Toronto's Young Empires send us straight to the dancefloor with this mixtape for The Block. www.myspace.com/youngempires
01. Sabali (Vitalic Remix) - Amadou & Miriam
02. Lies (Herve Remix) - Fenech-Soler
03. Hour of the Wolf (Lifelike Remix) - Adam Kesher
04. Dance the Way I Feel (Armand Van Helden Remix) - Ou Est Le Swimming Pool
05. Snake Charmer - Bag Raiders
06. Wait & See - Holy Ghost!
07. All Night (Azari & III Remix) - Voltage
08. You Know I Know It - Tensnake
09. La Mezcla - Michel Cleis
10. Rain of Gold (French Horn Rebellion Remix) - Young Empires
In the traditional sense of the word, Tanlines – the musical duo that is Jesse Cohen and Eric Emm – is not exactly a band. They certainly do make music: Emm is a veteran guitarist, formerly for the bands Storm & Stress and Don Caballero; Cohen was raised on the drums and keyboard (most recently playing for the band Professor Murder); and Tanlines’ debut EP, Settings (True Panther), thumps with electrifyingly diverse instrumentation – bongos and steel drums convene with airy guitars, hooky synth riffs, and thumping bass lines to create a sort of tropical disco dance party. But Cohen and Emm barely play any actual instruments on the album. Like a growing number of young experimental DIY pop musicians, they translate their musical ideas from their brains straight to their super high-tech computers. “For us, the writing and the recording process are the same,” says Emm. “I think the evolution of our band is kind of the opposite of the historical evolution of a band. With a band, you start out writing music in a practice space and then go to a studio. We go to the studio first.
Hot on the heels of successful high-fashion docs like Valentino: The Last Emperor and Lagerfeld Confidential, director Whitney Sudler-Smith debuts his disco decade homage to famed designer Halston at this Friday’s Tribeca Film Festival. Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston shows how Roy Halston Frowick, known simply as Halston, owned the 70s fashion scene.
What do pandas, superheroes, and The Smurfs have in common? Not much, except a little attention from artist Will Broome. Eyeless cartoon pandas and Speedo-clad superheroes are just some of the illustrations you’ll find in the Londoner’s portfolio. Notably, Broome is most recognized for creating Miss Marc, the playful and hip little girl plastered across the Miss Marc by Marc Jacobs collection. And The Block was fortunate enough to catch up with the busy illustrator and talk about his love for 80s cartoons, days at St. Martins, current and past projects, and an encounter with Naomi Campbell.
LCD Soundsystem – Drunk Girls
Directed by Spike Jonze and James Murphy
Forget those mopey Wild Things and their existential crises: Spike Jonze’s new music video for LCD Soundsystem’s “Drunk Girls” (co-directed by frontman James Murphy) features a goon squad of pandas really getting wild. They’re hilariously creepy, but since we don’t like being egged and tied up with duct tape, we won’t be inviting these party animals over anytime soon.
The new ads for Christian Louboutin F/W 2010 have photographer Khuong Nguyen (known for his works with Citroên and Porsche) taking inspiration from the Brothers Grimm and Lewis Carroll. From Cinderella and Alice to Snow White, we can’t help but pretend we’re a fairy princess in these stilettos.
Over at Block HQ, we’ve got Issue 21’s mix tape stuck on repeat. No surprise: it was created by super-talented Aussie trio Midnight Juggernauts. The three, Andrew Szekeres, Vincent Vendetta, and Daniel Stricker, have done a pile of notable remixes (The Presets’ “Down Down Down” and Cut Copy’s “Hearts On Fire,” among others), while the music they’ve put together as a three-piece electropop act has been burning up dancefloors since 2004. In the leadup to the May 28th release of their new album, The Crystal Axis, we asked Stricker, the band’s drummer, a few questions.
The Sundance Festival is about more than just film: at its heart, it’s a celebration of creativity. And when we visited Utah this January, we met a parade of actors, directors, and writers who truly push boundaries when it comes to the pursuit of art. More than what meets the eye, these kids boast talents on and off the screen.
