If you are a fan of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis series this will be great news. They have turned it into a film, and it looks like they actually did a great job. The animation in the trailer looks fantastic, and like a nice transition from her comics. The film was released late last year and is finally making it’s way over here to the States. Here is a brief summary of the story from Wikipedia-

The story begins just before the Iranian Revolution. Shown initially through the eyes of the nine-year-old Marjane, it shows how people’s hopes for change were slowly dashed as the Islamic fundamentalists took power, forcing head coverings on women and imprisoning thousands; the story ends with Marjane as a 21-year-old expatriate.

Persepolis- Official Movie Site
Persepolis- Pick up the complete series at Powell’s Books!

Here is a great example of well executed performance art bt the group Improv Everywhere. Over 200 people gather together and descend into Grand Central Station. All at once they freeze in place for exactly 5 minutes. What the hell is going on? Protest? Science Fiction? Who knows…Some pretty great reactions. It’s cool to see how this kind of thing snaps people out of their daily routine and brings them right into the moment. It’s like the dynamic is reversed…ordinarily we are frozen, stumbling through life without paying attention. I’m sure standing for 5 minutes without moving also served to bring the actors into the more focused moment of consciousness.

Here is a great collection of Chinese Medical Posters scanned and posted to Flickr. I am a big fan of medical illustration, and while I’ve seen the Indian versions of a lot of these, I’ve never seen Chinese ones. The personal hygiene ones are always good for a hoot. Thanks to Ben for the link.

View these Nude Suit images by artist Matthew Glover, and you may find yourself putting on an extra layer of clothing. No these are not some new secret x-ray vision spy camera, or a frightening new nudist clothing experiment, the pictures were cleverly modified in Photoshop (before anyone starts chortling about it) as mentioned in the artists notes. The subjects were photographed twice, once in the nude and then the images were composited creating the sometimes eerie images. The artist claims the final images are intending to show a more thorough understanding of the subjects by allowing them to choose the clothing, and posing them in a location of comfort. It creates and interesting dynamic as it shows them naked yet within the comfort of their clothing, but does it really help us understand them more, or simply distract? I think we can also learn something about ourselves from the viewing experience and how we react to the individual images, which is one thing good art should arouse.

Matthew Glover- Nude Suits

Performance type art really works for me when the pure imagination of it all pushes aside any logic, and results in a visual display that leaves me thinking, “Now why didn’t I think of that?”. Check out this short clip from Peter Liechti’s 1996 documentary on artist Roman Singer…Now I will need to get busy hunting down a copy of it.

More info on the film can be found here.

The best holiday of the year is just around the corner, and to celebrate how about everyone get naked and put on those scary masks, and have a bit of fun! Well anyway…Our good friend, and passionate horror aficionado (among other things) Jason sent this great link to the Cheesecake Monster gallery, featuring photos by Caleb Oglesby. Caleb has taken the two things he loves most…horror and naked ladies, and turned this into a series of sometimes disturbing images. The ladies pose in provocative poses while modeling common Halloween masks, which depending on your tastes will possibly either turn you off towards the female form…or turn you on, and help you discover your true fetish! Perhaps they will just make you laugh out loud like this one of the Burger King man did for me…as if that guy wasn’t creepy enough to begin with. In the end this is fun stuff, and it will be interesting to see how it evolves, so keep mining that vein Caleb, or maybe I should say keep hacking at it with that machete.

Caleb Oglesby- Monster Cheesecake
(Be warned you will see some nudity…and Halloween masks, so if either of those things fracture your senses…don’t click the links)

Another great link sent our way from Ketogah. I really like the way the hand held camera wobblies sort of add to the feeling of reality.

Check out these really cool paintings from Ron English. This was a collaboration with one of our favorite musician/artists Daniel Johnston. If you don’t know Daniel’s work, or life story for that matter as they are very intertwined, check out the 2006 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. Ron English is a fairly well known underground artist, who gained much note for his pudgy Mc Figurines and was featured in the Super Size Me film. He has amassed a nice body of work including re purposing billboards with new socially relevant or irreverent messages. His style of art is obviously more technical than Daniel’s, but Daniel’s amazing creativity is really evident in these pieces, and takes Ron’s work to new heights. Great stuff, thnx to our pal Ketogah for the link.

Ron English- Daniel Johnston Paintings

Step right up folks and get yourself the one and Only Hand of Glory. Andrew Bird sings about it, it makes appearances in Hellboy and the The Invisibles, and now thanks to the folks at Fiendish Curiosities you can own a pretty gosh darn scary looking replica of it. Troll their site for all sorts of marvelous and gruesome creations, just waiting to come home and roost on that shelf next to the porcelain bluebirds. See if you can locate Cyclops Kitty…everyone needs one of those right?

Fiendish Curiosities: Hand of Glory

Beth Robinson has really tapped into something here with her classically styled darkly themed dolls. Since 2003 she has pumped out over 300 of these fascinating and often gruesome creations which are guaranteed to delight those who enjoy Gorey, Brothers Quay, Trevor Brown and other masters mixing cuteness with death and fetish themes.

Each doll is entirely hand made using polymer clays, vintage fabrics, acrylic paint, and sometimes real human hair or teeth. Each piece is one of a kind.

Strange Dolls: Official Website