is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
Back in July I wrote about my overall low regard for documentary films. My argument mostly amounted to a frustration that documentaries, despite frequently adopting the guise of journalism, rarely acknowledge how little their narratives usually conform to actual facts. As a result I seldom choose to watch them; I’d just rather be watching something more transparently fictitious.
However, last month I saw two documentaries that frankly delighted me. First was “Jasper Mall,” directed by Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb and released earlier this year, which captures a year in the slow, ignoble death of a shopping mall in suburban Alabama. Then, at the end of the month, I watched John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection,” directed by Julien Faraut in 2018, which is ostensibly a sports documentary but in reality is an indescribably unique meditation on the nature of filmmaking.
These are two very different kinds of documentaries but what they have in common, and what worked for me so well, was their honest disinterest in being journalistically comprehensive. “Jasper Mall” makes no pretense that it’s telling a complete story about how or why this particular shopping mall is in economic free fall—much less why countless more malls across America are undergoing similarly catastrophic decline. The movie features no suspiciously simplistic statistics or flashy animated charts, no authoritative voices chiming in on the economic underpinnings of the ongoing retail collapse, and no corny reenactments of historic events. There’s also no “investigative reporting” that tries to bend events into convenient narratives, and no reductive mischaracterizations of real people for the purposes of setting up simplistic villains.
Instead, “Jasper Mall” is just an extended set of visits with the shop owners and workers who are trying to make the best of a deteriorating decision, with the mall operators who are quixotically doing their level best to reverse the trends, and with the idle patrons who can do little more than witness the collapse. Each person tells their story simply and straightforwardly, with no pretense and no artificial drama. There’s no judgment, no admonitory message, no call to action.
If anything, “Jasper Mall” is really more like a horror film, just one where the terror moves in slow motion and the victims fade away quietly. Most horror films trap their characters in buildings or towns that allow no escape. Similarly, “Jasper Mall” never leaves the mall grounds, and at times it feels like the mall’s deep, moat-like parking lot forms the very edge of the world. The characters themselves disappear one by one, whether because shops close or because they literally pass away, and there’s a feeling that the end is near for all of them. It’s sad and sweet and a little humorous, and also unforgettable.
Julien Faraut’s “John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection” also works within a circumscribed scope in that it deals only with a few specific moments in time—specifically, the occasions on which the tennis great competed in the French Open in the early 1980s—and goes no further. We get no back story on McEnroe’s early tennis training, no commentary from mentors, peers or competitors, and virtually no context on McEnroe’s career beyond these appearances at all.
In fact, the entirety of the film is composed from training footage captured by a filmmaker-tennis player named Gil de Kermadec, who served as technical director of the French Tennis Federation during McEnroe’s peak years. Throughout his tenure de Kermadec made it a practice to capture countless hours of footage of players at the French Open in order to better understand how the body moves during play.
A tremendous amount of what de Kermadec captured was of McEnroe on the court: his famous tantrums and the confoundingly off handed elegance of his swings. From this source material, rediscovered just a few years ago, director Faraut fashions an utterly original film. The subject is ostensibly McEnroe, and indeed the player is rarely not on screen. But in actuality the documentary is an impressionistic essay on what it means to make a film, as Faraut is even more interested in what it means for the camera to witness a live sporting event than he is in McEnroe’s playing.
Faraut’s film is actually about the making of de Kermadec’s film project—which itself is really only partially about McEnroe. In many ways the true star is the footage itself, salvaged from nearly forgotten archives, and restored to its grainy, gorgeous 16 mm glory. Faraut occasionally slows it down and overlays an otherworldly guitar soundtrack on top of McEnroe’s ground strokes, and the results feel as if he’s pulling on and stretching time like silly putty. You feel transported to the matches, but more aware of the abstraction and artistic license that the camera imposes on events than in most any other documentary. I haven’t seen another movie like it all year, if ever before.