Tilda Swinton
Few Hollywood actresses can transform themselves from one role to the next, especially if that transformation is becoming a man. 49-year-old Tilda Swinton, who played the gender-bending title role in Orlando, a film adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel of the same title, and the androgynous archangel Gabriel in Constantine, proves this kind of versatility involves a lot more than just a well-placed ball of socks.
For the Scottish-born mother of twins, acting is just one of many talents: a glance at her most recent CV shows that Swinton’s creative output is all over the map. She’s the muse for fashion house Viktor & Rolf, wrote and narrated the 2008 documentary Derek, sang backing vocals on Patrick Wolf’s 2009 album The Bachelor, and founded the travelling film festival, The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams.
Swinton’s current project pairs her with Italian director Luca Guadagnino for the film Io sono l’amore (I Am Love). Swinton plays Emma Recchi, a Russian socialite who marries a wealthy Milanese businessman. As matriarch, Emma’s life is dedicated to her husband and children. That is, until the family chef Antonio, played by Edoardo Gabbriellini, catches Emma’s eye. A torrid affair ensues, leading Emma on a whirlwind sexual journey.
Unsurprisingly, critics were captivated by Swinton’s portrayal of a high-society matriarch. And there’s nothing this Scottish lass can’t do. Word on the street, Swinton has agreed to play redhead Conan O’Brien – provided he occasionally walks the red carpet on her behalf.
Nathaniel Brown
Enter the Void is a grisly and euphoric film by infamous director Gaspar Noé. Noé’s 2002 film, Irreversible, had Cannes audiences walking out, but the director probably wasn’t surprised. The film includes an uncensored 15-minute rape and a man’s skull being viciously crushed. His new film, Enter the Void, is similarly shocking.
The main character, Oscar, played by Nathaniel Brown, is a drug dealer and user who dies on a bathroom floor after police shoot him during a nightclub drug-raid. For the soon-to-be 22-year-old Brown, this was a dream role, not because of the character he got to play, but for the opportunity to step behind the lens.
“Because of the camera’s perspective in this movie, there are times you see [Brown’s] body and hear his voice without seeing his face, so I thought I should find someone who wants to direct, who wants to participate in the process,” said Noé in V magazine. “When I met Nathan, he said that he wanted to study cinema and I immediately thought, he’s the perfect guy.”
Enter the Void is the model-turned-actor’s first feature film. For Brown, growing up home-schooled with a film-heavy curriculum attracted him to filmmaking: he lists John Hughes, Wes Anderson, and David Fincher as favourite directors. Having moved to New York at the age of 18 to pursue a career in directing, Brown was cast in editorials for i-D magazine and Barneys New York instead – consider it a stepping-stone into the industry. With his first role a success, Brown’s dreams are coming true.
John Hawkes
You probably don’t know John Hawkes by name, and his credits may not help (remember Pete Bottoms, Liquor Store Clerk, in From Dusk Till Dawn?). But a history of solid supporting roles has kept audiences engaged throughout his 25-year career. Born John Perkins, the 50-year-old actor’s recent TV roles are pure prime-time: Deadwood, Eastbound and Down, and Lost. He’s earning accolades, too: his performance in the movie Buttleman landed him the prize for Breakout Performance at the 2004 Sedona Film Festival. Now Hawkes’ current film, Winter’s Bone, is keeping audiences on edge with his gritty performance as Teardrop.
The Grand Jury Prize-winner at this year’s Sundance, Winter’s Bone begins with a family discovering their meth-dealing father put up their home to pay his jail bond, and to make matters worse, he’s gone missing. Determined to save her family from living on the streets, Ree Dolly, played by 19-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, journeys through Missouri’s Ozark Mountains in hunt of her father. She’s left to rely on her intimidating, drug-dealing uncle, Teardrop, as guide.
