“Pan Macmillan’s Don DeLillo book series, published by Picador in 2011, has won a Yellow Pencil for Book Front Covers design at the D&AD Awards held this week. The Don DeLillo series covers were designed by illustrator Noma Bar at Dutch Uncle, London, with art direction by It’s Nice That and INT Works.” (via)

notgames:

By Margaret Atwood

I was looking at Born Again recently, because I’d remembered it having interesting ideas on color, and got curious what happened to Christie “Max” Scheele— one of those names in every other book I read as a kid that I didn’t really know much about, despite her being such a key player for so many of those; looking at her cv, I easily saw more of her work as a kid than any other person!  The Man without Fear site did an interview with her just last year:  

I colored comics for 20 years, way longer than I ever expected to, being primarily a painter. I was working on my fine art career all along, first creating bodies of work that were gallery-ready, and then beginning to build my exhibition resume and sales track. By the time comics had downsized, Marvel had changed drastically, and coloring went to computer (which I did not want to do, my back/neck already suffering from holding the same position while coloring for so long), I was well on my way. Folks mostly shook their heads when I said that my best bet for employment was to work fulltime on building painting as a business, because it is a very hard business to make a living at, but I was already two thirds of the way there. Now I mentor other artists to teach them how to engage (with a good attitude!) in the whole process of career-building, which is very fun, along with all of my exhibitions and of course, work in my studio. […] Life is great, post comics, because I am doing what I always set out to do. 

I thought that was nice. She has a website for her landscape paintings, which google certainly suggests have been well-received. (I have a preference for the oils).

newyorker:

Gay Talese: Scrapbooker

Gay Talese is a legendary writer who works in a singular way. While tucked into his office—which is known to all as “the bunker,” and reached through a separate entrance below his family’s townhouse, on East 61st Street—Talese mixes journalism with arts and crafts. He initially composes his articles and books on long strips of paper that he strings above his desk, making a constellation of words.

Here, see a slideshow of the collages he made for this most recent “Talk of the Town” piece on a restaurant space hear his home.

Times New Viking show at the Satellite: I’d been feeling cooped up lately, so went to this, kind of spur of the moment. The band is somewhere past that blur of people in the photos; the band is part of the color-y blur…?  There are better photos here, I guess, if you’re into the whole clarity thing.  Anyways, I like Times New Viking well enough, and they were playing that night, so it was a good time, did the trick, though the show seemed a bit glitch-y.  But good crowd, people dancing around for the opening act; during one of the technical errors, a lady in the crowd yelled out a dumb joke to the band.  Something like “What do you call a one-eyed deer?” “I don’t know; what do you call a one-eyed dear?“  “I-got-no-eye deer.” 

Tim Burton at LACMA: Huge crowds for this show— too many people crowding tiny drawings of sketchbook scribbles.  Plus, that many people equals a long wait to get in, so I spent an hour looking at Picasso’s and Rothko’s and real art, which made the Burton drawings of Braniac or Beetlejuice afterwards a little underwhelming.  But, you know: pop culture artifacts, which is sort of interesting, though it all felt out of place for a museum.  Burton’s last few movies have been so unwatchable that it’s hard to remember his earlier movies … well, being messes, but interesting messes, at least.  I like those movies more than they’re good, you know— though I do think Beetlejuice holds up.  None of the pieces themselves made a case for Burton on their own terms, you know— they all kind of relied on the goodwill that I think you either go in with or don’t for the Nightmare Before Christmas or whatever.  But I guess I’m nerdy enough to have an interest in that sort of thing, the couple scribbles Burton did for his aborted Superman movie or whatever, to not have made it a total waste of time.  It certainly seems like it’s selling tickets for LACMA like crazy, and LA Weekly’s hyped the show pretty hard— but I don’t know, I just felt like it was too cursory a survey, a couple pieces from each movie, hitting highlights, rather than digging into any one project with enough depth to really get a sense of any creative or artistic process.  Plus: Batman costumes and Edward Scissorhands’s leather pants belong in a Planet Hollywood, not a museum.  Maybe that makes me an elitist.  Probably.  I like grey poupon on my Subway sandwiches, so maybe I’m just above the hoi polloi in a whole shitload of different ways.  I like to stick my pinky out when I drink tea from fine China. 

Super-8: It’s strange to me that a movie created by a former writer would be such a mess from the writing standpoint.  But this was a mess.  An entertaining ones at times, but it hasn’t been a movie that’s lingered in the memory favorably as days have passed.  I guess at least one question that I keep coming to:  “Why does a kid’s movie have weed jokes and the f-word in it?“  I mean, I like weed jokes and the f-word but I don’t really think they need to be in every kind of movie.  Just most kinds of movies.  I don’t know— Abrams can build a movie well in some ways, I think because he’s an experienced screenwriter, so he knows what’s supposed to be in a movie.  But there’s some sensual element, for lack of a better term, that I don’t think he has in him because he’s… just more a writer, than a director…? I didn’t hate it— there are moments; but the monster is terrible, and the ending— just as it teeters on the brink of exciting, the movie just sort of grinds to a weird halt. Just a mess.  I’d hoped for more, though, and I actually think I’m giving the movie more credit than it deserves because the rest of the summer movies are so lame.

douglaswolk:

pooryorickentertainment: 

Chris Ayers is making movie posters for the entire James O. Incandenza filmography from “Infinite Jest.” Although who knows what he’s going to do with the “Untitled. Unfinished. UNRELEASED” part. If you’re a DFW fan, this is essential.