Curio: Movies By Color

Alexa here with your weekly fix of film art. I've always thought color impacts the mood of a film greatly: the pops of red in Pulp Fiction, the moody blue noir of Blade Runner, the dominant earth tones in The Big Lebowski. Along these lines, there has been a mini-trend lately of designers abstracting films according to their color palettes. My favorite is by designer Charlie Clark.  Clark's project, titled "The Colors of Motion," takes the average hue from each frame of a film and then presents the frames together as horizontal stripes or square tiles. Distilled down to their palettes, The Matrix becomes a sea of green and black, and Frozen becomes a patchwork of dark blues and browns.

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Curio: Lily Tomlin, Movie Fan

Alexa here. To celebrate Lily Tomlin's 75th birthday tomorrow I dug up this 1983 issue of the ill-fated "The Movies" magazine from my collection. In it, Tomlin shares her film memories, especially those during her time as a teen usherette. The lengthy diary-like piece, filled with teen snapshots and written with wife and longtime collaborator Jane Wagner, reveals Tomlin to be a true film obsessive, discussing various modes of screen charisma ("inner glow" versus "outer twinkle"), her sexual awakening via B-movies, the damage Brigitte Bardot did to her, and her feminist critique of Annie Hall. Here are some choice excerpts.

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Curio: Back to (Film) School

Alexa here.  Each year at this time I'm a little nostalgic for the school supply run of yore.  I'm old enough to remember the original Trapper Keepers, and personalizing them with my own doodles and stickers. So in the back-to-school spirit I've been scouring for the best film fan notebooks, pencils and stickers to use for journaling or reviewing.  For that dream trip I'll take some September to TIFF, maybe?

Let's start with Wes Anderson. More, including Pitch Perfect, Amelie and Banksy are after the jump...

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Curio: Memorabilia Memorials

Alexa here, with my late entry eulogizing last week's departed greats.  I always find it interesting when we lose two idols at the same time, and they become linked in our mourning.  There couldn't be two more different performers than Williams and Bacall, could there?  Bacall, with her sultry, almost somnolent cool, and Williams, with his live-wire kinetics. Here are some curios, vintage and handmade, to celebrate their careers in film.

Portrait print by Psychosthetics.

Here are some curios, vintage and handmade, to celebrate their careers in film.

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Curio: Jason Bryant's Skater Film Stills

Alexa here with your weekly art appreciation.  Like many, movies were a way for Jason Bryant to escape the difficulties of childhood. Growing up in rural North Carolina, he loved to draw; as he got older, painting became his passion.  He often painted while listening to the soundtracks of his favorite films, and the images and emotions evoked made their way to his canvases. His work has evolved into photo-realistic paintings of classic film stills combined with skateboard graphics and pixelation. He often paints on skateboards themselves. He explores the facades of living, the act of "us[ing] smoke and mirrors to convey a polished life but sometimes it’s broken."  

For Sake of Family

Jason's take on Gilda, North by Northwest and more after the jump...

Nothing Left To Give

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