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Drawing and Life Lessons from Master Cartoonists

Craig Yoe, Joe Shuster, Charles Schulz and Milton Caniff

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Book

An unparalleled book, the very first of its kind. Taken from uber-rare, never-before reprinted...

Todd Haynes

Rob White

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Book

Todd Haynes's films are intricate and purposeful, combining the intellectual impact of art cinema...

Pete Fowler recommended Wolf City by Amon Duul in Music (curated)

Wolf City by Amon Duul

1972 | Rock

(0 Ratings)

Album Favorite

"I was living in Cornwall just after art college and lots of mates back home in Cardiff were really getting into kosmische stuff. One mate sent me a tape of this album. Amon Düül were a radical commune band, something which seemed a pretty out-there idea when you're living in Falmouth. I love this album, it's so varied. It's got pastoral music and very hard psych stuff on there side by side. I heard this record before hearing bands like NEU! and Cluster; it helped me get into the fact that the German bands of that post-war era had a year zero which was very appealing – by disregarding American rock & roll they created these amazing new templates. As with so many of these records, I'm drawn in by the artwork. The sleeve for Wolf City is amazing. I found out years later from Andy Votel that they created the sleeve by taking a photograph of an image created by several slide projectors overlapping onto a wall. You'd spend ages trying to get that right in Photoshop."

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Kudos

LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Tetro (2009) in Movies

Sep 21, 2020

Tetro (2009)

2009 | Drama, Mystery

7.0

(1 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Representative of late-period Coppola in just about every way: ostentatious visual display (this >> 𝘙𝘰𝘮𝘢 >> 𝘕𝘦𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘬𝘢 >> 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵), uneven and often nonsensically crammed narrative (even if it does [beneficially, this time] lack the ambitious delirium of 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘩 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘩), underwhelming coda, and an emphasis on weird + sprawling conversations over all else. The final act crumbles mostly, but otherwise found this to be quite enchanting. There's something about watching Vincent Gallo act that's just so magnetizing, I couldn't look away - the dude is crazy good in this (even if you still can't convince me him and Edward Norton are different people). Took me a bit to really get a feel for the fierce lancing of overly-pretentious, dickheaded artists rather than the worship of them as I initially gauged - as well as this just being a rock-solid story of art and family dynamics (helluva twist too [if underplayed], and the segments where trauma is expressed through stage productions are 👌👌). Wish it rebounded in the end but nonetheless it's compelling in spite of its flaws.

Kudos

Castle Smasher

Games

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App

Ready, aim, fire! Load your catapult and SLING BOULDERS at the enemies' castles on a quest to...

Shardlight

Games

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App

The world ended on the day the bombs fell. Since then, it's always been like this: disease, hunger,...

Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars by David Bowie in Music

Nov 2, 2017 (Updated Oct 26, 2018)

Ziggy Played Guitar...

Say what you want about David Bowie, whether you love him or hate him, it’s impossible to deny that there was no one else quite like him. A few have tried to emulate his genius over the years, such as Lady Gaga and Robert Smith, but no one will ever be as effortlessly unique and groundbreaking as Bowie. This album influenced so much that came after and while it wasn’t the first glam rock concept album, it is one of the best. It works as a concept album, as an overall complete piece of art and yet the songs also work on their own on an individual basis. This album truly sounds as if it was recorded in a technologically advanced studio in another solar system on the other side of a black hole by a higher being. If Stanley Kubrick ever made a glam rock record, this would be it. Yet it still has that air of raw emotion, as every vocal recording was completed in one take. There is a constant ominous atmosphere all through this album, even during the record’s more upbeat, joyous moments such as Starman. This threat is never clearly defined, rather it is felt through Bowie’s vocal performance and gives us a sense of some kind of upcoming impending doom, without clearly stating it, which in and of itself is a stroke of genius. There is also a juxtaposition present in the album, in that although the majority of the musical arrangements are odd and out of place for a rock ‘n roll album, giving a deliberate ‘alien,’ feel to the compositions present on the album, there is also an undeniable sense of humanity that is felt through Bowie’s voice and this oxymoron garnishes an already awesome sounding album with yet another emotion that is thrust at the listener. Although it is widely debated whether this record was intended to be a concept album, if you follow the narrative and fill in the blanks somewhat you can piece together the tale of a band that reached their prime and eventually blew up and committed rock ‘n roll suicide. This album was the genesis of so much genius to follow and it was all born from one man’s zany imagination.