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Happy Thanksgiving from Bad at Sports

Christopher — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 01:47:19 +0000

From everyone here at Bad at Sports we want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and hope you are enjoying the warmth and food that comes with your friends, family or significant other. We are continuously thankful for you, the art work we all love and the culture that gets us excited each and every morning which is only there due to the non stop diligence of everyone involved.

Now that you are most likely full of tryptophan, sleepy and in need of a good film to watch may we offer the latest Charles Bronson film for your enjoyment…..

Happy Thanksgiving and here’s to many more.

Superheroes in Court! Lawyers, Law and Comic Books & More

Christopher — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 05:24:09 +0000

Superheroes in Court! Lawyers, Law and Comic Books
Currently on display at Lillian Goldman Law Library’s rare book exhibition gallery at Yale the series showcases examples of images of superheroes in the dock, comic books about lawyers and examples of legal disputes and Congressional inquiries involving caped crusaders. My artist sense tells me somewhere a lawyer who loves comics is currently on kayak.com reserving a seat on the next flight to New Haven, CT. Read more here & here

Merchandise Mart adds LA to the portfolio of Art Fairs
Planed to open in fall of 2011 (want to lay odds it is close if not the same time as Scope: London & Zoo?) the Chicago based Merchandise Mart has hired MOCA’s Adam Gross as director of the event. Read more here

The Art on the Walls of Wall Street 2
Even though the original Wall Street film was a better story and all around film it did lack in a few areas most of all it’s representation of art. Work, design and taste that is so garish and laughably over the top that it is highly distracting from the story being told. In the sequal the art is more established and used as pantomime of the duplicitous emotions, mood or subtext of the film. The NY Times wrote and interesting article on the process. Read more here

Egyptian Van Gogh Heist now thought to be an inside job
A while back there was the report of a Van Gogh theft from the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum which had the art security equivalent of a ADT window decal and nothing more (seven out of 43 security cameras functioning and none of the alarms attached to the museum’s paintings) now the talk is that it was an inside job. This very well may be true but llet me ask how hard was the planning session for that theft? How complex could it have been since the only thing to slow one down from a theft was remembering if it was a push or pull door at the exit? Habib el-Adly, Egypt’s interior minister, said the loss was a “difficult lesson”…. Read more here

Google brings a rough version of a actual usable universal translator
called “conversation mode” which in the art world we could all use more then we would like to admit.

Review: Bless 10 Years of Themelessness DVD

Martine Syms — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:00:12 +0000

During a recent visit to Los Angeles I picked up the video compilation BLESS: Celebrating 10 Years of Themelessness at Ooga Booga. When I asked Wendy, the shop owner, about the dvd I was told “It’s not for people new to Bless. You won’t learn more anything about them. It’s for the true Bless fan.” For a moment I considered whether or not I was a true Bless fan and decided that I was.

Bless is a conceptual fashion house based in Paris and Berlin started by Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag in 1996. They release products designed to “make the near future worth living for.” They make thoughtful garments, jewelry for electronic cables, hanging wardrobe mobiles, and other items intended to be used, lived with, and sometimes discarded.

BLESS: Celebrating 10 Years of Themelessness, released by Bureau des Videos, collects 15 short videos from the Bless archive. Many of the pieces are documentation from the public presentations of their varied collections. In N^o25, Uniseasoners, as people enter the dining area of a restaurant they are seated by servers wearing Bless clothing. The servers take orders, bring wine, and later bring food. Everything is normal, maybe even boring, except for occasional pauses to highlight elements of the clothing. A scarf turns into a hooded sweater. In another video, N^o13 Basics, a narrator lets me know that we’re in an apartment in Paris where several friends have spent the day together “wearing sweaters, bodysuits, trousers and customized Levi’s jeans” as if they were their own.

There is nothing precious about Bless. Bless is a project that presents ideas about living. There is no lifestyle to buy, you must bring your own. As their modest iWeb page says, FITS EVERY STYLE.

Where the Wild Things Are Dirty Hipsters Are!

Christopher — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:57:42 +0000

Hope everyone is having a great Halloween and in the spirit of dressing up as things you are not here is the latest movie trailer by Spike Jonze “Where the Dirty Hipsters Are” the sequel to the smash hit “Where the Wild Things Are”. Have fun!

Food Inc., For Dummies

laurenvallone — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:41:30 +0000

Food, Inc., by director Robert Kenner, made me feel stupid. It reminded me of every reason why I loved Our Daily Bread, of 2006. Our Daily Bread exercised subtly and restraint, with very still, bleak vignettes of the monstrous places that produce the food we eat around the world. It does this without commentary, just offering a view of what is. Food, Inc. practices neither restraint nor subtlety. Each segment of the film is broken into segments that are announced with a title. As if we couldn’t catch on that hey, now we’re going to learn about corn.

If you have every seen more than one PETA video, or thought about the fact that high fructose corn syrup is in most processed foods, then this film will basically be a refresher for you. I picked up a few good conversation starters, like, if a cow were allowed to graze on grass for (I don’t remember it exactly…) a whole bunch of E. Coli would be naturally eliminated from its gut. However, instead of letting cows graze, we prefer to wash the processed hamburger meat with chlorine, which also kills the virus. The breakdown of who owns what we eat was also interesting, as well as the fact that there are only three or four commercial slaughterhouses left in the entire United States.

