Elvis Costello isn't my speed. His tastes, however...

Maakies cartoonist/wizard Tony Millionaire renders another ink-hewn cover, this time for Costello's 34th studio album, National Ransom. Unlike the casual abortions of most record covers—looking at you, Box Elders—Millionaire's efforts reek of forethought, sweat, y'know art, and always accurately evoke what's tucked inside.

HT @MarkCluett

Neon nostalgia courtesy of Swedish illustrator Junkboy. You might think chillwave, but I'm getting serious ZX Spectrum vibes.

Also His Bayonetta by way of Cave is a hoot.

SISU (pronounced see-soo) are Sandy Vu and Ryan Wood. The darkwave duo are offering their brooding Demon Tapes EP for free, here.

SISU Shotgun Running

Photography by Corwin Prescott. Modelling, again, by Mockingbird Girl.

I reviewed Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for the CBC.ca Book Club.

"Even then, looking past the indie rock, the power-ups, the last minute slow-motion dropkicks, Pilgrim is a simple story about departures, about leaving behind the comfortable inertia of your early 20s, where life's struggles are best seen from a distance — miniature and vague."

You should read the rest.

(Ignore the contrived headline. Not my doing, thankfully.)

Chris Marker's La jetée (1962) is a 29-minute film told entirely in stills, and it is colossal. A personal favourite, the time-travelling short was part micro-documentary of Paris, part love story, and part clockwork mystery, told with fatalistic trepidation towards a nameless, unseen calamity that paralyzes the human race. La jetée went on to "inspire" Terry Gilliam's serviceable US adaptation, 12 Monkeys (1995), a hearty B+ preoccupied more with the director's visual eccentricities than Marker's subtle politics, even if it was unanimously well-received. 

Originally in French, the English-language cut of La jetée features a laconic, world-weary narrator who galvanized Marker's bruising truths: humanity existed only by the divisions of wartime and peace.

As part of Not Coming To A Theatre Near You's Time Travel Month, contributor Evan Kindley wrote a detailed analysis of La jetée, striking the thousand beats that make it a mandatory experience.

 "But Marker is also processing his misgivings about the extreme political situations he’s known firsthand. The disorientation of being, by nationality if not by opinion, on the “right” side of one conflict and the “wrong” side of the next informs La jetée’s politics, which are doubly overdetermined by the memory of the French Resistance against fascism and guilt over imperialist aggression in Algeria."

You can find the film, in its entirety, on Google Video.

"Steve Berra (The Berrics) joins Mexican skaters Jesus Gonzalez, Eder Martinez, Mario Saenz, Angel Santiago and American Luis Tolentino for this Burn Ignite film, shot on location in Mexico City. "

The enduring legacy of skateboarding has nothing to do with the narrow arc of suburban malls and ESPN—it was, still is, and will forever be, a fertile ground for new art.

Bummer it's all for an ENERGY DRINK. :(

via

Pitchfork revealed the album cover for Weezer's post-Geffen release, Hurley (Epitaph). Yes, it's that Hurley and yes, in blog terms, this is tossing chum in the water.

"We just wanted to use that picture of Jorge Garcia's face on the cover. It's such an amazing album cover, and we didn't want to have any other words on it, so we just figured everyone was going to call it Hurley, so that's what we call it."

The rest.

Tom Scharpling, host of The Best Show On WMFU captures the insanity of Weezer's post-Pinkerton trajectory:

"You know when a band goes crazy? When every decision is more perplexing than the next? Please welcome Weezer to that esteemed list."

via