Today at Flavorpill, we learned about one young man’s journey to live “Amish-style” for 90 days. We read about Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut, which will feature Scarlett Johansson. We enjoyed this guide to literary Tumblrs. We followed the adventures of the Devil. We voted for Batman. We listened to what Feminist Frequency had to say about the Lego Friends line of toys targeted to girls. We wanted to talk to all the guys at the male cat lovers meetup. We learned why parsley deserves to be more than just a garnish. We appreciated this call for more “slow reading.” We said happy birthday to Alejandro Jodorowsky. We loved this awesomely designed heart-shaped utensil. And finally, we tried to imagine what David Lynch’s new paintingDuckman’s Injury looked like … and then we found out why he loves ducks so much.
Regardless of how you felt about the sequel to Back to the Future, I think we can all agree that Hill Valley circa 2015 looked like a pretty sweet place to live — you know, other than the fact that it’s home to Griff, Biff’s bionic grandson, and Marty’s marriage to Jennifer is a miserable mess. But come on, there are hoverboards and self-lacing sneakers! Built by Alex Schranz, this homage to the film covers all of the town’s hotspots, from the throwback Café 80′s diner to the 3D movie theater where Jaws 19 was playing. Click through to get a closer look at his impressive work.
If you are a geek and feel like killing some time this Friday afternoon, we can think of no better way to do it than by browsing Bruce Lowell’s massive Flickr archive. Using only LEGO, he recreates everything from video game characters to the Ghostbusters Ectomobile to entire In-N-Out Burger locations — and the results far surpass anything you may have constructed as a child. Click through to see some of our favorite Lowell sculptures, and then, seriously, check out some of his other work, because there’s tons of it, and it’s pretty much uniformly unbelievable.
Who could have predicted what the Internet would do for marriage proposals? It’s hard enough to muster the courage to ask your beloved to join you for all eternity, without the stress of finding a creative way to do it. Now, you’ve got to make a video, and it has to be a great video, or who would want to marry you in the first place? We would surely crack under this kind of pressure, but Atlanta-based filmmaker Walt Thompson most certainly didn’t. He spent 22 hours shooting the 2600 photos that make up this three-minute, stop-motion LEGO proposal that retells the history of Thompson’s relationship with his girlfriend, Nealey Dozier. He even recreated the outfits the two of them were wearing when they met. Unsurprisingly, Dozier said yes. So here’s hoping Han Solo really does make it to the wedding!
[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we'll spend the next two weekends revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published September 28, 2011.] The historically minded artist Mike Stimpson lends a tinge of childhood innocence to legendary moments in a collection that uses LEGOs to recreate famous photos (and one famous painting). By placing the original pictures side-by-side with his versions, he simultaneously pays homage to and updates these classic images, including the soaring Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, the darling kiss in V-J Day Times Square, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Bed-In. Page through Stimpson’s playful LEGO remixes after the jump.
This Black Friday, Doctor Popular, a self-described “game designer, illustrator, tailor, rapper, and super nerd,” created a diorama depicting the recent pepper spray incident at UC Davis in an unused news bin for Employment Guide on Market Street. “My hope was to install a piece to get people thinking about recent police violence while they were trying to do their holiday shopping,” he writes. “If I had more time I would have created many more dioramas based on scenes from New York and Oakland.” He adds, “I didn’t set out to create a Lego diorama, but it turns out that their “City sets” contained almost everything you need to create a protest scene. Seriously though, are the cities in Denmark filled with cops? There’s like a 2 to 1 ratio of police to civilians in these kits.” Is LEGO trying to tell us something? Either way, click through to see photos of Doctor Popular’s project, and let us know what you think in the comments! Read More »
This past Thursday marked the 20th anniversary of cultural icon Freddie Mercury’s death of AIDS-related pneumonia. In some ways, however, it doesn’t seem that long — the Queen frontman is still an incredible influence in art, music and fashion, and has been frequently name-checked as one of the biggest influences of many musicians, including Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, two of pop culture’s current reigning queens. Indeed, something about the Zanzibar-born Mercury (née Farrokh Bulsara) is singularly inspiring — his incredible showmanship, his forward-thinking, his unimpeachable talent both for singing and songwriting, his independent attitude, that moustache — and he continues to have a hand in many forms of art today. On the 20th anniversary of Freddie Mercury’s death, we’ve rounded up a few artworks, both large and small, that pay homage to the man, the myth, the legend. Click through to see our Freddie-art, and let us know which capture him the best in the comments. Read More »
We were sold on the work of LEGO sculptor Iain Heath the moment we spotted his Freddie Mercury portrait at Super Punch. So we were thrilled to find that he’s got an entire Flickr site full of incredible, pop-culture LEGO constructions. Although there are a few funny political caricatures (Sarah Palin, Arnold Schwarzenegger), Heath specializes in recreating the nerdiest of characters and celebrities: Stephen Hawking, Futurama, Monty Python, Star Wars, the anime films of Hayao Miyazaki. Geeks, rejoice, in the gallery of our favorite Heath sculptures after the jump, then visit him on Flickr to see much, much more. Read More »
You can thank our friends at BoingBoing for tipping us off to this neo-Victorian series of models, a work in progress by Lego artist Matt Armstrong aka “Monsterbrick.” His crazy steampunk inventions — which range from an antique typewriter to a meerschaum pipe (complete with a plume of smoke!) — are surprisingly realistic and detailed, in spite of the fact that they’re entirely made up of little plastic bricks. Click through to get a better look at Armstrong’s impressive work, and let us know in the comments which piece is your favorite. Read More »