The graphics were too cutesy and glossy for me as well. You would think a film that is focus on questioning how “natural” our food is would have more organic and basic feeling fonts and graphics, instead of super processed looking titles and animation. A lot of it felt very Disney-fied. Or maybe thats just me.

The “experts” were entertaining and knew what they were talking about. However, the selection was seriously limited. There was the bad corporation, the good farmer, the victimized small business owners, the granola hippie who went corporate, the sob story.

In general, the film was well researched, and would be great to show in an elementary or middle school. The issues are important and should definitely be given the space to be discussed. But, just a tip, if you doze off during the entire film, the directors conveniently end the film with a few minutes of bullet points of what you should have picked up during the course of the film. To summarize: buy locally, buy organically, eat seasonally, and try not to get E.Coli.

If you want to check out the trailer, you can see it here. But, if you haven’t already, definitely check out its classier counterpart, Our Daily Bread.

Objectified: Hevetica for Industrial Designers

Christopher — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:51:08 +0000

First there was Hevetica, the documentary about the font and typography in general. It was all the rage in art circles for a week and now comes the spiritual sequel Objectified which promises to do the same for industrial design.

Check out the trailer below.

Let the Right One In

Meg Onli — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:33:51 +0000

About a month ago I was able to catch a showing of the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In after much nagging from my film buff sister. Adapted from John Ajvide Lindqvist’s 2004 best selling novel Låt den rätte komma in, the film centers on the relationship that forms between Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) and the undead Eli(Lina Leandersson).

Oskar a 12-year old who spends his days being bullied at school and his nights imagining revenge. He meets Eli another outcast who has recently moved next door to Oskar. Set in the suburbs of Stockholm in the mid 80’s, the frozen landscape becomes the perfect setting for the sudden rash of murders. The film is remarkably beautiful but also is playful with its use of vampire folklore. Finally we see in a film what happens when a vampire enters a room uninvited. Hands down the best contemporary vampire film I have seen.

*Note: I rewatched the film this weekend after I picked up a copy at Target. I thought I had seen some subtle changes in the conversations but didn’t think much of it. The consumerist yesterday posted an article about the dumbing down of the subtitles. Hopefully they will release a copy with the original subtitles soon.

Paul H-O interviewed by C-Monster

Meg Onli — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:15:56 +0000

One of my favorite blogs, C-Monster, has an interview with ‘Guest of Cindy Sherman’ director Paul H-O. “During a series of exclusive interviews, Paul and Cindy fall in love and begin a romance. Unexpectedly, the relationship forces Paul to confront issues of ego, gender and identity as he gets caught up in the aura of Cindy’s celebrity.With unprecedented access, the documentary places us in the company of the great artist. Spanning over 15 years and including more than fifty interviews with art world and entertainment luminaries…” The interview is a bit random. No mention of Sherman, mainly just some random questions but might be worth it if you like Paul H-O.

Guest of Cindy Sherman opens March 27th in selected theaters.

via C-Monster
C-M: What’s the biggest stereotype about art?
H-O: That tremendous macho attitude that someone like Picasso embodied. Martin Kippenberger established a certain style for himself that way, too. Then there’s Schnabel. People don’t think I like Julian Schnabel, but, in fact, I adore him. He’s given me great material. He is that larger-than-life figure. He adopts the attitude of being Picasso, and since he’s such a visible figure, Hollywood people see him and say, “Here’s an artist!”

Read the entire interview here.

Meg watched The Watchmen

Meg Onli — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 03:39:32 +0000

I went in with low expectations of The Watchmen after reading reviews and speaking with my sister, who saw a midnight showing in LA. Her review was “Eh”. Typically I am really anal about showing up on time to movies. I forced my girlfriend to show up about an hour and a half early expecting a line for the 7:00 Saturday showing. No line was to be found. We began to realize that not even half of the theater was going to be filled. At around the end of the pre show countdown (approx 6:45) a mother and her brood of toddlers not only showed up to this rated R film but decided to sit next to us. Not exactly next to us, but I could see the whites of their eyes as they peered at me during violent parts of the film.

If you have read the comic you already know what is going to happen within the first ten minutes of the film. I did enjoy the alternate reality flashbacks accompanied by Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. This point marks when my viewing experienced was ruined, as the kiddos began to scream and tell each other to shut up. I will save you the details of their other antics but after about half way through the movie security came in to escort the toddlers out and deny the mother a refund.

As for the film, I say less romance, less slo-mo, less action. Alan More is clearly a genius when it comes to comics (excluding Promethia) but in the film something was lost in the dialogue even though much of it was lifted directly from the book.

I left the theater (approx 9:45) feeling similar to my sister, but wondering what the meetings were like when they decided what size Doctor Manhattan’s penis would be and how much it would sway as he walked.

Crips and Bloods: Made in America

Meg Onli — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:25:34 +0000

February 6th-10th
Gene Siskel Film Center

Ever since I heard about Stacy Perralta’s (Dogtown and Z-Boys) latest documentary Crips and Bloods: Made in America several months ago I have been waiting for the film to make it to the Midwest. CBMA looks at the roots of Los Angeles’ two most notorious gangs through interviews with current and former members and traces it’s not so violent origins.

View the trailer here.

For More information please visit the Gene Siskel’s website.

Bad at Sports » Movie

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