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RIP Sheldon Dorf, Comic-Con Co-Founder
11.05.2009
05:05 pm
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Sheldon Dorf, the co-founder of the San Diego Comic Convention, has died. NPR reports:

As The San Diego Union-Tribune says, “Dick Tracy, Charlie Brown and the entire comic strip pantheon lost a friend” this week.

Sheldon Dorf, who founded the hugely successful Comic-Con International comic book convention, died Tuesday at the age of 76. A friend, Greg Koudoulian, tells the Associated Press that Dorf succumbed to kidney failure. The wire service adds that Dorf “had diabetes and had been hospitalized for about a year.”

NPR’s Ina Jaffe reminds us that Dorf founded the convention in 1970. The four-day event, which pulls in about 125,000 people, is held in San Diego each year. The next is scheduled for July 22-25, 2010.

Dorf ran Comic-Con for 15 years. He told the Union-Tribune that over time, “it’s just become an ordeal. ... It’s become too much of a success.”

Having attended the San Diego Comic Con aka Nerd Prom over 9000 times, I give highest props possible to Mr. Dorf for helping create an institution which not only began as a support group for fandom but later went on to warp the fabric of American life as we know it. Anybody who has attended the convention has witnessed that, once outsiders to the entertainment industry, fandom is now the altar at which Hollywood grovels for its ideas and the collective voice which can make or break many a film or TV show. Nice work!

(More info: FishbowlLA: Comic-Con Co-founder Dies)

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.05.2009
05:05 pm
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The Hapa Sushi-Medical Marijuana Marketing Blitz
11.05.2009
04:49 pm
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Today’s NYT shines some light on a new print campaign created for the Boulder-based Hapa Sushi chain.  Hoping to lure customers to Hapa, a map was created which shows the area’s 59 medical marijuana dispensaries (blue dots) and their close proximity to the 4 Hapa outlets (red dots).

As Hapa owner Mark Van Grack told the Times, ?

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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11.05.2009
04:49 pm
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The Return Of ‘70s Exploitation Gem, The Telephone Book
11.05.2009
03:42 pm
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“I could seduce the President of the United States…but I have no political ambition.”  For you LA connoisseurs of obscure ‘70s gems, get thee tonight to the Egyptian Theatre!  For the first time in 38-plus years, Nelson Lyon’s The Telephone Book will be playing its first big screen engagement.

Much like ‘69’s Midnight Cowboy, The Telephone Book was branded in ‘71 with an “X,” but now probably plays as no more risque than an episode of Sex Rehab With Dr. Drew.  What a cast, though: everyone from Warhol superstar Ultra Violet, to character actor’s character actor, the great William Hickey.
 
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The film presumably involves a woman (Sarah Kennedy) who falls in love with the world’s greatest obscene telephone operator.  Here’s what the excellent resource VideoUpdates has to say about it:

The opening quickly establishes a style and mood somewhere between Soviet Montage and a 16mm student film.  While its (literally) X-rated nudity and frank discussion of sexuality are hardly shocking in the 21st century, the offbeat humor and profound strangeness seem amplified by the decades.  Beyond that, there seems to be a very intelligent undercurrent to the madcap randomness.

Regarding writer-director Lyon, not much comes up on him beyond a brief, early writing stint on SNL, but he was also one of the people doing coke with John Belushi on his last night on earth.  He’ll be in attendance tonight (Lyon, not Belushi), so maybe not bring that up during the Q & A?   A trailer and clip from The Telephone Book follow below.

 

 
Official site for The Telephone Book

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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11.05.2009
03:42 pm
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Francesco Giusti: SAPE
11.05.2009
11:57 am
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Feature Shoot says:

Francesco Giusti lives and works in Rome, Italy. He recently won 1st Prize in the Viewbook Photostory competition for his documentary series, SAPE. Of this series, he says, ?

