MR. ANDERSON'S BIRTHDAY by Thomas Broening

If you're not familiar with Thomas Broening's photography consider this your cue to look into his work. He's local to San Francisco and I've been an admirer of his work since 2006. Recently he's been doing a series of shorts around a character named Mr. Anderson. I really like his transition to video because he's using the medium to tell a story. A lot of photographers have tried making the jump to video. Video has become more accessible with the digital SLRs, however pursuing a medium just because you can doesn't necessarily make it a worthy pursuit. A friend of mine, Zan McQuade, scribbled into my notebook a paraphrasing of a quote she heard Braden King say at an event she was covering at Sundance that has stuck with me. I looked it up today to share.

"The film or the song or the painting isn't the thing," said King, adding that it's the medium to get at the mystery. Film, to King, is "a piece of fabric you can drape over an unseeable thing to give it form." -Zan McQuade from Obsolescence and Sustainability.

Maybe it's my education in journalism, my boyhood love of comic books or my obsession with film that causes me to pine for good story telling. None the less, Broening is successfully using video as a mode to tell stories which I really appreciate. Plus, today is my birthday and I think "Mr. Anderson's Birthday" is great.

MUSICAL DESIGN INSPIRATION

LCD Soundsystem is quickly becoming one of my favorite musical influences. I think James Murphy might be a musical genius and his influence on what is current and relevant in the world of design and video is more than notable. Michael Vadino's work with LCD Soundsystem dates back to their first album. The video below is from the "That's Cool, But Can You Make It More Shit?" exhibition at the Tom Dunne Gallery of Vadino's work and was featured on the LCD Soundsystem site.

IKEA for the cats

IKEA released 100 cats into a London store for their new commercial. Mother London is the agency responsible for this part of the campaign. If you've ever been to an IKEA you'll recognize a bit of personified and anthropomorphic cat behavior. It has viral written all over it. I saw this posted on AdFreak and heard about it on NPR this morning. Youtube is already overloaded with cute cats and I can't begin to imagine the play this is going to get. Watch the making of below and the ad here.

RIGHT PLACE by KOSAI SEKINE

This short by Kosai Sekine about an idiosyncratic and eccentric store clerk finding his place won Best Short Film at Young Directors Award Cannes in 2006 and Best Foreign Film Award at New York City Short Film Festival. I love the use of color, type A product positioning and musical scoring. The short reminds the viewer that we all have our right place, no matter how misplaced we may feel. More of Sekine's work can be found here.

NAN GOLDIN SHOOTS SCANLAN & THEODORE

I've been a fan of Nan Goldin's available light photography since I discovered her work in Journalism school at The University of Kansas. This most recent shoot is like a PG version of her early work's in the late 70's and early 80's. I still find her work compelling and beautiful, especially the inclusion of Erin Wasson as the subject and model.
A slideshow of the shoot is available on the Scanlon & Theodore site.

PROCRASTINATION by Johnny Kelly

I'd like to say this doesn't apply to my life. It does. I blogged about it, another way of procrastinating.

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.