Matthew Newton

The narrator in One Got Fat, the bizarre bicycle safety PSA filmed in 1963, warns that danger lurks everywhere when the rules of the road are ignored. One by one, the bicycling monkeys learn the error of their ways. One Got Fat seems to be an exercise in taking the mundane (bicycle safety), and transforming it into a fever dream.

Work life at Google’s Mountain View campus, aka the Googleplex, has become something of a modern myth. The conditions and amenities are envied by the majority of cubicle drones who are left to languish in America’s dimly lit office parks and asbestos-ridden buildings.

In more civilized times, music industry bottom feeders had to seek out the child prodigies and pre-teen crooners they sought to exploit. That meant trolling shopping malls and amusement parks in the armpits of America and the Great White North, all in hopes that The Search would turn up the next Bop or Tiger Beat centerfold.

There was a time when the arrival of a check-cashing shop signaled the death of a neighborhood. It meant your community had strayed as far as it could get from the halcyon days, that its own financial institutions either no longer existed or were unable to serve a growing percentage of its citizens. But that was before the bottom dropped out of the economy time and again, before no-questions-asked check cashing became the norm in so many communities.

Alexander Gellner takes a tweaked-out, one-minute crash course through puberty in this animated short. “Puberty, the fun and exciting times you had with pimples, uncontrolled new powers, and a thousand things you tried out for the first time,” writes Gellner in his synopsis. “Metamorphosis and change and chaos of becoming a real person are some of the themes that I tried to touch on.”

Boredom and monogamy are two ideas ingrained like memories in our collective consciousness. Those who choose monogamy are often viewed as simple fools by a certain percentage of the population; while individuals who remain single for long stretches of time are often dismissed as lonely, sad, or incompatible.

It’s difficult to think about androids without sci-fi visions of melting plasticine faces revealing a metal skull full of circuits and wiring; or artificial skin bleeding milk-white fluid when cut with a knife. It’s what films like Terminator and Aliens have conditioned us to believe. The underlying theme is that of fear.

Kid Zoom’s style knocks of the post-graffiti movement that’s transformed into a cottage industry over the last decade, where artists meld elements of street-level graffiti with high-minded fine art and cash in. But what sets Zoom apart is craftsmanship, and the reckless spirit of his work.

In his recent Ted Talk, photographer/street artist JR recounted his experiences working on art in impoverished, violence-ridden neighborhoods in countries such as Kenya and Brazil. While humor and wit are central to the artist’s charm, what seems to set him apart from his often-gimmicky, pop-art contemporaries (i.e., Banksy, Shepard Fairey, etc.) is a genuine empathy for the people living in the neighborhoods where he installs his work.

The chase scene in Bullitt (1968) is bare bones, beautiful. Its minimal use of music, aside from Lalo Schifrin’s jazz score that leads into the scene, allows you to focus on what’s playing out on screen.

Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll comics from the 90s, the comic books that chronicled the booze- and drug-fueled debauchery of bands like Guns N Roses, Mötley Crüe, Van Halen, and Metallica? The comics were unlicensed/unauthorized biographies characterized by abysmal artwork (I remember that James Hetfield looked like a transvestite version of himself; David Lee Roth a Botox-injected aerobics instructor) and an emphasis on drugs and nudity.

Hyperbole (and rampant product placement) aside — Red Bull! Quicksilver! — the teaser for Brain Farm’s latest film features a stunning array of visuals from snow-covered locations all over the world: Wyoming, Patagonia, Austria, etc. Watch this and be inspired (while you bask in the artificial glow of your computer screen).