In all I watched sixteen movies in November. Here is the full list.
“Jasper Mall” (2020) ★★★½Unpretentious, unassuming, unforgettable documentary about one year in the slow death of a shopping mall.
“On the Rocks” (2020) ★★ I got this Sophia Coppola movie free for buying any Apple device!
“Return of the Jedi” (1983) ★ Rewatched. Jeez did this franchise run out of ideas quick, and boy are so few people willing to acknowledge it.
“Lady and the Tramp” (1955) ★★★½ The painted backgrounds are still astounding, and the story, such as it is, isn’t so bad either.
“Casablanca” (1942) ★★★★★ Rewatched. Wondefully complex and elegantly simple at the same time.
“Spider-Man: Homecoming” (2017) ★★★ Rewatched. I’ve seen way more of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark than I really need to.
“From Russia with Love” (1963) ★★★★½ Rewatched. The most low key Bond. The best Bond.
“Deathtrap” (1982) ★★★★ A twisty murder thriller that’s maybe not so incredibly twisty, but it’s so tautly executed by the underrated Sidney Lumet that it’s a pleasure just to go along for the ride.
“Small Axe: Mangrove” (2020) ★★½ It’s shocking to watch a movie by Steve McQueen, one of the masters of nuance and subtlety, that’s clumsy and obvious.
“The Phantom Tollbooth” (1970) ★★ A swing and a miss at making a prestige picture from animation legend Chuck Jones.
“The Widow Couderc” (1971) ★★★★ A mysterious stranger who happens to look exactly like Alain Delon comes to a small French village and meets a widower who happens to look like Simone Signoret. Nothing too surprising happens, but the emotional authenticity that emerges is palpable.
“Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015) ★★ Rewatched. My kids are also into Marvel! Serves me right.
“Tampopo” (1985) ★★★½ A variety pack of Japanese love letters to good food. Defies description but delicious.
“Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944) ★★½ Rewatched. I remembered this being airtight and laugh out loud funny, but on rewatch it’s wildly uneven and little more than amusing.
Two things that you don’t normally see on television very often are now on television: design and yours truly. The new series “New York by Design” (which follows last summer’s “California by Design”) is five episodes of stories about all kinds of design innovation: architecture, industrial design, consumer products, electronics, software and UX, and more. As it happens, I appear on the show as a presenter and a judge (Adobe is a series partner), along with some terrific company including Debbie Millman, Stefan Sagmeister, Tucker Viemeister and many more.
The show airs Saturday evenings on CBS Channel 2 New York and the full season will stream on Amazon Prime next February. You can actually see the first two episodes embedded below. In episode one, I talk with designer David Benjamin about Mycelium bricks, an organic building material made out of what would otherwise be discarded compost material. And in the second episode I pay a visit to Zimmerman Workshop founders Adam and Sofia Zimmerman, who designed a one-of-a-kind staircase that’s part architecture and part art installation. (The behind-the-scenes photo above is taken at the top of that staircase.) For more information about the series, and to watch future episodes posted after their original air dates, visit newyorkbydesign.com.
My wife and I had tickets to go see “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” back in March. We’d booked them several days in advance and leading up to that Friday we debated endlessly whether it was something we should even be doing. The pandemic was starting to tighten its grip around New York, and the wisdom of a subway ride and a movie theater outing was starting to seem dodgy.
Ultimately we opted not to go, which in retrospect was the right decision. But how I wish we’d been able to see this big, gorgeous, astoundingly well made arthouse film on a large screen, because it very much is a work of art. Nearly every frame of writer and director Céline Sciamma’s romance about painting is composed like an Andrew Wyeth canvas, though imbued with an otherworldly warmth that Sciamma and cinematographer Claire Mathon crank up with precise care.
At times, the pristine visual craftsmanship is almost a distraction—several shots of a a raging, preternaturally blue ocean practically shout above the acting. On the whole though, the dramatic tension more than justifies the aesthetic conceit: the movie’s characters are effectively stranded on an island with few expectations, and yet they’re able to realize immense beauty from their circumstances. This seamless joining of form and content is rare—and stunning.
