From Curbed, a photo of the Rem Koolhaas just-constructed Beijing hotel that recently burned after some, yes, "illegal fireworks" touched off a building-wide blaze.
This edifice burned top to bottom, inside and out. Yet it is still structurally intact, as you can see. This is what happens when modern skyscrapers burn. Usually.
Recommended: Coraline, and in particular Bruno Coulais' soundtrack.
This blog likes pretty much everything director/stop-motion animator Henry Selick has done, from Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions to Nightmare Before Christmas to the unfairly-derided Monkeybone.
It appears digital 3D puppets are how Hollywood plans to keep luring the preteen set to theatres in the current slump, with parents in tow, natch. Previewed several bad-looking ones before the movie started.
Selick's film has some CGI but he is that rare duck who crafts actual physical models, moves, and photographs them, thus mostly avoiding the horrible rubbery Shrek look.
Coraline has gorgeous sets and some spectacular trippy sequences, such as the "blooming of the night garden."
Coulais' sweet, sad music recalls a mix of Carl Orff and the famous Bulgarian Radio Choir recordings, with a slightly Middle Eastern flavor (the composer's mother is Iraqi). Several children's choirs are used on the soundtrack.
Pricy, because you have to shell out extra for 3D glasses to watch it in the theatre, but worth it. The score also merits a download.
This is funny but I'm annoyed that the divine Google now trumps my own computer’s remembered searches with their mediocre Everyman bull.
But I was also annoyed that amazon made suggestions for books I’d like based on other books I’d bought, back in the ’90s.
You can’t stop “progress.”
A friend calls the cake makers on this Food Network show "boring" and "sedate." So true.
Their ideas for cakes are Hallmark card-predictable but the designers have this hipster patina. Most Americans will think "wow, this is what creative people are like--so funky and free" but they are just hard working hacks and drones.
Also dislike the omnipresent "documentary" style of reaction interviews to everything that happens, no matter how unimportant.
