Video essay – famous faces in their Hollywood debut

The video starts off with Jack Nicholson’s premiere in The Little Shop of Horrors as he reads a gruesome tale:

Starring (in order of appearance): Jack Nicholson, Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage, Anthony Edwards, Eric Stoltz, Woody Harrelson, Wesley Snipes, John Krasinski, Zach Braff, Jon Hamm, Ted Danson, Whoopi Goldberg, Mark Wahlberg, Madonna, Matthew McConaughey, Renee Zellweger, Jack Black, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert Duvall, Rob Lowe, Shirley MacLaine, Sylvester Stallone, Emma Thompson, Sharon Stone, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Richard Pryor, Jonah Hill, Matt Damon, Halle Berry, Robert DeNiro, Woody Allen, Tom Selleck, Eddie Murphy, Kevin Bacon.

Edited by Jason Bailey – Music by Earth Wind and Fire

via Kottke

Jacques Pepin Desserts – light and healthy panache, tatin, and tart

My favorite chef, Jacques Pépin, cooks up four delicious, and mostly healthy desserts:

Episode 103: Jacques helps his daughter Claudine relinquish her fear of making pastry with his easy Tartelettes Aux Fruit Panaches. She goes on to assist her father in the kitchen as he makes his variation of the very traditional French, Tarte Tatin. Jacques then shares his mother’s recipe for Mémé’s Apple Tart using an unusual method to make the pastry. Finally his granddaughter Shorey joins him to make and taste Individual Chocolate Nut Pies.

“You cannot make great food without mixing some love into it.”

My favorite is the Tartalettes Aux Fruit Panaches - Thin disks of dough baked with a topping of lightly sugared apricot and plum wedges until the pastry is crisp and the fruit soft.

Blog Design – the ultra-minimalist brigade

When I first started blogging, Jason Kottke, of kottke.org, was a sort-of hero for what I wanted to do. His style of blogging is very similar to mine and so are his design aesthetics.

As time has progressed, I’ve switched from the hero archetype to more of a hopeful-peer. My delusions of equality were boosted when I noticed Jason’s latest redesign of his blog. Where several of the features match the design I created for this blog.

When you read a blog there are so many items for you to click. It’s like you’re in Times Square and everyone wants your attention. That isn’t very Jobsian (Steve Jobs-esque) especially when I only want you to do three things on my blog: read it, share it, and (hopefully) enjoy the ads.

So, I have taken the opposite, ultra-minimalist approach, the only-what-you-need-to-survive style. Everything is gone, links are minimal, and reading is clutter-free.

Jason has taken this approach for years, probably long before I even dreamed of being a blogger, but now he is going for gold. Joining the ultra-minimalist brigade, and several of his updates match mine. While others completely blow me out of the water (mirror on Tumblr?).

It’s a great confidence boost for me, but also leaves me with some things to copy or rather “good artists copy, great artists steal”.

Here is the update in Jason’s own words.

In doing the design, I focused on three things: simplicity, the reading/viewing experience, and sharing.

Simplicity. kottke.org has always been relatively spare, but this time around I left in only what was necessary. Posts have a title, a publish date, text, and some sharing buttons. Tags got pushed to the individual archive page and posts are uncredited (just like the Economist!). In the sidebar that appears on every page, there are three navigation links, other ways to follow the site, and an ad and job board posting, to pay the bills.

Reading/viewing experience. I made the reading column wider (640px) for bigger photos & video embeds and increased the type size for easier reading. But the biggest and most exciting change is using Whitney ScreenSmart for the display font, provided by Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ long-awaited web font service, which is currently in private beta.

The reading experience on mobile devices has also been improved. The text was formerly too small to read, the blue border was a pain in the ass (especially since the upgrade to iOS 5 on the iPhone & iPad changed how the border was displayed when zoomed), and the mobile version was poorly advertised.

