Mike Mills is one of my favorite multi-hyphenate creative people, and has been for a long time. Back in the era of my tidal obsession with Air’s Moon Safari, I read up everything I could on the band, and Mills– the designer who’d crafted their rad cover art. I watched as many of his music videos as I could track down with the middling assistance of dial-up internet and my primary pre-YouTube rad video source, the late great RES Magazine. Ever since then, Mike Mills’ creations– in print, feature filmmaking, documentary, graphic design and music video have only grown successively more and more awesome.

His latest endeavor is his most intimate and most emotionally evocative work yet, the film Beginners. It tells the story of a sad graphic designer (Ewan McGreggor) learning to love (Melanie Laurent) late in life, and his elderly father (Christopher Plumer) who comes out of the closet in the twilight of his life. It’s a simple story but its scope is epic: it’s about mortality, growing up, the unchangeable nature of historical circumstance and seeking connection in a disconnected family. As heavy Beginners‘ themes are, Mills juggles story and concepts with significant grace, blending melancholy and humor in a way that somehow manages to reveal the intimate inner lives of his characters.

Beginners is in theaters now, and I strongly urge you to check it out on the big screen. And luckily, since Mike Mills can’t be confined to one medium, he’s released a companion book to the film called Drawings From the Film Beginners. It’s full of funny and charming sketches that relate to the Ewan McGregor’s character in the film, who also designs album covers for a living.

Thanks to Focus Features, I’m stoked to announce that we’re giving away a copy of the book, as well as a dropcard that will let you to download the Beginners soundtrack for free. Comment with your favorite work by Mike Mills and we’ll choose a winner at random this Friday!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Great Jason Villegas Giveaway this week! We were honored to have this opportunity to give one of you a one of a kind original art piece from one of our favorite artists, and we hope to host more contests like this in the near future.

Sifting through the 90 entries submitted here and on our Facebook page– including one megafan who diligently entered the contest 30 times under 30 different names (sorry dude, you were only counted once)– we ended up with 59 official entrants and assigned each of them a numerical value. We then used a highly complex formula generated by a secret machine* buried deep within Future Shipwreck headquarters**, to select our winner.

So without further ado, Jason Villegas‘ Lil’ Stink Eye goes to: Frank Antonoff! Thanks to everyone for playing!

* This.
** My bachelor apartment.

I couldn’t be more stoked to announce the following news: in honor of today’s interview with Jason Villegas, he’s created an original art piece exclusively for Future Shipwreck, and we’ll be giving it away to one lucky reader! The piece is entitled Lil’ Stink Eye, and it’s a lovingly handmade fabric sculpture that playfully expands upon Jason’s thematic obsessions with the Lacoste alligator and tanks.

Jason’s artwork has been shown from coast to coast in rad galleries like Okay Mountain and esteemed institutions like LACMA. This might be your only chance to take home one of his completely unique art pieces! All you have to do is leave a comment on this post or on the Future Shipwreck Facebook page (both to increase your chances) before Thursday, October 28th at midnight! We’ll choose one lucky a winner at random and announce their name here on Friday morning!

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Visual artist Eric Lindley records gorgeous, sorrowful music under the moniker Careful. Shades of Arthur Russell, Chris Garneau, and Xiu Xiu lurk in the corners of his sonic palette, as Lindley balances subtle sonic experimentation with acoustic tranquility. His new album, Oh, Light, was recorded in the refuge of his partner’s darkened closet over the period of a month, and feels at once intimate and layered, beckoning the listener for frequent returns to its chest of aural wonders.

In the afterglow of a coveted shout-out by the New York Times, the record will get its physical release in stores tomorrow. To celebrate, we’re giving a copy away on Future Shipwreck! Just comment on this post to qualify! A lucky winner will be chosen by random selection tomorrow night.

Listen to the album in full, below. I’d have to say my favorite tracks are “Scrappy” and “Oi, etc.” Also, watch Nicholas Girder‘s experimental videos for “Fox and His Friends” and “Laid, or Lain” after the jump.

UPDATE: The winner, chosen via random number generator, is Ben Prisbylla! Thanks everyone for playing!

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Dude, you guys made it incredibly tough to decide who won the Albert Reyes giveaway contest. There were too many great comments! Too many rad ways to spend a summer! You’re all winners in my mind, but in the end, we had to choose one person to take home a free print. That person is Gabriel, whose plan for a perfect summer felt completely philosophically aligned with Albert’s entire ethos:

To make things and sell them and have them sold in gallery/performance space with a fantastic opening with futuristic cumbia jamz being played from the speakers with a dj set curated by Mas Excitos and 22 oz cans of tecates given out by girls in the posters with all of my friends from all over in the same place. To dance, sing, and howl at the moon all the same time until it screams back in a thick Spanish accent “the future has yet to be written”.

