Only God Forgives

"The film is one that once again finds [Drive Director Nicolas Winding] Refn boldly moving into a new territory, in a script that his star Ryan Gosling has already said is the "strangest thing" he's ever read. The story centers on Julian (Gosling), who has lived in exile in Bangkok after killing a cop ten year ago. With his brother, he runs a Thai boxing club as a front for the family's drugs smuggling operation run by his Florida based Mom, Jenna (Kristin Scott Thomas). However, his brother gets into hot water when he murders a prostitute, and the cops call on retired cop Chang -- aka The Angel Vengeance -- to weigh in on the matter. And things get considerably sticky and bloody from there.

Shooting in Thailand has invigorated the Refn, who is clearly in awe of Bangkok. "I love this city. Sometimes it feels like the sets of 'Blade Runner,' says Refn"

Indiewire - "Nicolas Winding Refn Talks Making 'Only God Forgives' & Considers Tokyo Setting For Horror 'I Walk With The Dead'"
IMDB - "Only God Forgives"

"we could be seeing the film as early as the Venice Film Festival this fall."

Competitive Advertising

Audi vs. BMW

Audi posts a billboard of the A4 with the copy "Your move BMW."

BMW posts a billboard of its 3-series with the headline "Checkmate."

Audi follows up BMW's billboard with one of its RX cars with the headline "Your pawn is no match for our king."

And then BMW ties a blimp to that Audi billboard with its F-1 car, "Game over."

Stella Artois vs. Newcastle Brown Ale

Stella puts up billboards praising their branded glassware as a "Chalice not a glass"

Newcastle puts up a nearby billboard asking, "Who uses the word "Chalice"?"

And releases the following TV creative as part of its "No Bollocks" campaign.

Jai Paul - "Jasmine"

Spring Breakers

Above, James Franco is currently filming Spring Breakers, a movie written and directed by Harmony Korine (the writer of Kids), with Disney stars Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens.

Plot:

"Four college girls who land in jail after robbing a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation find themselves bailed out by a drug and arms dealer who wants them to do some dirty work."

Jeff Bezos to Recover Apollo 11 Rockets

Millionaire film director James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar) may have reached the deepest depth of the Earth this past week, but Billionaire Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has located and plans to pull up the F-1 Engines that carried Apollo 11 into space that have been sitting on the bottom of the Ocean since 1969.

Which is the cooler move?

"A massive locomotive dangling from a crane" over the High Line

Non-profit group, Friends of the High Line, responsible for saving the elevated ex-railway more than 10 years ago and who has "long sought to highlight the park’s rail history," is now in the process of raising funds to fulfill artist Jeff Koons' $25 million vision of a "full-size replica of a 1943 Baldwin 2900 steam locomotive" hanging art installation over the High Line.

New York Times - "High Line May Mix Past With Koons’s Vision"

Previously,

Artist: Jeff Koons

The Courting of Peyton Manning

Deadspin - "How The Broncos Got Peyton Manning"

Deadspin breaks down the upcoming Peter King Sports Illustrated profile on the courting of Peyton Manning.

"When the Hall of Fame quarterback sat with Manning alone at the club, Elway saw a person "in shock" over being cut and imagined what it would have been like if the Broncos, for whom he played his entire career, had released him after 13 or 14 seasons. "There's got to be a dagger in your gut right now," Elway told Manning. "Take your time. Be thorough. Make the right decision, whether it's us or someone else."

Draw Something Sells for $180 Million

Draw Something, the Pictionary-like game for Android and iPhone, in just seven weeks of release, has been downloaded more than 35 million times with users having created more than 1 billion drawings.

And last Friday was purchased by Zynga (FarmVille) for a reported $180 million.

Flaming Lips & Bon Iver - "Ashes in the Air"

Pitchfork - "Listen to the Flaming Lips / Bon Iver Record Store Day Collaboration"

Who is Anthony Davis?

"In college, Anthony Davis is otherworldly, and will almost certainly be the top pick in this summer’s NBA draft. As a pro, he has the chance to fundamentally alter our conception of defense."

"Davis also operates with a facility, and efficiency, simply not seen in the paint. When Marcus Camby, a frequent comparison for Davis, averaged 3.6 blocks as a freshman at UMass [Davis averages 4.6 blocks per game], he needed nearly as many fouls (3.48) to get there. Davis averages just two fouls per game, fewer than three other Kentucky starters. This is precision in the guise of havoc."

