MEDIA

MEDIA / TEXAS — No Comments
1
Feb 10

URB Mag Special Edition feat Amanda Blank & Maluca

URB magazine teamed up with the girls at Mean Red and put out a special edition Digital Magazine featuring Maluca and Amanda Blank. It was styled by Valissa and photographed by my former partner King Texas. The photos are great, some of the best I have seen from Texas. The interviews are also informative and easy to digest. I do have issues with the Digital Magazine format, and more specifically the page navigation which just doesn’t feel natural. I just think the Digital Magazine format is something that will find it’s home on mobile devices like the one by Bonnier that I blogged about a few weeks back. I prefer to scroll through information traditionally on a web page rather than toy around with the phony page turn and magnifying features. And I wish they had an embed function for the Digital Mag so I wouldn’t have to hyperlink you. Come on coders start slinging. Regardless it’s great to see the folks at URB mag taking chances and pushing the envelope. It’s well worth the read. I posted some screen grabs below, to check out the full feature click here.

TrevzNewPop

http://www.urb.com/2010/01/29/meanred-special-edition-with-amanda-blank-maluca-presented-by-urb

BOOKS / MEDIA / TrevzNewPop — No Comments
14
Jan 10

Some Revolution!

My girlfriend Sylvie Sunshine bought me this cool book for Christmas called “Free Press Underground & Alternative Publications” It contains a collection of images dating from 1965 – 1975 from strange small-run newspapers, zines, flyers, mags, etc. I was thumbing through it today and this image stood out. I’ve seen it a dozen times but for some reason this time I stopped and took notice. This image takes aim at the “Hippie Revolution” in the late 60’s early 70’s and it’s from a publication called OZ. I think it is as relevant today as it was 40 years ago. The caption reads:

He drives a Maserati
She’s a professional model
The boy is the son of the
Art Editor of Time Magazine:
Some Revolution!

MEDIA / TCM / VIDEO / netflix — No Comments
11
Jan 10

Putney Swope, Corporate power and Race.

Putney Swope is a 1969 film written and directed by Robert Downey Sr. and starring Arnold Johnson as Swope. Swope is the only black man on the executive board of an advertising firm who is accidentally put in charge after the death of the chairman of the board. Renaming the business “Truth and Soul, Inc.”, Swope replaces all but one of the white employees.

I caught this on TCM the other night. According to Wikipedia “It criticizes and plays with black militant rhetoric, the portrayal of race in Hollywood films, the white power structure, and nature of corruption in any struggle for power.” What compelled me to watch this was the fact that Robert Downey Sr. directed it. Yes he is the father of actor Robert Jr. I had seen the movie “Tropic Thunder” where Downey Jr. plays a white man in blackface bringing up issues of race in Hollywood. Hearing that his father also dealt with the subject of race in this film peeked my curiosity. This film deals more with race in the corporate structure than Hollywood.

This film is not really well acted or well shot, In fact Robert Downey Sr. had to redub all of Arnold Johnson’s lines because Johnson could never remember them. There are some funny moments and if you are a fan of vintage movies dealing with Mod Fashion and Black Exploitation you may find this as interesting.

The two clips I added below deal with the shift in the power structure in Black and White America, a topic that is very relevant today with the election of the first Black President. I will deal with this issue in more depth in future postings. The second clip is a bit funnier to me personally because it deals with freelance artist relationships with the corp structure. And more specifically negotiating of ones rates which for the most part is completely arbitrary. If you’ve been in this situation you will take comfort in being able to laugh at it since you probably did more than enough bitching by now. The final clip is just a goofy ad from the “Truth and Soul” agency. The gimmick was that Truth and Soul, Inc were such a novelty that everyone wanted them to shoot their ads no regardless of wether they made any sense at all. The satire in this film is an accurate commentary on Madison Ave and Pop-culture today.

MEDIA / VIDEO — No Comments
9
Jan 10

“Elvis was a hero to most…” Suspicious Minds

Yesterday was Elvis’ 75th birthday. I have never really been a fan of Elvis myself. After all I grew up listening to Public Enemy. The track “Fight The Power” taught me that “Elvis was a hero to most/But he never meant shit to me A straight up racist, that sucker was/Simple and plain Motherfuck him and John Wayne”. The feeling among many folks was that he stole from Black culture and became hugely popular because he was a novelty. I am not sure if this qualifies him as a racist, or just a smart and talented showman. (More about this topic in future blog postings).

Anyway yesterday I was channel surfing and I ran across two documentaries on TCM about Elvis. If you didn’t know during his lifetime Elvis was the biggest thing on the planet, and this is back in the days before paparazzi was paparazzi, the days of 7 channels and no internet. So big was big. But I never really got it. Even as an adult who tries to view things as objectively as possible I just didn’t get why people thought he was so great, until last night. One of the documentaries I watched was pretty much a live recording of a 1970 vegas show. It was called “That’s The Way It Is” and I suggest you watch it if you ever get a chance along with “Elvis Presley On Tour 1972″ Anyway in “That’s The Way It Is” his performance of “Suspicious Minds” was one of those rare glimpses into what a real superstar is and to me is the definition of Stage Presence. He was anything but “Simple and Plain”, He was a megastar and I saw it. I won’t bore you with any more with my attempts to describe the indescribable just watch.

TreV