USA Character Blog

How LG's Thin Screens Could Change Our Lives

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:00:00 -0500

Last month at the big Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, which brought new products from just about every technology manufacturer, there was one product that had everyone talking: LG launched a 55-inch flatscreen TV (LG 55EM9600) that stunned viewers and analysts alike. Apart from having great visual clarity and all the features highly trained technical TV reviewers are likely to love, the TV itself was just 4mm thick. Or it would be more accurate to say 4mm thin.

CNET gave the TV the coveted Best of Show Award for 2012, sharing in their review that it's "so shallow, it includes a separate control box to house connectivity and other necessaries, connected to the panel by a proprietary cable."

Why is this such a big deal for the rest of us? Mainly because the technology for these screens is finally getting advanced enough that we will start to see them used in unexpected ways both inside and outside the home, from Samsung's storefront window displays to smart recycling bins.

With screens everywhere, we can access information in much more interactive ways, and improve our entertainment and shopping experiences. For helping to pioneer this new technology which can offer so many new possibilities for any of us, the new LG flatscreen is Character Approved.

[Image: LG]

NOTE: LG is an Ogilvy client, however the author was not solicited or compensated in any way for this post.

Celebrate Bill Cosby at the Paley Center

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Whether as Cliff Huxtable or Fat Albert, Bill Cosby has played many memorable characters, won many awards for his skill as an entertainer, and broke several barriers along the way. Believe it or not, he came onto the comedy scene 50 years ago this year.

If you want to catch up on any of his work you may have missed, the Paley Center for Media is celebrating his five decades of work with screenings and a salute to this Hollywood legend.

The Character Approved celebration runs through March 4 and has programming offerings at both the New York City and Beverly Hills centers. The center will be showing not only some rarely viewed Cosby Show specials, but many of Cosby's variety show appearances as well.

Hey, hey, hey! Take a trip down memory lane at the Paley Center and enjoy the golden years of television with one its most famous faces.

[Image: IndieWire]

The (2015)Quilt to End AIDS

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:30:00 -0500

The original AIDS Memorial Quilt is a folk art legend, a 54-ton piece of crowdsourced art travelling the country and receiving additions in memory of loved ones. But since it can't be everywhere at once, two world-shaking organizations are teaming up to help you contribute to the cause--and you don't even need to pick up a needle and thread.

Launched on World AIDS Day, (2015)Quilt is a colorful online collaboration by ONE and (RED) to end the pandemic, one quilt square at a time. Complete with celebrity endorsements from Ellen Degeneres and Justin Bieber, the Character Approved campaign asks supporters to design a quilt panel online and pledge to support the cause of providing universal AIDS treatment by 2015.

Add to the quilt by creating your own square and sharing your masterpiece with friends. One by one, we can patch together the vision of a better future without AIDS.

[Image: (2015)Quilt]

The Best Man: James Earl Jones

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Just saying, reading, or typing the name James Earl Jones immediately brings to mind a booming voice and an unmatched presence.

Theatre fans have been entertained by the legendary Jones since the late 1950s. This week, he's our Character Approved pick because, after starring last season in Driving Miss Daisy on both Broadway and in London's West End, he's making a quick return to the stage in another iconic role, that of Arthur Hockstader in the upcoming revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man, alongside Angela Lansbury, John Larroquette, Candice Bergen, and more. Jones has always said that stage acting was his first love, and now at a robust 81, he is showing no signs of slowing down.

The play covers a fight between two political candidates vying for their party's nomination and referring the behind-the-scenes conflicts. Who better, in 2012 to play the Hockstader character--a former president of the United States--than Jones? We can't wait to see the show!

[Image: James Earl Jones in Driving Miss Daisy with Vanessa Redgrave, Walter McBride / BroadwayWorld.com]

Mark Your Calendars: Jason Wu for Target

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Target has featured more than its share of high-profile designers in the past, causing a sensation with certain collections. Well, 2012 is off to an incredible start with the first of Target's GO International designers, Jason Wu. Wu, famous for Michelle Obama's inaugural gown, is a superstar who counts many of the fashion world's best-dressed list and magazine editors among his fans.

The collection is inspired by the idea of an American girl in Paris and will feature the well-crafted, feminine designs for which Wu has become known. The 53-piece line will include plenty of day-to-night options: A-line silhouette dresses, tie-waist shifts, and high-waisted skirts accented with signature detailing. Wu even created an exclusive muse for Target--Milu, a mischievous, illustrated black cat--that will be featured on a t-shirt, tote bag and silk scarf in the collection.

