Juno
Giving teenage pregnancy the Hollywood treatment could have easily resulted in sickly sweet, sentimental rubbish. Instead, a sharp script and excellent lead performances backed up by a stellar supporting cast have produced a film that manages to be both pro-life and liberal. With its honest, insightful and at times hilarious dialogue, along with a simple but compelling plot, Juno is the antidote we needed to Knocked Up. While more popular, Knocked Up occupied a neverland where models sleep with dorks, then screw their careers to raise the bastard offspring, all among a mire of tired jokes and bad acting. All that’s needed now, for balance, is a film where a middle-class, financially-stable married couple chose abortion because, while their situation is ideal and all their friends already have children, they’re just not ready.
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‘We’re all a little mad here’, say the owners of Hollywood’s Laurel Avenue Bakery (aka Bakelab), an outfit that makes handcrafted goodies inspired by that fantastical childhood classic, Alice in Wonderland. The bake shop’s Tea Party Curio Box is packed with a delectable array of trippy treats: ‘curiously sweet’ blue meringue mushrooms, Cheshire Cat Macarons, ‘Taste Me’ cookies, and even a couple of unbirthday cupcakes — candles included. Read more
More timeless than current’. But I recently finished a long and complicated novel about Hollywood in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and am just now buckling down to write a short nonfiction book about this film, part of a series for Soft Skull Press. A little peremptorily written off as a mere ‘entertainment’, and also overshadowed by the in-fact-not-quite-as-good Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, this is a pretty dazzling effort: a coded Watergate-conspiracy narrative, a comment on the perils and pleasures of being fooled that’s also twice as much fun to watch as you remember. Which was pretty fun to begin with.
West Edmonton’s Fantasyland Hotel
Fantasyland Hotel is located in the West Edmonton Shopping Mall, Alberta, Canada. It first opened in 1986 and the main characteristic of the complex is its original themed-room styles, which include Hollywood, Roman, Polynesian, Truck, Victorian Coach, Canadian Rail, Arabian, African, Igloo, Western and Waterpark. All up, the hotel has a total of 120 theme rooms in eleven different styles. Read more
Also by XAVIER TOBY
A film about a horrendously obese girl who has two kids, with Mariah Carey in it and produced by Oprah. Sounds awful and at first, I couldn’t be less interested, but it turns out, I couldn’t be more mistaken. Based on the novel Push, it’s a tight and intelligent script realised by dedicated actors and exquisite direction. Read more
‘Most bands that play traditional music, do it in a traditional way. What’s interesting for us it to keep it fresh and make it a living tradition,’ said Gergely Barcza of Hungarian gypsy-fusion band Besh o droM. Formed in Budapest in 1999, the name translates as ‘ride the road’, which they’ve done with performances at festivals all over Europe, Asia and soon for the first time, in Australia. ‘When we started, I never thought the music would travel so far, and take us all to so many different places.’ Read more
Often a film revolves a major action or series of events, while at the centre of the Italian film Quiet Chaos, is a mammoth but not uncomfortable hole. When a TV executive’s wife suddenly dies, he takes to spending his days outside his daughters school, but instead of his life falling apart, his friends and relatives come to console him, and faced with his calm, they end up revealing their own difficulties. Read more
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Australian illustrator Ken Taylor has created imagery for some of rock n’ ’roll’s great purveyors of sound, from the Rolling Stones and Queens of the Stone Age, to Nine Inch Nails and the Mars Volta. He has an easily recognizable style that screams sharp edge cool. Bold and bawdy, Taylor’s pieces use vivid colour to create a cut-out-comic-like feel reminiscent of old movie posters from the 1930s and 40s.
These rings are handmade in Italy by Ashanti Raffaele Cinzio and come in a set of three, shaped flat and polished in a brushed finish. One sterling silver, one yellow bronze and one rose bronze. The rings individually measure 2mm height on the thin side and raise gradually around the ring to a height of 50mm to the feature side. As a set, the total band width consistently measures 7mm.
Oh man! Now I’ve seen it all. An entire blog dedicated to cupcakes, those perfect little bundles of sweet, sweet goodness. Hell, my mouth is watering just looking at them. What will they think of next? A blog about pretzels? Ha! Oh, wait a minute. Damn!
The work of Jennybird Alcantara is a trip, to say the least. This stuff is about as surreal is surreal gets. Think dolls, and animals, and plants, and insects, then mix it all up every which way and you’ve got the beautifully twisted paintings of Jennybird Alcantara.
Kirk brings Molly to meet his family for a pool party but she doesn’t have her swim suit. Kirk, an average Joe, can’t believe his luck when gorgeous babe Molly falls for him even though he’s the first to admit She’s Out of My League. In cinemas April 1.
California’s Cerasoli:LeBasse Gallery has just moved to new digs on Washington Boulevard, Culver City. And to celebrate the re-launch they have an exhibition running featuring the work of Deth P Sun, Mari Inukai [above] and Melissa Haslam, amongst others. This inaugural exhibition, the aptly titled Blender, runs until November 1st.
Three piece, cLOUDDEAD, who formed in Cincinnati at the tail-end of the last millenium, fuse traditional hip hop beats with indie, electronica and psy-rock overtones. Doesone and Why?’s layered, poetic vocals cover the personal, political and social elements of their lives; and, above all, their flatout rejection of traditional musical boundaries makes them a quirky and unique act.
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Scanners’ new single Salvation
I love this track by London based rock group, Scanners, which is off their latest album, Submarine. Having toured with acts such as The Horrors, The Wedding Present, The Charlatans, Electric Six, and Juliette & The Licks, Scanners could well blow up in 2010. Figuratively speaking, not literally. No, that wouldn’t be fun.
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The clever folk at Code Organ made a sythesizer that turns webpages into music. Just enter a URL and listen to the sweet, sweet sounds your site produces.
French installation artist Baptiste Debombourg made this mural of Icarus using 35,000 staples as a comment on American power. Read more
Wheeeeee! This game is so freaking fun! You move your cursor over each dot to make them split into four smaller dots ad infinitum.
Entre Chien et Loup by Amira Fritz
This fashion photo series — Entre Chien et Loup — is the product of a collaboration between Parisian-based photographer Amira Fritz and Matthew Cunnington and John Sanderson. Read more
Warning at Work is a silkscreen mini-print from Sussex based illustrator Andy Smith which comes in a limited edition of just 50. Dimensions are 20cm x 15cm. We have them available through the Lost At E Minor store.
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The new Runaways movie looks at the formation of the seminal girls’ group which spawned Joan Jett’s career. We have a Runaways prize pack to give away, including Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway, the Joan Jett and the Blackhearts Greatest Hits CD, the film’s soundtrack, and Joan Jett’s photobook with Todd Oldham. To enter, just leave the name of the city you live in! Read more
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