film + video

Returning to another story from days past: first, way back at the start of last year, we told you about a rumor that Sarah Jessica Parker's production company was planning a reality show/competition about the contemporary art world. Then, this April, we informed you about the Bravo network's upcoming "fill the void left by the departure of "Project Runway" lineup, which included Parker's then-titled "American Artist." Now, thanks to PSFK, we find that we can continue talking about this show's slow creep into existence with Bravo's release of an official casting call for the show (now without a title, only referred to as "The Untitled Art Project.") Casting starts a week from Saturday (the 11th) in Los Angeles then winds its way through Miami, Chicago, and New York until the middle of the month. With the announcement comes this description of who they're looking for:

How do you go from struggling, emerging or even semi-established artist to selling a complete show for $198 million? It's a big art world out there, but maybe this is one place to start!

...We want contemporary artists. Your medium could be one of many (or several of many) - painting, sculpture, installation, video, photography, mixed-media - we want voices that believe in their art and want the world to know.

This whole thing, as it inches forward, is like driving past a car wreck in super slow motion. We won't pass any serious judgement on the show until we've seen it, but the only way we see this thing being enjoyable is 1) get Damien Hirst to host it (that will help explain the "art is only for the money" angle) and 2) at the very end, when a winner is selected and they're given a big pile of money as their prize, The KLF jumps out from behind a curtain and sets fire to it.

While we can't be sure that our Diet Coke purchasing experience would be significantly improved by a 46-inch LCD touch screen, Flash technology, motion graphics, high-definition video, and Bluetooth capabilities, the thusly enhanced Coca-Cola vending machine (at right) won a Gold Lion in the design/point of sale category at the 2009 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. The souped-up machine, which debuted last year at the Beijing Olympics, was designed by Miami-based Sapient Interactive. Here's hoping that as the machines are rolled out, they'll be manufactured in a hue other than the bland, industrial gray we associate with shady ATM machines and old-school Casio graphing calculators. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola also picked up a Gold Lion in the viral advertising category, for the YouTube hit Signs, a short film for Schweppes directed by Patrick Hughes for Publicis Mojo of New Zealand. We've posted the charming video, which makes us crave a fresh Sharpie Magnum 44, after the jump.

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Last month's abrupt closure of Mrs. John L. Strong, our cherished stationer, finds us with a rapidly dwindling supply of engraved notecards and a new perspective on the concept of the paperless wedding invitations (sorry, Smythson!). Also behind our change of heart is the below stop motion masterpiece created by Corey McKenna to invite guests to his nuptials, held last weekend in Cincinnati. Set to Vampire Weekend's "M79" (ironically, named for the very Manhattan bus we used to take to procure the wares of Mrs. John L. Strong!), the video demonstrates that you don't need other people to make an excellent video—not when you have an empty house, a basket of clothes, and a whole lot of patience. We cordially invite you to take a look:

Staying in California for a bit longer following that last post, but heading south to Los Angeles and the movie business where two films have caught our attention. First up is the announcement of a possible movie being made surrounding the life and times of John DeLorean, the car designer turned possible drug trafficker who later went on to create the car bearing his last name (and, of course, made famous by the Back to the Future franchise). Sounds interesting, though it seems like if you've seen one Robert Kearns/Preston Tucker film, you've seen them all, right? We'd be more willing to pay to see something like an Errol Morris-helmed conversation with the newly-retired Robert Lutz about GM. Now there's a movie. Second, the good people at Curbed LA got a chance to talk to the writer of the upcoming film, 500 Days of Summer, Scott Neustadter, about why his main character is a failed architect and why L.A.'s architecture plays such an important part in the film. In short, the writer is also an architecture buff who isn't a practicing architect and wanted to call attention to some of the buildings around town. That's just the sort of thing our former co-editor Alissa Walker was recently doing for Fast Company in her piece, "L.A.'s Best Architecture is on the Ground," though with a much more modern look at what's snazzy in that city. And, likely due to bias, the final verdict is that it's Alissa's piece that we would most like to see turned into a major motion picture. Early casting note: we're thinking James Caan for the role of the Santa Monica Civic Center Parking Structure.

A couple of movie trailers to keep you up to date on what's new out there in the cinema. First up comes a documentary that seems like it should have been made a dozen years ago. It's Herb and Dorothy, which tells the story of the famous couple, Dorothy and Herb Vogel, the librarian and postal worker who have amassed an incredible contemporary art collection over the years. It looks great and kudos to director Megumi Sasaki for getting there first:

Second and maybe not very design related or even correct, we found the trailer for Transcendent Man, the documentary about inventor/futurist Ray Kurzwell, interesting enough on its own (if not a bit spooky). But is that Zaha Hadid we spot for a couple of seconds around the 2:08 mark? Probably not, because we can't figure out why she'd be interviewing Kurzwell or sharing a stage with him, but it kinda looks like her, doesn't it?

