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The trailer for Mark Romanek’s film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go has been released.

I’ve loved every film that Sofia Coppola has made to this point. On December 22, her fourth feature will hit US theaters. Here is the trailer for Somewhere.

Skeletal remains that have been discovered in a church are believed to belong to Italian painting master, Caravaggio.

There has been a good amount of buzz about Prime Meats which opened earlier this year in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The praise is quite worthy. The restaurant’s interior is designed with lots of wooden details and oil-style lamps that create an environment that harkens back to earlier times in America. Prim waiters uniformed in button-downs, brace suspenders, and raw denim add to the upscale meets old world working class vibe. This all really works. And truth told; one can dine at Prime Meats modesty or go for the pricier selections. The choice is yours. The house made drinks are refreshing and delicious. Good luck making them as good at home. Nothing that I ate was less than fantastic: celery salad, raw oysters, steak frites,  a soft shell crab dish, and a mean chocolate cake. It’s also worth mentioning that Prime Meats locally sources their ingredients and also does all of their own butchering in-house.

Hedi Slimane’s inspiring black and white photo diary has a thing or two in common with Germinal Roaux’s (seen below).

Germinal Roaux’s black and white photo diary is fantastic. Images of rock and roll performances, ballerinas, flowers and skateboarders are all collected together in a harmonious way.

As of this week, the Afghan War is the longest in America’s history at eight and a half years. Oddly enough, this fact didn’t seem to draw much attention in the media. Both this war and US operations in Iraq almost seem to be forgotten by the general public and media alike. I wanted to share a few features that I found on NPR that highlight works of two artists who are dedicating their work to the honor of those involved in these wars. Matthew Mitchell is painting 100 portraits of people who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. See the project’s website here. The other story is about an Iraqi born artist named Wafaa Bilal. He staged a 24 hour performance called ...And Counting in which he transformed his back into a permanent memorial to casualties of the war in Iraq. Here is more on this project.

This segment on David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things features Martin Gardner, a math and science writer who wrote a regular column for twenty-five years in Scientific American and published over seventy books. Gardner’s influence in these fields at applying recreational mathematics, magic, puzzles and games is absolutely fascinating. The episode covers everything from the math involved in the tiled pattern forms of M.C.. Escher’s work to perfectly shuffling cards in a sequence that brings you back to where you started.

Etsy is fantastic marketplace to find all kinds of handmade items created by individuals and small companies. Here is a short video on David Ellison, a wood worker and furniture builder who left his job in corporate America to work with his hands. Instead of paying a premium for mass produced furniture in a store, I went to Etsy and I’m hiring David to build me a unique platform bed.

The 2010 World Cup begins in just five days. Despite the absence of stars Ronaldhino and Ronaldo to the Brazil roster, the team is still heavily favored to win the tournament. Here is a pretty cool data-visualization that predicts Brazil’s path to a win.

(via Information Is Beautiful)

Coming to theaters in September, Danny Trejo is Machete and he has a special message for Arizona; “this time they’ve fucked with the wrong Mexican.”

Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre take photos of places that were once quite populated and are now long forgotten. The Ruins of Detroit is a testament to the decline of the city from having once been a dense place of culture. The same can be said of their series on Theaters.

In the digital age of computer generated special FX, it is quite interesting to contrast modern techniques with techniques of the past that often required the use of miniature models and optical printing. Here is a recreation of the bleeding elevator scene from Kubrick’s The Shining made with RealFlow and Lightwave softwares.

Tonight, my hometown Philadelphia Flyers play their first Stanley Cup Championship home-game since my youth. Though the team is down by two games, I have full confidence that they will summon the spirit of the original Cup winning Broad Street Bullies and punish Chicago tonight. Stream the HBO Documentary on the Bullies of the 70s here for a reminder of where tough hockey was invented. Let’s go Flyers!!!

When it’s not a volcano in Iceland, a hurricane in Louisiana, an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or an earthquake in Haiti, disaster strikes in the form of a massive sinkhole in Guatemala.