Damien Lewis + Lana Del Rey + Action = DESIRE, A Short Film For Jaguar and A Look Behind The Scenes.

To promote the new Jaguar F-TYPE, sexy ginger Golden Globe winning actor Damian Lewis joins Shannyn Sossamon in this new action-packed 13 minute short film, DESIRE, a collaboration with Ridley Scott Associates and featuring music from Lana Del Rey.




'Desire,' directed by Adam Smith in a five day shoot in Chile's Atacama Desert, is a 13 minute tongue-in-cheek James Bond-esque story in which Lewis plays Clark, a man who encounters difficulties in his attempts to deliver a Jaguar F-TYPE to a rather shady man who's at odds with a mysterious young woman played by Shannyn Sossamon.


above: "It sort of fell into my lap," the London-born actor tells The Hollywood Reporter. "I've never done anything for the online market before, and I just thought it was cool to work with Ridley Scott and [director] Adam Smith. I thought the script had a kind of nod to the Americana that you find in the Coen brothers' movies."

Now, a look at the 13 minute branded content and the making of it.

DESIRE:


"The Making Of" in 3 parts:
Join Ridley Scott Associates and director Adam Smith in Chile's Atacama Desert, as the crew begin to bring the action-packed F-TYPE Desire film to life in a look behind the scenes


Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:




Interested in the new F-Type? you can download the e-brochure here

The Classic Rock Ballad 'Beth' by KISS From Her Point of View (And The True Story).

Anyone who grew up during the 70s and 80s is familiar with the song "Beth" which was written by guitarist Stan Penridge and sung by KISS original drummer, Peter Criss. The song, to which many of my peers slow-danced in school gyms, has been featured or sung on GLEE, American Idol and in numerous movies. We often speculated as to who this "Beth" actually was - and apparently we were not the only ones.


above: at the risk of simultaneously dating myself and freaking out my readers, I actually still have my original single of Beth.

This legendary KISS ballad gets lampooned in this four and a half minute short film directed by Brian Billow of Anonymous Content, shown below. The fictitious story of the song’s inspiration came from the mind of Bob Winter, executive creative director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami. The Peter Criss character's dialogue stays true to the song's lyrics and the video is perfectly art directed to capture the era. Only flaw? Peter Criss was actually the only KISS member in the studio when the song was recorded for the 1976 album Destroyer*.

As Winter told Adweek previously, "I was thinking that it might be fun to create a series that's like the made-up stories behind real songs."



The truth is not far off. According to Songfacts, Criss and Penridge came up with a song called "Beck," which was about the wife/girlfriend of their guitarist Mike Brand (they were in a band named Chelsea at the time), whose name was Becky. It's rumored she was a hypochondriac and was constantly interrupting their band practices with phone calls asking when Mike was coming home, and the song was a joke directed at him.

In 1976, after Criss joined Kiss, he and Penridge revived the song and with the help of producer Bob Ezrin, they changed the title to "Beth" and made it more sentimental, changing the end of the first verse from: "I know you love complaining, but Beck what can I do?" to "I think I hear them callin', Oh, Beth what can I do?"

Get the whole story behind the Bob Winter and Brian Billow version  here at Adweek.

CREDITS
Director: Brian Billow
Production Company: Anonymous Content
Senior Executive Producer: Eric Stern
Executive Producer, Production: SueEllen Clair
Producer: Paul Ure
Writer: Bob Winter
Director of Photography: Darran Tiernan
Editor: John Dingfield, Beast Editorial
Actors:
Beth: Lilli Birdsell
Peter: Steven Olson
Kid #1: Michael Hamilton
Kid #2: Robert Hamilton
Ace: Roy Green
Paul: Alec Paul Cartinian
Gene: Rocco Fonzarelli
Roadie: Jason Lee Beckwith
Performer, Beth Piano Intro: Coleman Zurkowski

*source: wikipedia

The Winner (And All 29 Finalists) of The Heineken Future Bottle ‘Remix’ Challenge

Heineken has announced the winner of their 2012/13 Your Future Bottle Design Challenge. The winning design (shown below) was created by Fernando Degrossi, who is a graphic designer from Sao Paolo, Brazil.

The Winning Design:


Fernando submitted several designs, a few others of which were finalists and shown later in this post.

