Monday, October 4, 2010

7 Recent Autumnal Pleasures

JOHN HANLON, Brooklyn NY
1. Taking the air conditioners out of the windows
This might depress some, but I see it as a sign I've survived another hot summer. Welcome cooler weather and (hopefully) less street noise.

2. Seasons by Blex Bolex
The linked video doesn't do the book justice, but it gives you a taste of the pleasures found within this beautiful and evocative book. Here's hoping that more of Bolex's work will find its way to these shores.

3. Hammer Horror Films Every Friday Night on TCM This Month

4. Boys Outside by Steve Mason
More polished than The Beta Band's potheads-playing-around-in-the-studio aesthetic, but addicting to the point that it's one of the few recent albums I wish was longer. 40 minutes isn't enough.

5. Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition by Jonathan Rosenbaum
One of my favorite film critics writes a book that cautiously optimistic about the changes in film culture brought about by dvds and downloading.

6. Penguin 75: Designers, Authors, Commentary (the Good, the Bad . . .) edited by Paul Buckley
75 recent Penguin book covers annotated by their designers and the books' authors, whose comments range from "the cover made it a bestseller" to "I hate it." Penguin 75 seems like a blog in book form, but I find flipping through its pages much more enjoyable than staring at a computer screen.

7. A Journey Round My Skull
Speaking of blogs, I know I've sung the praises of the image collection A Journey Round My Skull before on my own blog, but in just the last two weeks he's featured abstracts based on vegetation, medical drawings, foreign children's books and pictures of robots.

2 comments:

Pops Gustav said...

Ooh, I have to check out that Penguin book.

the hanged man said...

They have it at St. Mark's Books.