With prices ranging from $19.99 to $59.99 for apparel and $19.99 to $49.99 for handbags and scarves, it's sure to sell out quickly, so mark your calendars. This standalone, limited-edition collection will be available February 5th through March 6th, 2012 or until supplies last at most Target stores and on Target.com.

For another great collection of wearable high fashion at mass retail prices, we salute Target and Jason Wu for this impeccable, Character Approved collection. Peruse the gallery below to see what we mean.

[Images: Target]

See into the Future with High-Tech Contact Lenses

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:00:00 -0500

Remember early last year when Lady Gaga unveiled her collaboration with Polaroid that included a pair of camera glasses? It was a huge step in concepts we only dreamed about making their way to the mainstream.

Well, consider this the next generation of technological eyewear. These contact lenses, developed by engineers at the University of Washington, could send the web directly to your eyeballs. With the amount of email I get on a daily basis, I wonder if I'd ever be able to see anything else!

The flexible, bio-safe lenses contain circuits and can be easily inserted and removed from the eye just like a regular contact lens. They don't obstruct the wearer's view, either. Just imagine a world where we aren't stuck staring at screens all day long. Surf the Internet in mid-air!

This Character Approved technology can even expand to any surface--our windshields, windows, and other surfaces could become computers. I never thought I'd live to see the day when we'd be teleporting, but with each new technological breakthrough (um, hello hovercrafts) it seems there's hope!

[Image: University of Washington]

Deep in the Undercity with Katherine Boo

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Katherine Boo has dedicated her journalistic career to writing about society's disadvantaged. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for her reporting on the conditions in Washington, D.C., homes for the mentally impaired; four years later, her New Yorker feature on efforts in one Oklahoma community to encourage marriage as a path out of poverty won a National Magazine Award. Her work has also earned her a MacArthur "genius" fellowship. After years of immersing herself in America's poor communities, Boo fell in love with a man from India, and began visiting his homeland. She wanted to learn more about conditions there, but she didn't feel she was the right person to tell the story--until an accident at home reminded her that life is too short not to take the most meaningful, Character Approved risks.

To write Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Boo plunged into Annawadi, an "undercity" on the fringes of the Mumbai airport where hundreds of families live in an illegal (but barely tolerated) slum of makeshift shelters. Over more than three years, she got to know some of these families, especially the Husains. Abdul, who is somewhere between 16 and 19 ("his parents were hopeless with dates"), brings in money by salvaging recyclable garbage around the airport and its luxury hotels. When his mother, Zehruinisa, decides that she wants some improvements to their home--a shelf on the wall, ceramic tiles on the floor--it sets off a fight with her neighbor that escalates until Abdul and other members of the family are falsely accused of the woman's murder.

Boo's reporting on the Husain family's struggle for justice, and on the concurrent lives of their neighbors, reflects the stark reality of desperate poverty and political corruption that shapes Mumbai communities like Annawadi. But there are moments of hope in Behind the Beautiful Forevers, moments where, in a world where it is easiest to go along with the status quo, people still try to do the right thing. This may not be the definitive story of India's economic disparities, and it doesn't offer easy answers. What it does give us is a way to break through headlines and scattered TV images and see the people of Annawadi with a renewed empathy.

[Image: Heleen Welvaart (author photo); Chiara Goia & Alex Masi/Corbis (cover art)]

R House: Small is the Future

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:00:00 -0500

Architecture Research Office and Della Valle Bernheimer Architects are winners of a competition called From the Ground Up: Innovative Green Homes. Their project, R House, is now built, and meets the stringent German Passivhaus standards for energy conservation. We aren't talking about a LEED Silver rating here: This house only requires the energy of a hair dryer for its heating. It is also small, demonstrating another fundamental of house design: A bigger house uses more energy than a smaller house of a similar efficiency. R House shows how a small design can work, be beautiful, and barely have any carbon footprint at all. This is the future of buildings.

R House is Character Approved because it proves that cutting-edge, environmentally sustainable buildings don't need to be generic.

[Image: Arch Daily]

The Last Names

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Those of you with good memories might recall one-half of the Last Names as Justin Rice of Bishop Allen. That band released three great indie-pop records and did an EP-per-month release for all of 2006. Now he's teamed up with his wife Darby for a project that's sure to please pop purists.

