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Film / Wall-E

There are two types of adorable: Pre-Wall-e, and Post-Wall-e. Pre-Wall-e adorable is the type of adorable that Suri Cruise and palm-sized furry creatures inspire. Wall-E takes this definition of adorable to a-whole-nother new level. So sweet is Pixar’s new offering that my eyes started to secrete this saline substance that is commonly referred to as tears. I had to bow my head and start pretending that the child next to me had set off my hayfever. Again.

I don’t know why I was surprised about this though. Pixar’s last offering – the highly successful French rat in the kitchen — also inspired similar moisture around the eyes. In fact, all their cinema release features have such a tear-jerking quality that, maybe, Pixar should be officially welcomed into the onion family. Except no one is ever truly fine about hanging with the onions.

But enough of the tissues; what we’re really all here for is one of those super cute, highly enjoyable, well-made feature films that Pixar is so good at making. Their track record should be enough to bring hoards of screaming children swarming in to fill seats with their booster-seated bums and, frankly, Wall-e doesn’t disappoint on all counts.

What we have is not only a sickly sweet film that is well-written and well-produced, but it is a feature that even touches on some contemporary issues that will leave about 20 per cent of said screaming children looking at their chocolate smeared fist, wondering whether they should go eat a carrot stick instead. For me, anything that has that kind of result equals good times ahead.

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Waltz With Bashir

Long gone is the time when animation was for children, and the gritty style of Waltz With Bashir seems to have first reached a wider audience in the recent past with Scanner Darkly. That film, like Waltz With Bashir, adds a realism and depth through simple colours and uncompromising scenes, which it is difficult to achieve with real actors. The stunning opening of Waltz with Bashir, featuring a pack of rabid, rampaging dogs, with gleaming, yellow eyes is the ideal example. The film then tracks a veteran of the Israeli Army mission in the Lebanon War of the early eighties, as he tries to recover his memories of the conflict and the following slaughter of innocents. His empty memory is probably similar to that of many of us who have either forgotten or never even heard of this conflict. As a story it’s wonderful, as animation it’s beautiful, and as a piece of history, it shouldn’t be missed.

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WOW WOW WOW, a knit animation!

Some years ago, Michel Gondry’s lego animation for the White Stripes video made my jaw drop. This one drops my jaw just the same, if not more. Amazing.

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Man in the Dark

This odd, atmospheric animation by web artists Aaron Russ Clinger and Miltos Manetas is simple but effective, a finely rendered piece of interactive art. There are some pretty crazy things you can make the floating man do if you play around with this long enough.

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Sydney’s Published Art bookstore

I almost had a heart attack the first time I entered Published Art. And I’m not even an architecture and design nut. This place is the shiz. As the name of the store suggests, Published Art is art published in book form. Their spectacular array of art, design and architecture books will bring a tear to the eye of any admirer of beauty. For Published Art, less is more. They make sure that they only keep the latest titles in stock so that every single one of their gorgeous hardcover books can be viewed from any part of the store. Read more

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Frank Warren’s Postsecret

I first met Postsecret lying in a Mexican hammock hung approximately a hundred metres away from a smelly dank dodgy hallway. ‘I wish I had lung cancer so my mom would quit smoking’, it told me. I was surprised. You don’t ever really expect to hear (or read) such a deep dark and tabooed secret, even from your nearest and dearest. But I guess if your nearest and dearest is the one who is the cause of that pain, you aren’t exactly going to share that with them. Right? Read more

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Soho Markets, Berwick Street, London

Fresh fruit? Yes please! Never mind that I had just finished a cottage pie as big as my face. I was going to have a punnet of those raspberries. I couldn’t help myself. Really. They were just sitting so pretty alongside the luscious apples and pears lining the rickety stalls of London’s Soho Fruit Markets, I just couldn’t restrain myself. And it seemed that I wasn’t the only one. Read more

