Salon.com > Benjamin Wheelock

Watch the “Gravity” trailer

Thu, 09 May 2013 23:59:00 +0000

It's been six long years since Alfonso Cuarón's last feature film, "Children of Men," but today the trailer finally arrived for "Gravity," his ambitious follow-up. The film stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and is scheduled to open October 4, 2013.

Salon’s gay marriage courage-meter

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:45:00 +0000

Amid Supreme Court arguments this week on Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act, political leaders exhibiting varying degrees of courage have lined up to announce their support of marriage equality. Some just came off of reelection, meaning they won't face voters for six years. One was a Republican prompted to change his position by his gay son. And still another was a former secretary of state abstaining from the political fray until recently, and suddenly finding herself following the party she once sought to lead.

Here, then -- with a tip of the hat to New York magazine's "approval matrix" -- is our gay marriage courage-meter. On the x-axis is timing -- who was ahead of the curve, and who just came to the party this week. The y-axis represents who showed guts and risked political capital for their support. Below the courage-meter is a short legend with background on the selections. Suggestions? Disagreements? Take to the comments section (and click on the courage-meter to enlarge it)!

The Oscar posters that should have been

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 21:35:00 +0000

Now that the Oscars have come and gone, it is time for Hollywood to look back and wonder, "What could we have done differently?" Our advice: look in the direction of Austin, Texas' Mondo Gallery. Through a partnership with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Mondo commissioned a series of limited edition silk-screened posters that, we think, put the actual campaigns to shame.

Who knows – perhaps with the right poster, "Wreck-It Ralph" might have snagged best picture!

Be sure to view these in full-screen mode.

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The Oscar posters that should have been

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 21:34:00 +0000

Check out the movie posters that Mondo Gallery commissioned for this year's crop of Oscar movies

PES: I worked on this for years!

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 20:30:00 +0000

Every year, it gets more and more difficult to draw a clear boundary between animated and live-action films. The official terminology used by the Academy Awards feels particularly vague and anachronistic:

An animated film is created by using a frame-by-frame technique, and usually falls into one of the two general fields of animation: character or abstract. Some of the techniques of animating films include cel animation, computer animation, stop-motion, clay animation, pixilation, cutouts, pins, camera multiple pass imagery, kaleidoscopic effects, and drawing on the film frame itself.

This definition feels like a half-step up from we know an animated film when we see one. When you get down to it, don't all movies use a frame-by-frame technique? The fact is that nowadays, all of the boundaries are blurring – even within the world of animation. Stop-motion animation is not necessarily a separate species from computer animation.

A calligrapher explains his art

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0000

One of the big differences between a type designer and a calligrapher is that nobody much wants to watch a type designer at work. Creating and refining a font is painstaking work that requires a fastidious nature, to say the least. Calligraphy is an action sport by comparison – measured in seconds rather than months – and watching a calligrapher at work is oddly thrilling. The stakes aren't exactly high (there's usually another piece of paper available...), but they somehow feel high:

The artist in this video is Seb Lester, seen improvising a beautiful alphabet in real time, filling the page with swift, effortless strokes. But as the video plays on, we also start to see other of his works – impossibly ornate type illustrations. There is a meticulousness to the mind at work here, and he clearly has more than pen and ink in his arsenal. In fact, Lester is known mainly as a type designer and illustrator, and only recently decided to learn the art of calligraphy. He has been at it for about two years now.

Did Obama reset the electoral map?

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 01:00:00 +0000

Mitt Romney visited President Obama for lunch at the White House today, and the final congressional recount ended in North Carolina. It's safe to say that the 2012 election is officially in the books. With the numbers official, it's time to revisit Salon's version of the electoral map, and see how the reds and blues have shifted.

As you may recall, we calibrate our state colors by taking into account not just presidential election results, but also senatorial, congressional and gubernatorial elections. We give each equal weight and generate a color from pure blue (see Massachusetts) to pure red (see Kansas). This gives a far more nuanced picture of how each state votes, and not just what they decide every four years.

Click the image below to see how the map changed as a result of the 2012 election. You may want to keep an eye on North Carolina and Virginia.

A taxonomy of Mitt Romney’s lies

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 17:00:00 +0000

"Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China."

"The president said he’d cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it."

These are the types of lies that come to mind for most when pondering Vanidicus Mittromneus – and with good reason. They are, indeed, outstanding specimens, but they merely hint at the rich variety to be explored. What follows is a rough breakdown of the genera and species, and we encourage you to seek out this vast taxonomic family in the wild.

MISQUOTING HIMSELF
Species Repulsa cogitato var. indictus

A perfect microcosm of the entire family: diverse, strategic and extremely difficult to kill. Inbreeding is common in this species, given Romney's habit of misquoting his own lies.

Sandy, the day after

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 18:21:00 +0000

The East Coast this morning didn't look the way we left it

Paul Ryan stars in “Atlas Shrugged”

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 20:40:00 +0000

The V.P. candidate pumps iron for Time and becomes the hottest meme since Big Bird. Here's our entry

What 100 years of voting looks like

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 11:00:00 +0000

The story of American politics over the last few generations is one of ever increasing partisan polarization. Barack Obama was able to pick off a few Republican states in 2008, but ideology and party identity have largely synced up, draining the electoral map of much of its fluidity. When it comes to presidential politics, there are a lot of red states, a lot of blue states, and only a few true swing states.

Over the years, the partisan divide at the top of the ticket has steadily crept down the ballot. And if there was a moment that the red state/blue state divide we now know was formalized, it was the 2000 election, when George W. Bush swept the South and the Great Plains but was shut out on the Pacific Coast, in much of the Midwest, and (except for New Hampshire) north of the Mason-Dixon line. This marked the culmination of two trends: 1) the South’s steady march away from the Democratic Party, which began sometime around the Depression but didn’t really kick into gear until the national Democratic Party embraced racial equality – first at its 1948 convention, then through the Civil Right Act of 1964 (Al Gore couldn’t even carry his native Tennessee); 2) the mass rejection of the modern, Southern-dominated, religion-infused national Republican Party by culturally moderate voters in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast.

Congrats! Here’s an ugly medal

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 18:00:00 +0000

I trained for this? On the eve of the London games, a look at some of the most hideous Olympic medal designs

Our Olympic logo!

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:55:00 +0000

The Olympic rings are already everywhere, and starting in a few days they are going to be everywhere.

We needed a graphic to let people know that Salon's coverage is going to be different -- the Olympics seen through Salon's unique lens.

For the design, we chose to create a viewfinder out of (virtual) translucent panes. When aligned, the panes suggest the Olympics logo, but with a twist on that familiar geometry. The colors aren't quite what you're used to either, and what's more, they combine in very unexpected ways.

You'll see this graphic in the coming weeks, attached to stories that focus on Olympic themes and details that you won't find elsewhere.

Let us know what you think.