Choosing a runner-up to get a full set of prints at a discounted price was equally difficult, but we fell in love with Zena’s utopian, all-encompassing interstellar vision:

I’d travel through space and time in a giant steam-powered dirigible fully-equipped with live music, friends, weed, alcohol, catering, pool and hot tub. We’d travel the universe, exploring any planet of our choosing and befriend the myriad alien life forms we encounter. Upon becoming slightly homesick, we’d bring our new-found alien friends back to planet Earth wherein we would all put our technologically and spiritually advanced minds together to repair the BP Oil Spill, create a new, worldwide ecological energy solution to put all oil companies out of business forever, end all wars and suffering, and repopulate all endangered lifeforms. Finally – ’round early August – we would dock in Tokyo, living out the rest of the summer in neon, jubilant, funtimes.

I would also have sex with Daniel Day Lewis.

Good luck with that Zena– and as for the rest of you, thanks so much for playing along! It was awesome hearing from the people who read Future Shipwreck, and I know you can all have the summers of your dreams if you want them!

If you still want a free print, good news! The other blog I write for, We Love You So, has just launched a final giveaway of their own, as we prepare to go into hiatus. Spike is giving away a priceless adult sized wolf suit from the production of Where the Wild Things Are, and the rest of us who work on the site are throwing prizes of our own into the pot. I’m including another print from Albert’s Elegant, Classic Shit series, so go drop a line over there to qualify for that contest. A winner will be chosen at random on Tuesday.

And please, if you love Albert’s work as much as I do, help support him and our gallery by heading over to Mastodon Mesa’s site and picking up a set of prints!

Reminder: Today is the final day to enter the Albert Reyes/Future Shipwreck giveaway contest! All you have to do is head over to the original post and leave a comment, telling us what you’d like to do this summer. Then you’ll be in the running to snatch a gorgeous limited edition print from Albert Reyes’ series Elegant, Classic Shit– being sold through Mastodon Mesa for $150 each– it’s totally nuts!

Ahh, summer! I celebrated the dawning of this most relaxed of seasons by doing something I’ve always wanted to do: I walked across Los Angeles. Joining up with my friend Brandon at 10:00pm on Memorial Day, we made a pact to walk the 15 miles from Silver Lake to the beach without uttering a word. We strayed from Santa Monica Blvd. for only a few fantastic detours: through the incomparably eerie solitude of a 3:00am Century City, all echoes and silence and steam; down alleyways in Beverly Hills where ghost cars and armed security eyed us with incredulity; beneath the shadows of floodlit palm trees in the emptied playgrounds of West Hollywood—nothing but pure magic. By 5:04am, with our legs locking down and blisters burning our feet, we finally reached sand. Five minutes later, the first summer sun rose on the west coast. And it was rad.

Back in real life, we’re busy wrapping up the Albert Reyes: Never Dies the Dream show over at Mastodon Mesa. Since we could only keep the show open for one day, we’re still struggling to repay the stunning costs of purchasing and applying chemicals from a warehouse in Canyon Country for the sole purpose of assuring the fire department that a bunch of wood isn’t going to light on fire.

So, we’re selling a series of glorious fine art (super limited) edition prints on MastodonMesa.com, aptly titled Elegant, Classic Shit. The works in this set of four 18″ x 24″ poster-sized pay homage to the greatest pop culture juggernauts of our day: Elvira, Superman, Woody Allen and Ronald McDonald, and they was printed by the legendary serigraph studio Modern Multiples. It’s $350 for the whole set, which is a pretty crazy bargain considering they could transform an entire wall in your home into a monument to sheer radness.

Albert wants to keep the sets together for the most part, BUT! To help spread the word, I’m giving away a print (of your choice) from Elegant, Classic Shit exclusively on Future Shipwreck! This is how it’s going to work: one winner will be chosen from the comments on this post and one runner up will be given a $75 discount on the purchase of a complete set.

Your prompt is: what do you want to do this summer? No, really– If you could do anything, if your jobs and commitments and car payments weren’t holding you back, what’s the one thing you would do this season? What’s your summertime fantasy? The contest will end on Wednesday, June 9th. And… go!

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