There's a chance you've heard another noteworthy team-up of Justin and his wife. Darby provided vocals on "Butterfly Nets," one of Bishop Allen's most popular songs. With the Last Names, Justin and Darby have given that successful collaboration a wider range of possibilities.

Though the Last Names have yet to release a physical product, they're winning over fans quickly with the handful of original songs they've posted online. No doubt influenced by Bishop Allen's decision to keep busy in 2006 with their EP project, the Character Approved Last Names are also releasing one cover song each week for every week in 2012. So far they have done some songs closely aligned with their pop roots, but they've also done a few far from what you might expect. With 48 songs left to go, we're sure the Last Names have more surprises in store.

[Image: The Last Names]

Situation Cares... and So Do We!

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:00:00 -0500

Earlier this month, Situation Cares, the charitable arm of the theatrical and live entertainment marketing organization Situation Interactive, hosted the Casino for Cares fundraiser at Reflections Studios. The event featured casino games, live entertainment, a silent auction and more. Impressively, more than 150 leaders in the theatre and digital marketing industries were in attendance, raising money to benefit the Situation Cares/Ian Bennett Memorial Fund.

Situation Cares was formed back in 2007 in memory of former Creative Director Ian Bennett. Each year a high school student who shares Ian's passion for the arts is awarded $1,000 to help pursue their goals through the Ian Bennett/Situation Cares Memorial Fund.

Situation Cares is Character Approved for being a successful and innovative marketing organization that gives back and helps support the future of the industry in which they work. To learn more or make a tax-deductible contribution, please visit www.situationcares.org.

[Image: Situation Cares]

Charlize Theron Makes the Uncomfortable Entertaining in Young Adult

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:30:00 -0500

What do you get when you mix Up in the Air director Jason Reitman and Juno writer Diablo Cody with Academy Award-winning actress Charlize Theron? You get a recipe for one of the most uncomfortably good comedies of the season.

I have to say that I've never felt so jarred by a Character Approved Theron performance. In Young Adult, she plays novelist Mavis Gary, a fiction writer who returns to her small hometown in Minnesota to find an old flame who got away. On the surface, she seems to be the beauty queen success story. At least, that is how she sees herself.

Theron plays a character who is painfully self-absorbed. It's hard to watch without cringing, but that's because the role is so well executed. Although you may pity Mavis Gary, you will always sigh and laugh at her honest antics as she tries to win the affections of someone who is no longer interested in her.

This is one of Charlize Theron's best performances since she won the Oscar for Monster in 2004. Young Adult is in theaters now.

[Image Paramount Pictures]

The New Class: Five Designers to Watch at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:00:00 -0500

It's that time of year again, when editors prepare to hit the tents at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. While industry giants and perennial heavy-hitting favorites will be showing again, some newcomers will join them for their first showing at the tents:

Emilio Cavallini: With over 40 years in the industry, this designer has combined his love of art, culture, and design with innovation and impeccable craftsmaship for some of the most impressive legwear in the industry. To the delight of accessories editors everywhere, Cavallini will present his collection in The Box during Fashion Week.

Brandon Sun: An award-winning design student from Parsons, Sun cut his teeth after graduation by moving up the ranks at J.Mendel and Oscar de la Renta. He was responsible for revamping the fur division while at de la Renta, but he left in fall 2011 to pursue his own line of luxury fur accessories, sold at upscale retailers like Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Lorena Sarbu: Romanian-born Sarbu moved to the United States to pursue her love of design, studying at both International Academy of Design & Technology in Chicago and the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles. She launched her signature line of eveningwear in 2009 and has a red carpet following for her elegant designs, crafted from sumptuous fabrics and made more special with intricate embellishments and beautiful textures.

Haus Alkire: This design partnership between Julie Haus and Jason Alkire combines self-taught design talent with photography and art. The duo has many industry accolades to their credit--including the prestigious Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation award for Womenswear for 2012--and is showing as part of winning the W Hotels Fashion Next program.

Vantan Tokyo: This show will include the work of four designers from the Vantan Design Collective. Expect highly creative and thought-provoking creations from these chosen talents.

We wish all of the designers the best of luck and look forward to seeing their impressive collections. For showing their creative spirit to the world and for making our wardrobes even more beautiful with their creations, we salute them as Character Approved.

