Hi everybody. I haven’t updated my blog in a while, but here’s something to look forward to:

2 weeks ago on Thursday and Friday, and on Wednesday of last week – TheFashionisto.com worked together with the top agencies in New York to photograph around 110 of New York’s up and coming models in an impromptu casting call meets mini photo shoot.

Agencies include:
DNA
Major
Ford
Fusion
VNY
Red
Request
& others.

We’re posting models everyday throughout the duration of fashion week. Check out http://thefashionisto.com/casting-call/new-york-spring-2011/ for updates.

I’ll post more details as I get more editing done, but wanted to put the word out for now!

Showing until Thursday September 9th at IFC!
http://www.ifccenter.com/films/last-train-home/

Trailer:

Synopsis:

Every spring in China, 130 million workers return home for New Year’s–the world’s largest migration, an epic spectacle of a modern country tied to a rural past. The Zhangs have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades, visiting parents and, like many, the children they left behind for grueling factory jobs. The absences stretch on, and these yearly reunions grow strained to the breaking point, as revealed in this intimate and starkly beautiful observation of one fractured family–and the human cost of China’s economic miracle. From the producers of Up the Yangtze.
NR, 85 Minutes, In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Canada/China/UK, 2010
Official Website: zeitgeistfilms.com

NY Times Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/movies/29home.html?_r=1&ref=movies

[ View it here ]

Please include credits if re-posting:

CREW CREDITS
Photography: Steven Chu (http://stevenchustudio.com)
Stylist: Cliff Hoppus at Artists by Timothy Priano (http://cliffhoppus.com)
Hair: Linh Nguyen for PR at Partners
Makeup: Aeriel Payne using M.A.C. Cosmetics.
Special thanks:
Brian Kish Inc. (http://briankish.com) New York for loan of Italian art pieces.
Rosie @ theones2watch.com, & Dave @ Red

Models:
Frey Mudd, Mikael Larsson, Evan Santoro: Dave Fothergill@Red NYC.
Marshall Brockley, Nick W: Gaspard@Request NY.
Thomas Hassler: Josh Bostwick@Fusion Model Management.
Luca Schmitz: Agel Raya@New York Model Management.

STYLING CREDITS:

[Cover] Shirt and jacket Robert Molnar, Pant Jil Sander
Porcelain horse head by Fornasetti, 1950

1  [Frey wears] Cape the Vessel by Lois, Shirt Raf Simons, Pant Robert Molnar, Shoe Hugo Boss, Gloves Brooks Brothers

2  [Evan wears] Sweater Jean Paul Gaultier, Scarf Dries Van Noten, Skirt Robert Molnar
Porcelain fawn by Gio Ponti, 1936

3 [NickW wears] Shirt and pant Robert Molnar, Shoe Gucci

4  [Marshall wears] Sweater Jil Sander, Scarf All Saints, Pant Robert Molnar

5  [Evan wears] Jacket the Vessel by Lois, Shirt All Saints, Pant Robert Molnar
Monumens de L’antiquité book by Johann Winckelmann, 1808

6  [Mikael wears] Sweater Vivienne Westwood, Shirt and Pant by Robert Molnar

7  [Thomas wears] Shirt and jacket Robert Molnar, Pant Jil Sander
Porcelain horse head by Fornasetti, 1950

8  [Luca wears] Coat Jean Paul Gaultier, Shirt Prada, Pant Marc Jacobs

1) Canon Wonder Camera: Always in focus, a gazillion megapixels. Shooting video becomes such an afterthought in the future, that we might not need to take photos? How does this change photography for a photographer?

2) Le Book Connections: Insights from interviews with photo reps. A good portion of the video is zzzzz, but there are some interesting nuggets inside!

Le Book – IMeanWhat?!? from LE BOOK on Vimeo.

Stacy SCARSELLA / TJX Companies. New York, NY June 2010 from LE BOOK on Vimeo.

The Mast Brothers from The Scout on Vimeo.

Stumbled across this on my blog reading this morning from Serious Eats. It’s a very nicely shot video, which makes me think I should give a shot at video on my mark ii. I mean, the video is a much more interesting and engaging presentation for this type of product, which depends on the atmosphere/world it creates around itself to inform you on how to approach and think about their chocolate. It also had production value to it.. like I was watching a food special.. I guess that helps legitimize or establish a product’s brand placement.

It does make me want to try their chocolate, much more than if I just saw a picture or announcement somewhere.

