Welcome to Wallyworld

Australian photographer Keith Loutit is a master of Tilt-Shift Photography. Tilt-shift miniature faking is a process where a photograph of a life-size location or object is manipulated so that it looks like a photograph of a miniature scale model. By distorting the focus of the photo, the artist simulates the shallow depth of field normally encountered with macro lenses making the scene seem much smaller than it actually is. Many miniature faked photographs are taken from a high angle to further simulate the effect of looking down on a miniature. - from Wikipedia

Bathtub V from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Read Michael's comment below. He's right, of course. Keith doesn't fake these shots in Photoshop - he does in with camera depth-of-field. But here's an interesting site where you can eneter one of your own phots and do a tilt-shift number on it. Tilt Shift Maker

Have a look at this absolutely brilliant piece of classifieds copy. From the New Zealand site Trade Me. And look at the bids this maverick washing machine has attracted.

Old mid 80's Fisher and Paykel top loader. Goes like a rocket!

By 'goes like a rocket' I actually mean that literally.
It actually shakes the house.

It's the loudest most violent sounding washing machine I have ever encountered.
It makes guests scared and children cry. I've lived with it like that for almost a year and it still scares me.

Once while washing a load of towells it got a bit out of balance and it got so out of control for a minute that I swear I actually saw a porthole to another dimension open above it just for a second, there were dinosaurs on the otherside and they looked scared too, it almost sucked me in but I held onto for my life to the deepfreeze. It sucked my shoes and pants off though and it got the iron as well which pissed me off because it was quite a good one. Luckily it sucked it's own power cord out of the wall and stopped before the whole house went in.
I drew a picture of the dinosaurs i saw incase people didn't believe me, they are partly red because my green felt ran out half way through.

I think it would be good to paint it matt black and put steel spikes all over it and draw demons on the front, however I have added an image of another possible customization option for people who like horses.

On heavy duty spin cycle it sort of sounds a bit like the tortured howls of 1000 undead writhing in the sulphury pits of hell mixed with a train with carriages full of scrap iron sliding down the road with no wheels, on fire, into a bell factory.

Thankfully it's bite is not as bad as it's bark. It washes fine, completes cycles, does everything it's supposed to.
It leaks a bit when it's running, always has.
Its a bit grubby, could do with a wipe down, I refuse to touch it because I'm still getting over the whole dinosaur scare thing.

If your in a fix and need a cheap washing machine and are either completely deaf or hate your neighbours this baby is for you.

$1 reserve, pick up only, Waterview Auckland.
Selling to pay for my counseling.

More here - Scary Washing Machine

Just one of the photos from a compilation called Top 20 Worst Australian Band Photos

Bad News travels fast the saying goes. According to Frank Kern, (and if you Google his name you'll see I'm #2 for those keywords) putting bad news (lower case) in the subject of an email, increases its clickthrough rate astronomically - he got a 39.2% open rate - watch the video here. So of course every man and his dog has been flogging that subject line in their sales emails lately. But does it work on the SERPs I wonder? Let's see shall we? Let's see if I can get this on Google under Bad News. It's a big ask. Last time I looked there were 103 million results for "bad news". So I think the only way this would fly is if you link to me - write a blogpost and link to me with "bad news" as the anchor text. Let's see what happens. Maybe the best that will happen is that this post will nest under the other listing for "Frank Kern". I've just spiced things up a bit by putting Frank Kern's name in the Title of this post. Sorry about that Irwin F. Kern IV ("Frank" to his mates).

Amazing what you can access on the Public Records. This is a Twitter account devoted to mugshots from the Denton Police Department, Texas. It's programmed by a UNT art photography student and, as he puts it

drawing attention to how much public info we put online.

Thanks to daBitch at Adland for the tip. Click on the thumbnail to see more. Fascinating.

Fantastic. Australian aboriginal filmmaker Warwick Thornton with an aboriginal cast and a fair-dinkum aboriginal outback petrol-sniffing theme - unlike the bullshit that was served up in the Baz Luhrmann crap "Australia" with Nicole Kidman - takes the Camera d'Or Prize (Best Debut Feature Film) in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival. "Best love story we've ever seen" was the jury's comment. Here's the trailer -

Here's what The Sydney Morning Herald reviewer Sandra Hall wrote about the movie before it went to Cannes -

Overlaid with the jaunty sounds of Charley Pride singing Sunshiny Day, the opening scene of the indigenous filmmaker Warwick Thornton's Samson And Delilah has a lambent beauty.

As 15-year-old Samson (Rowan McNamara) wakes, the morning light strikes his bed as if bestowing a benediction.

Then he sits up and with a groggy air of purpose, he fractures the image by picking up a can from the floor and holding it to his nose to take a long, deep breath. He's a petrol sniffer, and for the next few minutes we're taken through the hazy patterns of his day, which is spent languidly kicking the dust around the tiny Aboriginal settlement where he lives in the Central Australian desert.