Of the sixteen other movies I watched last month, it’s worth noting that the ones that debuted on streaming channels—the atrocious “Enola Holmes,” the diverting “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” and the flavorless “Rebecca” all support my running theory that the Netflix-age of original releases is one of underwhelming, slapdash quality. These movies are very rarely more than “fine,” and while it’s amusing to get easy, immediate access to them, the repeatedly empty calories-like sensation of disappointment is also getting really tiring. I can’t wait for this pandemic to be over.
“Lost in America” (1985) ★★½ Albert Brooks was ahead of his time, but not by much.
“Con Air” (1997) ★★ Rewatched. Holds its audience in starkly low regard.
“Stop Making Sense” (1984) ★★★★ Rewatched. Piercingly clear document of a band at a point where they finally figured out how to align their bizarre impulses with widespread accessibility.
“Only Angels Have Wings” (1939) ★★★★½ Rewatched. An intoxicatingly grubby little story of people lost at the edge of the world.
“Enola Holmes” (2020) ★½ I was totally signed up for this thriller about Sherlock Holmes’s super smart little sister, but it turned out to be not very smart at all.
“A Few Good Men” (1992) ★★★½ Rewatched. Not a masterpiece but for a movie where not a lot really happens on screen aside from some shouting, it’s remarkably entertaining.
“Black and Blue” (2019) ★★★ Pretty creaky policier, but there are still some vital ideas at work here.
“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (2014) ★★½ Rewatched. For every smart narrative decision it makes, it follows up with a really dumb one.
“Phantom Lady” (1944) ★ Paper-thin noir peddling psychobabble as verisimilitude.
“Rebecca” (2020) ★★ Not terrible except for the fact that it invites direct comparison with Hitchcock’s classic.
Yesterday around midday I was at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn not long after the Associated Press called Pennsylvania for Joe Biden. There was a large throng of revelers there, pumped up with the adrenaline of a victory that millions have been anticipating for four long, painful years.
Traffic was knotted all around as the crowds converged on the the southern tip of the plaza, but no one seemed to mind—you could hear car horns blaring and drivers and passengers yelling out their windows, but out of jubilation, not anger. The crowd converged on the iconic Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, where people danced and chanted and clapped to music. A number of folks had brought drums and percussion instruments from their homes and they were beating a powerful tattoo that rang throughout the air, seemingly for miles.
Nothing had been organized but everyone was in unison, and people took turns dancing at the center, directly under the arch, passing around a huge American flag and waving it to the delight of hundreds of onlookers.
This woman danced with her infant child strapped to her back. I tried to get a closeup shot that showed the baby’s face, but I think I was too overwhelmed with the magnificence of her movements.
At one point this man stepped into the center. Even without the flag, he instantly drew everyone’s attention and he proceeded to lead the crowd in an exhilarating, impromptu speech about the triumph of truth. Several times he coaxed the crowd into kneeling down with him, and then together everyone jumped up with a burst of energy, shouting at their top of their lungs with joy.
When the news alert had come through earlier in the day, around 11:30a, I wasn’t even able to emotionally process the victory. My mind had been in such a despondent state since Election Night, both frustrated by the unresolved vote counts and the fact that millions of Americans saw no reason why Donald Trump’s lies, deceit and dereliction of duties should not be rewarded by another term in office. If I’m honest, it just disgusted me. But being there at Grand Army Plaza, surrounded by people of every race, color and creed, I was finally able to enjoy—at least for an afternoon—the wonder and beauty of a truly meaningful moment of progress in a much longer campaign to set the world right again.
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is a terrific movie title for a year in which each month that passes has taken a “hold my beer” alacrity to one-upping the awfulness that preceded it. The fact that the movie was directed by perpetually inventive misanthrope Charlie Kaufman would seem to promise at least a diverting, brain puzzle-type examination of human experience.
