The Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery in London is proving to be one of the most successful exhibitions ever, for good reason.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/may/09/leonardo-da-v...

The Guardian Newspaper has created this very cool interactive guide to some of his work, "from grotesque caricatures to sublime nudes", and it is well worth checking out...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/interactive/2011/nov/09/leonardo-...

Just saw this on the New York Times site. Unexpected to say the least. And all the better for that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/garden/ice-cube-on-eameses-and-his-hom...

"Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out." -- Martin Scorsese

If you are interested in film, editing, and in action films especially, then these short video-essays by film Critic Jim Emerson make for fascinating viewing. In the first, by dissecting the chase sequence from Christopher Nolan's 2008 blockbuster The Dark Knight, he explores the language of film and how directors and editors will often dispense with visual logic and break the rules of filming in the pursuit of bigger, bolder, but not always better, action.

"Ultimately, everything about the movie -- the characters, the story, the emotions -- all come down to what is inside the frame, what's left out of the frame, and the associations that are made between different shots, as they're all pieced together. Compositions, angles, camera movements -- they take on different meanings depending on their relationships to the other shots around them. So, something that maybe isn't in the frame, something outside the frame, or something that may happen in the cut between two shots, can be implied, depending on how the pieces are put together."

Parts 2 (on Phillip Noyce’s 2010 film, Salt) & 3 (in which Emerson takes on classic chase scenes from Don Siegel’s The Lineup (1958), Peter Yates’s Bullitt (1968) and William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971)) are below, too.

In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight) from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.

In the Cut, Part II: A Dash of Salt from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.

In the Cut Part III: I Left My Heart in My Throat in San Francisco from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.

The videos and an accompanying essay by Emerson can be found at:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/IN_THE_CUT_The_Dark_Knight_by_Chris...

And an annotated transcript is available here:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2011/09/annotated_transcript_in_the_c...

...of starlings. Who knew? Not me. But this is "a magical case of mathematical chaos in action...all driven by the quest for survival." And it is jaw-achingly beautiful.

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

(via Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/chance_encounter_with_nature.html)

Just stumbled across this beautiful stop-motion animation from Spike Jonze, in which designer Olympia Le-Tan's accessories spring to life in a tragic-comic love story. Beautiful.

Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi on Nowness.com.

There is a short Q&A with Jonze about the project here: http://www.nowness.com/day/2011/10/17?ecid=emfb1001

We finally got some of our Hydro74 prints framed for the office... here's our favourite. A $20 frame from a brick-a-brack shop + a gorgeous serigraph = priceless.

The photographer William George Wadman recently paid a visit to our production studio to snap a few pics of Vault49's Technical Director, Ben Wilkinson-Raemer. These are some cool pics, and Ben is not as evil as he looks.

This epic and beautifully directed video from Woodkid came out in March this year and brings to mind Carl Dreyer's 1928 masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Stunning.

Wandering around yesterday in downtown around the corner of our Bond St print studio... this is pretty much the worst of the damage from Irene that I could find... and it's pretty cool.

Not a lot of people know this...but Vault49's NYC studio is actually located in the first ever recording studio of the rock band Kiss... just thought it was worth mentioning. Pretty cool, huh?

Known far and wide as 'rock and roll holy ground', 10 East 23rd Street is the stuff of legend, past and present (ahem). We look equally good in spandex and make-up too.