sam's myth

5.04.2010

REBUILD THIS CITY

As you know, Nashville was devastated by a historic storm this weekend that produced record floods downtown and in many towns and neighborhoods, took homes and took lives. Oh wait, you didn't know, because the national media has neglected to treat this disasters as more than a footnote in its newsfeeds. But one theme that has risen from this tragedy is that Nashville is already taking care of itself. One celebration for the cause will be tonight's Rebuild This City (with Rock and Roll): A Benefit for Nashville at Mercy Lounge-- a cover-free fundraiser for flood relief and victims with How I Became the Bomb, Paper Route and the Dozen Dimes on the bill among others.

Just yesterday morning I posted about my friend Andy Vastagh, and later that afternoon we found ourselves on iChat brainstorming ideas for a last minute poster we could collaborate on for this event. He channeled the basic concept, I illustrated the crying "Cyclops Batman Building," the surrounding city and landscape, and the Riverfront's four submerged flagpoles, and Andy wrapped it all up and laid out the type. As soon as we figure out how to print this thing without wasting gallons of now-precious water, it will be on its way to the Mercy Lounge for donors to take home as a gift for their contributions.

It feels really good to make my own contribution in this small way, through doing something that I love. My family and I have had some losses from this storm, but we are lucky to be alive, and I feel blessed to be able to help others in any way that I can. Let the rebuilding-- and the rocking-- begin.

UPDATE: Last night we quickly sold out of the 1st edition of 100 screenprints -- THANK YOU for the outpouring of support for these posters and the city of Nashville. We are fast-tracking a 2nd edition to ship on Monday, and all proceeds will continue to benefit Hands On Nashville's flood relief efforts. Tell your friends, donate to the cause, and hang one of these commemorative prints on your wall for a donation of $10. Don't make the poor Cyclops Batman Building cry! Visit BossConstruct.com to order yours. Nashville THANKS YOU!

5.03.2010

ANDY VASTAGH

Last fall, I emailed Andy Vastagh in an effort to see if any local screenprinters would be interested in helping me realize my dream of bringing screenprinted film posters to the Belcourt Theatre and beyond. Andy, who for the past several years has worked under the alias Boss Construction, was kind enough and willing to give me hand and show me the ropes in his East Nashville studio. He walked me through the screenprinting process, something I've wanted to know more intimately for a long time, and I finally was able to get my hands dirty with a squeegee and some ink (NOT paint... never call ink paint). Even cooler than Andy's generosity and attitude was the realization that the Boss is not just an amazing gig poster artist himself but he's a pretty well-known one at that; his work is featured in this book among others, a definitive who's who in the gig poster community). If you've been to Bonnaroo, South by Southwest, Flatstock, Next Big Nashville or any notable show at the Cannery/Mercy Lounge, chances are you've seen Andy's work and might even have one of his posters on your wall.

It's been a great and humbling learning experience working with Andy, experimenting and feeding off each others ideas, and we'll have more collaborations to come including a special new movie poster later this month. Here are some of my personal favorite pieces of Andy's. Be sure to visit Boss Construction's site and follow Andy on Twitter for more great poster art.

BONUS VID: This video makes me too happy not to share... Andy surprising his daughter Madee (also seen in the Clap Your Hands... poster above) with a trip to see the Jonas Brothers after he did a pair of posters for them.

CHILDRENS BOOKSHELF

From time to time I'll be posting pictures or scans from my shelf of vintage childrens books... one of the many things I have come to collect. For now, these are digital photos, as my scanner doesn't seem to capture the images accurately, or maybe just isn't large enough. These pictures also aren't as true to the illustrations as I'd like, but they'll do for now until I find a better solution.

Here are some illustrations by Art Seiden from Whatever Happened to YES? by Grace Jaffe and Phylis Goldman, published 1970. I love the 2-color green & brown printing style of these illustrations, and it doesn't hurt that the kid looks like a little version of me!

For more images, check out my Flickr page.

DAILY INSPIRATION

Feeling in need of some daily aesthetic inspiration? Here are a few sites that I frequent for this purpose. FFFFound.com refreshes with new bookmarked images from its invitation-only user group every few minutes, and the sheer volume of amazing images you'll find here can be overwhelming, from graphic design and typography to package design and photography. I've made it my home page so I can get a quick fix whenever I want to look at something cool. Explore FFFFound in small amounts, then get to the drawing board, camera or canvas before you overdose.

but does it float presents groups of images every couple days in ghostly, mysterious procession. For a greater survey of what curators Folkert & Atley have been posting, try the macro view or the index of categories on their right hand site menu. I've discovered some amazing artists here.

