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Architecture

10 Beautiful Blue Buildings from Around the World

By Claire Cottrell on

What’s more rare than a blue moon? A beautiful blue building! If you haven’t heard, there will be a blue moon rising in the Eastern sky tonight at 7:25pm. One of the more famous astrological occurrences (thanks in part to the world’s most popular love song), a blue moon isn’t actually blue, it’s just the term used to describe the second full moon in a month, which appears, on average, every 2.7 years.

In talking about the significance of the shade, Yves Klein, the French artist famous for his monochromatic paintings of the hue, said that “blue has no dimensions; it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colours are not… blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract.” In honor of tonight’s lunar event, we thought we’d take a look at some of the most intriguing blue architecture in the world to see if his statement holds up. From a design experiment exploring the psychological effects of living in an entirely blue world to Frida Kahlo’s cobalt colored home in Mexico City, click through to check out some of the most beguiling blue buildings around the world. … Read More

Film

8 Unreleased Movies We’re Dying to See

By Jason Bailey on

Last fall, Francis Ford Coppola went to the Toronto International Film Festival to unveil Twixt, his latest feature film. It didn’t go well — in fact, it went so poorly that there was some question as to whether the picture (unattached to a distributor) would see a release at all. It finally will, this weekend, with a single-theater engagement in San Francisco, but that seems like quite a fall for the director of The Godfather (even if his more recent work hasn’t exactly wowed us).

Meanwhile, a film that’s been in limbo for far longer than Coppola’s is inching towards a release: Dark Blood, the contemporary Western thriller from director George Sluzier (The Vanishing) that River Phoenix was working on when he died clear back in 1993. Sluzier put out a trailer back in May; last week, the film’s long-awaited premiere was announced for September’s Netherlands Film Festival. Those two resurrections got us thinking about other unreleased movies that we’re still itching to see; they’re collected for your reading (and partial viewing) pleasure after the jump. … Read More

Design

Maximalist Pictogram Posters for Rock ‘n’ Roll Icons

By Judy Berman on

The last time we checked in with Swedish designer Viktor Hertz, he had created a series of minimalist pictogram posters for songs like Radiohead’s “Exit Music (for a Film)” and Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind.” But if you’re growing weary of the vogue for minimalism, perhaps you’ll be interested Hertz’s next music-obsessed project, a set of decidedly maximalist pictogram posters, each of which interprets a slew of songs by a rock ‘n’ roll icon. David Bowie’s poster, for example, features a baby in an stars-and-stripes diaper (“Young Americans”), canines with gems for heads (“Diamond Dogs”), and a guy holding a globe with a price tag on it (“The Man Who Sold the World”). Solve these and more stylish riddles in our gallery, and if you’re interested in owning the posters, you can do that by supporting Hertz’s FundedByMe campaign. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. It took the return of Will Smith after a four-year film hiatus to knock The Avengers out of the top spot at the box office. That said, Men in Black III’s $55 million opening weekend is reportedly a disappointment for Sony, who spent about $325 million to make and market the movie. [via … Read More

Celebrity

Vintage Photos of Rock Stars In Their Bathing Suits

By Emily Temple on

[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we're revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published July 30, 2011.] It’s the last weekend of July and summer is in full swing (it won’t last forever, though, so if you haven’t busted out your bathing suit by now, you’d better do it soon). We already know that many of the literary greats we admire liked to flit around the beach in their bathing suits, but what about their sonic storytelling counterparts? Turns out they fancied a swim now and again too. Not surprising, since their days were most likely filled with sticky tour bus rides and sweat-inducing live performances. Also not surprising: they tend to look just a little better in their next-to-nothing duds than our dear group of authors, since for many of them, part of their job was inspiring teenage lovesickness. Click through to see our gallery of rock stars from the 60s, 70s and 80s as they frolic, pose and pout in their swimsuits. … Read More

Celebrity

Childhood Photos of Famous Rock Stars

By Caroline Stanley on

A few days ago we shared adorable pictures from the early years of some of our favorite writers with you, including an amazing photo of Ernest Hemingway in a dress. Today, we thought it might be fun to revisit the concept, but this time turning our focus on the music world. We don’t know about you, but we never really picture rock ‘n’ roll stars as having childhoods; wearing clothes that your parents have picked out for you and going through an awkward stage is the opposite of bad-ass. So, if you’re curious as to what Courtney Love looked like decades before she ever met Kurt — or you’d like to see how freaking cute he was as a little kid — click through to check out our roundup now. … Read More

Celebrity

Photo Gallery: An Intimate Tour of Graceland

By Caroline Stanley on

We can only think of a handful of houses that are also household names — and most of them belong to former presidents. Graceland, Elvis Presley’s Memphis mansion, is probably as well-known as the rock and roll icon himself; now a museum and one of the most-visited private homes in America, the twenty-three room house, known for its gaudy, bordello-like decor, contains such design quirks as a media room with three televisions, a racquetball court, and an indoor waterfall. Outdoors, you’ll find the Meditation Garden where Elvis, his parents, and grandmother Minnie Mae Hood Presley are buried, along with two of his private planes. New York-based photographer Rinze van Brug was recently given a private tour of Graceland, and the resulting images make you feel like you’re standing there right alongside him, walking through a piece of pop culture history. If you’re as curious as we were to go inside of this famed mausoleum of kitsch, click through to take the magical tour now. … Read More

Photography

Kevin Knight’s Funny and Dramatic Cosplay Photos

By Judy Berman on

Every year after Comic Con, the internet is flooded with cosplay photo galleries of two basic types: “Look at This Fucking Geek” and “Hot Nerd Girls in Skimpy Costumes.” Kevin Knight’s Heroes and Villains series, thank heavens, is nothing like that. For his photos, Knight takes cosplayers out of the convention setting, posing the elaborately costumed fans out in the streets, against dark, dramatic backdrops, or in scenes that play on their character’s personality. This approach allows him to draw out the actor in every cosplayer, capturing Obi Wan Kenobi’s wise expression and Clark Kent’s air of nobility as he transforms into Superman. Click through for a gallery that features Batman hitchhiking, Darth Vader walking a robot dog, Elvis serenading a shopping center, and then check out more of Knight’s work at his website. … Read More

Music

Vintage Photos of Famous Musicians Playing Sports

By Emily Temple on

Sometimes, it seems like you have to be one thing or the other — an athlete or a brain, a princess or a criminal. But as we learned from The Breakfast Club, that’s simply not the case. We recently took a look at intriguing photos of famous authors playing sports — proving once and for all that nerds can be athletic too — and that got us thinking about the famous musicians who’ve also dabbled in the physical arts, often times with each other. Click through to see George Harrison taking on Bob Dylan at tennis, Robert Plant playing soccer in a speedo, Elvis in his football finery, and more. It’s enough to get our blood pumping. … Read More

Art

Remembering The King with the Best Bad Elvis Art

By Paul Laster on

The legendary Elvis Presley, who died on this day back in 1977, has been celebrated in art for some 50 years by such creative talents as Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, and Keith Haring. Meanwhile, his fans have remembered him through lovingly lowbrow works of art. We’ve gathered some of our favorite examples — from a wacky nude of “Elvis the Pelvis” seated on a throne and an explosive matchstick bust of the phenomenal blues man to an eerie vision of the groundbreaking performer in a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich and a striking portrait compiled from illustrated stereo equipment. And of course, no schlock portfolio of Elvis pictures would be complete without “The Hillbilly Cat” captured on a kitschy black velvet canvas in DayGlo paint. Click through our gallery of images and let us know if there are any classic odes that we missed. … Read More