaining girl gets a threatening phone call, they must fight to stay alive...alone."

Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.

One dead buffalo.

My dad gave this uncomfortable brass coin to me a long time ago and I just found it. They pop up on ebay every once in a while but the lettering is usually raised, rather than indented like this one.
One site specializing in "fantasy coins" believes they come from brothels (or a certain brothel, I'm not sure.)
The backside is blank.

Daily poster: Deadly Prey.

Deadly Prey.
I was looking at West African movie posters last weekend. I have a small photo collection of them. But, I didn't have this one. I found it HERE. The site has a decent description of the West African movie poster "movement" from the late-80's.

"During the late 1980s, a cottage industry developed in Ghana, West Africa, called the “mobile cinema.” It was composed of young entrepreneurs who possessed three pieces of property — a TV, a videocassette recorder (known then as a VCR), and a portable, gas powered generator. Armed with these tools plus desire and ambition, they traveled from village to village showing movies on the VCR and selling tickets to the event."

Then imaginarypeople posted the Everything is Terrible video below on the Whitechapel board. It's fate.
I haven't seen Deadly Prey, but I'm somewhat familiar with AIP, the company that made it.

Aliencycle.

 

Bangcock artist, Roon­gro­jna Sang­wong­pris­ar, made this aiencycle from recycled car and bicycle parts. Incredible.

(via Design You Trust. Thanks to Dave for the link.)

Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared.