#bc it seems like the movie (series?) is following more of the expected timeline from before we learned we're getting 5+ seasons

[lovereturns]

i have… a lot to say about the miraculous movie but idek if it’s warranted bc it’s not like the show is good anyways JFHFJSKSK

[spookizfanblog]

Spookiz Multiverse Theory

Some people noticed that Spookiz the Movie had some differences from the series. Though, I’ve never seen all of them mentioned anywhere so I decided to write them down. I didn't take into consideration the Spookiz Cookie, music videos and commercials since they don't actually take place anywhere at all. It's pretty understandable why Cula has a phone in Spook it Up! but doesn't know what a cellphone is in the movie. So my points for Spookiz Multiverse Theory are the following.

1. The Roles

I think, everyone noticed that in the movie Cula and Kong Kong are not so naughty and mischievous as in the series. Kebi, on the other hand, seems more prankish and a little bit more aggressive than his show counterpart. Ofc, Cula as a protagonist cannot do pranks and gloat over other kids anymore, and Kong Kong as his sidekick cannot do the same. Also all Spookiz need to look weaker comparing to the hunter so we could sense the danger of the situation better. Thus, a role of a trickster is left only for Kebi.

2. Cula as a Student

Cula seems to be a good student in the movie while in the series he is constantly distracted or asleep in class and, as a result, he fails tests completely. I actually would have expected Cula’s academic performance to deteriorate in the movie after having ruined his sleep patterns for several weeks to meet with Hana. Though, It is possible that he learnt a thing or two that helped him with his classes. Either way, he is a nerd in the movie.

3. Cula’s OCD

Even before the series hit YouTube, Cula's Facebook official bio indicated that he had OCD. OCD is the uncontrollable, irrational actions that people take to get rid of anxious thoughts that do not correspond with reality. In the movie, Cula claims that he simply can't stand mess. However, we could see him panicking when Sam was getting his desk dirty, and how he simply couldn't resist cleaning it in the middle of the day, risking his health and getting caught by a human. Also, Cula never changed his sit in the movie and didn't care about other desks in the class being dirty, which means he needs to take a particular seat and always keep it clean to get rid of certain anxious notion and feel safe again. In the series Cula constantly changes seats and although he is squeamish, he doesn't seem to take such repetitive irrational actions. Not to mention times when Cula didn't care about the mess or forgot to wear his gloves.

4. Character Design

Some characters got new design elements. In the movie Kebi has shaggy hair and Kong Kong has a darker palette. Reaper Sam got a black fog as if he was from the sims. Also I thought that I found an interesting difference that in the movie the school security guard didn't have the mole on his cheek that (I thought) he had in the series. Unfortunately, it turned out that he had the mole only in Halloween special which is a shame bc I think it was a nice design detail. Still his eye colour was charged for the movie from amber to black (which is also kinda sad to me).

5. The School

In the movie the entire school looks different and that's okay, it is supposed be more realistic and detailed than in the series. Its structure seems more complex than in the show, it has some sort of H or more likely _T_ shape: two buildings are connected through the walkway on the second floor. Here Cula and Kong Kong got new spots to live. Instead of being neighbors on one of the floors, Kong Kong lives in a box in the attic/the part of the main building where the clocks are, and Cula's locker is on the ground floor (I believe) in a smaller building. The classroom the Spookiz study in is on the third floor of the main big building which is actually far from Cula's spot.

The classroom interior is also entirely different but I would like to point out two major things. The first thing is that in the movie they had single desks while in the series there were double ones. They needed Hana to be the only human kid involved in the story, which would probably be difficult if she had a deskmate. The second thing is that there are two different world maps in the classroom. In the movie there's a European (?) world map with Europe being closer to the centre of the map. In the series there's a Chinese (?) world map with China being closer to the centre and Americas being on the right side of the map.

6. Accessories.

Cula has at least two accessories that got a new design. The first one is his bag. In the series he and some other of the Spookiz have purple nylon (?) schoolbags. In the movie Spookiz's bags are brown and made of leather or imitation leather. Another thing is that Cula has red earphones with the symbol λ as a logo on them. In the movie Cula has the same earphones except there's a bat silhouette as a logo.

7. Timeline Mismatch

Some people assume that the movie takes place somewhere in or after the season 2 since Cula has a photo with the moon that he got in the ep. 7 of the season 2. First of all, what was the necessity for the creators to change the other two photos? Could it be another hint that what we see in the movie is similar to the show but not entirely the same? Second of all, in the end of the movie Cula has learnt to appreciate his friends but in the season 2 he didn't even take the first steps on this path. He got major character improvement in season 3 but by that time Kebi had already grown strong feelings for Zizi, and I don't think he would fight her for a candy as he did in the movie. It means that either the series should be in a different chronological order (and some of them really should) or the movie has its own timeline independent of the show.

8. Age Difference

OMG this one is so obvious I forgot to mention it, lol! But I think by now everyone know that Spookiz are 9-10 y.o. in the series. I'm pretty sure I saw information that Cula was 11 but i can't remember where i saw it. Anyway, in the movie Cula states that he is 109 y.o. and this is a strong proof that the movie is another universe different from the series.

Thus, there are lots of differences between the series and the movie. Some of them can be explained by the difference in genre and by a new plot. But most of them are details that weren't necessary unless the creators wanted to make a new universe on purpose. A universe where Cula is not an irritable and mischievous gloater but a slightly anxious nerd. Still narcissistic as always.

[neptrabbit]

So. Here are some of my personal thoughts on ith movie. since this post is LONG, most of the thoughts are leaning towards criticism & ofc it contains spoilers so imma put my bad takes under cut. they’re my personal, subjective opinion, so it’d be normal if you agree/disagree. anyways, you’ve been warned.

The opening song

stage performance & movies are two VERY different media, so unavoidably they had to make many changes to adapt the musical to big screen. One thing they were trying to adapt was the breaking the fourth wall narration in the opening song. they changed the setting of a lot of these lines to Usnavi telling a bunch of kids in an unknown future timeline abt Washington Heights. I personally am not a fan of this decision. the cut between the two different timelines in that 8 min release got me pretty confused & taken out & that feeling did not change much when i was watching the movie either. in the course of the movie, suddenly cutting to future timeline breaks the flow & consistency of the narrative for me, esp since the future scenes rlly aren’t that long. Ik it's for the reveal in the end. I still don't like it.

Choreography

the choreography & cinematography by themselves are hella fantasitc. there’re VERY pretty scenes and choreography, esp during songs. from top of my head i can name a few: the reflection of dancing in the opening song, the running scene in It Won’t Be Long Now, the pool scene (with Vanessa floating on a life saver in the middle) in 96000, THE FUCKING ENTIRETY OF PACIENCIA Y FE, the dancing in The Club, the horizontal dancing scene in When The Sun Goes Down, etc. But a lot of the scenes, esp those that involve group dancing, seems a bit out of place when they seem to take place in the real world rather than on stage. This is prolly another demonstration of the difference in the media of stage performance & movies. I had a hard time to suspend my disbelief, and the movie trying to place some of the dancing in the actual narrative rlly didn’t make it better for me.

(at first I thought for some reason the pool scene in 96000 was everyone’s imagination coming together & was looking forward to it. I did not expect it to actually take place in a pool in the movie & they even used a whole sequence of them going to the pool to show them going to the pool to set it up. So is the dancing in the intro. i did not expect an overhead shot to reveal that it actually happened. Moments like these gave me serious pauses & made me unable to rlly appreciate the fantastic cinematography & choreography.)

bc of the reason i stated & the fact the movie is so centered around these songs & the plot gets cut by the narration from the future, this movie kinda strikes me as a series of well-made music videos connected by loose plots & themes rather than an actual movie.

Plot change

as we all are aware, they made several choices regarding the plot. 

changing nina’s reason to leave Stanford from unable to take care of school & jobs to provide for her living at the same time to experience of racism. i’m personally not a fan of this change - i am not implying that racism is not an issue that poc experience daily. It’s just, I expected a more nuanced discussion on racism & identity in a movie centered around a socially & financially marginalized minority group than a few lines of “my roommate lost her shit so her & RA searched me”, “the school board thought i was a waitress at diversity dinner”, “the waiters looked at me in the looks that question if i am with them”, and “i felt lonely and without a community there”. They are pretty superficial considering their impact in the story. tbh the line “when i was younger i’d imagined what would happen if my parents had stayed in Puerto Rico” did a much better job to capture the identity crisis that first gen immigrant children go thru and gave me more emotional impacts than all the horrible things stanford did to nina. 

deleting Hundreds of Stories and putting Paciencia y Fe right before abuela’s death. i understand it’s a narrative choice bc they decided to reveal that abuela won the lottery later & make it that Usnavi had saved to move to DR in the beginning. in the changed lyrics of Paciencia y Fe we also had a peak of abuela’s struggle of deciding whether to leave or stay in Washington Heights. which is nice. but putting that song right before abuela dies rlly makes her conflicting feelings unimportant to the story... maybe the leave or stay refers to her dying, but she doesn’t rlly have much of a choice either way, does it. she’s just.. kinda like some characters in anime.. whose tragic backstory is narrated right before they die to get the readers emotional... but in a pretty song sequence... the choreography & lighting is very pretty tho. gotta give credit where it’s due.

Sonny’s subplot. i rewatched the movie and realized that there was some foreshadowing of his illegal status in the beginning when Daddy Sonny was talking to Usnavi, but tbh it was quite easy to miss.. so i was a bit surprised when they brought up Sonny’s subplot when there was only 45 min left of the movie. that was not enough time to fully develop this plot, esp given that time is used for other subplots too. we know Sonny is very aware of the politics & is sorta an activist, but him wanting to be like Nina & wanting to get into college wasn’t established earlier, so that part following the protest scene feels a bit flat.

Other things

I’ve seen the discussion of the film’s lack of rep of Afro-Latinos, but I am not the most qualified person to talk abt the experience of Afro-Latino community. I’m keeping my ears open and learning on this subject. 

I liked that they made Daniela & Carla a couple and was excited when i heard the news. The movie itself was not rlly explicit on their relationship tho - there were scenes of Carla pulling Daniela outta bed in the beginning & their dancing. but tbh the fact that they added a third Salon lady, Cuca, who’s always hanging around, makes D&C relationship harder to notice. Im not gonna say blink and you’ll miss it, but it’s pretty easy to miss. obv their relationship has nothing to do w the main plot, but eh. wished it was more explicit.