For a while, this movie is that, but then it gets lost in its own head (something which you’d actually expect to happen to Kaufman movies more often than it does). It starts out as a fairly compelling two-hander, with its leads bantering on an extended drive to visit family, interlaced with a surprisingly deft voiceover (voiceovers are never surprisingly deft). Eventually though it starts falling back to standard Kaufman shorthand: dream logic blocking, elliptical editing, jump scare cutaways etc.
No one else can do this stuff like Kaufman can and so few even try, so it’s somewhat forgivable that little of it rises above the amusing. But the last third, which is by turns reminiscent of a rather unenthusiastic David Lynch or Jean-Luc Godard flick, feels much less assured as it devolves into a game of semiotic Clue, leaving the viewer to match up wryly dropped hints with narrative twists. Kaufman does not want to telegraph the “meaning” of it all or do all of the expository work for the viewer, which is fair, but I’m not convinced he’s fully doing his job as a storyteller, either.
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is a disappointment but then again most of what we’re getting to see this year has been disappointing. I wrote in August about how subpar most of the direct-to-Netflix fare has been in general, but we’re also living through a pretty rough drought of genuinely entertaining movies that may stretch on for a long time. On the one hand, studios are holding back their most anticipated films until such a time when theater-going is a thing again. And on the other hand, the pandemic has surely paused or deferred production for a ton of what would have been entertaining to see next year, too.
Sorry, didn’t mean to be such a downer there.
In total I watched fifteen movies last month. Here’s the full list.
“Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011) ★★ Rewatched. Supposedly benign but takes a lot of offensive liberties with race and history.
“Millions” (2004) ★★★ Smartly directed fable of a kid’s experience dealing with the death of a loved one? I’ll take it. Corny sermonizing on the power of faith? Not so much.
“Monsters University” (2013) ★★★½ I know these back catalog Pixar sequels are not supposed to be well regarded but I really liked this one.
“Motherless Brooklyn” (2019) ★★ Edward Norton did his homework and he wants you to know it.
“The Shop Around the Corner” (1940) ★★★★½ Rewatched. Warmly imagined romantic comedy about pre-War Hungary.
“Sleuth” (1972) ★★★★ A delicious acting feast rolled up in a parlor room whodunit.
“Star Wars” (1977) ★★★½ Rewatched. Enjoying this movie today requires not just suspension of disbelief but also summoning up a willful ignorance of all the crap sequels that have followed.
“The Birth of a Nation” (1915) Talk about complicated. A disturbingly well-made paean to hatred and bigotry.
“An American Pickle” (2020) ★★ Starts off with crackle, then limps along to a whimpering finish.
“The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) ★★★½ Rewatched. The best made installment of the entire series, but perhaps not essential at all.
“The Traitor” (2019) ★★½ Goes deep inside the Italian mafia, reveals surprisingly little.
“How to Build a Girl” (2019) ★½ Shamefully squanders a terrific premise: excavating the way British music weeklies used to build up and tear down bands.
“Dazed and Confused” (1993) ★★★ A great hangout movie, sure, but in retrospect, quite toxic.
“The Violent Men” (1955) ★★★★ An old western with a terrifying view of how power is amassed.
Here’s a project that my team at Adobe has been working on for a long time. In addition to steering the design of Adobe XD, our design and prototyping tool for UX/UI designers, late last year we also took on the task of refreshing its visual identity. You can see the results on our new website at Adobe.com, but you can get a sense for the visual and motion vocabulary we created in this video reel.
If you’re interested in learning more, I wrote about the thinking that went into this work over at XD Ideas. And keep an eye out for more applications of this identity across Adobe XD and related sites and touchpoints soon.
