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Flavorwire

Los Angeles

Electrifying Photos of Los Angeles, 1940-1990

By Tanja M. Laden on

Not far from Downtown Los Angeles, the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens is the former home of American railroad magnate Henry E. Huntington, whose 500-acre estate and massive collection of 18th-century British portraiture became available to the public after his death in 1927. While the Huntington is definitely worth a visit in person, it’s also possible to check out a few of its resources online. Form and Landscape: Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Basin, 1940–1990 is a web-based exhibition presented by the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West featuring a selection of 70,000 images from Southern California Edison, the company that supplies the majority of electricity to the LA area. As part of the Getty’s initiative, Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in LA, authors, scholars, and other experts have culled the Huntington’s massive archive documenting the region’s — quite literally — electrifying history. … Read More

Pop Culture

Staff Picks: Flavorwire’s Favorite Cultural Things This Week

By Chloe Pantazi on

Need a great book to read, album to listen to, or TV show to get hooked on? The Flavorwire team is here to help: in this weekly feature, our editorial staffers each recommend the cultural object or experience they’ve enjoyed the most in the past seven days. Click through for our picks, and tell us what you’ve been loving in the comments. … Read More

Art

Blueprints of Light: Illuminated 3D Perspective Drawings

By Chloe Pantazi on

This stunning installation by the London art collective United Visual Artists (UVA) uses light to create 3D constructs, repurposing space in innovative and compelling ways. With the aptly titled Vanishing Point, spotted at Architizer, UVA re-imagines and restructures the 2D designs of Renaissance architects, using laser beams to manifest 3D perspective environments that register as spectacular blueprints of light, revising architectural conventions and making art out of planning. Take a look at photographs of the installation, currently on exhibit at Berlin’s Olympus Photography Playground, below. … Read More

Music

65 Immortal Brian Eno Quotes for His 65th Birthday

By Tom Hawking on

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno turns 65 today. He’s been one of the most erudite, intelligent, fascinating (and quietly, delightfully batshit crazy) people in the music industry for the best part of 45 years, and so to celebrate his birthday, we thought we’d do what we’ve done for John Waters and Michael Caine, and round up the most illuminating, interesting and occasionally bewildering things he’s said over the years. Enjoy the collected wisdom of the great man after the jump! … Read More

Celebrity

Zoe Saldana Is the Latest Hollywood Ingénue to Use Bisexuality as a PR Tactic

By Tyler Coates on

The ladyblogs are all abuzz over this month’s issue of Allure, featuring Star Trek star Zoe Saldana. The cover line under her boldface name reads, “115 Pounds of Grit and Heartache,” bait that the Internet has gleefully seized, because the business of calling out sexism is always booming. But buried within the actual profile of Saldana is another irritating trend that Hollywood ingénues willingly participate in: the casual mention of the actress’s bisexuality. … Read More

Film

‘Star Trek Into Darkness’s’ Clumsy, Superficial Commentary on Drones

By Jason Bailey on

Star Trek has never shied from allegory — in fact, from the original 1960s series incarnation, creator Gene Rodenberry saw the show’s parallel universe as an opportunity to “make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles.” His show, and the spin-offs and films that followed, offered up commentary on war, the environment, torture, and the like, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that J.J. Abrams’s new sequel Star Trek Into Darkness treads into the waters of political allegory. What’s surprising for the franchise (but not for the current moviemaking culture) is that it does it so shallowly. … Read More

Music

Meet Your New Favorite Band: Majical Cloudz on Radical Vulnerability and the Mythologizing of Montreal

By Tom Hawking on

Meet Your New Favorite Band is a new regular feature where Flavorwire interviews an emerging band whose work we love. This month: the marvelous Majical Cloudz, who are due to release their excellent new album Impersonator next Tuesday via Matador.

Devon Welsh is standing on a chair. He and Matthew Otto, make up the duo Majical Cloudz — a band whose intimately melancholy music rather belies its rave-tastic moniker — have been on stage at Brooklyn’s Bell House for about half an hour. While they’re ostensibly here to support Youth Lagoon, a significant proportion of the crowd has clearly either come to see them or has been won over by their songs. … Read More

Books

In Case You Hadn’t Noticed, Dan Brown Is Really Freaking Weird

By Emily Temple on

Dan Brown’s newest much snickered-at mega-blockbuster novel hit shelves this week, and all the ensuing publicity for the author should be reminding you of something: Dan Brown is a really, really weird dude. Sure, he’s a writer, and writers often have strange habits. But, as the evidence below proves, Brown is a head above the rest — whether that head is upside down or not. … Read More

Film

Gorgeous Original Posters for Paul Thomas Anderson Movies From Mondo

By Jason Bailey on

Well, looks like Mondo has off and done it again. The collectible art division of our beloved Alamo Drafthouse Cinema has a new series of posters dedicated to the work of Paul Thomas Anderson, and they’re knockouts. Mondo artist Aaron Horkey curated the series; after the jump, you can see their posters for Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, and Hard Eight (aka Sidney), along with Horkey’s thoughts on the pieces and the artists responsible. … Read More

Music

ABBA’s ‘Gold,’ Ranked From Gleeful to Glum

By Tyler Coates on

ABBA were one of the greatest pop acts in global history, and part of what made them so impressive was their prolific output of hit songs. The foursome, made up of two real-life couples (Björn Ulvaeus was married to Agnetha Fältskog and Benny Andersson to Anni-Frid Lyngstad), churned out eight albums during their ten-year recording career before the respective marriages failed by the early ‘80s. The band’s songs chronicled the ups and downs of their relationships, often pairing misery and hopelessness with their big, flashy pop sound. In honor of the museum dedicated to the band that opened in Stockholm last week, as well as this week’s Eurovision Song Contest — which launched ABBA’s worldwide success — here’s a look at the band’s most popular hits in descending order from glee to despair. … Read More