Tl;dr: i think they have a lot of interesting ideas that they didn’t explore fully so the movie feels a bit all over the place. this goes for Vanessa’s hope to become a fashion designer, Nina’s experience of racism & identity crisis, Sonny’s illegal status. Loved Daniela and the songs tho. Piragua song’s funny as hell. A bit sad they didn’t paint abuela in the finale :(

i am familiar w the source material & liked it a TON but i don’t like it enough to feel nostalgia.. so i can’t go in there with a fresh mind & see it without comparing it to the original, and neither do i hold so much affection for it that i can happily ignore the defects. so honestly i’m probably in the group that has the worst experience watching it

also: pls lmm i beg u pls don’t make a live action adaption of hamilton, pls

[robotlesbianjavert]

*invasive asks, don't have to answer if you don't want* I keep wondering what is the appeal of slasher movies (nothing wrong with them, just not my thing)? I never read The Cursed Child, what's that about and what do you like about it?

these are good questions don’t worry xoxo

a) i can’t actually explain my penchant for slasher movies in a tumblr-wise moral manner, bc obviously slasher is a genre that tends to be filled with shit like fetishization and a demonization of mental illness and whatever else i can’t list it all right now it’s just a very flawed genre.  so i can’t really discuss it on that kind of intellectually moral level - they are very much a guilty pleasure that i feel i’m permitted.

the thing is that they are such a cheesy b-movie genre that it’s hard to be feel supremely guilty about it?  obviously they’ve gained some mainstream focus that necessitates serious discussion about various harmful shit going on, and i could go more into it if prompted and if i consider myself capable, but they are also SO DUMB.  not dumb some are smart-ish but you always know what to expect from them, you can always expect some dumb caricatures to get slaughtered, expect some final girl expy to limp their way to survival, you can expect the build up, and if there’s a surprise then that’s just an extra treat.  i guess it’s kind of cathartic, being able to exorcise some of my more serious anxieties through them, even when they get positively decadent in the blood and gore and sadism

i guess that while i also like horror as a general genre and am super happy to discuss horror films that take themselves more seriously (ie babadook, get out, that kind of stuff i sincerely believe that horror has great potential for commentary that often gets overlooked or underdeveloped), it’s a bit easier to latch onto singular slasher villains fandom-wise (your michael’s and jason’s and i guess the freddy’s altho freddy can go choke) than it is for more concept-based horrors, bc you don’t NECESSARILY have to take them seriously and you can just have some fun with them (altho they do have their place in a serious discussion, like how michael and jason are horrors that stalk otherwise safe environments, or how freddy is literally thematically about violation)

it’s hard to really explain in a justifiable way rather than a guilty-pleasure way, and i can’t really argue that i’m somehow a morally superior person for liking them and i don’t want to bc that’s dumb and exhausting.  they just tend to be fun i guess.

b) okay so what cursed child is about is essentially the relationship between harry and his son, albus severus, and how they are both essentially similar in ways that, coupled with harry’s complicated legacy and upbringing, drive them apart and eventually bring them back together, particularly in their opinions on hogwarts - this results in albus jr attempting to one-up his father via what albus understands as his first failure (cedric’s death) through time travel.  things escalate from there.

honestly i think that cursed child is a really important continuation of the themes and lessons from the main harry potter series in a more grown-up sense, and i really hate how it’s been spoiled on this site by a bunch of dumb spoilers that never fit well out of context.

like part of the problem i think is that a lot of ppl online tend to a) overidealize harry as some sassy angel child and b) try to freeze him at 11-17 years old rather than consider how his adolescent experiences might map onto who is is as an adult father.  so when he says “sometimes i wish you weren’t my son”, they decide to ignore the context leading up to that moment (albus essentially needling and baiting harry and accidentally touching upon triggers relating to his past abuse, and the two of them essentially having two different conversations) and then everything afterwards (harry’s horror and guilt over speaking in a moment of anger and spite, as he was prone to in the main series, and his desperation to protect and apologize to albus in a time where he’s triggered for a sustained period of time and afraid that his greatest enemy is somehow returning), and decide to declare that jkr must not know her own characters if she dares to write harry as a “bad dad”.  as much as ppl like to try and discuss how terrible it was for harry to suffer abuse at the dursley’s, they sure seem to want to underestimate how it affects him in the long run.  and by fuck does cursed child dig into what harry went through with the dursley’s, particularly petunia!  he’s having nightmares about her and this gets discussed and ppl still like to act like this play misrepresents how he suffered!  it’s so fucking stupid!

i guess i also can’t really lie - i initially bought into all the bad hype surrounding the play when spoilers were released, tho i hope in a more muted way than a lot of ppl i followed, and i only really got interested when i read a particularly moving think-piece about snape, and then i knew i had to have it bc i cannot stress enough how snape was One Of Those Characters that i latched onto in my childhood, and how it felt good to be a bit vindicated in the face of how this website trashes him.  also i cried a lot w snape bc it’s such good closure for his character, it helps you understand how his character potentially developed in the light of the main series, and also i got a better understanding of dumbledore too like you got the impression after the kings cross chapter in dh but when he admitted his insecurities re: how he only hurts the ppl he loves in cc?  it literally like blew his character wide open for me, it really helped me piece together a lot of the things i was unsure about with him.  so i also think it provides a lot of retroactive understanding and clarification of the characters that some ppl like to deliberately misinterpret for notes 

also ppl’s complaints about the time-travel plots are fucking stupid to be perfectly honest, esp in comparison to POA.  first off, poa did hint that it’s possible to change the timeline, cc established that we are working with very different time-travel tools than in poa, and thirdly in poa time-travel was a plot device and in cc it’s a thematic device so who even gives a fuck honestly.

