• Spanish

WHAT: Sunset Strip Musical Festival 2011
WHERE: Los Angeles, California
WHEN: August 20th, 2011

Text by Lizandro Melean

Photos by Greta Alvarez / @grets & @lizandro_melean

The Sunset Strip Festival 2011 tried to take back that old feeling full of hairspray, self-destruction, bad behavior and gallons of whisky down your throat on stages full of angst-ridden songs. Two stages, the one on the east, not too much rock on it, but full of fresh bands that made the public jump no matter how hot the weather was.

Cobra Starship was the dessert after 1pm, a band that seems right on these Glee times but not too right on a rock festival on Sunset Strip, where as legends tells, lies the real American rock heart.

On the East side at 3:10pm Matt and Kim put the entire audience inside their pockets and Public Enemy, although they were far from being in the rock aisle, reminded us why they are one of the top-notch rap bands of all time, priceless to see Flavor Flav´s teeth live. She Wants Revenge on the other side stayed on the mellow side with their placebo-indie-rock-style warming up the amplifiers for Mötley Crue.

The poisons for the day: beer, courtesy of Budweiser, and Jack and Coke on a bottle. The prices: reasonable though a little high, the usual on these kinds of events. The Twilight Zone moment: you could only drink these refreshing elixirs on a zone that were more in tone with an AA after party than something else. You could not drink your beer watching the bands; I imagine this was made to stop people from littering.

People went there to see Bush and Tommy Lee and Co., Escape the Fate also gave a wonderful performance but it was Bush who started to put fire on stage. Their show was short but consistent. The sound impeccable and Gavin Rossdale voice amazing. It was like listening to a Greatest Hits Bush album, only the essential songs were played and they were one of the bands who did a meet & greet before their show.

Mötley Crue and Kiss must be the most theatrical bands out there. You pay to watch Tommy Lee spin around with his battery, then you pay to see fireworks and great visual effects and then you pay to listen to the band live. Their show was flawless and entertaining with a capital E.

The Sunset Strip Festival is the aperitive for Fall season. It’s the moment to blow the heat candle and give a step forward to the winter-colder season and a breath of melancholic air to all those bands who were, are and will be the kings of the sweetest cocaine for the soul: rock n roll.

Videos you said? Served!

Bush-Glicerine

• Spanish

WHO: Lullatone
WHAT: Pajama Pop
LINK: http://www.lullatone.com/

Por Greta Álvarez

@Grets

Lullatone is awesome. It’s music that should musicalize the most delicate moments of our life. Do you have any doubt left of what Lullatone is about yet? Well, they are a half japanese half Northamerican duo that make ambient melodies with a minimalistic touch full of peacefulness necessary to make your day a better one.

Seymour and Tomida are husband and wife and they make music for ads, films and for many other things, they create concept albums with short melodies destined to musicalize elevators, cellphones (with original ringtones) and clock alarms to wake you up every morning. Moreover they also have a beautiful minimalistic house in japan thatt works as their recording studio and happy baby that is always around while they work. After you listen to them you will want even your doorbell to sound like a Lullatone tune or like they call their genre: Pajama Pop.

• Spanish

WHAT: CoolHunting Digital, a La Caza de las Últimas Tendencias
WHY: We are on it!
$: 29.90 EUROS
LINK: http://www.coolhunting.pro/

Follow us @CoolHProject

Here @ CoolHunting Project we feel deeply proud to give this notice to you: we appear as “recommended material” on the book titled CoolHunting Digital, A la Caza de las Nuevas Tendencias, a text recently published by ANAYA Multimedia. The news are flattering to us because this is the first Spanish book that covers the duty of digital coolhunting or like the author Anna Maria López López calls it: Coolhunting 2.0.