New to my radar is Designers Go To Heaven, curated by talented designer Andrei D. Robu. This daily selection of design finds seems to speak directly to me... More than just daily inspiration, sites like this turn me onto artists and designers that beg further study and end up having a huge influence on my style and ambitions. If I made a site of my favorite designs I've ever found online, it would look almost exactly like this. Here are a few friendly faces I found there just today alone:

4.30.2010

BENJAMIN A. HARPER'S FANTOME

The second of three new EPs from The Comfies is now up for download. I've been a rotating member of The Comfies for over five years, and Benjamin A. Harper, the man behind The Comfies, is one of my favorite songwriters and singers in the world. Needless to say, I highly recommend you check it out and give it a download. This is a 100% independent release, with a limited-edition CD on the way for collectors. I created the artwork for these EPs, the covers of which will connect in a panoramic landscape. I also played piano on one of the tracks, "Christmas Eve Eve." I'm always happy and proud to be involved with anything Ben Harper and The Comfies put out, and to help spread the word about his music. Enjoy!

Download The Comfies present Benjamin A. Harper's Fantome at Bandcamp.

4.27.2010

MIKE DAVIS

Alright, first things first: I will be regularly posting about artists I love and showing off some of their work that I admire, and there's no better person to start with than Mike Davis-- Nashville native, Minneapolis DJ superstar, and member of the design collective Burlesque of North America.

Mike was an upperclassman when I was just entering high school in 1995, and on a daily basis I would study and observe Mike's picnic table graffiti in an effort to absorb as much as I could of his natural gifts with lettering, penmanship and color. These days, branded as Twelve Car Pileup, he's a nationally recognized poster artist and core member of Minneapolis' print shop and gallery Burlesque--having created not just yearly posters for Bonnaroo but their stage identities too-- and author of the stellar retro-design blog So Much Pileup, a must-bookmark for any lover of late-60's to early-80's design ephemera, logos, book covers, album art, and international stamp design. Just last year, my unparalleled love for Mike combined with my unparalleled love for tiny vinyl toys when KidRobot issued a keychain series based on an ABC's print that Mike designed for his baby cousin (Getcha one here!)

Without further ado, here are some designs of Mike's that I love, and I know you will too:

HELLO AGAIN

Hello internet. I've resurrected this blog and am re-purposing it as a companion to my new site at samsmyth.net. On this blog I plan on posting new artwork, ideas, drafts, sketches, processes, and inspirations, as well as works of other artists and designers I love, plus who knows what else.

To the right you'll find links to my other spots on the net: my aforementioned portfolio site, plus my Twitter page and my Flickr page. Just below that, a hallway of doors to other internet worlds: art and design blogs, film resources, and people and things I like. I promise you will find each of these paths to be interesting and entertaining... have a click and see what you can see.

Thanks for reading, and please come back soon for more...

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8.25.2009

HAUSU

Some images I created inspired by HOUSE. The first is a new series of black and white images that intentionally avoid representing the actual images in the film (imagine them as issues of a quarterly journal of some kind). Following those, the original poster I created for the Belcourt Theatre last year.

4.08.2009

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO - April 18th at the Belcourt

4.06.2009

The 40th Nashville Film Festival

1.08.2009

I've hardly written about films this year at all. In fact, I only wrote about my favorite movie this year, and only informally. So this is a banged-out, more informal approach to a top ten. Hopefully less permanent, less serious, less self-serving. Screw everyone else, I thought it was another great year for movies. For me. Here are the ten that had the biggest impact on me, from ten to one.

Werner Herzog takes his eternal questions of man and nature to the most remote place on earth: Antarctica. He interviews the people working at the south pole, wondering who these characters are and what forces brought them here to this desolate, surreal landscape. The results, as is always the case with Herzog, are humorous, bizarre, fascinating. And in some cases, extremely poignant. A movie that made me look at life differently after leaving the theater, after such a journey into the unknown.

The first movie by Harmony Korine that I really connected with. And definitely a departure for a director who has seemingly become so stereotyped. Diego Luna is Michael Jackson impersonator and Samantha Morton is a Marilyn Monroe in a dreamlike fantasy of a film in the spirit of Fellini. It's a beautiful and organic tribute to the search for individuality and acceptance; It's a very personal movie about feeling on the outside of the world, trying on different selves, and finding other people in the same boat. And running off with them to a utopian castle in Scotland and feeling for a little while like you could live forever. It's not perfect, but it defined what I loved in movies this year: speaking to something within me personally that I just couldn't shake.

