Category Archives: Reviews

Modified Classic Cars: Lisbon-Based “COOL & VINTAGE” Built A Cult Following For Its “RestoMod” Land Rovers

From a Classic Driver online article:

Classic Driver CoolNVintageOf course, Cool & Vintage is one of hundreds of companies building Land Rover ‘restomods’, but it’s forged its premier reputation for two reasons: the unparalleled quality of its work and its aesthetic positioning. “I’ve always thought that the Land Rover is among the greatest pieces of industrial design, so it was never my intention to mess around with it too much. We try to stay true to its shape and its history while adding our own creative twist, which could be anything from a bright colour to a more aggressive stance.” Ricardo initially wanted to fuse his vision of the quintessential beach car with a southern European summer vibe.

Over the last seven years, Cool & Vintage has created an aesthetic for its tastefully modified classic Land Rovers that is instantly recognisable among its cult following around the world. We thought it was high time to pay a visit to its Lisbon hipster haven…

Sun-drenched beachscapes, beautiful surfing girls and the most immaculate old Land Rovers you’ve ever seen – it must be Cool & Vintage. This vision of fantasy has garnered the Lisbon-based restoration company, which has been putting its unique twist of Defenders and Series models since 2012, something of a cult following Land Rover buffs and hipsters alike.

To read more: https://www.classicdriver.com/en/article/cars/visiting-cool-vintage-ground-zero-custom-land-rover-culture

Technology: “PrinCube” Is The World’s Smallest Mobile Color Printer

From a YankoDesign.com online review:

Princube Printer Smallest Mobile Color PrinterThe PrinCube sits on the throne of being the smallest (and the lightest) handheld color-printer. With a swift motion of your hand, the printer rapidly prints out one line at a time, measuring up to 0.56 inches in thickness. PrinCube’s multi-line feature lets you extend your prints by printing up to nearly 10 feet of content line after line. The wireless printer conveniently pairs with any device like your phone, tablet, or even laptop over a Wi-Fi connection, and each individual ink cartridge can handle approximately 415 A4 pages worth of printing before replacing. The battery on PrinCube’s pretty remarkable too, with the ability to print for 6 continuous hours before needing a recharge via the Type-C port in the PrinCube’s size.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/princube-the-world-s-smallest-mobile-color-printer#/

It looks like a block roughly half the size of a spray-paint can. In fact, that’s how you would hold the PrinCube too. Grab it with one hand and run it across any surface and the PrinCube performs a neat, seamless, colored inkjet-print on it. The PrinCube isn’t just small, it’s hand-held, wireless, and incredibly versatile. It can print on materials your desktop printer doesn’t even dream of. Paper, cardboard, wood, metal, cloth, working on flat, textured, and even curved surfaces. You could literally give yourself temporary tattoos too because the PrinCube even prints on the skin (it’s safe, if I may add).

To read more: https://www.yankodesign.com/2019/10/24/this-handheld-color-printer-is-literally-the-size-of-a-regular-printers-ink-cartridge/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+yankodesign+%28Yanko+Design+-+Form+Beyond+Function%29

Top Restaurant Chains: “Emmy Squared Pizza” Is Serving Up Nostalgia In Three Eastern States

From a Restaurant Business online article:

Emmy Squared Pizza and BurgerMost pizza places, Detroit-style places, the dough is sitting in a portioned-out container and it gets pressed into the pan. We let it rise in the pan. I knew from the beginning, that’s what’s going to separate our pizza. … It’s built in that we need larger walk-ins to have those extra pans. It’s just part of the plan.

When we run out of pans, we run out of dough. Some of our smaller restaurants have to have 500 pans because of the volume.

The backstory: Emily Hyland and Matt Hyland, who shared pizza on their first date, are the husband and wife team behind several restaurants in their Pizza Loves Emily group, including the growing concept Emmy Squared. They brought in industry veteran Howard Greenstone as a partner. Greenstone has been CEO and president of Rosa Mexicano and is currently a strategic adviser and partner with the Marcus Samuelsson Group.

