Here are some shiny things that caught my eye recently:
♦ In today’s housing market, here’s the route I may need to go:
Via.
♦ For something a bit more expansive, click through to check out more pictures of Hope Tree, an installation at Tokyo’s Designer Week 2010 “that combines paper and light within a 20 foot shipping container. Visitors walk into the space to find a toroidal surface composed of 670 self-supporting watercolor paper panels punched with leaf-like cutouts. To make the experience even more ethereal, these openings are illuminated by LED string lighting, which allowed for coverage of the entire space with minimal watt usage. Designed by 24° Studio.” Via.
♦ Last night, Neil Gaiman guest-voiced as himself on The Simpsons for what was a pretty fun episode—a little Ocean’s Eleven action with the tweenlit field. Pretty hilarious. If you missed it, Hulu.com will have the episode available for viewing on November 28th (or 29th).
♦ I do love me some gateau, people, especially when it’s based on some super-cool art. Check out the images below of adaptation at its best (and yummiest). Here’s the original art, Descent, by the very talented artist Ray Caesar (click to make larger):
And here’s the cake based on Descent, made by pastry chef Dante Nuno, owner of Fire and Icing (also click to make bigger):
Tentacle-tastic! Who wouldn’t want that cake? I bet you’re thinking about eating it right now. Definitely check out the website for Fire and Icing, whose tagline is “Delicious as Heaven, Sinful as Hell”—the gallery of confections is impressive. Via.
♦ Speaking of tentacles, artist Greg Brotherton really knows how to repurpose stuff. Via.
♦ I particularly enjoyed Kevin Delger’s Daily Superpower for November 16th: the ability to cry wolves.
Who wouldn’t want to cry wolves?
♦ One of the titles from DC Comics’s new 52 I’m looking forward to checking out in collected form is Justice League Dark, which throws together all the supernatural heroes of the DC Universe into a super-team. I’m not sure how I feel about John Constantine as a superhero, but we’ll see. i09 has an exclusive preview of the third issue to whet your appetite.
Relatedly, I recently picked up the first issue of the rebooted Wonder Woman, and I have to say it was pretty darn good.
♦ My friend Molly shared with me the link to this piece in the Weddings section of The New York Times, describing the grammar-based courtship of Jennifer Miller and Jason Feifer. Finally, the semi-colon gets the respect it deserves.
♦ Who doesn’t like Art Deco and superheroes? Artist Grégoire Guillemin has made some great posters inspired by that art movement. (Fans of movie poster art—I’m looking at you, Mr. Cook—might enjoy seeing his minimalist vision at work in various portfolios on his website.) Two of my favorite of Guillemin’s Art Deco superheroes are below, and you can buy these as various-sized posters at Society6 (click to make bigger).
Via.
♦ Everyone’s abuzz about the new trailer for Pixar’s Brave featuring the studio’s first female heroine. The film’s due out in Summer 2012, and I can only hope that the storyline lives up to the gorgeous animation. Check out the trailer below.
♦ Another video for your consideration is Raiding the Lost Ark by Jambe Davdar, “an in-depth insight into the making of the 1981 collaboration between Spielberg and Lucas. This fan made Filmumentary contains behind the scenes video, rare interviews with cast and crew, reconstructed deleted scenes and subtitled facts.” Did you know that in German “Spielberg” means “play mountain”? I didn’t, nor do I know how “rare” this commentary is, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Via.
