The image we have of the modern American architect is of a charismatic conjurer like Frank Lloyd Wright, wandering about with his cape and cane, or a narcissistic obsessive like Howard Rourke in The Fountainhead, deeply immersed in the details of his work. So the late Samuel Mockbee, the well-regarded architect and professor at Auburn University, cut a welcome figure. Stout, bearded, wily, and garrulous, he seemed more like Santa Claus than an architect.
     That comparison might not be so ridiculous. Mockbee’s greatest accomplishment was to establish the university’s Rural Studio, a program that instructs students by leading them to design and then literally construct buildings for the needy in Hale County, Alabama. Sam Mainwright Douglas’ new documentary, Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio, which premieres nationwide on PBS Monday, August 23 and will be released for rental afterward, is an excellent introduction to the Studio and its work.
     Since its inception in 1993, the Rural Studio has completed several small houses and public buildings each year. In Citizen Architect we see a class of sophomores working together to build a house for a local man who had been living in a rusting trailer. We also see some of the handsome buildings that the Studio has already completed, including an animal shelter, a fire station, and a church. And we hear interviews with architects throughout the country who are carrying on Mockbee’s vision by practicing “social architecture,” doing work that’s pragmatic and community-centered.
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Released this year by Magnolia Pictures, Countdown to Zero is a powerful documentary that explores the nuclear weapons’ potential for unimaginable destruction and offers a singular solution for preventing such catastrophes. Lawrence Bender, the film’s producer, has been nominated for Academy Awards for films such as Inglorious Basterds, Good Will Hunting, and Pulp Fiction. The last documentary Bender produced was the Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
     Jeff Markey got the chance to speak with Bender last week in LA, and discussed his involvement with the anti-nuclear proliferation group Global Zero, the film’s portrayal of the current threat of nuclear disaster, and what citizens of the world can do to help.

Why and how did you get involved with a documentary about nuclear weapons?
Well, having produced An Inconvenient Truth, I was able to witness firsthand how a movie can educate and inspire a movement. It was a great thing I got to do on that film and with Al Gore. I recieved a lot of incoming phone calls when that movie came out [from] people wanting to do an Inconvenient Truth of different subjects and issues. I got a phone call from Bruce Blair and Matt Brown from the Global Zero organization. … They said, “We want to do a documentary about another great threat facing us — nuclear weapons.” And that made sense.
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Australian imports are usually packaged with a bolt of lightning — hard-charging rock explosions in the vein of AC/DC, Silverchair, and Wolfmother. With Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, the Sydney duo of Aimee Nash and Scott Van Ryper emerges as the new face of Aussie rock: a drugged-up stew of distorted guitars fueled by the American bands Nash and Van Ryper toured alongside and brought into the studio to lend a hand on the recording. The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Ricky Maymi and Leah Shapiro and Peter Hayes of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are just three of the reasons that Buy the Ticket boasts such a West Coast neo-psychedelic drone. “Gone Without Feeling” and “To Never Know You” dig up Oregon rockers the Dandy Warhols via Nash’s ethereal vocals.

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Buy this at iTunes.
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The summer monsoon rains arrived in Pakistan last month. And with one-fifth of the country now submerged, they have yet to stop. The rain continues to fall and the flood waters keep rising, making for a waterlogged crisis of Biblical proportions: an estimated 1,600 Pakistanis are dead, but that figure only begins to hint at the disaster’s scale, as 20 million have been displaced, according to the country’s prime minister. All of this adds up to the region’s worst flood in eight decades.
     For a nation already afflicted by widespread poverty and with half of its labor force devoted to agriculture, the months ahead will be extremely trying now that 17 million acres of farmland are under water and 200,000 head of livestock have been lost. The extended food shortages resulting from this situation will require generous donations of international aid, but so far the world has been slow to respond. As of last Tuesday, less than 40% of the U.N.’s requested $459 million in relief funds had been made available (though an additional $43 million had been pledged). The United States has been chief among the countries responding to the disaster, but aid organizations have been reporting donor fatigue in the wake of the tremendous outpouring of funds after the Haitian earthquake earlier this year. In a time of economic hardships across the globe, we may be seeing evidence of limits to generosity and of public weariness at the prospect of managing the fallout from yet another catastrophe in a remote corner of the world. But the disaster’s proximity to other calamitous events makes it no less severe.
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American comedy writer/director Tom Schiller is known for his distinct style and offbeat humor. Notable for his eleven-year stint writing and directing short films on Saturday Night Live, Schiller’s impressive oeuvre of work also includes the 1984 unreleased classic feature, Nothing Lasts Forever, and over 300 comedic TV commercials. Schiller may not be as prominent as his SNL cohorts Lorne Michaels or Bill Murray but he has certainly been as pivotal in shaping the landscape of comedy. With the recent revival of Nothing Lasts Forever, Schiller has achieved a cult status. In preparation for his upcoming screening at The Cinefamily in Los Angeles, Schiller spoke with PLANET° about growing up on the set of I Love Lucy, why Nothing Lasts Forever was never released, and how Fellini got him out of a ticket.