What’s happening with film distribution during this pandemic is pretty fascinating. There are first run movies debuting on all kinds of services and at all kinds of price points. Earlier this year I rented “The Assistant” (superb) on iTunes for US$5.99. Just a few weekends ago “Bill & Ted Face the Music” debuted for home viewing for US$19.99. And Disney is even charging a hefty US$29.99 to rent “Mulan” to customers who are already paying a monthly subscription fee for Disney+. In contrast to the pre-pandemic world where the cost of a ticket was more or less completely dissociated from the actual movie you’d be watching, the perceived value of a given film is more apparent than ever in these rental prices.
I’m not exactly sure then what to think when a movie is free, but I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised when Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s independent film “Bacurau” debuted on The Criterion Channel last month. I’ve been an enthusiastic subscriber of that service since it launched but I’ve thought of it primarily as a terrific catalog of classic and international films, not a platform for releasing new movies that, in a pre-pandemic world, would have debuted in theaters.
I’d heard a lot of great buzz about “Bacurau” and in fact had hoped to be able to see it in a theater one day, so it was a treat to get to watch it from home at no additional cost. It’s a truly odd movie that combines elements of social documentary, science fiction, spaghetti westerns and more to tell the near-future story of a village in Brazil that, soon after burying one of its matriarchs, suddenly finds itself missing from regional maps. That description not only fails to do justice to the premise, but is only a hint of what follows, which I found to be thrilling and weird—so weird that when legendary weirdo Udo Kier shows up halfway through, I was shocked to realize that there would be even more weirdness to come. The movie is not perfect, but it’s so fearless in its willingness to mash up and subvert genres that it seems to be reinventing itself as it unfolds. If you have an appetite for disorientation, I recommend it highly.
It’s worth remembering too that “Bacurau” represents just a tiny fraction of the immense wealth of worthwhile film to be found on The Criterion Channel. Even if you subscribe for only a month or two to watch a few films, you’re coming out way ahead.
All told, I watched nineteen movies in August. Here is the full list.
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000) ★★★★½ Rewatched. Like a TV season finale so transcendent there’s no need to watch all the episodes that preceded it.
“The Little Prince” (1974) ★★½ Not without its charms, but sunk by the irritating titular performer.
“Big Hero 6” (2014) ★★ Rewatched. Its reverence for tech is not holding up well.
“My Brother’s Wedding” (1983) ★★★★ Imperfect but transfixing tragedy set in South Central LA.
“Never Goin’ Back” (2018) ★★★★ A morally reprehensible but briskly made triumph.
“Extra Ordinary” (2019) ★★★½ Yet another Irish indie in which an unattached driving instructor speaks to the dead and battles a one-hit wonder rockstar, to largely amiable effect.
“The Report” (2019) ★★★★ Setting aside the vanity of a screenwriter directing a movie about a guy writing something so important that middle-managers and executives want to water it down, this meticulous reckoning with Bush-era torture is terrific.
“Speed” (1994) ★★★½ Rewatched. A good example of how a dumb movie can achieve greatness.
“Top Gun” (1986) ★½ This thinly plotted recruitment film remains aesthetically undimmed, but it’s also still just as empty-headed as ever.
“Uncle Buck” (1989) ★½ Disappointingly few laughs; I added a half-star out of fondness for John Candy.
“Revanche” (2008) ★★★★ A taut, expertly directed subversion of the revenge thriller form.
“Sullivan’s Travels” (1941) ★★★ Rewatched. A pointed declaration of ideals about comedy vs. realism that’s not particularly funny or realistic.
“Bacurau” (2019) ★★★★ Bonkers B-movie set in Brazil that continually reinvents itself, thrillingly.
“The Truman Show” (1998) ★★★½ Rewatched. Charming but maybe most commendable for neutralizing Jim Carrey’s insufferability.
“Greed” (2019) ★★ Steve Coogan as anti-hero is so entertaining that this message movie mostly forgets to deliver its message until the end when it skirts by with lip service.