"I think we have to look at brands as our new Medicis," says art director and Tronic Studio co-founder Vivian Rosenthal. "They're the ones commissioning new art and design." Earlier this month, Rosenthal joined Sebastien Agneessens (Formavision), Jason Koxvold (PerfectFools), Dan LaCivita (Firstborn Multimedia), moderator Brian Collins (COLLINS:), and a brand-savvy audience for Creative Storytelling, a Mediabistro-sponsored panel discussion at Tribeca Cinemas in New York City. For those of you who couldn't be there in person, Mediabistro's Jonathan Federico caught up with the panelists after the discussion to get their thoughts on innovative design in advertising and branding for the below "After Bites" video. What are clients hungry for at the moment? Facebook tie-ins, iPhone apps, and of course, ways to build their brand in 140 characters or less. Says a wary LaCivita, "If I put a Twitter logo on any design, it's automatically going to get chosen by the client."

Graphic design legend Milton Glaser has alerted us to the launch of his new website, MiltonGlaserWorks.com. An e-commerce-enabled companion to the designer's online home base, MiltonGlaser.com, the new site offers signed editions of Glaser's books and other works, including posters and a new range of giclée prints of assorted musicians and William Shakespeare. We'll take this collotype/silkscreen, "Mookie," which Glaser describes as "a loving portrait of a monstrous rabbit." Whether or not your budget allows for the acquisition of a signed "Beethoven with Eggplants" silkscreen, Glaser fans should be on the lookout for screenings of the documentary Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight. Directed by Wendy Keys, the film has been making the festival rounds and premieres next Friday at New York's Cinema Village. We've posted the trailer after the jump.

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Our countdown to the Friday opening of the fiftieth anniversary Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition at New York's Solomon G. Guggenheim Museum rolls on! Today we present a real treat for fans of the original caped crusader: video of Wright's June 1956 appearance on the long-running CBS game show What's My Line? His line? "World Famous ARCHITECT."

Is Wright familiar with the show's scoring system, asks host John Charles Daly after Wright, toting his trusty cane, "signs in" on a blackboard topped with an ad for sponsor Helene Curtis? "Somewhat," says Wright, a smirk playing perpetually on his lips. "I've watched one of the shows, with interest." Adding to the fun is that the all-star panel (peopled by the likes of Arlene Francis and Peter Lawford) is blindfolded, lest they recognize Wright. Suboptimal acoustics—rather than the 89-year-old Wright's fading hearing—are blamed when Daly has to repeat the panelists' questions. "It goes out and comes right back," observes Wright of the bouncing sound in the high-ceilinged studio. "Never mind. We'll overcome it," he reassures Daly, eliciting a big laugh from the audience. It's almost as entertaining as when panelist Dorothy Kilgallen, her eyes covered by what appears to be a sleep mask rimmed in pearls, asks Wright, "Does your voice play any part in the work you do?" Click "continued..." to view the full video.

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The sequel to the surprise 2006 blockbuster Night at the Museum opens next Friday, and expectations are high. "It's not just the summer," director Shawn Levy told Entertainment Weekly. "It's freaking Memorial Day!" This time around, the film's action moves from the Museum of Natural History to the sprawling Smithsonian Institution. "It's not just creatures," said Levy, of the museum exhibits that come to life in the sequel. "It's artwork and aircraft and a lot of cool s***." (It's not just this format in which Levy speaks. It's that it packs such a rhetorical punch!)

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian brings back Ben Stiller as Larry Daley, a museum guard turned Ron Popeil-style entrepreneur who is called back the museum world after his old chums are shipped to the Smithsonian by mistake. Wackiness, including a romance with a come-to-life wax dummy of Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams), ensues. Alas, the museum caper is set in Washington, D.C. and so doesn't make it to the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, but don't give up hope for a film in which, say, a swarm of Bouroullec-designed algue threatens to wreak havoc on Manhattan. When EW's Josh Rottenberg asked about the potential for a third Night at the Museum, Stiller replied, "I don't know. I guess the Louvre has already been Da Vinci Code'd out, and I don't think the Vatican is that funny a museum. [Pauses] Night at MoMA?"

Previously on UnBeige:

Earlier this week, we talked about a piece by the street artist Banksy getting painted over accidentally by a graffiti clean-up crew. We were fortunate enough to hear from the owner of the wall Banksy had marked up, Julian Chatt, in the comments section of that post saying the reports of the incident weren't anywhere near the truth, that "the image is probably NOT by Banksy and I have never claimed it was" and was upset more that the city council's clean-up squad had just wandered onto his private property and painted over it without his permission and despite his many requests that they just leave it alone. Really very interesting, all of it, and we believed that it would probably be the Banksy (or not-Banksy) story of the week. But then we ran across the upcoming web-only film/documentary, Banksy's Coming to Dinner, which looks downright crazy. The elevator pitch is that actress Joan Collins gets a request by the reclusive, mysterious artist to have her throw a dinner party for him so that he can finally reveal his true identity. Only catch is the thing was all a big hoax, completely unknown to Collins and the other guests until the Daily Mail uncovered the truth. Here's the trailer:

This will either be an absolute disaster of a film or the best thing you've ever seen -- and nothing in between. We can't wait to see it.