To read more: https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/emerging-brands/how-growing-pizza-concept-embracing-nostalgia-drive-traffic

Top New Exhibitions: “An Impressionist Autumn” At The Museum Of Fine Arts, Houston Thru January 12

From a Arts and Culture Texas online article:

Paul Cézanne, The Turning Road (La route tournante), c. 1877, oil on canvas, private collection.While all of the works on exhibit hold special interest, Aurisch identifies several gems. For example, Van Gogh fans will enjoy his spectacular perspectival rooftop view from the window of his room in The Hague in 1882. Maurice de Vlaminc’s 1906 Dancer at the “Rat Mort” (La danseuse du “Rat Mort”) is a delight with his Fauve treatment of the figure; through color and gestural line, it’s as though we are witnessing a shift into the 20th century. And Henri Matisse’s 1943 still life titled Lemons against a Fleur-de-lis Background (Citrons sur fond rose fleurdelisé) vibrates with lively pink patterned wallpaper and a stacked brick platform, charged with Japonisme energy.

This fall season, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents Monet to Picasso: A Very Private Collection and Berthe Morisot: Impressionist Original, billed together under the theme of “An Impressionist Autumn,” on view Oct. 20, 2019 through Jan. 12, 2020. The two exhibitions offer museum visitors the chance to peek into the private lives of artist, muse, and society at large.

To read more: http://artsandculturetx.com/fall-for-impressionism-morisot-and-monet-to-picasso-at-mfah/

Top Art Podcasts: Harvard Psychologist Steven Pinker Analyses “Charnel House” By Picasso (BBC)

BBC Radio 3Today’s edition features Harvard professor Steven Pinker. As an experimental psychologist, Steven has written extensively about violence – and for his choice from the gallery’s collection he has selected two of Pablo Picasso’s most gruesome depictions of man’s inhumanity, Charnel House and Guernica, now housed in Madrid.

Charnel House by Picasso

Radio 3 presents a radiophonic art exhibition, as 30 of the world’s most creative minds choose a favourite work from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Ep5 Pinker and Picasso.

“The Way I See It” is a co-production of the BBC and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009d6q

New Electric Cars: “2019 Mazda MX-30” Is An “Everyday” Vehicle With “Freestyle” Doors

From a DesignBoom online review:

the mazda MX-30 delivers 141bhp and 195lb ft from an electric motor powered by a 35.5kwh battery, offering a range of 130 miles. it is capable of 6.6kW domestic charging and and 50kW rapid charging via a ccs connection, the latter of which will give 80% charge in 30 to 40 minutes, claimed mazda.

Mazda MX-30 Electric Car doors.JPG

the MX-30’s freestyle doors use custom-designed hinges that allow the front doors to open to 82° and rear doors to open to 80°, giving the car a distinctive and elegant cabin silhouette. this should make loading and unloading cargo easier as well as providing easier access for strollers and wheelchairs.

japanese automaker mazda has unveiled it’s first mass-production electric car. unveiled at the 2019 tokyo motor show, the mazda MX-30 features unique freestyle doors, ecological materials and the automaker’s new fuel-efficient skyactiv-x engine, marking a positive step in mazda’s multi-solution approach to reducing emissions.

To read more: https://www.designboom.com/technology/mazda-mx-30-first-electric-car-rear-hinged-freestyle-doors-10-23-2019/?utm_source=designboom+daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mazda+unveils+first

New Books On Food: “American Cuisine” By Paul Freedman – 200 Years Of “Regionalism And Variety”

From a Yale News online review:

American Cuisine Paul FreedmanOne way to understand American cuisine is through its regions — and the regional traditions that underlie the history of American cuisine. New England, the South, and New Orleans Creole are the regional cuisines of America. Examples of New England cuisine are “Yankee Pot Roast,” the lobster roll, and clam chowder. Southern favorites include grits, collard greens, okra, fried tomatoes, and sweet potato pie. Louisiana’s signature creole dishes are jambalaya, gumbo, and étouffée.

The compensation for that standardization — or at least what the food companies and the food and restaurant industry have offered — is variety. In my opinion, variety is what the food companies offer you in lieu of quality. At least in certain aspects, quality is impossible in an industrial food system.

In his new book, “American Cuisine: And How It Got This Way,” Yale historian Paul Freedman gives readers a window into understanding American history through cuisine spanning more than 200 years, debunking the myth that American cuisine does not, in fact, exist.

