These are a few selects from my Costa Rica trip. We went canyoning, canopying, caving, caroling… ok well not the last one but I was on a roll with the c’s. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

Who is this? Is anyone even reading this, no matter, its January 2nd, and I’m in the mood to write about the year. I just posted 2 Netflix notes, which is actually more rewarding than I remember it being, i believe I will continue this trend into the new year. I will break this down into categories, and by matters of segues lets start with movies.

Lets round this year up by saying why is everyone so damn bleak. Thanks There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men for setting the stage.

I’m not one for lists myself, (although i get suckered into reading them most of the time) so lets just go with some movies I liked this year and why.

Ironman: RoDo, is my favorite actor.  I “met” him in sundance a few years ago and he can fit in my pocket, however, he still got some skills and its nice to see a superhero that enjoys it. You know before Stark becomes an alcoholic.

Dark Knight: my friend saved me seats in IMAX and we were perfectly center in the theater.  They had me at that opening sequence I felt like I was flying in a helicopter around Gotham. That and Heath Ledger was you know awesome. Negative points for the stupid batman deep voice and the cartoonish Twoface, there are some f’ed up looking people out there with some real horror going on, no reason to make a realistic joker and a cartoon floaty eyed twoface.

Wall E: Beautiful, from the animation to the simple story, it really captured something special. The kind of movie that may only be possibly nowadays as a cartoon. I dont know if people have the patience for the lack of dialogue without the computer graphics to help it along.

Man on Wire: This dude is crazy, what he did was magical, and I couldnt imagine what you do with your life after achieving that.  Its like going to the moon then coming home and selling used cars.

In Bruges: I really liked Martin McDonagh’s short film Six Shooter, so I was excited at the prospect of seeing a full length version of his dark comedy. However it sat in my apartment for way too long.  Netflix does that to me. And in true Netflix form, once I saw it I couldnt believe that I waited so long to watch it. Colin Farrell is bumbling and extremely likeable all at once, and Ralph Fiennes is sharp and angry. Gleeson pulls it all together, one of the stand outs in the genre, and of the year.

The Fall: This movie was like a painting. Each scene more jaw dropping than the next, and this was all done without computer graphics.  According to Tarsem (the director) it was all about framing. Beyond that the story was exactly what it should be, it was a yarn, strung together by a devious stuntman, who made it up on the fly for a little girl. The real acting gem in this movie however is the little girl Catinca Untaru, adorable and heartbreaking, she really sells it.

Milk was really good as a story, however something about Van Sant’s directing left me unfulfilled. His pacing was off, and the balance of past and present seemed jarring.  Sean Penn plays the role well, but since I have no frame of reference, its easy to say that he did a great job. I mean he’s expected to right? He’s Sean Penn. So that wasn’t much of a surprise, and Brolin’s character although apparently golden globe nominee worthy really seemed weird to me. He was angry, like a child.  I dont get his character, and i guess I wasnt supposed to, but what was his motivation, his demons?

The Wrestler: I hesitate to write about this one because it made me feel so uneasy.  It’s hard to watch this movie, its all about the fall of the dream.  One of my friends said something about wanting to see a prequel, and I think that would have been a nice way to set up the movie, instead of the event poster montage. Although I guess that wasnt the point. It’s hard to watch this because its about the self destruction of the star. The person that can’t give up on the dream for fame, the need for self validation. The sadness and loneliness of that path. Mickey Rourke is perfect, but it doesnt seem to be a stretch to play yourself. The last frame bothered me a bit, and while my girlfriend has a good point about the use of the Springsteen song being the perfect conclusion, I think it was a cop out to use it for the end credits. It seems that the essence of the movie is in that song.

I still havent seen a bunch of the award season hopefuls, but im assuming as good as they are or aren’t im not missing much although Slumdog is still on my short list, the rest are probably rentals.

Well that was longer than expected, thats all i got for now, part 2 to follow.

Ok, I know its June, but i’ve been busy, with what you say, well I’ll tell you. This is a rundown of some highlights from May in no particular order.

I went to a couple weddings. Wedding 1, Wedding 2.

I am on the hunt for a new apartment, brooklyn here I come? This process is hard, and i’m sure it would be even harder if i didnt have my very own apartment hunter helpin me out. Thanks j.

Movies: Ironman, Indy, The Fall

First off I want to say, like everybody else I loved Ironman. It was my favorite comic turned movie to date. RoDo was awesome. He has always been one of my favorite actors, but this really put him in the drivers seat.

Indy… so apparently people are under the misconception that the original Indy movies were not campy. Come on, he’s a whip wielding archaeologist, really, you put the originals on that high of a pedestal. PS. If speilberg and lucas had all of this technology then they would have used it. My only real issue was the poorly conceived ending, I mean, it’s just insanity.

