Brooklyn Nets Black-and-White

Correcting a previous post, this appears to be the official Brooklyn Nets logo that will debut tomorrow. Going from a navy blue and red color scheme in New Jersey to a cleaner black-and-white, we'll get a look at the jerseys tomorrow.

Source: Bleacher Report

Movie Set Photos

First published set photos of -

The Lone Ranger - scheduled for May 2013 starring Armie Hammer (The Social Network, J. Edgar) as The Lone Ranger and Johnny Depp as Tonto.

Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino's slavery-era Mississippi film scheduled for Christmas Day 2012 starring Leonardo Dicaprio, Christoph Waltz and Jamie Foxx.

World's Biggest Consumer Brand Companies

Click here to size a zoom-in-able size version.

NBA Playoffs Start Today

Will it be as wild as 1999's lockout shortened season when the #1 San Antonio Spurs beat the #8 seed New York Knicks in the Finals?

Can Kobe and the Lakers make a run? Can the young Thunder beat LeBron to a first championship?

Lawless

Lawless, debuting at the Cannes Film Festival in May, is scheduled for wide release this August.

Starring Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce and Mia Wasikowska, the film is adapted from the 2008 historical novel The Wettest County in the World.

Willis Earl Beal - "Evening Kiss"

Chicago singer Willis Earl Beal has gotten one of the strongest co-signs in the music industry - being signed to XL Recordings. The "British Independent record label owned by Richard Russell" currently rosters Radiohead, Adele, Sigur Rós, The xx, Tyler the Creator, Vampire Weekend, Jack White, Jack Peñate, Gil Scott-Heron, Beck, Basement Jaxx, Ratatat, Bobby Womack and formerly M.I.A. and Dizzee Rascal.

EDM = Millennials

GQ's Ryan Leas's feature on Miami, FL's Ultra Music Festival - "Further Down the Rabbit Hole"

"EDM [Electronic Dance Music] getting so big with Millennials says something about the conditions of the generation. There's a perverse pressure on them. On one hand, we've been raised with the notion that we are the generation that can change things. We're progressive, modern. We've grown up in tandem with the digital revolution and will make great strides with the technology at our fingertips.

And yet, with all this, we have a set of problems to inherit that seem to be ever growing and ever more severe. Political gridlock and inefficacy. Precarious economy. Lack of jobs as the cost of education reaches ludicrous levels. Climate change. Global political fallout from decades of decolonization and, on our part, bullying. Nobody I know who grew up in the '90s was raised to expect any of that.

Few are conscious of this, but it's there, it's embedded. There's a sensation of paralysis, of great unease about the future in most people I know my age. So the sudden rise of a scene where you can chase oblivion makes sense. The moment where our collective inertia may have elevated a form of music not for its merits (which exist), but for the fact that it can represent what we really want: an exit door with strobe borders, a rabbit hole lined in lasers. I'm talking about the moment where the attraction of EDM becomes precisely those three days where you can so fully enmesh yourself in the music that you go beyond the point of thinking or caring about what you might be escaping from. Not catharsis. Erasure."

Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes Film Festival, the legendary French more-than-70-year-old film festival that has awarded filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Gus Van Sant, The Coen Brothers and Terrence Malick with the seemingly unattainable and most prestigious film prize, the Palme d'Or, and the festival that was so on-point to have co-signed and prized some of the best films of 2011: Melancholia, The Tree of Life and Drive; has announced this year's official selection lineup.

2012 Official Selection:

Wes Anderson - MOONRISE KINGDOM
Jacques Audiard - DE ROUILLE ET D'OS
Leos Carax - HOLY MOTORS
David Cronenberg - COSMOPOLIS
Lee Daniels - THE PAPERBOY
Andrew Dominik - KILLING THEM SOFTLY
Matteo Garrone - REALITY
Michael Haneke - AMOUR (LOVE)
John Hillcoat - LAWLESS
Hong Sangsoo - DA-REUN NA-RA-E-SUH (IN ANOTHER COUNTRY)
Im Sang-soo - DO-NUI MAT (THE TASTE OF MONEY)
Abbas Kiarostami - LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE
Ken Loach - THE ANGELS' SHARE
Sergei Loznitsa -  V TUMANE (IN THE FOG)
Cristian Mungui - BEYOND THE HILLS
Yousry Nasrallah -  BAAD EL MAWKEAA (AFTER THE BATTLE)
Jeff Nichols - MUD
Alain Resnais - VOUS N'AVEZ ENCORE RIEN VU
Carlos Reygadas - POST TENEBRAS LUX
Walter Salles -  ON THE ROAD
Ulrich Seidl - PARADIES : Liebe (PARADISE : Love)
Thomas Vinterberg - JAGTEN (THE HUNT)