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Chicago artist Damara Kaminecki (aka Damarak the Destroyer) creates the some seriously bad-ass woodcuts. With a darkly gothic, antique aesthetic, and subject matter tending towards ye old curiosity shop, Kaminecki has a body of work which truly stands out. Read more

I love the work of Joao Machado. It’s vibrant, distinctive, and compelling — broken bits of storylines immersed in drippings of bold shape and colour. Read more


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You heard it here first. Singer-songwriter Julian Perretta might just become the most exciting new artist of 2008. Read more

It looks like the New Rave movement is making a big comeback thanks to Carrie Mundane, designer of the UK-based fashion label, Cassette Playa. Read more

I’ve heard whispers that Kings Of Convenience, the Norwegian duo of folkloric proportions, have split. I hope they’re unfounded, but like all good rumours, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Perhaps Erland Oye is enjoying the unlimited scope of his solo career too much? And then there’s his new submorphic guitar pop project, The Whitest Boy Alive, to keep him occupied. The whitest boy alive? Indeed he is. But damn the guy can sing.

Located by the Atlantic Avenue Station, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the BAM movie theaters are as genuine as it gets in New York when it comes to going to the movies. It features a small selection of the latest releases actually worth seeing, or you can immerse yourself in the BAMcinématek, which presents repertory classics, retrospectives, festivals, premieres, and rare films.

DJ Spooky — That Subliminal Kid — is just about the deepest crate digger around, trawling the barrels of long-lost record stores for choice vinyl to spin in his wickedly dubby sets. He gave us the inside word last week on his eight favourite songs right now via our sister website, My Secret Playlist. This is what he had to say about Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Panic in Babylon: ‘If there’s anything that the twenty-first century has told us, it’s that dub is the real original hip-hop. Lee Scratch even had to make it clear in 1965 by adding “Scratch” to his middle name. Take that, Grandmaster Flash!’ Read the rest of DJ Spooky’s Secret Playlist.


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Roots Manuva’s Slime & Reason

I like Roots Manuva because he tells stories. I know that sounds simplistic, but honestly, have you noticed how rappers, certainly American rappers, have stopped narrating their lives and are purely focused on how great they are? I know, I know, hip-hop is all about word play, slang, and blah blah blah. Read more

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Pictures taken at just the right time

You don’t have to be a skilled photographer to take the best snaps: some just appear out of absolutely nowhere. This site has collected together some of the funniest, cruelest, most alarming — yet completely spontaneous — photos circulating the web. Thank god for other people’s suffering! Read more

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Alex Trochut

Freelance designer Alex Trochut uses typography, illustration and a solid idea to create works that communicate to each brief. He states that he doesn’t want to choose a particular style but instead enjoys ‘expressing himself and communicating though the needs of every project’. And his formula has worked: his clients include The Guardian G2, Nike Football, and my pencil-case favourite, Faber and Faber.

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National Geographic Best Wild Animal Photos of 2008

National Geographic just announced the Best Wild Animal Photos of 2008. They’re all stunning, but I’m particularly fond of the one of a frog refusing to become lunch for a snake. It looks like they’re eating each other. My number two is the black-crested macaque hanging out on a beach. Read more

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Two Americas

There are two Americas: one which strives to create its own culture, music, and art with a strong sense of ethics in mind, and another that drinks 32-ounce energy drinks before waiting on line to get into a club packed with women trying to get back at their overbearing fathers, and homophobic men with a fondness for Axe body spray. How do we bridge the divide?

Golden Half is one of the world’s most popular toy cameras. It’s compact in size and each click of the shutter uses half of the standard 135mm frame. This means a 36-exposure roll of film will return around 72 images. It’s available for US$100. Read more

the faint

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Woohoo! We have five copies of the new Faint album, Fascination [Inertia], to give away to randomly selected Australian-based Lost At E Minor subscribers who leave a message under this post telling us about the last time they, ummm, Fainted.

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