To celebrate its 140th year, Heineken put its design elements online and challenged creatives everywhere to ‘remix’ these assets into an iconic bottle, designed for the future. The remix theme gave designers total freedom to delve into Heineken’s past and play with the brand's DNA to create a cool new design. The winning approach remixes five circular Heineken logos from five different decades, and incorporates the red star, Heineken’s famous trademark.

The video invitation to the design challenge:


The winning design and the finalists were selected at a live judging event at Heineken’s space in the heart of the creative community at Milan Design Week, which has been visited by more than 10,000 design fans since opening on Tuesday. Fernando’s design beat almost 2,000 entries and becomes the second Limited Edition bottle that will be produced. It will go on sale around the world in early 2014.

The Top 5 Finalists:
Anna Ptasinka:

Andy Audsley:

Tomasz Wagner:

Fernando Degrossi:

Bartek Bak:


The Other 24 Finalists (in no particular order):
Balazs Kaczper:

Davide Colombo:

Elina Presniakova:

Fernanda Ochoa:

Fernando Degrossi:

Fernando Degrossi:

Ji Yeon Kim:

Johan Bl:

Joris Blomjous:

Milos Dostanic:

Nemanja Djordjevic:

Nicolas Vicario:

Nivedita Sivaprakash:

Paolo Tonon:

Pat Corrigan:

Thijs Mensink:

Victor Correa:

Dominique Hernandez:

Leondios Tsiobanelis:

Marco Bellarosa Architects:

Marco Bellarosa Architects:

A Serbian designer whose name I do not have the characters to type (I'm so sorry) so I pasted his name above his design:


Sergey Rizhov:

Sergey Rizhov:


The judging panel consisted of designer Joshua Davis; Evan Orensten of Cool Hunting; Mark Dytham of PechaKucha and Heineken’s global head of design Mark van Iterson.

Mark van Iterson, Global Head of Design at Heineken, said "This is the completion of a five month process; a contest that has attracted over 2,000 high quality entries. The use of our heritage in this winning design is really clever and results in a very contemporary iconic bottle. It was a bold step to put our brand history into the hands of emerging designers, but Heineken is a progressive brand and this contest has proved again that opening up in the search for creativity pays off.”

Heineken

Craig Steely's Island Sanctuary, The Lavaflow 7 House.

The Lavaflow 7 - Mayer/Penland House on the Big Island of Hawaii by San Francisco- based architect Craig Steely.

New and Beautiful Paintings by Stephen Magsig. City Views Opens At George Billis Gallery.

above: Stephen Magsig, 68 Mercer St., Oil on linen, 30 x 24"

I've been a longtime fan of Stephen Magsig's work having introduced you to his Urban Alphabet paintings and his Postcards From Detroit back in 2009.


above: Magsig's Urban Alphabet, a series of small scale paintings of letters from city signs (I own the "A", the "O" and the "K")

Stephen's latest show, City Views, opened yesterday at the George Billis Gallery in New York and features several new pieces that capture the flavor and ambiance of New York. The oil paintings on linen depict urban storefronts, cast iron facades, street corners, neon signs, bridges and city views in Magsig's inimitable style.


above: Stephen Magisg, Manhattan Bridge, Oil on linen, 30 x 60"

Void of human figures, his paintings combine the early morning light of Edward Hopper with an adept realism. Long shadows, empty street corners and closed cafes exude an emptiness while simultaneously appearing inviting. His work successfully combines the aspects of a large inhabited city with the quietude of a personal and private moment.

168 Mercer St., 40 x 30":


54 White St., 30 x 24":


Brooklyn Bridge Shadows, 30 x 60":


Duane St. Shadows, 48 x 40":


Bass Ale, 42 x 36":


40 Walker St., 62 x 48":


Bleeker St. Shadows:


Lincoln Tunnel Ventilation Tower, 24 x 30":


Rheon Cafe, 42 x 36"


281 Church St at White St., 62 x 48":


Nolita Corner, 30 x 24":


Broadway Shadows, 20 x 16":


108 Franklin St., 20 x 16":


Sunday Morning Shadows, 24" x 30":


The show runs through May 25th.

City Views, George Billis Gallery
521 W. 26th Street, B1
New York, NY 10001
April 23 - May 25, 2013
Reception, Thurs April 25, 6-8 pm
www.georgebillis.com

Stephen Magsig website

If you never saw his Urban Alphabet or Postcards from New York, see those here.