Not part of the festival, but premiering in Cannes, France during the upcoming third week of May will be Kanye West's newest 30-minute music video, currently being filmed in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha Qatar.

Artist Ben Jones at the MOCA

Photo above and video below of artist Benjamin Jones's moving piece as part of the "Transmission" exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).

Source: TWBE

Shimao Shanghai Wonderland

"An abandoned quarry in Shanghai’s Songjiang District in China will be turned into an amazing 19-storey hotel complex. The five-star InterContinental ‘Shimao Shanghai Wonderland’ hotel will be constructed within a 100-meter pit and will feature a man-made waterfall and lake outside its door steps. There are even plans for an underwater restaurant, and bungee jumping facilities."

Source: PSFK

Formula 1

Having watched the last ten laps of the Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix this morning I'm a new fan of the sport that has drivers whipping "the fastest, most sophisticated race cars on earth" in exotic locales across the world: Kuala Lumpur, Barcelona, Monaco, Singapore, Brazil.

GQ's Daniel Riley profiled the sport in December of last year.


"Will America Ever Catch the Formula One Bug?"

"It's my impression, though, after a weekend at the circuit, that F1 should be less concerned with mimicking the moves of NASCAR than standing as a clear alternative—in particular, for the politically blue sports fan who has long balked at the fuss surrounding NASCAR...In the end, there are allegiances to the teams and drivers, and a reverence of the past that's not unlike our romanticism of, say, baseball. "The history is the attraction," Webber says. "Some of the tracks we've been racing on since the '50s."

#LongRead Profiles

GQ - "The Rose Revolution"

"Derrick Rose, the reigning NBA MVP, lives on the eighty-fourth floor of the Trump building in Chicago, one of the tallest buildings in the country, right up near the roof, with wall-length windows overlooking the city he rules, the only city he has ever known."

"[Adidas] signed Rose to a "lifetime" contract reportedly worth more than $200 million..."

The Atlantic - "American Mozart"

"UPON MY RETURN back east, I pay a visit to Rakim, the humble, soft-spoken introvert with a uniquely dark and mesmerizing voice who is generally regarded as the most influential rapper alive. In 1987, when he was 19 years old, Rakim released a record with the DJ Eric B., Paid in Full, on which he invented the more artful and interior form of rap that Kanye West has since made his own. He now lives in a mansion in the woods of Connecticut, like an urban samurai in exile..."

Coachella 2012

I was lucky enough to travel to the California desert oasis that the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is, this past weekend. The mountain and palm tree surrounded polo grounds were filled with more than 75,000 people for 3 days and will be again next weekend as the 11-year-old Coachella has, for the first time, doubled the festival into two identical weekends.

Highlight performances of weekend 1 included reggae star of yesteryear Jimmy Cliff (sang "I Can See Clearly Now" as drizzling rain stopped), Odd Future R&B behind-the-scenes-writer-turned--potential-star-crooner Frank Ocean (joined on-stage by Odd Future rapper Tyler the Creator), one of the few rock n' roll bands left in modern pop the Black Keys, French instrumental 80's-sounding band M83, an authentic what-we-thought-Nicki Minaj-was-going-to-be rapper Azealia Banks, Wisconsin's own Bon Iver, one of the most critically praised bands of our time Radiohead, up-and-coming Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky, Toronto's gifted and mysterious singer The Weeknd, Scottish DJ/producer Calvin Harris (joined on-stage by Rihanna), the powerful voice of Florence + The Machine and Sunday closer Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg (joined by Wiz Khalifa, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent, Eminem and a hologram of Tupac Shakur - see video below).