Kelly Reichardt's beautiful followup to OLD JOY is short and sparse, a seemingly short story about a young woman who loses her dog and almost loses everything. But that doesn't make it any less a great film. Actually, a whole lot about the daily struggles we experience in life can be found in this deceptively simple tale. Michelle Williams is incredible here, and the minimal style is right up my alley. Plus, at 75 minutes, you can't beat that running time. After two films I'm confident that Reichardt will emerge as one of the most talented American filmmakers of her generation.

A movie that just seemed to be written from life. Too rarely, small independent films, original screenplays like this, come along and really feel true-- to the nature of family dynamics, to the unique individuality of couples... Music lover Jonathan Demme really uses music every chance he gets to breathe authenticity into the scenario; Some say the dinner, reception, and Rachel's wedding overall goes on too long, but I loved how it makes you feel like you're there, with real people, watching a real couple who really loves each other, and a real family whose issues, secrets and traumas are as real as it gets.

The most misunderstood movie of the year. First, I hoped American moviegoers would be on board for the Wachowski brothers psychedelic, pop-art rollercoaster-- a live-action anime mismarketed as a Hollywood kids movie. People called the plot convoluted (it's not) and the running time too long (it's shorter than tons of movies including this year's biggest one). Surely a movie like this -- the biggest acid-trip of a movie Hollywood has produced this century-- would go over well in Japan. Nope, it tanked there too. Now it's just me and a growing legion of secrets fans, enjoying for ourselves the wonder of this fantastic and imaginative motion picture-- a dark and archetypal story of loss, brotherhood, and the little guy taking down the system (you can trace Star Wars right over it)--- and a movie that continues to push the boundaries of film language, treating the screen as a canvas of abstract color and every cut as an opportunity to move us *through* the movie rather than pulling us alongside it.

What can I say about the biggest movie since TITANIC that hasn't already been said? First, that the stupid sonar sequence has got to go. Secondly, that Gary Oldman is the man. And lastly, that I told you Heath Ledger would get an Oscar nomination for The Joker before the movie even started shooting. Now I'm just waiting to watch him win it.

Where the vampire movie meets the GDSM (the Goddamn Sam Movie). Set in the snowy suburbs of Sweeden-- a Chris-Van-Alsburg two-tone town where the sun is always down and no one is around-- two children meet. One is an outsider, ridden with angst. The other appears to him as a both an angel and a demon, trapped in death, defined by lonliness. Adolescence, as this list will reveal, interests me almost more than anything else in movies. This one says more about the lonliness of growing up than it does about being a vampire, but as a vampire movie its just as haunting. Great deaths, the most beautiful score I've heard in years, and a perfect ending. Huge jump up to the top three from here.

The best Pixar movie since their debut. The pinnacle of contemporary animation. A quasi-silent film that rediscovers and celebrates the power of storytelling with action, movement, and pure cinema. The most romantic robot love story of them all-- and an interesting study of the masculine and the feminine, or relationships in general. A childrens film that is already considered a classic. And a post-apocalyptic cautionary tale with the most refreshing and endearing sense of hope for humankind. In a way, the quintessential movie of our time. I didn't see it at first, and then I saw the light. This is the best movie of the year. There are just two others that, personally, hit me just ever so slightly deeper.

The directorial debut of the genius Charlie Kaufman. I had to remind anyone interested that this movie was even playing, and that's without telling them that this is a movie that Ebert himself admitted one must see twice to have even seen it at all. This time, Kaufman's meta-mentality takes a theater director (a career-defining performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman) who's obsessed with death and bestows upon him the notion to create the ultimate work of theater that encompasses life itself. There is nothing in life, or death, that is not somehow addressed by this movie. Nor is there anything in the experience of love, loss, relationships, and the passing of time that is not somehow addressed in Kaufman's dream. It is a Jungian treatise, a celebration of the female muse (where Samantha Morton radiates as Kaufman's idea of the indie Bardot), and a soul-searching work of pure, personal philosophy; few movies I've ever seen have made me look at my short, fleeting, beautiful and meloncholy life in such a new, inspired way. A true work of art that must be seen and studied multiple times to truly appreciate.