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.05.2009
11:57 am
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Here’s to you Mrs. Robinson: California Cougar Convention this Friday
11.05.2009
02:05 am
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For a mere $30 entrance fee, L.A.‘s “cougars”—and the younger men who love them—can learn all there is to know about the intricacies of older woman/younger man dating and mating rituals Friday at the California Cougar Convention. Like: Who pays for dinner? Inquiring minds (and aspiring gigolos) want to know.

The event will feature a keynote speech by “cougar expert” Lucia (see video clip below), the crowning of Miss Cougar California (selected by the “cubs” attending) and what is being described as a “giant feline dance party.” Prior to the main event, there will be a women-only “Cougar School” for aspiring Mrs. Robinsons that begins at 6:30 p.m.
 

 
(Speaking as a guy, when I watched this clip, all of the men in it have that “this is like shooting fish in a barrel” look in their eyes. I suppose that’s the point, isn’t it?)
 
The California Cougar Convention, Nov. 6,  7 p.m., Crowne Plaza, 1150 S. Beverly Drive. www.cougarevents.com
 
(PS: Does anyone living in LA want to cover this story for DM?)

Cross posting this from Brand X

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.05.2009
02:05 am
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Maurizio Anzeri: Photo Embroidery
11.05.2009
01:09 am
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From Planet:

Embroidery never seemed as dark and suggestive as in the art of London-based Italian artist Maurizio Anzeri. In his meticulous work, he transforms old discarded family photographs into three-dimensional objects with intense psychological evocations. ?

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.05.2009
01:09 am
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Animated Stereoviews of Old Japanese Photos
11.05.2009
12:16 am
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Awesome blog Pink Tentacle says, “In the late 19th and early 20th century, enigmatic photographer T. Enami (1859-1929) captured a number of 3D stereoviews depicting life in Meiji-period Japan.”
 
See more cool Japanese stereoviews over at Pink Tenticle.

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.05.2009
12:16 am
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Girls Freestyle International Skateboard Championship (1965)
11.04.2009
11:42 pm
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(via Nerdcore)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.04.2009
11:42 pm
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The Strangeness That Is Jacques Demy’s Model Shop
11.04.2009
03:38 pm
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I’m always fascinated when the great European directors come to work in America.  Zabriskie Point, while a hands-down favorite of mine anyway, in my eyes, almost succeeds more as a relative failure because there’s something poignant about Michelangelo Antonioni‘s need to make sense of a landscape more disjointed than Rome (L’Eclisse), more baffling than North Africa (The Passenger), and possibly more empty than ‘60s London (Blow-Up).  Antonioni might not have succeeded in making sense of countercultural America, but there’s something undeniably beautiful about his attempt.

Jacques Demy‘s nearly forgotten film, Model Shop, is another example of a perceived failure that somehow manages to succeed all the more so for it.  Released, briefly, by Columbia Pictures in ‘69, when Demy was still basking in the international glow of his Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Model Shop stars Gary Lockwood as a Vietnam-dreading drifter who starts trailing around Los Angeles Anouk Aimee’s older French woman (well, who wouldn’t?!)  Thus begins a hall-of-mirrors roundelay that, despite it’s strained dialogue and meandering plot, comes off as much a love letter to Los Angeles as it does to melancholy romance.
 
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And while Model Shop flirts with themes of the “universal condition,” it’s also wonderful to see (as it is in Don’t Make Waves or Play It As It Lays) what the city looked like back then, less burdened as it was by cars, noise, and signage.  A (typically) colorful clip from Model Shop follows below:

 
Bonus: Harrison Ford’s Model Shop Screen Test

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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11.04.2009
03:38 pm
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The Bald Bear Horror Show
11.04.2009
03:30 pm
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As spotted in today’s Daily Mail, Leipzig veterinarians are baffled as to what, exactly, is causing the sudden, full-body hair loss of the zoo’s female bear population.  Global warming, a possible virus?  No one knows.  But there is an upside: the zoo has experienced a tremendous surge in attendance.
 
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Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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11.04.2009
03:30 pm
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