basically: i think the play is a vital and important continuation and conclusion of the original series and its thematic elements, and if ppl don’t like then what the fuck ever but at least they can try to dislike it on legitimate grounds rather than things they heard secondhand or deliberately misinterpreted/decided didn’t fit with their headcanon

i can actually talk like.  a lot about this play bc there was a lot of what i liked and what i think tumblr should like if everyone could carefully remove their heads from their asses.  there are a few things i think could have been improved (while i don’t think it was necessarily baiting, i do believe scorpius/albus was a sorely missed opportunity), the play is more positive than it negative and i would kill to see it onstage.  i guess if ppl don’t like reading script it’s fine but honestly i loved the script, but i’m also fairly used to reading script so idk

also it justified my belief that hermione would be an awful teacher and i feel vindicated even tho i have not seen anyone talk about it tbh

also it made my mother cry (in a good way) and she loved it and that’s literally all the assurance anyone should need. my mom’s a good person and everyone should trust her.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Ettore Sottsass’s Candy-Colored Utopian Design

Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical, installation view (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

The late, legendary Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass has been — to paraphrase Yogi Berra — rediscovered all over again. In recent years, his work has been shared with wide audiences through a series of articles and “explainers,” like this recent short video from Vox, or this 2014 piece about Memphis by Alissa Walker that appeared on Gizmodo. And his profile got a big boost from his prominence in the exhibition Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970—1990 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2011. Sottsass’s work (or that of his contemporaries and imitators) has been featured in all its wacky glory in Miami Vice, in movies like Beetlejuice and Ruthless People, and in the perfectly postmodern Christmas episode of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse that featured Grace Jones. Concurrent with the happy rediscovery of the “Sottsass look,” design studios around the world have been producing boldly hued and playfully geometric wares for consumers who have tired of colorless minimalism. The moment that a field of squiggles appears on a Formica surface, or a printed textile seems to resemble the cover of a marble notebook, the spirit of Sottsass is duly invoked.

But the designer, who lived to be 90 and worked for nearly seven decades across an array of different media and styles, did far more than bring “Saved by the Bell chic” into existence. Because his work is so often bound up with that of Memphis, the Italian design collective he co-founded in 1981, and of postmodernism in general, a fuller appreciation of Sottsass’s diverse career is overdue. Thus, in his centennial year (he would have been 100 in 2017), a refreshing survey at the Met Breuer called Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical aims to introduce both seasoned admirers and new fans to the breadth of the designer’s oeuvre. Though the title evokes the lingo of the tubular 1980s, this exhibition makes the case that Sottsass wasn’t just superficially “rad” in the Moon Unit Zappa sense of the word (although he was that, too). Rather, he was a true excavator of history: radical in its Late Latin meaning of “having roots.” A good deal of the material on display here draws inspiration from or refers back to the art and architecture of the ancient world. So the encyclopedic Met, with Egyptian jewelry and Mesopotamian ceramics aplenty in its permanent collection, is a fitting place to appreciate Sottsass’s singular, exuberantly odd vision.

Barbara Radice, “Sottsass in India” (1988) (courtesy of Barbara Radice)

Sottsass was born in 1917 in Austria and brought up in Turin, Italy, the son of a modernist architect who was also named Ettore Sottsass. After graduating from the Politecnico di Torino in Turin in 1939, he served in World War II and spent time in a labor camp in Yugoslavia. At the end of the war, he returned to Italy and got to work with his father designing buildings to replace and improve upon what had been destroyed in the conflict. He set up his own office in 1947 in Milan and began working in an increasingly wide array of media: painting, sculpture, jewelry, furniture, architecture, and industrial design.

What fails to come across in the typical “’80s explainer” version of the Sottsass story is that he left his mark on several very distinct design movements over the course of his career, and this is precisely what makes him so hard to categorize. The Met Breuer exhibition presents the artist’s works alongside “friends” that highlight either a shared genre or superficial similarities — sometimes both. In the “Early Career” section, Sottsass’s ceramics from the late 1950s, decorated with grids and stripes, and his geometric shelving units are paired with drawings and objects by Wiener Werkstätte designers Josef Hoffmann (who was nicknamed “Square Hoffmann” by his contemporaries, for exactly the reason you’d expect) and Kolomon Moser from the turn of the 20th century. Non-chronological additions, like a black and white teapot by American postmodernist Peter Shire, “Two Tone Cone” (1981), demonstrate the geometric, black-and-white impulse echoing down the timeline from fin de siècle Vienna to early 1980s Los Angeles.