The Classical - "Anthony Davis in Space"

Davis' Kentucky plays Baylor today at 2 p.m. EST for one of the two remaining spots in this year's Final Four.

Powerade Ads Go Directly At Gatorade

The Making of M.I.A. "Bad Girls" Video

M.I.A. - "Bad Girls"

If Attacked by a Wolf

"If you're being attacked by a wolf, the two things that we're always trained to do in the special forces is to let it bite your arm, then go down on top of it and get your fingers—one in each eye—and squeeze through both eyes into the brain. So yeah, I didn't tell you that."

- Bear Grylls (Man vs. Wild)

Slow Ride

"In 2008, 46.3 percent of potential drivers 19 years old and younger had drivers’ licenses, compared with 64.4 percent in 1998, according to the Federal Highway Administration, and drivers ages 21 to 30 drove 12 percent fewer miles in 2009 than they did in 1995.

Forty-six percent of drivers aged 18 to 24 said they would choose Internet access over owning a car, according to the research firm Gartner."

New York Times - "As Young Lose Interest in Cars, G.M. Turns to MTV for Help"

Nike Air Yeezy 2

The Nike Air Yeezy 2 Wolf Grey/Pure Platinum will be released April, Friday the 13th.

Top Forty

"In an age when an unprecedented range of musical genres is easily available via the Internet, the public's appetite for hits has never been greater"

"Top Forty radio was invented by Todd Storz and Bill Stewart, the operator and program director, respectively, of KOWH, an AM station in Omaha, Nebraska, in the early fifties. Like most music programmers of the day, Storz and Stewart provided a little something for everyone. As Marc Fisher writes in his book "Something in the Air" (2007), "The gospel in radio in those days was that no tune ought to be repeated within twenty-four hours of its broadcast--surely listeners would resent having to hear the same song twice in one day." The eureka moment, as Ben Fong-Torres describes it in "The Hits Just Keep on Coming" (1998), occurred in a restaurant across from the station, where Storz and Stewart would often wait for Storz's girlfriend, a waitress, to get off work. They noticed that even though the waitresses listened to the same handful of songs on the jukebox all day long, played by different customers, when the place finally cleared out and the staff had the jukebox to themselves they played the very same songs. The men asked the waitresses to identify the most popular tunes on the jukebox, and they went back to the station and started playing them, in heavy rotation. Ratings soared."

- John Seabrook

The New Yorker - "The Song Machine"

CityMaps

CityMaps re-creates Google Map like functionality for New York, San Francisco and Austin, TX with corresponding logos for local restaurants and retail stores.

Quote of the Night

"Once u fucked the baddest bitches in cambodia and norway and been to palaces in the jungle with zillionaires drinkin 100 yr old absinthe with prime minsters sidejawns - then end up at wmc w shitty euro/us #EDM fans u realize u just wanna die as ralph waldo emerson david thoreau broke in a cabin or something #EDM"

- Diplo (photo taken from Vanity Fair)

A$AP Rocky performing at SXSW

in Austin, Texas Saturday night/Sunday early morning.

"Pretty Flacko"

"Big Spender"

"Peso"

TV character inspired Lego ads

Fast Company - "SEE (AND TRY TO RECOGNIZE) YOUR FAVORITE TV CHARACTERS AS LEGO"

German ad campaign.

Quote of the Night

"I believe one can live many lives through personal style. Every day is an occasion to reinvent yourself."

-Ralph Lauren

Prometheus - Trailer

The full trailer debuted at a Comic convention in LA this weekend. Directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator) and starring Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron, Prometheus is set to be released June 8th.

Previously:

Movies to look forward to in 2012

7 Wonders of Nature

The New7Wonders in Zurich, Switzerland announced the "7 Wonders of Nature" list below back in November. While they are all beautiful looking places notable missing wonders include the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef. (and the Mississippi River!)

