Hasta La Ideas

Fashion designers are unusually skilled at deploying their creativity in non-sartorial realms: Tom Ford directed one of the best films ever made, Ralph Rucci‘s transcendent works on canvas rival those he shows on the runway, and Hedi Slimane is an accomplished photographer (meanwhile, have you heard Oscar de la Renta sing?). Marc Jacobs is giving acting a go. He appears in Disconnect, a thriller directed by Henry Alex Rubin (Murderball) that arrives in theaters on April 12 and stars the likes of Jason Bateman and Alexander Skarsgård.

“My character is Harvey and I run a house for minor [in age] Internet porn. It’s all virtual. People go online and they talk to these kids about their fantasies or whatever. I’m the sort of father of them in the house—the Fagan of all these wayward kids who come stay in this house,” Jacobs told Entertainment Weekly. “In the end, I’m really not a bad character. I’m actually the one who is protecting them in a way. I’ve taken them off the streets, and they don’t get harmed. They’re doing something that is virtual, though they are talking about sex. But you can look at it two ways. Harvey isn’t a pimp, having them meet up like street hookers or giving them drugs. He provided a home for the kids. But it is sleazy.” Here’s the freshly released trailer:

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is continuing its multimedia push with 82nd & Fifth, a new web series that will highlight 100 works of art from the Met collection. Each episode includes “Watch,” a two-minute audio and visual essay with a curator and a work of art from the Met collection that changed the way he or she sees the world; and “Explore,” an interactive feature that invites visitors to get closer to the work of art on their own. Among the first episodes is “Modern Living,” in which decorative arts curator Amelia Peck discusses the living room of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Little House. Watch the first six episodes of 82nd & Fifth here, and stay tuned for new episodes to be posted in pairs every Wednesday for the rest of the year.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Another day, another smashing design-themed documentary! In Reconversão, director Thom Andersen trains his lens on Pritzker winner Eduardo Souto de Moura with a blend of old-school (think Vertov and Muybridge) techniques and eye-popping HD wizardry. Zooming in on 17 of the Portugese architect’s buildings and unrealized projects, and overlaid with his own words (via a guest voiceover), the film gives Souto de Moura–a master of the reborn ruin–the last word: “If there is nothing there,” he says in an on-screen interview. “I invent a pre-existence.” Keep an eye out for the documentary as it makes the festival rounds. We think it’s the perfect primer before delving into Phaidon’s forthcoming jumbo Souto de Moura monograph.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The 2013 Sundance Film Festival gets underway next Thursday in Utah, and festivalgoers have Todd Oldham to thank for taking this year’s merchandise in a fresh new direction. The designer not only developed a line of ‘Todd Oldham for the Sundance Film Festival’ gear, including bags and wallets made from recycled festival banners, but also acted as curator for Sundance Film Festival Editions. For the new initiative, he invited Sundance alums such as Morgan Spurlock, Amy Sedaris, and Parker Posey to design a product–a button, a t-shirt, a tote. “It wasn’t hard to get them on board,” said Oldham in an interview with the Sundance Institute. “I did curate, but the art was really in asking the right person for the right task. And they are so talented–Mike White is a great graphic designer as well as filmmaker, Stacey Peralta is an artist, so I knew I had good, wildly creative people.” John Waters whipped up a subversive t-shirt (pictured).

In addition to whimsical apparel and recycled accessories, Oldham also brought his editorial expertise to the festival with a new book, Sundance Film Festival A to Z. He invited 26 illustrious illustrators–including Caitlin Heimerl, Chris Silas Neal, Michele Romero, and Yuko Shimizu–to have their way with one letter, with each letter representing festival films and artists (yup, “R” is for Redford). “We got very sophisticated, learned efforts. Some don’t tell the story at first glance. It’s super fun to try and decipher what the artist saw,” noted Oldham. “Illustrators have vivid imaginations and are usually forced into linear systems with tasked briefs. But we just let people do whatever they wanted and they were delighted to be unedited!” And if you detect a hint of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse in the cover art, that’s because it’s the work of Wayne White.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Say what you will about St. Barts–we think Iceland is the place to ring in the new year. According to local lore, tonight is the night that cows talk, seals take on human form, the dead rise from their graves, and elves move houses. Residents celebrate with family dinners, bonfires, and fireworks, lots of them. The pyrotechnics spectacular is made possible by the country’s lack of restrictions on fireworks, and the entire population of Reykjavik–approximately 200,000 people–gets into the act. This year, those of us in less permissive nations can watch the massive fireworks display online: click here to watch the live broadcast at 7:00 p.m. Eastern / 4:00 p.m. Pacific.

Continue the explosive Icelandic fun with a New Year’s Eve screening of Bjӧrk‘s new music video, “Mutual Core” (below), commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. “[MOCA director] Jeffrey Deitch contacted me a while ago, and he suggested that we collaborate on this, and it sounded like a good idea,” said the Reykjavik native in a recent interview with Paper magazine. “Because I’m an old punk, I’ve never done commercials or sponsoring or anything like this–I’ve been really strict with it–but with this, [Jeffrey] seemed to be helping us to make a music video. That sort of makes sense to me. It doesn’t feel like sponsoring.”
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.