Uncovered Gem of the Week: Tarsem’s The Fall

25 years of cinematographic obsession, or what Nike has to do with a 6-year-old Romanian girl.

Chances are, you’re already familiar with legendary director Tarsem (pronounced tar-SAME) and his prolific commercial work for brands like Guinness, Nike, Levi’s and Motorola RAZR, as well as music videos like R.E.M.’s famed Losing My Religion.

What you may not be familiar with is his colossal pet project. The Fall, inspired by 1981 Bulgarian movie Yo Ho Ho, took 25 years to make and was shot on 26 locations across 18 countries. The film was quietly released in 2006 and swept the festival circuit, polarizing critics and audiences with its dramatic avant garde style and odd head-scratcher of a plot. And while The Fall sets a whimsical playground for the bizarre, the macabre and the idiosyncratic, what’s even more fascinating than the film itself is the story behind it.

If Tarsem‘s style, however distinctive, seems vaguely familiar, it may be because he keeps rather famous company. His posse includes iconic director Spike Jonze and filmmaker David Fincher of Se7en, Fight Club, and Zodiac fame. The two were, in fact, instrumental to making the The Fall happen by getting Tarsem to finally move from obsession to production.

We have a hard time pegging The Fall — it’s part The Wizard of Oz, part Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, part Bjork, part something else entirely. And while it’s just as likely to leave you overwhelmed with sheer awe as it is to make you underwhelmed and confused, it’s worth the watch even merely for the breathtaking cinematography, the phenomenal locations, and the brave play of light and color.

Watch The Fall and stay tuned for Tarsem’s new project, Greek epic War of Gods, now in production.

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Famous Logos Revised: Fortune 500 Sans Fortune

Downward design, or what happens when the corporate glass is half-empty.

We’re going down. Just listen to the media, the politicians, the self-proclaimed experts — we’re bombarded with messages of economic apocalypse. And it seems like it’s not just little guy taking the hit. So what happens to the biggest logs that stoke the fire of capitalism, the world’s most powerful and recognized brands, at a time of indisputable recession?

According a yet-to-be-tracked down designer, by way of a good friend of ours, here’s what happens.

• Update: The original author of the work has finally stepped forward — the logo parodies below were designed by the team at Business Pundit. For the full collection in all its glory, please see their original article.

The images were emailed to us by a friend who found them on a random Istanbul-based student Yahoo group. But we’re bent on giving proper credit to this piece of genius, so stay tuned for updates.

Meanwhile, we thought we’d add one — perhaps THE sign-of-the-apocalypse one — of our own, and leave you with that:

• Related Post: 6 Signs the Apocalypse Cometh (And 6 Signs It Goeth Away)

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Artist Spotlight: Alan Macdonald

The commercialization of heaven, or what 17th century painters know about Diet Coke that we don’t.

Many have criticized the commercial burden of modernity, but few have done it with such quiet, haunting precision as painter Alan Macdonald.

His portraits populate the world of 17th century oil paining with contemporary brands, creating a sense of uncomfortable anachronism that drives us to such existential questions as the purpose of our modern lives and the void we’re all looking to fill with consumerism.

The paintings often feature lyrics from pop culture’s most iconic songs, immaculately chosen to deepen the impact of the imagery.

Much of his work is an explicit social commentary on vice culture, exposing drugs and alcohol as the true Mephistopheles of modernity.

And while some of his work has a sense of humorous sarcasm about it, perhaps the most unsettling thing about is the reverse Woody Allenesque comic distress that oozes from it — we may be making a mockery of it all, but deep down we know we’re still headed straight to the very peril we are laughing at.

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Pepsi: Can It?

How Tim Burton could’ve made $1 million today and why the road to social media is paved with good intentions.

The recent Pepsi redesign produced a new logo, fresh packaging and a slew of mixed response across the social web spanning the entire it-sucks-it-rocks spectrum — not quite the all-around applause last year’s award-winning new Coke identity got, but still an interesting conversation to follow.

The evolution of the logo alone sparked a heated discussion in the design community.

A multi-talented artist friend of ours loved the very first one best, declaring: “It looks like Tim Burton did it.” Which of course gives anything more street cred than any advertising can buy. And the guys at Make The Logo Bigger just launched a Design Your Own Pepsi Logo contest on Flickr for all the naysayers and smart-asses who think they know better than Pepsi’s $1 million design team.

Meanwhile, the ever-eager Steve Rubel of Edelman, Pepsi’s PR firm, got to spreading the word ever which way he could. First, influential social media types got a kit of 10 Pepsi cans showing the evolution of the logo, complete with a teaser note.

Then, a YouTube video popped up tracing Pepsi’s design history. And despite the questionable editing and the cheesy music choice, we found it somewhat endearing.

Rubel even set up a room on FriendFeed called the The Pepsi Cooler where Pepsi is inviting ordinary web users to help shape the company’s media future. An admirable, albeit misguided initiative as it seems that so far, the bulk of room members are professional social media all-stars. Heck, Chris Brogan is on there.

Also from the well-intentioned but misguided front: We came across this cool tag cloud in the FriendFeed room, showing responses to the redesign. No love link and thus no clue where it came from, just a random image hosted on the Amazon cloud server — but pretty neat nonetheless.

It may be smart of Edelman/Pepsi to actually stand behind the Flickr contest and hear what the design community has to say in the only language it speaks. After all, they put themselves on the social media table, so now it’s all fair game. And, sure, it could turn into a food fight — but they’d better be ready to join in and play.

But enough about our take. What’s your 2 cents on Pepsi’s $1 million redesign initiative?

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