My New York Diary: A Film-Book by Julie Doucet and Michel Gondry

A long time fan of illustration and film, especially the work of Michel Gondry, this book and DVD are very exciting for me. This book is a collaboration between illustrator Julie Doucet and and Michel Gondry. In 2008, Gondry asked Doucet to make a film together. The book is about that process and inserts Doucet and her drawings into one narrative and an 18 minute film. It is available for purchase on Picturebox and according to the CoolHunting.com post I saw this at originally Gondry will be signing copies in LA on November 11. It's almost worth a trip south to LA.

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.