Despite his long resume, Hawkes has only been at Sundance a handful of times. But then, he’s got other things to keep him busy, from fronting folk-rock band King Straggler, to trying out different characters while hitchhiking across the country (if you see him on the side of the road, he’s unlikely to answer to “John”). But we’ll excuse his absence. Who can be upset with a man who so coyly sings, “Do you want to hold hands?”
Dax Shepard and Katie Aselton
Before Dax Shepard earned infamy as a small screen improv troublemaker on MTV’s Punk’d (he played the repo man who made Justin Timberlake cry), he spent eight years persistently auditioning for roles in tampon commercials (or so he likes to joke). But The Freebie, an ultra-low budget film, is propelling Shepard (and the film’s director) into indie-darling stardom. “It may be the only time I will be able to use the word ‘beautiful’ for a film I’m in,” tweeted Shepard.
The Freebie, written and directed by Katie Aselton (a former Miss Teen USA first-runner-up), was one of the buzz films at Sundance this year. The plot, inspired by conversations between Aselton and her friends, revolves around Darren and Annie (Shepard and Aselton), a happily married couple of seven years who have lost interest in having sex. To spice things up, they both agree to take one night off from their relationship and sleep with a stranger.
In real life, Shepard and Aselton are both in deeply committed relationships, no questions asked: Shepard is engaged to actress Kristen Bell (his When in Rome co-star) and Aselton is married to director Mark Duplass (his film Cyrus, starring Marisa Tomei and Jonah Hill, also premiered at the festival).
Critics considered Aselton’s first directorial debut a delight, proving that acclaim isn’t tied to a big budget. “Kevin Costner’s The Postman was really expensive and really sucky,” Aselton told indieWIRE online. “I attempted to do the exact opposite.”
Paz de la Huerta
Twenty-five-year-old Paz de la Huerta loves being promiscuous – on film, anyway. She played Donald Sutherland’s seductress maid in Fierce People, a sex-siren named Nude in The Limits of Control (alongside a blonde cowgirl Tilda Swinton), and Nico, a nympho in Choke (a film about a sex-addict con-man played by Sam Rockwell). Adding to the roster, Huerta did a cover and full editorial spread for 2009’s French Playboy. So it’s no surprise why Gaspar Noé chose Huerta to play Enter the Void’s salacious character Linda.
The film’s teaser – jarring bright lights that could almost cause a seizure – provides a lot of thematic foreshadowing. In Void, recently orphaned Oscar makes a life-long commitment to take care of his sister, Linda. But when Oscar’s drug-fuelled lifestyle spirals out of control, Linda needs to fend for herself. She becomes a stripper, with some forays into prostitution. Ultimately, it’s a story about emptiness and the things we’ll do to fill it.
The many euphoric moments in the film, from Oscar’s rapturous drug-trips to Linda’s sexual highs, weren’t easy to shoot: one 20-minute take required Huerta to portray sexual ecstasy that cascades into a full-fledged mental breakdown. And Huerta makes it look effortless. Maybe it’s the years of walking down runways for the likes of Zac Posen, or being trained by The Actors Studio, or starring in dozens of big and small screen roles that have made her so easy onscreen. But it doesn’t really matter, because Huerta has us seduced.
Juliette Lewis
It’s been a long time since Juliette Lewis moaned and growled her way through a cover version of PJ Harvey’s “Hardly Wait” in Strange Days. But the 36-year-old actress still nimbly balances her music and acting careers – fronting The New Romantiques and starring in several films a year – and marries them when she can.
No surprise, then, to hear Lewis co-stars Mark Ruffalo’s directorial debut, Sympathy for Delicious. Delicious is a dramatic and music-driven film about a paralyzed DJ who finds out he’s been given the gift of healing. “He takes his God-given gift and prostitutes it for sex, drugs, rock and roll, and fame,” explains Ruffalo in the Sundance Film Festival’s Meet The Artists video blog.
