Light & Magic.
BLADE RUNNER, Dir. Ridley Scott, 1982
(post about BR forthcoming)
Video posts today.
Nouvelle Vague – “Dance with Me” cut to Bande à part, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1964
via BleachBlack
Alright, alright.
I’ll take flack for this post. It’s been a month since the video’s initial release, which makes this topic an old bag. And it’s not like Lady GaGa needs any MORE press, but c’mon.
The video for “Bad Romance” is awesome.
I know. Can we still be friends?
Chain Jacket, via Luxirare.
Her concept sketch on the left, her final product / body on the right.
Luxirare authors my favorite style website. She creates her own clothing and gourmet food. Simple as that.
I don’t think she gets enough accolades on her great photography/composition, however. The site is flush with amazing images of her original products. Truly inspiring stuff.
This photo is just SO…good.
SO GOOD. <3
The Masque of Red Death
Harry Clarke (March 17, 1889–1931) was an Irish stained glass artist and book illustrator. Born in Dublin, he was an important figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement.
Pen, ink and watercolor.
Some of his best known and most successful works are Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales, Goethe’s Faust and Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
“Celtic Mysticism, Symbolism, National Romanticism, Art Nouveau, all claimed an influence in the work of Harry Clarke.” – Belvedere College Museum.
Clarke’s stained glass work:
Though I love Clarke’s figures, for obvious reasons, some of my favorites are his most inert pieces. Landscapes. If you can call them that:
I have the pleasure of owning this piece, and a copy of the The Masque of Red Death seen at the top of this post:
Alex McDowell designed the next installment of the franchise – THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS. This production was one of those disorganized-but-well-intended sequels that began with no shooting script, which contributed to the final film’s story and performance failures. Too bad.
The film is really gorgeous, and McDowell contributed one of the most memorable Alternate-Los Angeles settings in this film. The orange street lights of LA, the smog, Dia de los Muertos, S&M club culture, motorcycles / driving culture, tattoo parlors, the LA River, the Long Beach docks, and Downtown Los Angeles all appear in and inspire the sets in this movie.
THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS, Dir. Tim Pope, 1996
“L.A. is the bane of designers’ existence, because everyone always refers to it as the touchstone of dark futuristic design. It was really important to me that we didn’t shoot L.A. in the rain. I think that would have just said [the old things] all over again…It’s a challenge; there’s never really been a film shot at night that doesn’t use water as an element for reflection. It’s a classic thing.” – McDowell
On broken glass:
“But when we were scouting downtown locations, a recurrent image to me was the broken glass all over the place. Early on, I decided that we could use broken glass to do the same thing as water, but it would have a far more potent narrative message. The Kristallnacht…so there’s those kind of overtones. And then there are earthquake overtones which…is the idea that the people are living in buildings they would never ordinarily be able to. The homeless have repopulated the city because the city’s falling apart, it’s been condemned, and everyone else has moved out.”
EXT. Dust Factory
(frames from original comic/graphic novel by J. O’Barr)
Alex McDowell is one of my favorite, current production designers.
He also inadvertently shaped my tastes / aesthetic/ geekdom by production designing the first two movies in THE CROW franchise. Yes, I’m an uber-geek. It’s cool. I can live with it.
By the way – Alex McDowell started his career designing album covers for The Cure and Siouxie and the Banshees. Then he moved onto art directing music videos and commercials, and then directed some too. You know. No big deal. Later, he designed a few movies you might have heard of. I’ve been a fan of his work since THE CROW. He’ll get an special blog post from me soon, no doubt – he’s amazing!
Gothic-romantic-vengeance-cheesiness-possibly-bad-acting aside, the first two films in THE CROW franchise are gorgeous. Iconic. Visually incredible.
Observe:
THE CROW, Dir.: Alex Proyas, 1994
“I think that the starting point for the design was, obviously, the comic book,” McDowell said. “The imagery of that is great, and it is also very simple… We tried to take the simplicity of the comic book to the film. The setting is a decayed inner city; a place that has gone so far down the tubes, it’s beyond redemption. We really wanted to get across that the city is like a war zone.”
“McDowell made the cathedral his central design point.”
You can see the cathedral elements in the loft that belongs to Eric and Shelley. The set is heavily influenced by the apartment drawn in the comics too.
This commercial cracks me up.
Of course, I respond to descriptions of ”intricate, Venetian frescos” on ceilings and Corinthian details on monolithic columns.
…the promise of virtual bloodshed isn’t bad either.
I’m not a gamer, so this commercial worked on me by using architecture nomenclature. Smarty pants at Ubisoft! The game DOES look gorgeous.
Cute.
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