Thursday, February 24, 2011

Closets I'd raid: Coco (Eliot) Sumner








Jordan: Dominate Another Day

Here are most of the spots from Jordan's Dominate Another Day campaign, featuring Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade and comedian Kevin Hart. The campaign supports new Air Jordan 2011, which just launched last weekend.

Dominate Another Day (the first spot):


My personal favorite: H the Great (it just cracks me up):


And a slew of others:

Escape:


Heat Check:


Quickness:


Explosive:


Gadgets:


Rocket Shoes:

Liv Tyler by Terry Richardson (February 2011)


Sunday, February 13, 2011

James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream

The 'Wilhelm Scream' is a Hollywood sound effect, often used when someone is stabbed, shot, falls from a great height, or anything traumatic/tragic of that nature. It's become a Hollywood inside joke, referencing the scene when a character named Wilhelm (from the 1953 western film The Charge at Feather River) painfully cries out after he's shot by an arrow.

James Blake's song/video does not in fact contain the Wilhelm Scream, yet seems to perfectly capture it by winding it down in slow-motion, revealing that tragic pain frame-by-frame, beat-by-beat. The disoriented, hazy, all-encompassing sense of loss -- anyone who's ever had their own Wilhelm Scream can relate.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Steve McCurry: The Last Roll of Kodachrome

With the digital-photography revolution, Kodak is discontinuing one of its most legendary film stocks -- Kodachrome, which has been described as being to color film as what "saxaphone was to jazz". Photographer Steve McCurry, famous for his National Geographic portrait of a wild-eyed Afghani woman, convinced Kodak to leave him the final roll of Kodachrome film. Here is a sampling of some frames from that last roll. Note its beautiful color palette -- soft, elegant, pure, and brilliant.


Robert De Niro in his Tribeca screening room, NYC (June, 2010)


Boy in slum tea shop, Dharavi, India (June, 2010).


Ammitabh Bacchan, arguably India's most iconic actor -- he's like the Brad Pitt/Paul Newman of Bollywood. (June, 2010)


Rabari tribal elder, India (June, 2010)


Rabari tribal elder, India (June, 2010)


Rabari girl, India (June, 2010)


Rabari boy, India (June, 2010)


Street art on 7th Ave & Bleecker, NYC (July, 2010)


Grand Central, NYC (July, 2010)


Young couple in Union Park, NYC (July, 2010)


The final shot, taken in Parsons, Kansas - home of the last lab to develop Kodachrome film. At the feet of the graveyard statue are flowers of Kodak's iconic red & yellow hues. “I saw a statue of this soldier, looking off in the distance,” says McCurry, “and he’s kind of looking off into the future or the past. I figure, This is perfect. A cemetery. Kodachrome—this is the end of this sort of film—[suggesting] the transience of life. This is something that’s disappearing forever.”

Thursday, February 3, 2011