Neue
Neue, a thrice-yearly online magazine marrying cities and type. First up, New York City. (via Marc Feustel)
“Coming Home”, the showcase I guest designed for Laura Brunow Miner’s inspiring Pictory site, went live this morning. It’s a collection of photos both old and new around the theme of the houses we grew up in. A big thanks to Laura for her editorial guidance and exacting eye, and to the site’s readers for all the positive feedback I’ve received through various channels. (The introduction and quote typeface is FF Tisa served by Typekit.)
Another great hand-drawn magazine cover by John Paul Thurlow. (via Peter Nidzgorski)
A conceptual video for collaborative research project Mag+, initiated by Bonnier R&D, into the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. Rather than introducing any sort of radical new UI paradigm, the concept relies on a minimalist yet typographically rich approach that mixes the best of print and screen interaction on a tablet-sized device.
David Simon, creator of television’s The Wire, photographed by Philip Andrews on the New Orleans set of his new HBO series Tremé, for Jesse Pearson’s lengthy interview in Vice magazine. The topic of conversation darts from the screenwriting process and studio involvement, to American healthcare reforms, to the origins of Omar and his fourth-floor jump, to the failure of prohibition, and so on.
Simon spends time discussing how and why a sixth season of The Wire focusing on the immigration issue — it would have played between seasons three and four, leaving the media critique as parting shot — turned out not to be achievable, and why he feels the show’s first season was its weakest. Here’s the introduction:
David Simon is responsible for one of the greatest feats of storytelling of the past century, and that’s the entire five-season run of the television series The Wire. If that sounds like hyperbole to you, then you haven’t watched the show yet. It is the most intricate web of character, motivation, insight, action, repercussion, and emotion that’s ever been on TV, and it rivals the grand novels of the late 19th century, when novels actually, regularly, had scope. More hyperbole, but there you go.
Contains plot spoilers of course, but if you haven’t watched it, do yourself a favour this festive season. (via Wilson Miner)
It’s hard to imagine even the most jaded and cynical having any issues with the last forty minutes, in which Cameron uncorks the action and shows all the young pretenders — the Bays and the Emmerichs and the Von Triers — how it’s done.
— From Chris Hewitt’s five-star review of Avatar for Empire.
Three favourites of mine — Shane Carruth’s Primer (above), Duncan Jones’s Moon and Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris remake — made Wired readers’ list of the decade’s top science fiction films. Most surprising omission: Children Of Men.
Update: Hard-boiled notes, as I did earlier, that Children of Men is the only film from this decade to make the Wired editors’ official list, at the expense of Primer in particular. The two lists aren’t comparable though, as the official list is for the last three decades (hence the inclusion of Gattaca from 1997).
Empire celebrates its twentieth anniversary by recreating some favourite movie moments. Portraits by photographers Sarah Dunn and Robert Gallagher. (via Todd Dominey)
Hallowe’en cover for The New Yorker by Chris Ware. The story continues in comic form here and here. (via Mike Hudack)
After he finished making True Lies, Cameron called Kubrick, by then a recluse, and invited himself over. They spent a day, in the basement of Kubrick’s house in the English countryside, watching True Lies at Kubrick’s flatbed editing station. Cameron went over the shots … so that Kubrick could learn how the effects were done.
— One of many anecdotes from The New Yorker’s lengthy feature on James Cameron ahead of his sci-fi opus Avatar, opening in December. (via José Barbosa)