[Images: IMG]

1,000,000 Nerdfighters Can't Be Wrong

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Towards the end of June 2011, YA author John Green announced the title of his next novel, The Fault in Our Stars, to his online fans, known as the nerdfighters (it's complicated). In just a few hours, as he gleefully reported on the blog he shares with his brother Hank, the book had risen to the #1 spot on Amazon's bestseller list--for all books, in all categories--based solely on those fans' pre-orders for a book they then believed was nearly a year away from being released. Dutton, his publisher, quickly moved the release date up to this month... at which point it immediately became a #1 bestseller all over again.

So does The Fault in Our Stars live up to the hype? Absolutely. Green introduces readers to Hazel, a 16-year-old girl with lung cancer who reluctantly goes to a weekly support group to keep her parents happy, until she meets Augustus, a hot guy a year older who's already lost one leg to osteosarcoma but takes comfort in an existentially bleak humor that resonates with Hazel's own frustrations. She convinces him to read her favorite novel, a story about another teenage girl dying of cancer by a Dutch author named Peter Van Houten, "the only person I'd ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it's like to be dying, and (b) not have died." When the reclusive Van Houten responds to an email by saying he could only ever tell Hazel what happens to the characters in An Imperial Affliction in person, Augustus offers to use his dying-cancer-patient wish on a trip to Amsterdam. And that beautiful and horrific journey only takes us to the halfway point of the story.

Hazel has one of the most Character Approved voices you're likely to see in any novel, for readers of any age group, this year. She's caustic about the ways her cancer has prevented her from having a normal teenage life, but she's also profoundly sensitive to the effect her condition might have on the people who love her. "I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?" she tells her mother. But by opening herself up to Augustus's love, she comes to realize the futility of hiding from the world. It's not a joyous discovery; if The Fault in Our Stars has a message akin to "love means never having to say you're sorry," it's the much less sentimental "the world is not a wish-granting factory." What Hazel does with that knowledge, however, will move you long after you finish reading.

[Image: Tom Koene]

Of Montreal Brings Paranoia into Pop with Paralytic Stalks

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:00:00 -0500

If you've been making albums for over a decade and haven't made an album that's a bit challenging to your fans, you might need to rethink your writing process. Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes has more than a few "growers" under his belt, but their newest album, Paralytic Stalks, might be the band's most mind-expanding release yet.

Longtime Of Montreal fans are used to change. The group started in the mid-90s as a lo-fi indie pop group with a fetish for all things '60s. After making a few records, the music got a little more psychedelic on character-based albums like 1999's The Gay Parade and the 2001 album Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies. Then came a few bass-oriented rock albums before their big swing toward fractured, R&B-inspired dance music.

With Paralytic Stalks, Barnes dials up the paranoia and self doubt. On "Spiteful Intervention" he exclaims, "I made the one I love start crying tonight / And it felt good." It's lyrics like these that give this album a wringing-out-your-diary feel that can be difficult to hear, but you'll find it even more difficult to stop listening. After 15 years of making Character Approved music, Of Montreal has got little left to hide.

[Image: Stereogum]

The Envelope Please: This Year's Oscar Nominations

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Admit it: at some point in your life you've rehearsed a pretend Oscars acceptance speech. Well, some talented people in Hollywood with a little more potential to win one of those gold statues are practicing theirs right about now. That's because the nominees for the 84th annual Academy Awards were announced this morning.

Here are a few Character Approved nominees that we'll have our eyes on at the ceremony next month:

The Artist has been called a love letter to Hollywood, and the academy loved the movie right back. The black and white film got nominations in five categories, including Best Picture.

Another big name this morning is Brad Pitt, with his Best Actor nomination for Moneyball, one of three for the movie. And Pitt's Tree of Life got a couple of nods as well.

In other handsome-leading-man news: The Descendants landed four nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for George Clooney.

The Help also emerged as a film to watch, landing four nods.

Director Steven Spielberg will be busy on Oscar night, and so will his colleague Martin Scorcese, as both The War Horse and Hugo will be awaiting a potential Best Picture win.

One final nominee to watch: The very funny Melissa McCarthy was recognized in the Best Actress category for her hilarious work in Bridesmaids.

If you haven't seen all the movies on the list yet it's time to head to the theater, because the Oscars air on February 26. The envelope please...

[Image: Getty Images]