Freedman, the Chester D. Tripp Professor of History, approaches his study of American cuisine not by identifying a list of specific national or regional dishes, but rather by looking at the interactions among regionalism, standardization, and variety.

To read more: https://news.yale.edu/2019/10/15/yale-historian-pens-book-defining-what-exactly-american-cuisine

Nostalgia: “Abbey Road” – 50 Years Since The Beatles Walked Off Stage (1969)

From a New Yorker Magazine online article:

Beatles Abbey Road Quote from Paul McCartney“Abbey Road” was the Beatles’ last word—the final recordings by the most popular and influential artists of the nineteen-sixties. Now, on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, “Abbey Road” has been expertly remixed by Giles Martin, George Martin’s son and protégé, and reissued in a super-deluxe edition that comes with an archive of studio outtakes and a hundred-page book of essays and liner notes that chronicle how the recordings were made. “The Beatles are good even though everybody already knows that they’re good,” the classical composer Ned Rorem observed in 1968, alluding to how the band’s immense popularity confounded the usual notions of discriminating taste. If anyone needs to be reminded of this, this new edition of “Abbey Road” should do the trick.

In the spring of 1969, Paul McCartney telephoned George Martin to ask if he would be willing to work with the Beatles on a new album they planned to record in the months ahead. Martin, who was widely regarded as the most accomplished pop-record producer in the world, had overseen the making of all nine albums and nineteen singles that the Beatles had released in Britain since their début on E.M.I.’s Parlophone label, in 1962. His reputation was synonymous with that of the group, and the fact that McCartney felt a need to ask him about his availability dramatized how much the Beatles’ professional circumstances had changed since the release of the two-record set known as the White Album, in the fall of 1968. In Martin’s view, the five months of tension and drama it took to make that album, followed by the fiasco of “Get Back,” an ill-fated film, concert, and recording project that ended inconclusively in January, 1969, had turned his recent work with the Beatles into a “miserable experience.”

To read more: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/when-the-beatles-walked-offstage-fifty-years-of-abbey-road?utm_campaign

Best New Art Books: “Masterpieces Of Painting J. Paul Getty Museum”(2019)

From a Getty Museum online release:

9781606065792_2000xMasterpieces of Painting surveys more than one hundred of the most exquisite and significant paintings displayed in the museum’s famed, daylight-suffused galleries. Vibrant full-color illustrations and engaging descriptions of these masterworks reveal their fascinating histories and cultural, social, and religious meanings. Sure to enchant and edify all art lovers, this book is a spellbinding tour through the history of Western painting.

Masterpieces Of Painting J. Paul Getty MuseumRooted in a passion for the Italian Renaissance as well as Dutch and Flemish Baroque works, the original collection of J. Paul Getty (1892–1976) has been transformed over four decades to include seminal pieces by celebrated masters such as Masaccio, Titian, Parmigianino, Cranach, El Greco, Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Poussin, Canaletto, Fragonard, Turner, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Monet, van Gogh, Cézanne, and Ensor.

Davide Gasparotto is senior curator in the Department of Paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, where Scott Allan is associate curator and Anne T. Woollett is curator. Peter Björn Kerber is curator at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.

To read more: https://shop.getty.edu/products/masterpieces-of-painting-j-paul-getty-museum-978-1606065792?utm_source=artbound101&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=artbound101

Future Of Health Care: New Machine Learning System Detects Infections 48 Hours In Advance

From a Health IT Analytics online release:

Philips Machine Learning SystemThe prototype revealed that using artificial intelligence and machine learning to examine certain combinations of vital signs and other biomarkers could strongly predict the likelihood of infection up to 48 hours in advance of clinical suspicion, including observable symptoms.

Royal Philips, in collaboration with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) of the US Department of Defense (DoD), are building a machine learning algorithm that will be able to detect an infection before a patient shows signs or symptoms.

The partnering organizations recently announced results from an 18-month project, called Rapid Analysis of Threat Exposure (RATE), the first large-scale exploration of pre-symptomatic infection in humans. The project aims to develop an early warning system that accelerates diagnosis and treatment of infection, containing the spread of communicable disease.

To read more: https://healthitanalytics.com/news/philips-dod-build-machine-learning-system-to-detect-infection