In this place of magnificent skies and endless red plains, Samson and most of the others in his community behave as if trapped in a belljar and starved of the oxygen necessary to make things happen. Only 16-year-old Delilah (Marissa Gibson) and her grandmother, Nana (Mitjili Gibson), seem content. Nana is the community's painter and her work is spirited away to the city by a dubious character who snaps up each painting as soon as it's finished. And as her grandmother paints, Delilah watches and sometimes helps, entranced both by the purity of the pigment and her grandmother's pleasure in the work she does. Nana's happiness is infectious and as Samson silently studies these two from the sidelines, he decides that he loves Delilah and wants her for his girlfriend.

It's a demanding film, so determined to replicate the listless rhythm which governs the community's routines that you feel a need to slow your pulse beat to adapt to it. Thornton, who shot the film himself, has the action unfold in long takes which give you plenty of time to dwell on the desert vastness. But there are bursts of restless energy, too. Samson's brother has a garage band which Samson is banned from joining because of his fondness for snatching up the guitar and thrashing it tunelessly at full volume. So he resorts to his boom box, while Delilah finds her refuge in the car, where she sits at night, listening to Latin music.

Samson doesn't speak, for reasons which are revealed much later in the film, and nobody else says much either. His courtship of Delilah is conducted in gently humorous pantomime. He carries his bed roll from his brother's house and lays it beside hers. She tosses it back at him, and so it goes until he eventually wins her trust. It's a beguiling sequence but at other times you long for the release of tension to be had from simple conversation. Despite the dusty realism of the setting, the story's tongue-tied nature gives it the deliberate feel of a fable, as if stillness were being used as a blunt instrument to impose meaning.

The pace quickens after Nana dies in her sleep. Despite the conscientiousness with which Delilah has cared for her, she's accused of negligence and beaten brutally with sticks by the other women in the community. Profoundly stirred by her injuries, Samson steals a van and takes her off to Alice Springs, where things inevitably get a lot worse before they get any better.

The few moments of cheerfulness come courtesy of Gonzo, a homeless man the teenagers meet while sleeping rough under a bridge on the town's edge. He's played by Thornton's brother, Scott, and his breezy if bumbling attempts to make friends with the couple add a bracing shot of spontaneity.

Thornton has said that he sees the film primarily as a love story and he's certainly endowed the relationship between the teenagers with great poignancy. McNamara, 14 when the film was shot, has a coltish grace and Gibson projects a remarkably mature sense of resilience. As well, Thornton has a real gift for the transcendent image. The film's opening is one example. Another has Delilah helping the spaced-out Samson to bathe himself - a scene filled with intimations of baptism and regeneration.

Yet like all stories about addiction, this one is ultimately dispiriting. Despite the flash of hope that Thornton gives you at the end, he isn't in the business of providing the kind of cathartic release you get from more conventional storytellers. He takes you into another world, but finds no obligation to make you comfortable there. He's made a tender film, and an honest one, but it's tough going.

BTW another Australian film critic (ex Sydney Morning Herald) is Lynden Barber has a great blog on film called Eyes Wired Open. He actually picked this movie to win the Camera d'Or. Oh yeah...he talks about Tarantino's war flick too.

Lucy Gordon the young British actress famous for her role as a British Reporter in Spider Man 3 has hung herself in a Paris apartment yesterday morning - two days before her 29th birthday.

Her body was found hanging from the ceiling of her Rue des Petits Ecuries (10th Arrondissement) rented apartment.

Apparently she had been heard arguing with her boyfriend the night before. He claims to have gone to bed and then woke in the morning to find his lover had hanged herself.

Shocked by the horrific scene, he ran into the street below where he alerted a local shopkeeper.

Lucy's father said "She had been acting since the age of two, which was really as soon as she could walk. Her career had been just taking off, and it's a tragedy that it has been cut short so soon."

A Police officer who attended the scene said - "The circumstances of the young woman’s death were horrific."

Lucy Gordon had just finished playing the actress and singer Jane Birkin in Je t'Aime Moi Non Plus - a biopic about the late French singer Serge Gainsbourg currently being previewed at the Cannes Film Festival. Described by one reviewer as

the overall tone of the trailer was classy Euro art softcore, with a touch of cartoon whimsy.

Here's a clip of the original Gainsbourg/Birkin hit record of the same name

Lucy Gordon had only recently moved to Paris from New York.

Lucy Gordon also had a starring role in a new French comedy Cineman, due out later this year and starring the popular French comedian Franck Dubosc. She also had a larger part in the romantic comedy The Russian Dolls where she co-starred with Audrey Tautou.

Very sad.

Baby Baby Baby Lyrics translated (loosely) into English. Some of this stuff doesn't translate. There are French in-jokes and references to French celebrities, film stars and rock stars. Click on the hyperlinks in the lyrics to find out more.