Locations NEW YORK:

-Brooklyn-

Bedford Cheese Shop
Bierkraft
Blue Bottle Coffee
Brooklyn Larder
Cafe Pedlar
Choice Greene
Grab
Market
Marlow & Daughters
Marlow & Sons
Park Slope Food Coop
Sit & Wonder
Stinky Bklyn
Spuyten Duyvil Grocery
The Chocolate Room
Urban Rustic

-Manhattan-

Chelsea Market Baskets (Chelsea)
Dean & Deluca (Soho)
Dean & Deluca (Madison Ave)
Eli’s Manhattan
Jack’s Coffee
Murray’s Cheese (West Village)
Murray’s Cheese (Grand Central Station)
Provisions (South Street Seaport)
Steven Alan
Stumptown Cafe
The Surrey Hotel
Whole Foods Market (Bowery)
Whole Foods Market (Columbus Circle)
Williams-Sonoma (Columbus Circle)

There’s something to watch everyday this month at Anthology Film Archives. I saw Fellini’s Casanova (1976) this past evening– an excellent print on short loan from Universal, The Color of Pomegranates a few evenings before. I’ve missed Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein. I saw Straub’s Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach. I will see Cavalier’s Thérèse, Sokurov’s The Sun on saturday, perhaps Warhol’s Empire and/or My Hustler, Frida, and Seberg.

I’ve attached a Calendar below. Click to view more info!

So affordable!!

Film Screenings / Buy Tickets
$9 General Admission
$8 Essential Cinema (free for members)
$7 Students, seniors and children (12 & under)
$6 AFA Members

This is for all you young models, enjoy!
The rewards, disadvantages, and lessons of a youth spent modeling for the fashion industry.

“Cindy Crawford interviews Beverly Johnson, Linda Evanglista, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, and Lauren Hutton for House of Style Special.”

Welcome to the dream world. One of my best friends turned me onto Sergei Parajanov. We had watched The Legend of Suram Fortress & Ashik Kerib. I was completely speechless and in shock on the first viewing. It hit really far inside my sub/unconscious.

The Color Of Pomegranates is probably Parajanov’s most known film. It’s currently playing at Anthology Film Archive in the East Village
Wednesday July 14, 2010 at 9:15pm & Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 7:15pm

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=07&year=2010#showing-36101

Film Notes from Anthology’s website:

The powerful words of 17th-century poet Arutuin Sayadian, also known as “Sayat Nova” (“King of Siam”) are magnificently captured in this visual pastiche which is both a stylized biography and a tribute to his work. Charted into eight sections of his life from childhood to death, the film is a series of symbolically rich, almost hallucinatory scenes. This baroque masterpiece was banned in the Soviet Union for its religious sentiment and nonconformity to “Socialist realism.” Paradjanov, a tirelessly outspoken campaigner for human rights, was convicted on a number of trumped-up charges and sentenced to five years of hard labor in the gulag. A wave of protest from the international film community led to his release in 1978.

Watch below via google video:

Additional info from Kino.com:

The Legend Of Suram Fortress
Director: Sergei Paradjanov
Country: Russia | USSR
Year: 1985
Paradjanov’s first film after more than a decade of persecution and imprisonment is based on an ancient Georgian legend about unrequitted love. Armenia. 1985. 78 mins. Color. Georgian w/English Subtitles.

(The Legend of Suram Fortress) – Based on an ancient legend, this dazzling film by visionary director Sergei Paradjanov (Shadows Of Our Forgotten Ancestors) is a surreal ode to Georgian warriors throughout the ages who died for their country. Repeated efforts by the Georgian people to construct a defensive stronghold continually fail. The building collapses until a fortune teller remembers an old prophecy that the son of her erstwhile lover must be bricked up alive in order for the fortress to stand. The young man is faced with the prospect of sacrificing himself to save his country.
Ashik Kerib
Director: Sergei Paradjanov
Country: Russia | USSR
Year: 1988
This shimmering spectacle resembles a medieval manuscript brought to life in its tale of a wandering minstrel in search of his lost love. Armenia. 1988. 78 mins. Color. Russian w/ English subtitles.

(Ashik Kerib) – From Sergei Paradjanov (The Legend of Suram Fortress, Shadows Of Our Forgotten Ancestors) one of the most acclaimed experimental directors of the Soviet cinema, comes Ashik Kerib, a 19th Century romantic tale evocatively brought to life.

