I have to give Rock credit for his great descriptions here. I’m not always a fan but he shows great wit and depth here.

Via Mir.

In honour of the end of this year’s fantastic TED conference, here’s one of my favourite talks posted on their site in the last few months: Virginia Postrel’s excellent take on the true meaning of glamour.

John Gruber is best known for his Apple Computer-centric blog Daring Fireball, but he’s also a pretty astute design critic. In this 15 minute talk he makes a link between auteur filmmaking and the software design process.

In film, directors like Kubrick, Hitchcock, and Kurasawa were able to have extreme levels of control on their work, creating extremely personal and opinionated films.

The most prominent example of this in the design world may be Apple Computer, which reportedly follows the whims and desires of CEO Steve Jobs. As a friend who works for Apple’s rival Microsoft once put it: “Microsoft tries to please everybody, but Apple tries to please one person: Jobs”. If one happens to share Jobs’ tastes, a Mac will be perfect for you, if not, go somewhere else.

Check out this neat animation done entirely by lighting and extinguishing candles. I’m extremely impressed by the effort and ambition in the execution. See also the Making Of.

Via 6ix Passions.

Hedgehog in the fog is one of the masterworks of Russian animator Yuri Norstein, who did most of his most well-known pieces under the Soviet-controlled Soyuzmultfilm. Some of the animators films are still available in the Masters Of Russian Animation series on DVD.

He has apparently been working on a feature-length film based on the Nikolai Gogol short-story the overcoat since 1981, and from the sound of the Wikipedia article, he isn’t even half done yet, which makes me feel better about my blogging pace of late.

Here’s a cute little video of 100 aged 1 to 100 banging a drum, in order of age.

Here are some pieces of design I’ve done for M60, the film festival I’ve done some design work for over the last few months. Above is the DVD case, with a drawing of Montréal’s Rialto theatre. To the right is a drawing of Stanley Kubrick, whose favourite typeface Futura I used for all the text and documentation I could. (( though Stanley generally preferred the extra bold, while I go for the medium. )) I used his face for the ambient slideshow played during the launch party.

The festival was a huge success, and I look forward to next year.

Here is my entry for the just-completed M60, the Montréal 60-Second Film Festival. The festival, in its inaugural year, was a big hit, with tons of great films and far too many people being turned-away at the door.

My entry is really more of a tech demo than a film. It was done entirely with a flatbed scanner, an idea that quickly lost its luster as my cheap $100 scanner slowly imploded under the strain of about 400 scans in the space of a few days, getting ever slower and showing ever more lines and other artifacts of wear.

10 Beautiful Data Visualizations

Some of these are great, but some are pretty purely aesthetic.

- – -

Smashing Telly

A great site of well-curated documentaries, most of them full length. Recently featured: Air Guitar Nation, The Vice Guide to North Korea, Saul Bass, and a documentary about Stanley Kubrick. Of course there’s lots more too.

- – -

Thoughts on Seeing Leonard Cohen Live

Sean of Said the Gramophone with his first article for McSweeney’s – a very Montreal-y take on one of Montreal’s favourite musicians.

Prints by Bree,ree

I just spent about 30 minutes going through this guy’s prints. They’re great.

- – -

The Largest Police have Ever Seen

The worst kind of crime hits my home province.

- – -

The Bitter End

Anyone in Montréal over the fall should check out Dan Beirne (of Said the Gramophone fame) in his new improvised “sitcom” The Bitter End. I’ve not seen it live yet, but I have seen this funny preview on their blog (where they also hope to be posting every single episode).