Link to the video (3.3M views so far)

BTW The clip was filmed on Rue Montorgueil which translates as "Street Mount Pride" - probably another in-joke amongst the creators.

Baby Baby Baby

I want to fuck on the commode. I want Tellier on my Ipod.

I want your Mom’s Black Amex. I want your Dad's car.

I want to go out with your mates. I will wear my cutest panties.

I want a hot sex session. You can look but you can’t touch.

I want to be a Justice top friend. Gaspard’s hand on my thigh.

I want to be able to count without my fingers. And I want yours in the right spot.

I don’t want to go up the stairs. That's perfect - you're going to carry me.

I want to be the only person in photos. And I want to model for Laurent.

I want gifted children. And I want my dog to have a degree.

I want your head on a platter. I want mine to be on Denisot.

I don't want any cake. I just want Coke.

I don't want Kate, I want Ethan Hawke.

I want to jump off of a big ladder. Do as you can for the rainbow.

I want chocolate and vanilla flavoured ice cream. I want your balls to be blueberry flavoured.

I want to dance like Vanessa. I want to see her guy at Ibiza.

I want to be asleep when you wake up. And I want Yelle’s t-shirt.

I want to fit all my jeans. And I want you to come home with your pay check.

I want ice cubes in my glass. I want to smoke dope with your grandma.

I saw your ex - you know she's dumb. Tell her I found her boots.

I don't want a pip in my cherry. I want you to straighten the Tower of Pisa.
I want to cum in a Deux Chevaux. And I'll do it behind your back.

From the original French Lyrics of Baby Baby Baby

baby baby baby .....

je veux des plans sur la commode
j'veux Tellier sur mon ipod
je veux l'amex black de ta mere
je veux la voiture de ton pere
j'veux sortir avec tes potes
j'mettrais ma plus belle culotte
j'veux une session un peu hot
j'veux bien qu'tu r'gardes mais pas qu'tu p'lote

baby baby baby ....

j'veux etre dans l'top de justice
la main d' Gaspar sur ma cuisse
je veux compter même sans les doigts
je veux les tiens au bon endroit
je veux pas prendre les escaliers
tien c'est parfait, tu vas m'porter
je veux que moi sur les photos
et j'veux poser pour Saint Lau
je veux des enfants surdoués
et j'veux qu'mon chien soit diplomé
je veux ta tête sur un plateau
je veux pas d' cake, j'veux de la coke
je veux sauter d'une grande échelle
je veux des glaces choco vanille
je veux tes boules à la myrtille

je veux danser comme Vanessa
j'veux voir son mec à Ibiza
je veux dormir quand tu te réveilles
et j'veux l'même T-shirt que Yelle
j'veux rentrer dans tous mes Jeans
et j'veux qu'tu rentres avec ta prime
j'veux des glacons dans mon verre
faire une souflette à ta grand-mère
j'ai vu ton ex, tu sais la sotte
dis lui qu'j'ai retrouvé ses bottes
j'veux pas noyau dans ma cerise
j'veux qu'tu redresse la tour de Pise
j'veux jouir dans une 2 chevauxx
et je vais l'faire derrière ton dos

Somali Pirates We - check it out now on the South Park site.

Cartman (with eye patch) decides to go off to Somalia with a "pirate club" in search of booty. They get kidnapped and put up for ransom but end up hijacking a French ship and their stereotypical French crew. The kids come back expecting a pirate heroes' welcome, grog and all, but their ragtag comrades are too bored and addled-looking to care. The kids try to whip the pirates into shape with the help of a rousing musical number.

Funnily enough, the cartoon pirates speak flawless Somali. Mogadishu looks like an urban junkyard of crisscrossing telephone wires and sad-looking palm trees. All the tools of the pirate trade are accounted for: AK-47s, ammunition belts, a decrepit fishing boat with a "Yamoha" outboard motor.

Arr maties! very funny.

Gov

Make The Girl Dance Baby Baby Baby

is the first single from a Parisian techno/rock band called "Make the Girl Dance". This clip has had over Three Million Views on Daily Motion. It was filmed in a popular Paris market street - Rue Montorgeuil ("Mount Pride") - in the middle of the day. 2 o'clock actually - after the lunch crowd.

And today a parody of the Baby Baby Baby clip was released. Well funny.

If you look carefully you'll see its in mirror-effect. This is intentional. It's to get around the laws about privacy and advertising in France. By flipping the picture, you can't read the signs and or brands that appear therefore making it quicker and cheaper than having to obliterate each and every brand name that appears. The eyes of the passers-by are barred out to do away with the need for Model Releases. More music and clips at their Myspace page.

Now here's the Parody version -

Here's a Full Translation of the original lyrics more or less - some of this doesn't translate -

Ah...Paris! Where else eh?

Make The Girl Dance Baby Baby Baby