I’ve been in a bit of denial about the end of summer so I’m having to catch up quickly here on our two latest episodes of “Wireframe.” You can listen to them below but you should also subscribe at adobe.ly/wireframe or in your favorite podcast app.
First up is this newest installment, just out this week, all about designing apps that purport to help people rest easier at night. Sleep is a multi-billion dollar industry so it’s no wonder that there are a host of apps out there that are trying to help all of us sleep more soundly—especially in this time when the world seems to be constantly on edge.
It was fascinating to hear from folks like Ian McConchie, VP of design at Headspace, about the way they think about calming people, relieving stress and improving sleep. We also talked to Lucas Guarneri, who’s working on sleep trackers at Withings, Ania Wysocka, a designer who created her own app—Rootd—to help people manage anxiety, and more.
A couple of weeks ago we also had this terrific episode (one of my favorites this season) on designing the streaming media experiences that are consuming so many hours of our quarantine living this year. We had a terrific, illuminating conversation with Thomas Williams of Ostmodern, a design shop that specializes in video streaming experiences. We also talked to Dan Rayburn, an analyst and journalist who knows the world of streaming media—and streaming apps—inside and out. And we talked to writer Suzanne Scacca about tracking the Netflix user experience and how it impacts what we choose to watch.
For that episode, the “Wireframe” producers and I also did a trial run of a service called Scener, a free Chrome extension that makes it easy for remote groups of people to co-watch content on services like Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video etc. This way of consuming video has become more popular lately for obvious reasons, and in fact I had a more in-depth experience with Scener just last weekend when we used it to host a remote movie-watching birthday party for my daughter. She and eight or so of her friends used Scener to video and text chat while the app also kept a stream of “Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse” in sync. It was a bit janky at first, especially as I was scrutinizing it for all of its UX and design imperfections. But ultimately it worked really well, and you could absolutely imagine this becoming a much more common way of friends spending time together, pandemic or no.
You can find Wireframe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, PocketCasts, Castro or wherever you download your favorite shows, and you can listen to previous episodes and find out much more at adobe.ly/wireframe. And in two weeks: we have a terrific episode about voting.
Netflix is the multiplex now, and it feels like a bit of a gift every time the service rolls out a new original movie direct to our living rooms. In July I was enthusiastic about getting to see “The Old Guard” and “Da 5 Bloods” in their “first runs.” Both were made exclusively for Netflix, and both feature pedigrees I’m inclined to favor: Charlize Theron giving, again, everything she has in an action thriller; and Spike Lee diving into the legacy of the Vietnam War with an unhinged, transfixing performance by Delroy Lindo. But both left me unimpressed and worse, with this nagging feeling that the filmmakers just didn’t think it mattered that much whether they delivered the best possible movies they could. In fact, looking back over the past few years of Netflix’s original films, with the clear exception of Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” they almost all fit this description: flashy, star-studded productions that just didn’t feel fully committed to their own success. Forget it Jake, it’s Netflix.
To be fair maybe this isn’t just Netflix; maybe it’s just another kind of “new normal” we must all accept in this time where everything is up for revision. Take Tom Hanks in “Greyhound” (the first thing I’ve ever watched on Apple TV+). It’s a taut, efficient little wartime thriller and a fun ride, but at its edges—the perfunctory love story, the rough CG effects, the scant running time—it still felt lower stakes and less ambitious than a “true” feature film release. As a genre, direct-to-streaming is higher profile and frequently higher-budget than direct-to-video, but I’m not sure it’s proven yet that it can be higher quality.
I watched seventeen total movies in July. Here’s the full list.
“The Adventures of Tintin” (2011) ★★★ Rewatched. Better and less distractingly uncanny valley-esque than I remembered.
“Missing Link” (2019) ★★ Amusing but insubstantial, and quixotically stop-motion-animated by Laika Studio.
“Blood on the Moon” (1948) ★★★★ A very manly Robert Mitchum-led western, gorgeously shot and begging for a proper film restoration.