Ettore Sottsass, “Lapislazzuli” (1968–72), shown with an architectural vessel from the Moche culture of Peru, AD 400–600 (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Ettore Sottsass, “Murmansk” fruit dish (1982), silver (courtesy Met Breuer)

One of Sottsass’s best-known projects was a commercial failure: the Valentine Typewriter, a bright red, plastic portable gadget he designed with Perry King in 1968 for Olivetti. The Valentine has become the quintessential “design museum” object: It’s beloved for its cheeky approach to the design of otherwise-drab office equipment, like an early ancestor of the original iMac, but because it wasn’t a terribly reliable or efficient machine, it isn’t the sort of device (like the IBM Selectric) that stayed on in offices after the computer revolution because it did its job just fine. Sottsass had hoped it would be a utopian, affordable object that would give users joy, and his frustration with its fate is immortalized in an Instagrammable quote from 1993, which is reproduced on its pedestal: “I worked sixty years of my life and it seems the only thing I did was this fucking red machine. And it came out a mistake. It was supposed to be an inexpensive portable, to sell in the market, like pens…Then the people at Olivetti said you cannot sell this.”

Ettore Sottsass, Valentine Portable Typewriter (1968), ABS plastic and other materials (courtesy Met Breuer)

Viewed through the prism of the Valentine episode, what comes next for Sottsass makes a lot of sense: After a brief stint working in George Nelson’s office, he abandoned corporate modernism and hit the road. He traveled the world studying the art, architecture, and design of dozens of different civilizations, and took a transformative trip to India in 1961. The work that emerged from these journeys is his most timeless, and for me, this section of the exhibition is the most successful, perhaps thanks to my pro-ceramics bias. As the sixties unfolded, Sottsass became fascinated with totems of various kinds and began creating large sculptures comprised of ceramic cylinders. Five of the totems that comprised the Menhir, Ziggurat, Stupas, Hydrants, and Gas Pumps (1965–66) project (first exhibited at Galleria Sperone in 1967) are shown in a group, inside an egg yolk–yellow room. Around the perimeter, smaller ceramic works with the recognizable steep-stepped silhouette of a ziggurat are shown with ancient analogs: an architectural vessel made between 400 and 600 AD from Moche culture in Peru, a metal reliquary in the shape of a Stupa from the kingdom of Kashmir in 7th–9th century India, and dozens of others.

Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical, installation view (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

The “totemic” quality of these sculptures, paired with their irresistible candy colors, rings a bell: In the galleries that follow, we’re re-introduced to the furniture and objects we thought we knew. Now, looking at the tall, imposing Superbox Sottsass designed for Poltronova in 1970, with the image of a rectangular Chinese ritual object circa 2400 BC still in mind from the previous room, it seems it’s not just modernism that Sottsass was channeling, but mystery. The Superbox is paired with contemporaries: a metal and acrylic Donald Judd work from the same year, with roughly the same proportions, like a cabinet missing its overcoat, and a return visit from Koloman Moser, whose 1903 wood and glass cabinet shows us a very early stab at the repudiation of ornament that came to define modernism in the 20th century. The Superbox, which sports black and blue stripes, suggests a different way to think about the ornament-free movement. As a functional cabinet, and as a totemic object in its own right, its playful, circus-like stripes suggest a secret inside. Rather than a “freedom from” approach to surface decoration, it suggests that a lack of ornament might inspire the observer to contemplate what secrets might be found in its interior.

Like other avant-garde Italian designers of his era, particularly Joe Colombo, Sottsass was intrigued by systems. “Environment,” his contribution to the landmark 1972 exhibition at MoMA, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, is the most overtly political of all the works referenced here. (It is not on view itself, but is referenced in printed material and through a film that plays continuously.) “Environment” was a prototype of modular cabinets that could be configured in almost any combination to support a small, large, or shared living space. Colombo’s 1971 “Total Furnishing Unit,” which was also featured in Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, is a modular solution for a single person or a couple, with a finite allocation of space and resources. “Environment,” by contrast, is theoretically limitless; it could just as easily furnish space for a commune as for one individual. Thinking back to the failure of the Valentine typewriter, it seems Sottsass’s utopian impulses were best channeled through a project that was too far out for the marketplace. Instead of conceiving of the world as a landscape for purchases and households, he wanted to reimagine what a household could be.

Ettore Sottsass, “Carlton” Room Divider, (1981), wood, plastic laminate (courtesy Met Breuer)

Ettore Sottsass, Cabinet No. 56 (2003), wood, ebonized pearwood veneer, acrylic (courtesy Met Breuer)

The Memphis group, which was established in 1981 and namd for the song “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” by Bob Dylan, remains the work for which Sottsass is still best known, and that’s unlikely to change in the near future. A review in Bloomberg News of this very exhibition totally misses the point, with the headline “This One Man Colored the 1980s in Pastel.” The one-dimensionality of this persistent view seems to be precisely what Sottsass was trying to shake off during his global travels, experiments in totemic furniture design, and commune-modernism.

When we come into contact with Sottsass in the wild, it’s usually indirectly. Memphis furniture is highly collectible and far too expensive to be commonplace. Almost no one actually uses a Valentine Typewriter. And employing a modular “Environment” setup would not be practical or even feasible in most living situations. So the “explainers” are, in a sense, right: The most common Sottsass experience one is likely to have is of his vision, his color palette, his love of squiggles and zigzags, and his confident indifference to notions of good taste. This exhibition makes the case, mostly convincingly, that it wasn’t just an aesthetic that Sottsass unleashed on the world, but a particular way of interpreting the past and imagining the future.

Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical, installation view (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Memphis furniture, like the Postmodern movement itself, paired high with low, ancient with modern, highly skilled woodwork with mass-market Formica. The Carlton Room Divider—perhaps the mascot of Memphis—was built to house books, but it hasn’t got a right angle anywhere. (Sottsass remarked that books always seem to lean to the side, anyway.) It’s just this sort of gesture that makes it seem as though the eye-popping quality of his aesthetic is a red herring, and that the real “wow factor” in his work is that his choices make us question what we thought we knew about ordinary things: the quality of materials, environments, typewriters, bookshelves. Tugging at the root of how we live and interact with the objects in our lives, as opposed to just decorating their surfaces, is an act of radical design, indeed.

Ettore Sottsass, Omaggio 3 (2007), Corian and wood, 75 × 64 1/4 × 59 1/4 in. (courtesy Met Breuer)

Ettore Sottsass, “The Structures Tremble” (1979), plastic laminate, composition board, painted steel, rubber, glass (courtesy Met Breuer)

Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical continues at Met Breuer (1000 Fifth Avenue) through October 8.

The post Ettore Sottsass’s Candy-Colored Utopian Design appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[whatsfilming]

The Flash Season 4

Thanks to early renewals on all the Arrowverse shows, the writers certainly left us hanging on each of the finales. With Savitar now defeated and Barry in the speed force (albeit temporarily, I’m sure), what can we expect from The Flash season 4? After the first 3 seasons featured a speedster villain (Reverse Flash, Zoom, and Savitar), the showrunners made it clear long ago that wouldn’t be the case for this season. Thanks to a tweet from @FLASHProdOffice, we know the title of The Flash season 4 episode 1 will be “The Flash Reborn”.

After name-dropping the character a couple of times throughout the last few episodes, TVLine.com confirmed that the big bad for this season will in fact be will be Clifford DeVoe (aka The Thinker). We haven’t seen any official casting announcements for his role yet, but hopefully as filming gets underway the network will release the news.

Who would you like to see in the role of The Thinker in The Flash season 4? Let us know in the comments below!

It won’t be shocking to see the return of Keiynan Lonsdale, Candice Patton, Jesse L. Martin, and Carlos Valdes in The Flash season 4, but some speculated that Tom Felton’s role was only a one season arc. However, he’s already returned to Vancouver in advance of production kicking off next week. Just Jared via @kingscourtgraph spotted Tom enjoying some Vancouver sunshine on June 27th. But will Julian get another chance with his love interest Caitlin this season? We’ll have to wait and see.

At the very least it won’t take long for us to see Caitlin back on our screens. Yesterday Danielle Panabaker tweeted a photo of her parking space at Vancouver Film Studios while they were in final prep for The Flash season 4 episode 1:

We're back! @CW_TheFlash #TheFlash #Season4 http://pic.twitter.com/N0M20ufjk0

— Danielle Panabaker (@dpanabaker) July 3, 2017

Although one of Tom Cavanagh’s characters, H.R. Wells, met his death during the season 3 finale, Barry asked his Earth 2 version (Harrison Wells) to stick around, so we’re sure to see more of him this season as well. After The Flash wrapped up production on season 3, Tom was back a couple weeks later for a role in a Hallmark original movie called Darrow and Darrow. Look for that on the Hallmark Channel later this year.

RELATED: Darrow and Darrow with Tom Cavanagh Starts Filming in BC

The Flash season 4 is scheduled to start filming in Vancouver and area today until April 21st, 2018. It premieres Tuesday, October 10th at 8pm on The CW in the US and on CTV in Canada.

Arrow Season 6

Arguably the biggest series finale cliffhanger in the Arrowverse last season was Arrow. With Oliver and William on a boat off the coast of Lian Yu alongside the dead body of Chase, we’re left wondering who made it off the island following the explosion; and how. Did Team Arrow make it to the A.R.G.U.S. plane on the other side of the island, or was it too late? Did the landmine REALLY kill off Malcolm? So many questions to set us up for a good story to start off Arrow Season 6.

At the very least, it seems as though Dinah and Rene made it out unscathed; both actors (Juliana Harkavy and Rick Gonzalez) were promoted to series regulars earlier this spring as per The Hollywood Reporter. Dinah made her first appearance mid-way through season 5, whereas Rene was present from the season premiere onward. Both were technically only recurring characters last season despite heavy screen time. We’ll also be seeing a lot more of Katie Cassidy in her role as Black Siren. According to TVLine.com, she’s back as a series regular for season 6 after spending most of season 5 out of the limelight.

Josh Segarra, the actor behind last season’s big bag Adrian Chase, has been in Vancouver for a role on the upcoming Overboard movie remake as per @pursuit23. Although it would be convenient for him to make an appearance on this season of Arrow, it’s unlikely assuming Chase didn’t magically survive his self-inflicted handgun shot to the head.

After Arrow wrapped up season 5 in late April, series lead Stephen Amell hasn’t had much downtime. Since June 1st, he’s been in his hometown of Toronto filming an indie sci-fi feature called Code 8. He and his cousin, The Flash star Robbie Amell, are both starring in and executive producing the film which is based on a 10-minute short of the same name, also starring the cousins. Code 8 is scheduled to wrap up filming on July 14th.

Arrow season 6 is scheduled to start filming in Vancouver on July 7th and will continue until April 26th, 2018. It premieres in it’s new day/time slot Thursday, October 12th at 9pm on The CW in the US. According to a CTV press release, in Canada Arrow season 4 will maintain its Wednesday position on CTV TWO at 9pm. This is an interesting move; meaning that Canada will either get the episodes a full day ahead of the US, or we’ll be almost a week behind.

