Hasta La Ideas

When you think Buckminister Fuller, of course you think “domes.” But we’d wager that a close second would be “futurist.” Unfortunately, while that title has stuck, not all of his work has been so fortunate. Below you’ll find the trailer for Evan Mather‘s documentary, A Necessary Ruin: The Story of Buckminister Fuller and the Union Tank Car Dome, which tells the story of a Fuller dome built in Baton Rouge for the railroads, but became obsolete in just a few short years, fell into disrepair quickly, and was ultimately bulldozed. Here’s the trailer:

Mather’s film, which judging on that seems like it’ll be superb, looks to be currently making the screening rounds, having just played at New York’s Center for Architecture last week, so keep an eye on his site for upcoming dates or for when it goes on sale. Architectural Record also has some great details about the dome and the documentary.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Finally someone is making a movie about Dubai’s building boom. Unfortunately it’s going to the mark by a healthy margin, given that the emirate starting falling apart and stopped building just under two years ago. But what is Hollywood if it isn’t a factory of fiction? Slash Film reports that a screenplay for The Architect, which has apparently been all the talk the last couple of months, has finally been snapped up by a studio. Here’s their description of the film:

The story follows Mitch Avery, a New York City hot-shot up and coming architect who gets the opportunity of a lifetime — to build his dream building in Dubai…Anyway, once on the ground on the Arabian Peninsula, all hell breaks loose. Of course, this is just the begining. It turns out everything was a gigantic set-up which results in a chase to find his kidnapped wife Carlie and uncover the bigger conspiracy. I’ve heard that a big director has shown interest in the script. Sounds like an interesting premise.

We’re confused. Was the job a big setup or the whole of Dubai is fake? Because we’d be willing to believe the latter more than a “hot-shot architect” would be swayed toward working over there on a building anymore without cash up front. If for some reason we get handed script doctoring duties for this one, we’re going to change the whole thing and make it about “Dr.” David Fisher and his fake rotating buildings. At least that wouldn’t seem so far fetched as The Architect does.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Finally, two years after we first told you it had been announced, Sarah Jessica Parker‘s modern art-based reality show has been officially unveiled. Previously untitled, the show will now be called “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” and will begin airing on June 9th on Bravo. According to the info the network passed on to us, it will pit fourteen up-and-coming artists against one another, all competing for an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum and $100,000. As we’d told you last summer, the show boasts some impressive judges: critic Jerry Saltz, gallery owner Bill Powers, and Salon94’s Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn. Whie originally we had reported that Simon du Pury was to also be a judge, instead he’s stepping into the Tim Gunn role and serving as the contestants’ mentor. And for some reason actress/model China Chow is going to host/judge the whole thing. We’ve been poking fun at and mercilessly mocking this show since it was first announced, because frankly it sounds ridiculous. But like we’ve said before, so is the art world, so who knows? Watch the trailer below at your own risk. If you’re like us, you’ll likely feel queasy, uncomfortable, giggly, and confused (“That’s art makin’ baby!”). This will either be a wonderful disaster or a horrifying success.

For the win, our money’s already on either the crying photographer or the performance artist with the bag full of water over her head.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

You might remember back in early February when street artist extraordinaire, Banksy, was burning up the Sundance Film Festival with his directorial debut, Exit Through the Gift Shop. While it was one of the top films to make sure to see during the fest, the usual progression is that such a buzzed about film would find a distributor and make its way into theaters across the country. Exit is now gearing up to do that, but in a far more complicated, weirder way (you expected simplicity from the mysterious and tricky Banksy?). The film apparently received offers for distribution from studios, but declined them in favor of doing running other, more lo-fi method of getting the film out, via Cinetic Media, the company who represented Banksy’s film at Sundance (not being in the business, we’re not entirely sure the logistics of how this works or why exactly it’s so bizarre). The film will make its debut first in San Francisco and New York on April 16th and then branch out from there, assuming all goes well. Here’s a bit:

“The 20th Century distribution model involved the transfer of rights for 15 to 20 years to distributors who said, ‘We have the access and knowledge you don’t, give us your film,'” [Cinetic’s John Sloss] said. “Now, there are a lot of high quality distribution and marketing execs for hire, and in the 21st Century, is the other model always necessary? We showed this to the head of Landmark Theaters, and he loved it. When Banksy has such an ability to generate awareness, do we really need significant P&A when so much of what Banksy does is viral?”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The original Tron film from the early 80s was mostly an effort made by a handful of people who didn’t have backgrounds in film (industrial designers, programmers, illustrators, etc.), so it stands to reason that the upcoming Tron Legacy sequel didn’t need to be helmed by a film school grad either. The sci-fi focused blog io9 put together this interesting post about the sequel’s director, Joseph Kosinski, a Columbia School of Architecture grad. Although he never went into practice, he says the lessons he learned as an architect in training have influenced every bit of his film work. Here’s Kosinski at the recent 5D Conference, talking about just that:

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.