Sources:

LoveThesePics.com - "Congratulations World Class Winners: New 7 Wonders of Nature"

Announcing the provisional New7Wonders of Nature

Ha Long Bay (Vietnam)

Iguazu Falls (Argentina / Brazil)

Amazon (Brazil)

Puerto Princesa Underground River

Jeju Island (South Korea)

Komodo Island (Indonesia)

Table Mountain (Cape Town, South Africa)

Andre the Giant Tall Tale

"[Andre the Giant] has been unofficially crowned "The Greatest Drunk on Earth" for once consuming 119 12-US-fluid-ounce (350 ml) beers (over 11 gallons) in 6 hours. On an episode of WWE's Legends of Wrestling, Mike Graham said André once drank 156 16-US-fluid-ounce (470 ml) beers in one sitting, which was confirmed by Dusty Rhodes. Such feats can be attributed to his large size, which meant it took higher amounts of alcohol to inebriate him. In her autobiography, The Fabulous Moolah Lillian Ellison writes that André drank 127 beers in a Reading, Pennsylvania hotel bar and later passed out in the lobby. The staff could not move him and had to leave him there until he awakened."

-Wikipedia

Below, a photo of Andre the Giant holding a regular 12 oz. can of beer.

The Lively Morgue

"July 21, 1993. “Where Sharks Face Off With Gentler Souls,” read the headline on an article published that month about the New York Aquarium in Coney Island. “This is a bargain for those in search of the deeper perspective,” wrote the reporter, who traveled there with his son. Or maybe just a scare: “If you were to mix one drop of blood with a hundred million drops of salt water,” he noted, “a shark could detect that drop of blood as far as a quarter mile away.”"

^ Above an example post from the New York Times' first Tumblr blog, The Lively Morgue, "A Treasure House of Photographs" that got cut on the news floor.

The Letter and Its Effect

The resignation letter/op-ed by former Goldman Sachs Executive Greg Smith published in the New York Times yesterday lost the company $2.15 billion in the stock market yesterday (making Smith's 1,283-word op-ed worth a whopping $1.675 million per word. -The Atlantic) and is also apparently hurting investment business the recruitment of college talent.

Men's Fashion Sites Worth Visiting

In no particular order,

A Continuous Lean - one post a day, every business day and a Map & Intel feature on where to shop, drink and dine, and day drink and people watch in New York and LA.

How To Talk To Girls At Parties - close to dozens of Tumblr posts a day.

Die, Workwear! - "a menswear blog devoted to the good life."

The Impossible Cool - inspirational photos of classic cool

The site's Twitter handle bio - "“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.” -Gore Vidal"

GQ Eye - GQ on Style, 3-5 posts/day

Hypebeast - headquartered in Hong Kong

High Snobiety - headquartered out of Montreal and Germany

Uncrate - "The Best Gear for Guys"

Marcus Troy - "The exciting digital space of lifestyle and fashion journalist Marcus Troy, who is equally at home in Main Street culture as well as the cutting edge and urban sub-cultures."

The End of Encyclopedia Britannica

Wikipedia and the Internet has won. Encyclopedia Britannica announced yesterday that the company will no longer print the 32-volume set (ending the company's run since 1768).

Good Coaches

Great coaches matter. Two great examples of high and low art appropriately placed.

(1) Undefeated, this year's Academy Award Best Documentary follows the 2009 Manassas High School Football team of North Memphis, TN. "Absorbing, inspiring and terrifically entertaining" - Washington Post

(2) Below, the Powerade commercial. Expect to see a lot of this come March Madness.

The Armory Show (2012)

The 2012 Armory Show, open this weekend (March 8-11) in New York City, "is America's leading fine art fair devoted to the most important art of the 20th and 21st centuries. In its fourteen years, the fair has become an international institution. Every March, artists, galleries, collectors, critics and curators from all over the world make New York their destination during Armory Arts Weak."

The fine art included a Beluga Whale featured in the Nordic lounge

Giant dollar-bill-folded pigs

30 busts of Osama Bin Laden (French gallery)

A photo of a deer

A new sculpture by Takashi Murakami

African tribal Star Wars statues: Darth Vader and Boba Fett

A mechanical (Hugo-esque) bird by U-Ram Choe

A painting by James Nares

An exhibit of clouds

"Eric Yahnker, a Los Angeles animator turned artist who has worked on “South Park” and other shows, presents a series of large drawings, including one of a Tyrannosaurus rex surfing called “Endless Summer.” The walls surrounding the drawings are decorated with more than 300 used baseballs bearing forged autographs not of players of the game but of celebrities like Keanu Reeves, Leonard Cohen and Bill Cosby. Mr. Yahnker is working hard to stay ahead of the curve of ridiculousness in contemporary life."

Keith Haring

Diego Rivera

And a few other modern paintings and sculptures