In recounting Lermontov’s fable of a wandering minstrel trying to earn enough money to marry the girl he loves, Paradjanov dispenses with conventional storytelling devices in order to present a boldly unique cinematic experience. Glorious tableaux, exquisitely composed, choreographed and photographed, are combined with intertitles, images of early Russian artwork and a haunting blend of traditional and contemporary musical forms, to create an enthralling and utterly unforgettable film.

I saw this tonight and I think that if you’re a New Yorker, this is an important film. For school education, I think it’s not enough to just talk about the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement; this should be included alongside the others.

The current and upcoming generations of gay teenagers have a unique experience – gay as a defined identity, and sans the religious right, without the imminent pandemic danger it’s earlier generations of youth experienced. The gay experience now is affected by consumerism (pop culture, blog culture), consuming the various aspects to build the identity. For whatever reason, if it’s that AIDS doesn’t phase kids as a deathly reality anymore, HIV infection statistics among youths have started climbing up in correlation with the popularity of bareback (condomless) porn. The AIDS epidemic of the 80′s is less tangible a reality and more a story– the tangible evidence of its destructiveness and the blind eye politicians (the president) and government agencies turned towards addressing the epidemic– wiped out with the generation that endured it.

Life as a gay person in the lower and middle classes pre-gay rights movement (of which the Stonewall Uprising in June of 1969 was the start) is less tangible a reality and more a story as well. A reality still for those trapped in insular environments, but for the masses – at least on the surface level due to a bit of attention in the entertainment media- the cultural temperature appears safe. I think it’s easy to feel a bit apathetic now – the battle is off the streets and in courtrooms. It’s why psychologists have studied internalized racism– when it goes guerilla, it’s much harder to address.

The film does a nice job of recounting the times and the perspective of what it was like then for the lower-middle class gay. The anti-gay propaganda doled out in classrooms to children is really horrifying and I’m curious what damaging effects it’s had on those youth. I love the imagery of drag queens in full garb fighting the policemen – they were the ones who were fighting back that night, perhaps that’s a lesser known fact. Some of the more violent aspects were mentioned only in passing – how gays were beaten, killed, and dumped in rivers; not just by police smashing your head in but by suburban gangsters who drove into manhattan and would pull you into their car to murder you. It was said the police turned a blind eye to the killings of gays and not bother to conduct an inspection unless you were of an upper class family. A friend of a friend was a victim of one of these abductions where some gangsters broke a beer bottle in half and ground it in circles around the victim’s eye socket, removing his eye and pulverizing his eye socket so only a large gaping hole in the head remained. Then they took the broken bottle and went to work on the stomach.

Coming from the west coast, it was nice to have some way to experience the Stonewall Uprising through interviews and re-creations. The turning point in the West Coast’s history of gay activism comes with the 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay public official in active office. This was our Stonewall – which I read about in The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk while I was attending Berkeley.

The first time I came to New York in early 2004, I went in search of the Stonewall.. it was snowing and windy, I had no idea where I was going, and I had spent the day trying to walk around the city with frozen hands. I ended up at some club, I’m not sure if it was the Stonewall though..
I haven’t tried to find the Stonewall since then, for no real reason. However, it was nice to see the film just a few blocks from where it took place. I guess that’s nice about watching movies about New York in New York- Manhattan is small and usually some scene you’re watching will be just down the street of where you are. That’s more real that reality TV.

Synopsis from Film Forum:

http://www.filmforum.org/films/stonewall.html

“It was the Rosa Parks moment,” says one man. June 28, 1969: NYC police raid a Greenwich Village Mafia-run gay bar, The Stonewall Inn. For the first time, patrons refuse to be led into paddy wagons, setting off a 3-day riot that launches the Gay Rights Movement. Told by Stonewall patrons, Village Voice reporters and the cop who led the raid, STONEWALL UPRISING compellingly recalls the bad old days when psychoanalysts equated homosexuality with mental illness and advised aversion therapy, and even lobotomies; public service announcements warned youngsters against predatory homosexuals; and police entrapment was rampant. A treasure-trove of archival footage gives life to this all-too-recent reality, a time when Mike Wallace announced on a 1966 CBS Reports: “The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage.” At the height of this oppression, the cops raid Stonewall, triggering nights of pandemonium with tear gas, billy clubs and a small army of tactical police. The rest is history.

USA • 2010 • 82 MINUTES • FIRST RUN FEATURES