Best songs of the weekend -

“Many Rivers to Cross" - Jimmy Cliff

Novocane” – Frank Ocean
“Intro” – M83
“212” – Azealia Banks
“Skinny Love” – Bon Iver
“Beth/Rest” – Bon Iver
“Peso” – A$AP Rocky
“The Morning” – The Weeknd

"You Used to Hold Me" - Calvin Harris
“We Found Love” – Calvin Harris and Rihanna
“Shake It Out” – Florence + the Machine
“The Next Episode” – Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg
“The Recipe” – Dr. Dre and Kendrick Lamar
“Forgot About Dre” – Dr. Dre and Eminem
“Still Dre” – Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg

Fulfilled a 2+ year dream.

New Missouri Tiger Uniforms

Welcome to the SEC

When to Book a Flight

The New York Times has posted a report based on recent year studies on when to buy the lowest plane ticket fares and other various tips.

NYT - "When to Buy That Plane Ticket"

Domestic - 6 weeks out

Europe - 21-22 weeks out

Caribbean - 11-12 weeks out

Business or First Class to Europe or Asia - 23-24 weeks out

Django Unchained

"The first teaser poster for The Weinstein Company's "Django Unchained", the next film from director Quentin Tarantino starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell and Leonardo DiCaprio."

#MakeItCount

"Casey Neistat went around the world in 10 days spending an undisclosed sum that Nike gave him to make a movie. In the end, he made an adverfilm for Nike with some nice quotes and great scenery… money creatively well spent."

-The World's Best Ever

The Life of Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne

Who is Ricky Rubio?

Grantland - "The Death of Ricky Rubio"

"Minnesotans may not have that exact same Spanish duende — we don't have the same aficionados, like a Lorca or a Hemingway, to put this into context — but we can feel sorry for ourselves with the best of them. We're the home of the Minnesota Vikings. Native son Bob Dylan recorded Blood on the Tracks, the greatest breakup album of all time, in a south Minneapolis studio. And we gave the world F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote fatalist shit like, "The sentimental person thinks things will last — the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't." So in a way, we're strangely equipped for this kind of mini-tragedy."

Brooklyn Nets logo?

Kanye West (feat. Big Sean, Pusha T and 2 Chainz) - "Mercy"

The first single of the upcoming Kanye West label G.O.O.D. music compilation album set to be released sometime this Spring/early Summer.

Chicago Cubs v. White Sox

HBO The Newsroom

Created by Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, The Social Network). Debuting on HBO June 24th.

Newcastle No Bollocks campaign

Last week we showed the first Newcastle Brown Ale TV-ad and billboard going after Stella Artois's "Chalice" advertisements.

Now check out the bar coasters, posters, neon signs and beer taps also created by ad agency Droga5.

the Netherlands to Stop Sale of Marijuana to Tourists

“This place would die if they changed the weed laws. We know that. We’re business students.”

-Two American college students studying abroad in Europe

New York Times - "Law Could Hamper Drug Tourism in the Netherlands"

Nike NFL uniforms

I've read so many stories about this the past few days that I can't source the story so consider this like a guy telling you a story at a bar: some sports business analyst predicted that Nike will sell more NFL jerseys this year than Reebok did in the entire 10 years it had the exclusive rights. (that same analyst predicted that NFL Nike jersey success would lead to increased sales of NBA, MLB, MLS and NHL jerseys as well). Throwbacks back?

Nike Store. NFL Shop

Stalley (feat. Rick Ross) - "Party Heart"

Who is Nerlens Noel?

The modern day Jesus Shuttlesworth.

New York Times - "Everybody Wants a Piece of Nerlens Noel"

Kendrick Lamar (feat. Dr. Dre) - "The Recipe"

Kendrick Lamar (feat. Dr. Dre) - "The Recipe"

Expect this to be performed closing night of Coachella.

Furniture Designed for Modern Technology

New York Times - "Furniture Meets the Digital Age"

Ted

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane and Mila Kunis, Ted is slated for a July 13 release date.

Total Recall

Remake of the 1990 Arnold Schwartzenegger movie starring Colin Farrell coming out 8/3/12.

Game of Thrones Returns Tonight

War Is Coming