In the Dramatic Special Jury Prize-winning film, Lewis returns to familiar musical ingénue/druggie territory. She vamps on-stage and pops painkillers as Ariel Lee, the bassist in the band Burnt the Diplongs, alongside Orlando Bloom, who plays the self-important lead singer, The Stain. In the film, Ariel offers DJ “Delicious” Dean, played by writer and real-life paraplegic Christopher Thornton, the opportunity to exploit his talents by joining the Diplongs.
“It’s a super strange movie which I like, and I’m told I’m pretty good in it – Ha!” tweeted Lewis. But the icing on the cake is Lewis performing all the songs live, not a trace of lip-syncing or air guitar to be seen.
Diego Luna
In many ways, Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal are like Mexico’s Matt Damon and Ben Affleck: inseparable on and off film. The pair, who have been acting together since their adolescent days starring in telenovelas, now put out Sundance-approved flicks through their production company, Canana Film; their past successes include Rudo y Cursi and Sin Nombre. This year, Luna’s second outing as a director, Abel, has Bernal serving as executive producer. (Luna’s directorial debut was J.C. Chávez, a biopic about Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez.)
In the film, the audience is introduced to Abel, played by Christopher Ruíz-Esparza, a young boy newly released from a psychiatric ward. Once home, Abel has difficulties adjusting to the absence of his father, who walked out on the family. Solution: Abel takes on the role of patriarch – acting as father to his siblings, and as husband to his mother. But life gets complicated when, inevitably, his father returns home.
Though some scenes are mildly incestuous, the film is less disturbing than it is endearing, and features pitch-perfect performances from its young cast. We wouldn’t expect anything less from Luna; after all, he’s played everyone from a teenager experiencing a sexual awakening (Y tu mamá también) to a neurotic Michael Jackson impersonator (Mister Lonely). It seems Luna is a true Jack-of-all-trades: transitioning from actor to director and back, performing beautifully on both sides of the lens.
Last September, the world got its first glimpse of Band of Outsiders’ Spring 2010 collection. The New York air carried a hint of autumn, wind pushing the odd, dry leaf up the street. But inside Chelsea’s Milk Studios, it was warm and sunny. Bright murals of sky and ocean lined the walls, heaps of sand covered the floors, grass poked between boulders, and small toy boats floated in pools of water. Skipping Fashion Week’s catwalks for the sort of daring presentation the label is known for, BOA dropped their 43 male and female models into quirky California beach vignettes.
“I try to stay away from runway for a few reasons,” explains Scott Sternberg, the designer behind Band of Outsiders and the women’s offshoot, Boy by Band of Outsiders, both of which playfully reimagine preppy vintage. “First, runway feels a little antiquated, so why not explore other ways of showing the clothes and engaging the press?” Besides quality craftsmanship and detail in tailoring and fabrics, it’s the creative concepts behind the collections that make BOA stand out.
“For Spring 10, the concept was very simple – turn Milk Gallery into a beach. We carted in tons, literally, of sand, and photographed a panoramic of a beach in Massachusetts that felt Malibu-esque.” The result? A very odd beach party – one at which ogling editors and adoring fans rubbed shoulders with Hollywood actors and the New York fashion media elite. Jason Schwartzman and Grace Coddington, Kirsten Dunst and Tavi, Rachel McAdams and Sally Singer. The juxtaposition was hilarious: guests in their New York best, most dressed head-to-toe in black, face-to-face with fresh young models in rolled-up chinos and Sperry topsiders, hair beach-blown and sun-kissed. One model sips a milkshake, another searches for coins in the sand with a metal detector.
These offbeat scenarios highlight what makes Sternberg’s brand different. The clothes are inspired by vintage boys’ school attire, but the way in which he shows them off brings a fresh take to what otherwise might appear to be a high-end version of Gap. His unconventional approach extends to all of BOA’s endeavors. For example, instead of using models to shoot his lookbooks, the LA-based designer opts for actors, most often comedians: for Fall 2009, Sternberg himself shot Jason Schwartzman hamming it up in sharply tailored suits, shirts, and trousers (complete with a polaroid of Schwartzman splayed out on some stairs as though he had tripped and fallen). “I use actors because they tend to have more depth, and levity, than models.”
