Tim Heidecker & Eric Wareheim are comic geniuses and their show on Adult Swim is the best thing on Television or the Innernette. It’s basically a free-form public-access-VHS style collection of sketches with what seems to be a loose focus on late-eighties to mid-nineties culture. Beyond the immediate, viscerally comic aspects of their work there’s a deeper commentary going on and for me, that’s what makes the show so enjoyable time and time again.
Unfortunately, no one I know besides Jakub, Dusty, and Sam agree with me and over the past few years I’ve come to realize that Tim & Eric are rather polarizing figures; you either love them or you hate them. I’ve refrained from posting on them in the past just because it’s a little off topic for this blog and I doubt most of you come here looking for hilarious shows to watch. But today I came across Daniel Murphy’s Esquire article about the series of ads Tim & Eric and Zach Galifianakis created for Absolut Vodka and I thought it was an interesting look at how they approached the project from an advertising perspective. The three spots — which I consider to be some of Tim & Eric’s best work — came out last year as part of the Absolut World campaign. The vodka maker basically gave them an open ended commission; they could make whatever they wanted as long as they mentioned the product. I’ve never worked directly in advertising, but I’d have to imagine this would be a dream gig for anyone in the industry.
“It’s the incense, it’s the ferns.”
A Vodka Movie Pt. 1 – Watch
Esquire Article about Pt. 1 – Read
And the other two parts:
A Vodka Movie Pt. 2 – Watch
A Vodka Movie Pt. 3 – Watch
You may have seen Ryan Jeffery’s name on the blog before, he did the Benoit Pioulard video about a year ago. I first met Ryan when he did live visuals for Adelaide, he floored me, not only was the band amazing but the visuals that Ryan put together couldn’t of been done more perfectly. Ryan is the real deal, he would have about 3 mic stands around him and would have the top bar sitting horizontal that held about 80+ looped pieces of 8mm film each taped together separately making it look like he was surround by 80+ fastened thin belts. He then had 2 vintage projectors that sat side by side and pointed in the same spot on the screen that sat behind the band. What set him apart from any visual show was that he layered the 2 projections and would slowly fade in and out live and did his damnedest to sync his visuals with the music while changing the 8mm film live like a mad man. It was pure genius and I still to this day couldn’t believe his dedication to the minute by minute work he put in for every show. To explain how breathe taking the show was I one time saw Adelaide play in Lansing, MI a few years back and they played a show that had 9 bands playing that night but all of them were hardcore bands besides Adelaide, I stood their with the band and most of us had some kind of western shirt on or a plain tee but every single other person I swear had a black hoodie waiting to mosh and once Adelaide started and Ryan had the visuals going each and every kid sat down in that building indian style like 1st graders and watched them play each song, I couldn’t believe it.
I really had to dig for these videos and figure out how to convert them so I hope you enjoy them as much as I do, I hope Ryan doesn’t mind that I grabbed them off a DVD that he gave years ago, maybe if enough of us fall in love with them he’ll let us keep them up.
I’ve posted about Bibio plenty on here it feels like but with a new LP out now I had to share something different since i’ve already posted a song from Vignetting The Compost. I found these videos he did for a few new songs, enjoy.
I’ve always loved the artist series over at Hillman Curtis. Very well produced and put together films; my only complaint is that they are so few and far between. Scott’s recent post reminded me to go back and watch this one on Milton Glaser. I love hearing design heavyweights like him talk about the big issues in design. As far as I know, he still teaches at SVA occasionally—how fascinating it must be to have him as a teacher!
While they’re not quite as good as their big screen counterparts, some TV title sequences are starting to look a lot like what you’d expect from a feature film. Smashing Magazine has an article entitled “20 Brilliant TV Show Titles” featuring some of the better examples out there. My personal favorite has to be TrueBlood; the colors are incredible. Although none of them come close to beating Catch Me If you Can (although Mad Men tries valiantly), there certainly are some nice ones in the list. Link
The Knife is back but only half back and without Olof. Before I get into this video, how was the name The Knife not taken by a hair metal band in the 80s? Well if you want to see darkness then look no further than this video. The one part when all you see is a bed of bodies in the empty pool outside of the mansion will not get out of my head, the shots are wonderful all the way thru. Congrats to Mute on putting a budget together in a crazy time during early 2009 and delivering a wonderful piece like this.
I’ll be posting more about 800beloved very soon but to just give you a taste here is the video for “Go”. Sean Lynch has one of the best voices you’ll hear debut in 2009. Think who sings colder and more distant than what you hear, its like his voice is the boldest grey, you can’t even compare it Joy Division or The Cure.
The beautifully shot “White As Diamond” video by Ryan Jeffery gave me goosebumps the first time I saw it, part of me was happy that I didn’t rely on the shots color which is what usually gets me but more of the cold northern woodsy landscapes are what grabbed me.
Here’s another nice example of some time-lapse tilt-shift by Keith Loutit. This one is so good it’s hard to believe that it’s real, it just looks like a big stop-action Hot Wheels diorama. The crowd shots are the hilight for me though; I’m loving those seat colors.