But one movie-- SYNECDOCHE too, but these three are really all up here together-- had such a personal impact on me that I can't put any other movie above it. Its been years since a movie made me feel the way Gus Van Sant's PARANOID PARK made me feel. GVS reigned in his experimental side that I've so enjoyed watching bloom over the years, taking a young adult novel with a compelling plot and merging the two into a pure dream of youth. What David Lynch did for dreams GVS does here for memory-- taking us into memory itself as a teenager remembers and retraces a traumatic event that will define his grownup self. As Alex remembers, we journey into Alex's soul. It takes Alex a couple of loops through what happened before he can process it and find closure, and through incredible editing and beautiful camerawork from Christopher Doyle we explore this process with him. No other movie has ever captured my experience of being a teenager-- that inward voice of the self-- the way Van Sant has. By exploring the process of trauma, GVS captures something about the experience of growing up itself. One of my favorite films I've ever seen.

Ten more outstanding works of personal vision: HAPPY GO LUCKY, BE KIND REWIND, THE FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON, THE CLASS, FUNNY GAMES, REPRISE, THE WACKNESS, MILK, WALTZ WITH BASHIR, and VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA.

Also liked, and shouldn't leave out REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, BURN AFTER READING, A CHRISTMAS TALE, THE WRESTLER, THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, IN BRUGES and docs YOUNG@HEART, AMERICAN TEEN, and MAN ON WIRE.

Worst of the year: Easily THE HAPPENING, but SEVEN POUNDS, THE X-FILES and INDIANA JONES-- for sheer dissapointment-- come close.

Tons I still haven't seen yet, but mostly stuff no one's ever heard of: BALLAST, HUNGER, STILL LIFE, THE BAND'S VISIT and IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA to name a few.

Favorite performances of the year: Philip Seymour Hoffman in SYNECDOCHE and its entire female ensemble (Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emily Watson, and Hope Davis), Lina Leandersson and Kare Hildebrant in LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, Gabe Nevins in PARANOID PARK, Meryl Streep in DOUBT and MAMMA MIA, Kate and Leo in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, Frank Langella, Sean Penn, and Mickey Rourke in FROST/NIXON, MILK and WRESTLER, and the performance of the year, Heath Ledger in THE DARK KNIGHT.

Since I'm a geek who listens to film scores as much as any other kind of music, the best scores of the year: Thomas Newman's WALL-E, Johan Soderqvist's LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, Jon Brion's SYNECDOCHE, James Newton Howard and Hanz Zimmer's DARK KNIGHT, and Alexandre Desplat's BENJAMIN BUTTON.

Ten movies I'm most looking forward to next year.... aka proof that I am a child.

1. PONYO ON THE CLIFF BY THE SEA, the new film from Japanese master Hayao Miyzazki
2. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE - Spike Jonze filmed this Sendak adaptation with giant puppet suits in New Zealand. These top two movies are among the most anticipated of my life.
3. UP - New Pixar, about an old man who goes on a safari via a flying house in honor of his late wife.
4. THE ROAD - John Hillcoat's film of Cormac McCarthy's novel hits screens this year with Viggo Mortensen.
5. BRUNO - Sacha Baron Cohen returns to wreak more havok. I just realized I don't know how to spell either wreak or havok.
6. INGLOURIOUS BASTARDS - New Tarantino war epic.
7. THE IMAGINARIUM OF DR. PARNASSUS - New Terry Gilliam, with Heath Ledger, promised by Gilliam to be as good as the best films of his career.
8. THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX - Wes Anderson with stop-motion-animator Henry Selick...
9. TWO LOVERS - Joaquin Phoenix's "last" performance before "retiring," Gwenyth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw (the hooker in Eyes Wide Shut), a remake of the 1957 Visconti/Mastroianni/Doetoyevsky "Le Notti Bianche." GDSM.
10. THE SOLOIST - Trailer for this Robert Downey Jr / Jamie Foxx weepie looks cheesy, but after Pride and Prejudice and Atonement I'll follow director Joe Wright to the ends of the Eath.

and if they come out this year, new movies from Terrence Malick, Woody Allen, the Coen Brothers, Scorsese, Ang Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Miranda July, Mike Judge, Steven Soderbergh, Michael Mann, David Gordon Green, Pedro Almodovar, Jean Pierre Jeunet, and Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Bonus treat for those still reading: my favorite albums of the year. I hardly listened to any other than these, and I don't feel like ranking them, so here they are in alpha order.

Coldplay - Viva la Vida. Yeah that's right.
Eef Barzelay - Lose Big
Explorers Club - Freedom Wind
Gabe Dixon Band - s/t
The Happy Perscriptions - The Enter Sign
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
Paper Hats - Deseret Canyon
Portishead - Third
Sigur Ros - Med sud I eyrum vid spilum endalaust
Vampire Weekend - s/t
The Walkmen - You & Me

Thanks for reading.