Juno

Today I went to watch Juno in Tyson's Corner here in Virginia and it stands head and shoulders above anything that I have seen in recent months. Ellen Page is brilliant as the title character and Michael Cera, as always, is suitably tortured in the male lead. If you haven't seen it, go see it.

Now the reason why I'm bringing it up is because of a few spots that I made in the film. In Juno's room she has work by Kozyndan, Tara McPherson and David Choe.

Kozyndan is the joint pseudonym of Los Angeles-based husband-and-wife illustator team Kozy and Dan Kitchens, known in particular for their whimsical and occasionally absurd illustrations of modern cityscapes. Check their website out for a tour of the wonderful world in which their imaginations exist. I have a colouring-in book that they did and I've yet to get drunk enough to break out the crayolas and ruin it...yet.

Check their blog out for more.







Tara McPherson is an American painter, comic book artist, poster artist, freelance illustrator, and teacher based out of New York City. A recurring motif in her work is a person with a stylized heart-shaped hole through their chest in the place of an actual heart. McPherson's array of art includes painted covers for Vertigo comic books and graphic novels, advertising and editorial illustrations for companies such as Fanta and Spin Magazine, and numerous gig posters for rock bands such as Green Day, Beck, Modest Mouse, Isis, High on Fire, and Death Cab for Cutie. She also has exhibited her paintings and prints in fine art galleries all over the world. Currently she is working on a painted graphic novel for Vertigo, painting for private commissions and gallery exhibitions, designing a new line of toys for Kidrobot based on her characters, and teaches a Concept Illustration class at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City.

Tara did a signing when she exhibited at the Richard Goodall Gallery in the Northern Quarter of Manchester and I managed to get the wife a Beck poster signed, which won me a kajillion brownie points. I could do stupid shit for three days afterwards and not get sent to the naughty step. Brilliant!





David Choe is a muralist and graphic artist based in California. He mostly does murals, which have appeared everywhere from Los Angeles to Manchester to Vietnam and all stops in between. He is known as much for his exaggerated vulgarity as for his aesthetic sense. His work also appears on a store in the Northern Quarter opposite Eastern Bloc. (I can't remember the name)







This is something else that I found by having a snoop about on the old Interweb and this is Michael Cera's created parody video, "Impossible is the Opposite of Possible" of Aleksey Vayner's truly awful video resume entitled, "Impossible Is Nothing" that lit the internet up a couple of years ago. Watch the original here. Laugh out loud stuff on both accounts.



Oh yeah, and the Chemistry teacher in the film is played by none other than Cut Chemist. (Geddit?)



Here are some videos to waste some of your precious time with some edumackashun.

Here are Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow doing their Brainfreeze thing. Watch it here.

And here he is digging for some records in Torrance in LA.