While he acknowledges there is something attractive about the slick advertisements the big European houses produce, Sternberg feels they’re bleak and boring, even old and out of touch. “One thing I’m always interested in exploring with Band of Outsiders is how to overcome what have become very tired visual clichés associated with fashion,” Sternberg explains. “The way I feel about clothing, about fashion, is much more playful, joyful, soulful, nostalgic, narrative, and even a little funny – not a pouty model in full makeup awkwardly holding a purse or something like that.”
In seasons past, Sternberg has used actors such as Marisa Tomei, Michelle Williams, and Sarah Silverman for his campaigns. For Spring 2010, Sternberg photographed actors/comedians Donald Glover, Dave Franco, and Leslie Mann at a yacht club in Marina del Rey. California is a favourite backdrop for Sternberg’s photo projects. “LA is a funny place – a relatively young city, and from an architectural perspective quite cacophonous – and these settings are especially interesting when contrasted with the east coast, Ivy League aesthetic in the clothes.”
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that a label named after a Jean-Luc Godard film would spend so much time considering context, image, and the emotional range of its models. Band of Outsiders seems to have gotten the mix right, because we can’t wait to see what they’ll do next.
Images Benny Horne Words Susan Locht Fashion Editor James Worthington DeMolet
For supermodels, lucrative and creative work is the reward, and longevity is the challenge. Canadian-born Tasha Tilberg, a 5-foot-9.5-inch stunner who’s graced the pages of Vogue, W, Bazaar, V, and i-D, has both. Working on major campaigns with serious names in photography since the mid-90s, Tilberg continues to storm catwalks and light up photo shoots all over the world. She’s been photographed by the likes of Steven Meisel, Kayt Jones, and Mert and Marcus, and walked the shows for Karl Lagerfeld, Lanvin, and Alexander Wang. Her long list of ad campaigns include Marc by Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, and H&M.
On-set for “Madame X,” Tilberg makes the whole thing look easy. Off-set she is reserved – somewhat shy, even – but one step into the lights, dressed in Comme Des Garçons and Givenchy, and she’s in control. “When I started modelling, I didn’t like it at all,” Tilberg explains. “I was very uncomfortable with the idea that I got paid just to have my picture taken while I knew so many people who worked so hard for almost nothing.” But modelling offered what she describes as a “freedom from shyness” and a chance to collaborate with some amazing artistic visionaries. “I definitely enjoy it more now… For me it’s about the process, the experience of working with these [creative] people.”
When we met, Tilberg had just moved from Echo Park, Los Angeles into a Lower East Side apartment with her wife, Laura Wilson. Tilberg says they returned to Manhattan for one big reason: for her to model. We hope this means we’ll be seeing more of this tattooed, laid-back beauty.
Hair Enrico Mariotti at See Management
Make Up Kristin Gallegos at Bryan Bantry using Shu Uemura
Casting James Worthington DeMolet
Model Tasha Tilberg at One
Location Root Brooklyn
Fashion Assistant Lauren Deleo
Special thanks Marco and Jennifer at amarcordvintagefashion.com
FOLLOW US
ON TWITTER
LIKE US
ON FACEBOOK
THE BLOCK MIXTAPE
by Young Empires
Mixtape: Young Empires
Toronto's Young Empires send us straight to the dancefloor with this mixtape for The Block.
www.myspace.com/youngempires
01. Sabali (Vitalic Remix) - Amadou & Miriam
02. Lies (Herve Remix) - Fenech-Soler
03. Hour of the Wolf (Lifelike Remix) - Adam Kesher
04. Dance the Way I Feel (Armand Van Helden Remix) - Ou Est Le Swimming Pool
05. Snake Charmer - Bag Raiders
06. Wait & See - Holy Ghost!
07. All Night (Azari & III Remix) - Voltage
08. You Know I Know It - Tensnake
09. La Mezcla - Michel Cleis
10. Rain of Gold (French Horn Rebellion Remix) - Young Empires
Download