CoolHunting Digital, A la Caza de las Nuevas Tendencias classified us as content creators, coolhunter bloggers and main responsibles for this bilingual site. Charmed to be on such a good text-book we cannot let pass the opportunity to recommend the work of its creator Anna Maria because, besides being a professional designer and Spanish coolhunter, this is also her sixth published book. Congrats to her great work!

Info: http://www.coolhunting.pro/
Facebook: Coolhunting Digital

• Spanish

WHAT: Art in The Streets 2011
WHERE: MOCA, Los Angeles, CA
WHEN: April 17th, 2011 / August 8th, 2011

Photos and Text by Isaac Bonyuet

@IsaacBonyuet

The beginning of every new art movement will always generate controversy. “Art in the Streets” started on April 2011 at the MOCA with the biggest expo yet dedicated to this urban art in the LA area and with it protests of neighbors and puritans. Shop owners reported to LAPD the increase of illegal tags on the zone. Ironically this exposition, which has been very popular, is bringing good business to those establishments around the museums.

Inside the museum you could find an encyclopedia on this street art; from its beginnings in New York on the 70’s to his expansion throughout Philadelphia, San Francisco and LA. This exhaustive documentation included original samples by Lee Quinones, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Fekner, Keith Haring, between others. Then you entered into an animated zone where they duplicated a New Yorker neighborhood imagined by graffiti artists where you saw how they survived on the urban jungle.

Two complete wings of the museum where dedicated to the great pioneers of modern graffiti. Neck Face, Os Gêmeos, Invader, Shepard Fairey & Banksy. These last two artists with a greater presence on the showing.

Banksy is one of the center figures on the expo. The acclaimed urban artist gave some stencils he used in the past with anecdotic taglines about how he came up with his ideas. His satiric art entertained the public. In 2011 it’s exhausting the argument about graffiti as vandalism, quoting Banksy: Cavemen began their art as graffitis on caves

You got extra points if you saw the urban art around the museum. “Art in the Streets” will generate controversy once again on its next stop in Brooklyn in 2012.

• Spanish

WHAT: 30 Minutes or Less

By Lizandro Melean

@lizandro_melean

30 Minutes or Less is the new effort from Ruben Fleischer who made himself a name with Zombieland. Like his zombie-brother this film is a politically incorrect action-comedy with a script far from coherent but fun. You go to the movies in summer season to eat popcorn and have fun; well here you do it easy as it sounds. The synopsis is simple. Two bullies caught a nerd (Eisenberg) who works as a pizza delivery guy to rob a bank for them, the thing is he must do it in ten hours, if not he will explode with the help of a couple of C-4 he has attached on his chest.

Jesse “Facebook” Eisenberg stars in this story but is his partner in movie-crime Aziz Ansari who makes 30 Minutes or Less even more absurd and funny with a hyperkinetic and freaky role while Jesse stays on the sober side of the movie, he is playing himself once again. Nothing new on that department but we need to say that guy has charm, period.

If you watched Zombieland you will notice the edition and direction work is pretty similar in 30 Minutes: slow motion on crashes or violent moments, violence, bad language, more violence and an opening credit sequence that could work for Zombieland, the sequel.

The Soundtrack varies but is not so far from your generic rock n roll gallery from The Hives to Metallica, again just as its predecessor.

30 Minutes or Less is like a Pizza. It arrives, you open it, you eat it, you digest it, you enjoy it, you remember it with joy and maybe in the near future you could ask for it again. For me this movie is another Netflix winner.

• Spanish

WHAT: Move, Eat and Learn
WHY: A trip of a lifetime

By Greta Álvarez

@Grets

This is the story of three guys who went on a trip for 44 days, travelled thru 11 countries taking 18 flights. A friend, Rick, was the director-producer, the other one was Tim, camera and sound and Andrew is who we can watch on screen. These three short films are their way to resume their travel titled: Move, Eat & Learn.

An original audiovisual project made with great quality. It works for them as a reminder of their trip and it let us enjoy the show in a cooler way than to see online Facebook pictures of these three travellers.