RELATED: Comic Book Shows Filmed in Vancouver – Your Favourites!

Legends of Tomorrow Season 3

Legends of Tomorrow may have the most-revealed upcoming season of all 4 shows. In a high level summary of Legends of Tomorrow season 3, the showrunners confirmed the return of Caity Lotz, Arthur Darvill, Victor Garber, Dominic Purcell, Brandon Routh, Franz Drameh, Maisie Richardson-Sellers and Nick Zano.

The returning cast will be joined by newcomers Tala Ashe (American Odyssey) and Billy Zane (Titanic) who will play Adrianna Tomaz (aka Isis) and P.T. Barnum respectively.

This time around the Legends will have to face the damage we saw at the end of last season which they caused by revisiting a point in the timeline they had already been. Their mission will be to restore the timeline without disrupting it further. However, their former teammate, Rip Hunter and his new “Time Bureau” gets in the way and causes the Legends to go their separate ways. That is, until Mick Rory crosses paths with one of them while on his much anticipated vacation in Aruba. With the gang back together, they’re determined to face the Time Bureau head-on and save the future their own way.

Thanks to @missalexad17 we know that one of the primary locations during Legends of Tomorrow season 3 episode 1 will be Central Park in Burnaby. According to the filming notice she found, the cast and crew are expected to be filming at the park from July 10th to 13th. Central Park is one of the most popular filming locations in the Lower Mainland of BC. In addition to being a location that Legends of Tomorrow has used several times before, in the past year the park has been used by Van Helsing, The Flash, Supernatural, Once Upon a Time, Arrow and more.

Legends of Tomorrow Season 3 is scheduled to start filming in Vancouver and area July 7th until February 26th. It premieres Tuesday, October 10th at 9pm on The CW in the US and on CTV TWO in Canada.

Supergirl Season 3

Although Kara and team have put the threat of Queen Rhea behind them, their work is far from over. Recently added to the cast of Supergirl season 3 is Odette Annable (Pure Genius). According to Deadline.com, she’ll portray this season’s big bad, a recently well known Kryptonian and formidable villain from the comics lore, “Reign”.

In last season’s finale, Kara and Mon-El were torn apart after his pod was drawn into a wormhole, but mention of him in the network’s official summary of season 3 revealed that we haven’t seen the last of Chris Wood’s character yet. We’ll also see the return of the David Harewood, Chyler Leigh, Mechad Brooks, Jeremy Jordan and Calista Flockhart.

Despite the undeniable on-screen chemistry and the proposal during the season 2 finale, we’ll see less of Alex and Maggie (aka Sanvers) this season. Floriana Lima (who plays Maggie) has stepped down from her series regular status. She’ll be back in some capacity though, because she’s still set as a recurring character as per TVLine.com.

Katie McGrath was introduced as Lena Luthor during the beginning of season 2 and recurred throughout the rest of the season. According to Deadline.com, we’ll be seeing a lot more of her in Supergirl season 3 as she’s been promoted to series regular.

Supergirl season 3 is scheduled to start filming in Vancouver and area July 6th until April 28th, 2018. It premieres Monday, October 9th at 8pm on The CW in the US and on Showcase in Canada.

Also Starting This Week

Once Upon a Time – Season 7 (TV Series) Cast: Lana Parrilla, Robert Carlyle, Colin O’Donoghue, Andrew J. West, Alison Fernandez Filming until April 2nd, 2018

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (TV Movie) Filming until August 4th

For a full list of what’s filming in Vancouver and British Columbia right now, check out our In Production page.

Filming Locations

As always, keep an eye on our Current Filming Locations page where we post any information received via Twitter or otherwise. If you’re interested in checking out some past locations, have a look at our Filming Locations Archive.

Thank you @lemon_buzz for the initial scoop on when each of these shows would be returning to Vancouver to resume filming!

If you see any of these productions, including the The Flash season 4 filming in Vancouver and British Columbia, be sure to let us know by tweeting us (@WhatsFilming) or via our Submit a Location page.

The post The Flash Season 4, Arrow Season 6, Legends of Tomorrow Season 3 & Supergirl Season 3 Start Filming appeared first on What's Filming?.

[qveenpoppy]

fall trailers recap (as of 5/17)

okay, so, i didn’t watch all of the trailers that came out for new fall tv series (some just do not interest me). nonetheless, here are my thoughts on the ones i did watch:

the gifted - i am not much of an x-men person. do i have interest in the films? a little, but at this point it seems like too much to take on. however, this series does look interesting, especially considering that the two mutant teens have a father who literally locks up mutants for a living. will make for an interesting show, and like legion, i can see this being pretty popular on social media. also, hello, little lev tashi’ne! wonder how the unwind production will continue now that one of their stars has a leading tv role... hmm...

the orville - one of several trailers on this list that surprised me. anyone that follows me on my other blog knows i have become a star trek fan in the past year (blame chris pine and his stupidly handsome face - and karl urban too), so it was inevitable for me to have some interest in what is essentially a parody series. and honestly? it looks great. the set feels reminiscent of the original enterprise set from the 1960s series (in that it’s quite basic and perfect for tv), and it’s good to see seth macfarlane in something that isn’t animated for once. (he was surprisingly lovable in sing, though, if i’m being honest.) i laughed quite a few times during this trailer, and i can definitely see myself giving this series a try. (i’ll have to play catch-up the following day, though, since its broadcast conflicts with this is us!)