Tarsem, let me tell you, this was one of the most beautifully shot movies I have seen in a while. The crafting of the scenes was a work of art, very polished fantasy art, but striking, and the little girl in the movie plays quite possibly one of the cutest roles i’ve seen in a while, and i’m pretty sure thats just the way she is, adorable.

*As a side note I would like to mention how visually stunning some of the recent movies have been, while There Will be Blood took home the oscar for cinamatography and was beautiful in its own right, I really enjoyed the natural subtle use of imagery in The Assassination of Jesse James, and the frame by frame meticulousness of Wes Anderson’s Darjeeling Limited.

Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum.

Dude… loves bodily fluids. But on the reals, his use of color is amazing,

and even though i’m not a big fan of japanimation or japillustration, he really speaks well to the essence of the genre. Plus, dude is ridiculous at self-promotion, he even put a Louis V in the middle of his exhibit.

My dunks are here, and I’ve been wearin the hell out of them. Big fan of the color way, getting used to the high tops.

Ricky’s site is done, finally, check it out, he wanted to integrate his blog so I used an iFrame to pull everything together.. Also reprogrammed the gallery, added google map, and made the informational pages xhtml. Check it out.

Allendale Lightning, so my little brother is 7 and lives in the burbs. And you know what parents in the burbs love… organized sports. Now i’m not saying i’m against them, I loved baseball, played it through highschool, but some of these stories… anyway, my dad asked me to throw together a logo for his traveling team, and while I love the more traditional or vintage logos for pro teams, I thought a little whimsy would be cute for a team of 7 year olds. Inspired by the encyclopedic visual resource by chris creamer, here is my final design.

This was going to be its own post, but I am going to use my recent sitings area to post all interesting web links… so from now on, look to the right for new content, or you can subscribe to my del.icio.us rss feed tagged JB, that’s whats driving the content.

Hello, I know its been a while, but I’ve been working.. what’s that you say, so have you. Well, as my friend brandon would say, “shove it.”  Although I have been trying to post images more regularly on my tumblr so, if you like pictures check it out.

Anyway, this is what I have been up to since my last post.

1. My family got a new puppy named lucy, she’s adorable.

2. I have been working on finishing up ricky’s new site. The concept was to strip down the content, make it scalable, and simple within a nice easy to navigate wrapper. I will post once I push it live.

3. Made custom dunks at the Nike Store in midtown. (i will post pictures once they are made)

4. I shot a headshot for my friend andrew the other day and it came out pretty good. I set up on my roof with some seamless white paper, and it came out pretty good. good job me.

5. Went to the MoMA and saw Olafur Eliasson as well as Color Charts and it was really cool. Go see it now.

6. I am starting to work on a site for Dinger’s Dog Treats and have been throwing together some ideas for a logo and color palette for the site.. Im thinking electric baby blue and mocha. And this is something I’ve been kicking around logowise..

7. I bought chips ahoy chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and they are… not that good.

I just started my new job today, and with this, I will officially stop trying to keep up with bloggers more organized and in the loop than I try to be. So this blog, is now going to officially become a place where I talk about random work I’ve done, and once in a while I will post a list of links of notice.

(I’m going to try for once a week. We will see how that goes)

The other day my sister asked me if I knew of a place where she could get a cool invitation for her best friend’s birthday party. Since she trusts my taste I started thinking of a bunch of letterpress companies I have stumbled upon over the years. I went to a few and looked around at some stock stuff, but since she was on a tight time frame we weren’t able to find the right thing, so with some downtime at my last week of work I decided to throw something together:

The Concept? Use the idea of tree rings, and turn it into an abstract pattern.

And since im all of a sudden mr. wordy, I’m going to let the following images show you the rest of the steps.

I just recently finished a new site for the band Zevious. The original concept was to create a visual score to accompany their song Coma Cluster. The idea was to take the song, and visually interpret the song with geometric shapes. This brought me to try and find a written piece of music that I could test my concept with since all I had was an mp3, and no score. While looking I tried to find a score by one of the guitar players favorite composers Ligeti, and thats when I found this…

almost exactly what I was trying to accomplish done and pieced together on youtube, gotta love the internet.

So, since mapping out an entire song visually for a background of a website was a bit excessive I decided to use the basic idea to create a similar idea. I used one of those itunes visualizers to map a split second of the song, and then redrew it in illustrator. Using a scrolling effect, when you navigate the site, it takes you down through the background image. Eventually, I will probably evolve the squares as the page scrolls down, but for now in case you have no idea what I am talking about, here is the final site. Enjoy.

Over the last few months I have been working on a new site for Heutchy, a new men’s shoe line, by Wells Stellberger. The shoes just debuted at New York Fashion Week in a collaboration with Shipley and Halmos. I have also been helping him with the photographs of the line. I just finished up the site to include the new photos check it out. Refinery29 just did a feature on him, where you can find out more about the shoes, (and also see my product shots.)

Apparently, we have Conan, John, and Stephen to blame for Huckabee. Thanks a lot guys. via.