THE SPRING ISSUE
The Moral World of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Text by Hannah Eves It’s a rare honor for a director to win multiple Palmes d’Or, the highest prize for a film competing at that grande dame of foreign film celebrity, the Cannes Film Festival. Yet after winning with 1999’s Rosetta, Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne joined a list of film luminaries (including Francis […]
Art School Confidential
Text by Steven Snyder He has created worlds this unusual before – lairs of the bizarre, the wacky, the cynical and the angry. But director Terry Zwigoff has never before filmed his dreamscapes from the eyes of someone who didn’t embrace the low-key, low-energy and low-brow ways standard in Zwigoff’s films. Just consider his repertoire. […]
When Buscemi Reigns, He Pours
Text by Mila Zuo Steve Buscemi. Nearly a household name, but only a few fans could name every single contribution he’s made to theater, film and television. To say that the “Indie King” (as doting fans on the Internet call him) has carved out a prolific career would be a vast understatement – but for […]
Rolling the Dice with PJ Ransone
PJ Ransone wears Dior Homme by Hedi Slimane plaid sleeveless shirt, black tie, suspenders and black pants Cloak black striped shirt and gray jacket Dior Homme by Hedi Slimane suit, shirt and tie Text by Patrick Knowles Photographs by Brooke Nipar SOMA: So what’s with your “No Dice” tattoo? PJ Ransone: I have these two […]
Street Pulse: Tokyo A Go-Go
Ohiogozaimas! from the streets of Tokyo, fashion capital of the East. Kids from Tokyo take the streets seriously – it’s the concrete runway to some of the most eccentric styles in the world and American pop stars duly take note. SOMA stops fashion forward Tokyoites to hear what they have to say about city life and […]
CASTING AGENTS
Text by Robyn Dutra It’s a familiar story in the cultural milieu called “downtown New York.” Two guys who “do nothing else professionally” start a fashion line from their digs on the Lower East Side. They begin with T-shirts and sweatshirts, colored and distressed by hand, emblazoned with images that “tell a story of past […]
The New Bohemian South of the Border
Text by Heather Bradley Mexico City, like a brilliant but misunderstood teenager, often gets a bad rap. It’s polluted, there’s crime, it’s too hot, too cold, too inland or too expensive. While the accuracy of these impressions vary wildly by neighborhood, season and the individual’s perspective, none of them apply at the Condesa DF, a […]
Berlin
Text by Alessandra Mattanza For many, Berlin has become the architectural capital of the world. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall it has been an immense, continual, open construction site, substituting rubble and empty spaces with adventurous, futuristic constructions of glass and steel and other whimsical experiments, with the old historic buildings safely guarded […]
Jazz Up Your Ride
Text by Robin Liss If you prefer the highways to the sidewalks and spend too many hours of your life choking on someone else’s exhaust on your way to work, then it’s time to add a little tech to brighten your drive. These gizmos won’t speed up your commute (hold your breath for those hovercrafts), […]
Orchestrated Chaos
Text by Nora Ballard Snow fell in San Francisco on Valentine’s Day. For approximately 30 minutes after 6 p.m., the white stuff came down in Justin Herman Plaza. However, a closer look revealed the fat flakes were in fact goose feathers, the result of a massive pillow-fight organized by an alternative flash mob. About 1,000 […]
B.I.K.E.
Text by David S. Hirschman In slow motion through the fog of grainy night-footage, a girl named Alison races on her bicycle toward another girl as a crowd cheers on the curb in a new documentary called B.I.K.E. Predictably, the two collide roughly and are thrown to the blacktop. When the ambulance arrives a few […]
Grayti in the Heart of Sao Paulo
Text by Matthew Vree So, graffiti has gone mainstream. Companies ranging from Coca-Cola and McDonald’s to MSN and Sony have latched on and sucked much of the rebellion from the formerly underground art movement, turning the vast majority of it into cultural cliché. However, true aficionados are finding inspiration and innovation in a city that […]
Nieves
Text by Mila Zuo The zine is perhaps the last breath of non-commercial DIY sincerity in the world of oversaturated pop literature. Anyone can make one, and attributes that lofty publishers would consider flaws (asymmetry, misspelling, general misuse of grammar and all things linguistic) are revered and treasured in the lo-fi publishing world. And to […]
Documenting the Parisian Ghettoes
Text by Anneloes van Gaalen Long before the global media decided to turn their attention on the Paris ghettoes following the riots last fall, French photographer and street artist JR was already working in the desolate urban spaces of the French capital. The streets are JR’s gallery and source of inspiration, as he takes photos […]
From The Streets to the Surf
Text by Fiona Killacky Khayelitsha is one of the world’s poorest areas. Just outside central Cape Town in South Africa, it houses a township of desolate, poverty-stricken black South Africans struggling for survival with little access to education, employment and healthcare. Khayelitsha is also home to the first black South African surfer to win the […]