ghosted - more parody series! this time more along the lines of x-files, a show i never watched. this gave me a feel of that with a dash of ghostbusters, and it feels a little... i don’t know, cheesy? the two leads seem okay and the trailer had its moments, but i’ll pass on this one. (fox comedies do tend to fall flat for me...)

will & grace - not exactly a new series, but still a series i wanted to comment on. the trailer was amusing (hello singing agent maclaren, lol), but did make me wonder if this reboot could work. while i love the original series, times have changed since it first aired. gay is a bit more normal, especially on tv. most shows will feature at least one lgbtq+ character nowadays, so the uniqueness of will & grace isn’t there anymore. it just feels like any other show on tv. will original viewers of the series still tune in? probably. but don’t expect it to be as buzzed about as reboots like x-files or gilmore girls. will & grace is a great sitcom that probably should have been left alone as is.

deception - i was interest in this series just when i read about it getting a series order, so i was highly anticipating the trailer. it’s tv’s now you see me, basically, except the magician works for the law. (considering the fact that a producer on the series is in fact associated with the nysm franchise, i would love for there to be implications of a shared universe.) otherwise, it feels like any other procedural out there now, with the man having some ability that makes him more capable of solving crimes. this may be bc the partner is a woc, but it vaguely reminds me of minority report... i do mean vaguely. it just follows the same formula.

the good doctor - another trailer that surprised me. in my eyes, it feels like limitless (hello boyle!) meets house. it looks really good. something i can 100% see myself trying come fall. it does help that the lead actor, freddie highmore, is someone i’ve seen in films since even he was a child. (charlie and the chocolate factory ring a bell? that movie was terrible, but he was a cute kid actor.) i have seen some people complain a little that he’s playing an autistic doctor but doesn’t have autism himself in real life, and i do see why that would be a problem. still, i think that makes it even more of a challenge for him to get that part of the character right, and therefore show off more of his talent. if they make mistakes along the way with how they portray autism, then we really have a problem.

the alienist - you all know why i watched this trailer. luke evans, the current love of my life (he’s gorgeous and ridiculously talented and oh so sweet, okay?), is a lead on this series. (it’s surprising to see him go to tv considering that his film career is just continuing to blossom, but tv has adopted a lot of film stars lately - hbo’s big little lies has a bunch of them - so maybe i shouldn’t be so surprised.) that probably has a lot to do with why i liked the trailer, bc it’s normally not my kind of show. but the period drama aspect gives me flashbacks to the past (not present day) scenes of forever and time after time, so i can potentially give this show a try. it is an event series, so it can’t hurt too much to get into considering it won’t last long, meaning not a lot to dedicate myself to. heck, i could probably wait to binge the season over two days. but we’ll see, bc dan stevens’ tv run creeped me out, so this could do the same.

star trek: discovery - again, i like star trek. a lot. so this series does interest me a little. can’t say i will watch it, though, bc the prequel aspect just loses me. i’d probably be more interested if it were just like the original series and featured kirk or spock - even in quick cameo roles. but ten years before the events of the original series? yeah, count me out. i do support its diverse cast, and for a tv series, the effects are, no pun intended, out of this world. i cannot believe the budget they must have had for this show.

9jkl - i’m pretty sure i clicked play on this trailer by accident. but holy crap, i’m so glad i watched it. it looks like a hilarious sitcom, which is surprising considering how campy other cbs sitcoms tend to feel. a comment-er on the trailer says this feels campy too, but i don’t think so. the basic plot, with an actor living back home with his parents - though said home is actually an apartment next door - does sound a little cheesy, but the humor is good. a bit risque considering all the sex references, but surprisingly funny. i do recognize two actors on the show (i don’t know names, sorry!) - one is ross and monica’s father from friends, and i believe the other was the lead on about a boy? anyway, i don’t watch a lot of sitcoms, but i’ll definitely try this one - i didn’t give the cbs schedule much of a look, so i’ll have to make sure this is on at a time that works for me!

me, myself, and i - one youtube comment-er described this show perfectly: “it’s like the wonder years meets this is us”. i definitely get that sort of feel from this show. it’ll be interesting to watch these three different timelines all move at once, considering that there are characters besides the lead who we’ll see in the future while we simultaneously watch their past unfold. (like the lead’s daughter - there’ll probably be a lot of foreshadowing regarding her future career that we’ll already see turning out in the future portions of the show.) but i do like that connection between past and future with the crush. i wonder if that girl will pop up at all in the present day timeline. i’m a fan of bobby moynihan’s from snl, so i’m happy to see him branching out. and i’m also so ready to root for that child actor from the past portion of the show. he seems quite charming, adorable, and talented.

young sheldon - never saw an episode of big bang theory. however, this was trending on twitter for a while today, so i got curious. it started off feeling a bit cheesy and like a hallmark film, but the more i watched, the more heart it had. it wasn’t overly funny, but it was cute. and this must be the year of the child actor, bc man, a star is being born here. this does give me a little bit of forest gump vibes, except sheldon is actually a genius. maybe it’s more his behavior, which i’m assuming is Asperger or something, that has me giving that comparison. i probably won’t watch this one, but i’ll root for it to succeed.