Your father was a staff writer on I Love Lucy. Did that have any influence on your interest in comedy?
Yes, well I had it by osmosis…you know what I mean? You can’t say it about yourself, but others told me I was funny. My filmmaking techniques would have translated fine into comedy. I was able to do it. And also, growing up being on the set of I Love Lucy, I certainly learned a few things from that….
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It seems like Nathan Williams has emerged from his smoke-filled van and got his head into some real nice vitamin D. On King of the Beach, the Wavves’ leader ditches the under-produced garage-punk of his first two records for a cleaner and far more pop-oriented collection of songs, majorly influenced by Southern California. The entire album, like the best punk rock, is imbued with a casual, but never tossed-off, air of fun. The songs feature addictive ’80s hardcore-like vocal melodies and crisply produced guitars. It only took two or three plays before I had the epic riff of “Super Soaker”, and its sentimental foil, “Take on the World”, stuck in my head. For King, Williams indoctrinated a new rhythm section — drummer Billy Hayes and bass player Stephen Pope — who cut their teeth (and who knows what else) for the late Jay Reatard.

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Buy this at Other Music or iTunes.
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Over the last decade, New Zealand design has emerged on the worldwide stage. As a country that remains committed to the preservation of its pristine land, this ideology is often relayed in it’s design approach: modern simplicity combined with eco-conscientious, locally sourced materials.
     Cameron Foggo is the latest designer to join the ranks with David Trubridge, Simon James, and Fearon Hay Architects — all locals who have made great contributions to the New Zealand design scene. Foggo’s furniture designs are understated gems that mix clean lines with traditional materials. Starling is a chair built with hand-turned white ash and New Zealand portage leather. The goal was to create a lounger with a simple skeletal frame that did not cause a visual partition and block the flow of a space. The Liaison Chair and Sofa have comfortable feather-filled cushions and can be custom built to any size. All of Foggo’s designs utilize components and materials made in New Zealand and are assembled on the South Island.
     Foggo is the creative director at NoNN, a multidisciplinary design studio located in Christchurch. He is also working on a series of modular architectural homes and “bacshes” (small beach houses) that will launch in 2011.
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In February, Definitive Jux effectively closed its doors from making any more music, and El-P — the progressive hip-hop label’s founder, boss hog, and chief curator — stepped down from his post as the NYC label’s artistic director, effectively ending an era in indie rap that owes more than its fair share to El-P’s hard-hitting style. As we all could have predicted though, you can take El out of the Jux but you can’t take the Jux out of El. With Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3, he’s created an industrial shakedown of laser shots (“Take You Out at the Ballgame”), howls (“Drunk with a Loaded Pistol”), and fresh-to-death remixes (Kidz in the Hall’s “Driving Down the Block” and Young Jeezy’s “I Got This”). Void of any vocals, the album stands as El-P’s answer to J Dilla’s modern classic, Donuts. The instrumental medley thrives on succinct transitions through “Whores: The Movie”, “Meanstreak (In 3 Parts)”, and “DMSC”, before launching into “Time Won’t Tell”, a slow-building but pristine, driving beat that evokes one-time label-mate RJD2’s The Horror. Best is saved for last, however, with the Mothership Connection of “Contagious Snippet” and the hard-hitting 1980s drum-hype behind “Eat My Garbage 2”. On Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3, El-P reminds us all where he came from — what comes next remains anybody’s guess.

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Buy this at iTunes. After the jump, check out an interview El-P did with Ford Models.
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It’s no secret that the hotel world and the design world have started to overlap more and more in the past several years, with ultra-stylized hotels cropping up in just about every major destination. Kent and Britta Lindvall have, shall we say, elevated the concept with their new Treehotel, located 15.2 meters above the ground in the forest of Harads, Sweden. Perched in the trees and accessible by retractable ladders, the hotel has become both a coveted travel destination and something of an architectural marvel.
     Treehotel currently has four rooms available (with plans for more in the coming months), including the Bird’s Nest, which looks and functions essentially exactly like it sounds. Perhaps the most eye-catching so far is the Mirrorcube, the brainchild of Tham & Videgård Architects (each room is designed by a different prestigious architecture firm). Constructed of aluminum and wood, the Mirrorcube’s reflective walls are designed to fit in with its surroundings and to essentially be invisible, with infrared film embedded to make it visible to birds, naturally.
     Throughout the different cabins no eco-friendly detail has been spared, including incineration toilets. The Lindvall’s pet project is an equally enticing vacation spot for style mavens, ecotourists, and people that just really miss their childhood treehouse. As Britta explains it, “Perhaps we’re a little crazy but it helps — if not, we would never have got started.”
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Sally Mann’s photography is simultaneously nostalgic and startlingly real, a beautiful depiction of the contemporary South and the more immediate space of the family. Mann’s preoccupations with growth, time, death, and decay are captured in her images of her young children, the old Civil War battlefields that surround her, and the way in which the people and the wild landscape grow, die, and merge together. Her first solo exhibition in the UK, The Family and the Land: Sally Mann looks at her long career in light of her impulse to focus on the physical world surrounding her as her primary subject.
     The show draws from perhaps her most well-known series, Immediate Family, as well as Faces, Deep South and What Remains. The exhibition first focuses on her portrayal of her young children in all their innocence and immediacy. Faces and What Remains follow with Mann’s unflinching look into the physicality of being, ultimately demonstrating the bare fact of decomposition after death — the literal merging of bodies back into the earth. Finally, the images in Deep South explore the landscape of the South, focusing on the physical and metaphorical Civil War scars that still mark the land. Displayed in a European context, Mann’s photographs take on a more sharply American sheen, their location abroad more directly connecting to them to life within the intricate, complicated space of the rural American South.

The Family and the Land: Sally Mann is on display at The Photographer’s Gallery in London through September 19.
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