Recycled Magazine Mirror

Like the idea! There's a lot we can do with recycled material. You can buy the mirror from UrbanOutfitters.

source: BetterLivingThroughDesign

Earth Day special

This morning I got this special photo from my friend Linda in Pittsburgh. She was reading a book when camping early April, then this spider showed up. She snapped a quick shot and the framed words accidentally formed a magical message: Nature's Talking! What a special gift for the Earth Day:)

千树万树梨花开

Marble Cliff must be the prettiest area in Columbus at this time of the year for its heavenly beautiful pear blossoms!

Drawing into Film

The book Drawing into Film is a terrific collection of drawings from 13 renowned filmmakers. Again, I feel the strong similarities between a film director and an architect: they both sketch a lot, they both deal with time, space and movement, they both go through the process of production/construction, they both face the challenge of budget, they both are involved in substantial leadership and collaboration...

It was my first time seeing the drawings or sketches from several of my favorite filmmakers. I was quite amazed by their imaginative thinking process as well as visualization skills. The following are the ones I love the most -

Once was a cartoonist, Fellini took advantage of his drawing skills in filmmaking. These cartoonish sketches were made for Amarcord (1974) and Città delle donne, La (1980).

I've seen Orson Welles' paintings in the documentary One Man Band before and was deeply impressed with his versatility. His paintings are as free and powerful as his mind. These are the sketches for Macbeth (1948).

David Lynch really surprised me with his classic style pencil sketches. You would think his drawings are as wild as his films! The following sketches are for Eraserhead (1978) and Dune (1984).

Of all the filmmakers included in this book, the most audacious in using colors is Akira Kurosawa. His color choices remind me of Van Gogh. These are a couple of drawings for Dreams (1990).

Martha Graham

I would have missed the wonderful DVD Martha Graham Dance on Film if it were not a Criterion Collection. I was led into the amazing dance world of Martha Graham, the American pioneer dancer and choreographer. The DVD includes three short films: a documentary about her dance company with her own, Appalachian Spring and Night Journey, two complete ballets performed and choreographed by her. What struck me was the depth of human emotions expressed by her body movements. Unlike classic ballet’s soft and elegant feel, Martha’s dance is much more emotional and dramatic. As a result, the characters in her dance became lively and distinctive.

Besides the dance itself, I was also attracted by the abstract and sculptural stage design in her dances. Later I learned nearly 20 of the sets were designed by Isamu Noguchi, a famous Japanese American artist and landscape architect.

My favorite quotes from Martha -

● Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
● Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.

● There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.
● I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination. There is a great deal of outer space, distant from our daily lives, where I feel our imagination wanders sometimes. It will find a planet or it will not find a planet, and that is what a dancer does.

Robert Jaso's Fashion World

Once was France's highest-paid male model, Robert Jaso is a hot fashion photographer today. He really got extraordinary vision in fashion. Love the following three images, and the last one is very architectural!

source: thecoolhunter.net

The Color of Pomegranates

Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates (1968) is one of the most beautiful and unique films I’ve ever seen. It tells about the life of 18th Century Armenian poet Savat Nova, which recalls Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrey Rublyov, a film about the life of this 15th Century Russian icon painter. Both films bear a heavy religious and cultural theme, but in different poetic forms: Parajanov’s compact and abstract poem v.s. Tarkovsky’s long and slow-paced chaptered essay.

The narrative of The Color of Pomegranates is highly symbolic, metaphorical, fragmentary and surreal. Rather than acting in the conventional sense, the characters simply repeat slow moves against minimal background to represent an event or an inner expression, almost like a stage performance in an extremely abstract form.

There is no dialogue, only text from the poet’s writings in combination with images. The colors and compositions of each frame possess an unspeakable beauty. It definitely requires a genius mind to envision such images. After learning that Parajanov was influenced by Pasolini, I can’t wait to explore Pasolini’s works.