Karl Lagerfeld for...

Karl Lagerfeld premiered three short films at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 21. Each of the "films" feature Rachel Bilson, my personal style icon, in a different role - she is a model in one, a ballerina in the next, and an art student in the last. Surprisingly, they are not as abstract as one would first think when imagining Lagerfeld's work. In fact, they are the exact opposite of what I would imagine - mainstream commercials for Magnum Ice Cream. Magnum is a globally recognized brand that is finally exploring the U.S. market, and using these commercials to break ground.

In my opinion, the ads are a success - they have a dry, satiric comic quality and Bilson is (as always) charming. Here is my favorite:



It's almost as if Lagerfeld is poking fun of himself in this one. Known for his work at elite fashion houses Chanel and Fendi, as well as his own label, Lagerfeld is quoted in an interview on the collaboration with Magnum, of all things:

"I am mass market too...Don't forget that I did H&M. There are lots of people who can buy a Chanel dress, but there are many, many, many more people who can buy a Chanel lipstick."

Down-to-earth words from a man who never takes off his sunglasses!

Life in a Day!

The Summer 2011 movie slate is full of sequels and action flicks - we've got Fast Five, Thor, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, to name only a few. I'm undoubtedly excited to see these movies, but I am more excited for this:



People were asked to upload videos of their lives to YouTube on July 24, 2010 for this project. With thousands of people responding to the request, director Kevin MacDonald (Last King of Scotland) and crew were left with the extraordinary task of editing down 80,000 clips - almost 4,500 hours of footage - into a feature length documentary. They managed to do it and Life in a Day was well-received at this year's Sundance and SXSW festivals.

This amazing movie hits theaters on July 24th...check it out!

RIP Tim Hetherington

Photojournalist and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Tim Hetherington was tragically killed during a mortar attack in Libya on April 20, 2011. Most famous for the war documentary film Restrepo he produced and directed with Sebastian Junger, Hetherington was working on a doc on the conflict between Muammar Gaddafi's forces and rebels in Misurata, Libya when he died.

China Squashes Time Travel

China’s State Administration for Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) has banned “time-travel” in television and movies, citing that notion involves distorting and disrespecting the country’s history.

The guidelines condemn story lines that involve "fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking." With the absence of these elements, SARFT hopes to extract fantasy from reality and control how Chinese citizens view their country.

Though we are familiar with time-travel in a science-fiction sense through movies such as Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, The Terminator, and Back to the Future, time-travel in Chinese film and television is more often used as a mechanism for fantastical nostalgia, a way of reimagining reality and current affairs. For example, Myth (Shen Hua) is a popular television drama based on time-travel that tells “the story of a modern man going back to ancient China where, after some adjustment, he finds love and happiness.”

The bottom line is that Chinese officials are not scared of the power of science-fiction; rather, they’re worried that the citizenry is unhappy with the status quo and time-travel in film and TV provides a false hope. Last time I checked, the purpose of fiction was to provide escape and enjoyment...

What Do Will Ferrell and Mexico Have in Common?

Casa De Mi Padre, of course! The first official trailer for the film was released earlier this week:



To be real, I think the trailer undersells the movie's potential for brilliance and oversells its twisted genre conventions. Starring Will Ferrell in his first Spanish language role alongside Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, Casa De Mi Padre is a spoof Western that follows rancher Armando Alvarez (Ferrell) as he entangles himself in conflicts of romance and drug trafficking. It's directed by former Saturday Night Live writer and winner of the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival for "Brick Novax's Diary" Matt Piedmont. Though there is no release date set for the film yet, I think theatres will be packed for this one.

Reading 100 All TIME Novels

Six years ago, TIME Magazine put out a list of the "100 best English-language novels" from 1923 to 2005. The novels were handpicked by book critic/fiction writer/blogger Lev Grossman and TIME editor at large/art critic/blogger Richard Lacayo. In "How We Picked the List," Lacayo writes, "Lists like this one have two purposes. One is to instruct. The other of course is to enrage." This statement is proven accurate in the very amusing "Your Opinion" section, in which readers can share their feelings about what constitutes a good novel.

Every now and again, I visit this list. For the most part it makes me feel unaccomplished and uncultured, but it also reminds me of how important fiction is in our world. The way I see it, the novel (and fiction in general) is a springboard. As we all know, fiction inspires critical thought and creative work. More often, it moves everyday people who are bored at work to think and fantasize. Fiction, in my opinion, is one of the main reasons for why the world still works. It keeps us interested and gives us hope.

Reading 100 All TIME Novels is a manifestation of all this. Just a regular guy, "MyRev," has embarked on a quest of a lifetime. His mission? To read every novel on TIME's list and review each one. This guy understands the importance of the great novel and has made tackling this project seem like a piece of cake. He has taken something that is essentially high-brow and transformed it into something both down-to-earth and accessible. I'm impressed, and happy there are people out there doing stuff like this.

Project Five

Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore, and Alicia Keys are all directing short films to be part of a five-part anthology entitled Project Five. Created for Lifetime, the original movie will be a collection of five stories of women with breast cancer. Aniston on the purpose of the film:

"Our hope with Project Five is to entertain, inform and inspire dialogue, research and prevention. Otherwise, our goals are small...We want these films to move people and empower those affected by breast cancer to stand tall through this challenge, which impacts ALL of our lives, no matter who we are.”

Patricia Clarkson and Jeanne Tripplehorn will be starring in Aniston's short, which, along with the other four, will air on Lifetime in October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Jay-Z the Journalist

Earlier this month, Jay-Z hopped on the celeb blog movement with his site Life + Times. But in true HOV fashion, he has taken the concept to a whole new level - Life + Times is not at all a place where Jay goes to bitch about another rapper's unwarranted success or give us the lowdown on what event he attended last night; rather, it's a site focused on culture - style, leisure, art & design, technology, music, and sports. Not only is the site informative and extremely well-written, it is stylish in both design and content. I would expect no less from the HOV.

Though he has enlisted a staff of writers to support the site, Jay is still heavily involved in the project - his informal interview of his "sister" Gwyneth Paltrow on her interest in hip-hop really struck me as an example of his engagement with the e-mag.

Jay-Z's mission statement for the site is "I want to make the ordinary, extraordinary" - six words that speak absolute volumes to the scope of this project. As a whole, the site carries with it an air of exclusivity, but exclusivity made accessible. When I peruse the site, it's as if I am caring about and listening to what Jay listens to and cares about. For whatever reason, that feeling gets me and keeps me coming back.

Classic Daft Punk Song Revisited

Actor Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild, Milk) makes his directorial debut with a music video set to the tune of Daft Punk's "Alive":