Sharing. I’ve always thought of kottke.org as a place where people come to find interesting things to read and look at, and design has always been crafted with that as the priority. A few months ago, I read an interview with Jonah Peretti about what BuzzFeed is up to and he said something that stuck with me: people don’t just come to BuzzFeed to look at things, they come to find stuff to share with their friends. As I thought about it, I realized that’s true of kottke.org as well…and I haven’t been doing a good enough job of making it easy for people to do.

So this new design has a few more sharing options. Accompanying each post is a Twitter tweet button and a Facebook like button.

via kottke.org

Warner Bros brings out all the Batmobiles for DVD special features

The Dark Knight Rises is just a few months away from hitting cinemas, and there’s already talk about the film’s home video bonus features. Last Friday, Warner Brothers held an event just outside the offices of Legendary Pictures in Burbank, California. The showcase spotlighted all five Batmobiles seen throughout the years, from the ’60s camp series to Christopher Nolan’s recent incarnation.

via IGN

Photos posted on Facebook from the event:


Continue reading “Warner Bros brings out all the Batmobiles for DVD special features”

Interesting facts and the full story on James Cameron’s deep sea adventure

“The Challenger Deep is something like 50x the size of the Grand Canyon”

“The sub actually shrinks 3 inches at the bottom of the ocean.”

“My feeling was one of complete isolation from all of humanity. I felt like I went to another planet and came back.”

  • The pilot is descending about 36,000 feet (10,973 meters), but his ears won’t pop during the journey; the pressure inside the pilot’s sphere stays constant.
  • Crammed with equipment and just 43 inches (109 centimeters) wide, the interior of the pilot sphere is so small that the pilot will have to keep his knees bent and can barely move.
  • Water vapor from the pilot’s breath and sweat condenses on the cold metal sphere and drains to a space where it’s sucked into a plastic bag. In an emergency, the pilot can drink it.
  • The pilot chamber is a sphere because it’s the strongest shape for resisting pressure—if the pilot sat in a cylinder, the walls would need to be three times thicker.
  • If the sub’s 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of ballast weights don’t drop when commanded, a back-up galvanic release will corrode in the seawater within a fixed period of time, freeing the sub to rise to the surface.

National Geographic’s Daily News has the full story on James Cameron’s record-breaking trip.

Also, more facts on the Sub called the DeepSea Challenger, and a descriptive video below.

A portrait series of the modern American Cowboy/girl

Some excerpts from the series by Jay B. Sauceda:

BILL PRYOR – Bill runs a ranch in between Alpine and Marfa. He’s a friendly guy with what may be the raspiest voice I have ever heard.

BROOKSIE – Brooksie spent 27 years working the coal mines of Utah until settling down on an 80 acre spread close to Clear Creek Canyon.

MICHAEL STEVENS – Michael is a horseman and guitar maker living in Alpine, Texas. He’s a hard guy to miss since he towers over most of us regular sized folk.

Continue reading “A portrait series of the modern American Cowboy/girl”

The Knife Maker – maturing a skill into an art

In our second film, we meet writer turned knife maker Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn. He talks about the human element of craft, and the potential for a skill to mature into an art. And in sharing his story, he alights on the real meaning of handmade—a movement whose riches are measured in people, not cash.

via Made by Hand

 

“It takes buckets of blood, sweat, and work…to get competent, then maybe you have it in you to get good, to go beyond and become an artist.”

 

director-producer – KEEF
director of photography – JOSHUA KRASZEWSKI
editor – MATT SHAPIRO
music – MICHAEL TRAINOR & NATHAN ROSENBERG
music produced at THE DOG HOUSE NYC
sound recordist – ROBERT ALBRECHT
re-recording mixer – NICHOLAS MONTGOMERY
assistant re-recording mixer – JOHN GUMAER
gaffer – ADAM ORELLANA
title design – MANDY BROWN

special thanks – JOEL BUKIEWICZ & CUT BROOKLYN

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Watch film #1 – The Distiller

 

A project from bureauofcommongoods.com, Made by Hand is a new short film series celebrating the people who make things by hand—sustainably, locally, and with a love for their craft.