Harry Allen Pig Bank

by Josh Rubin

These 100% resin money-banks were cast from a demised piglet (we're assured it died of natural causes)! A large cork stopper under the belly should holds all the treasure in. Available in fuscia or white. The Pig Bank is part of Reality, the first series of Harry Allen Products that consists of objects whose form is 'sampled' from existing sources. Literal, ironic, intelligent and functional!

$120, Buy it at BASE

Mouse Skull Necklace

by Josh Rubin

Skulls might be last year's thing but to me they transcend fad, and I know I'm not alone. This little mouse skull is made of oxidized silver and cast from a found original. Crafted in Brooklyn by Andrea Gentl and India d'Arthenay of Thorn, it comes on a 22" chain.

It's $218 from Active Endeavors, but if you enter the coupon code: COOLHUNTING you'll get 20% off this or anything else they're selling.

Biohazard Alien Detection Watch

by Watchismo

Tokyoflash has always brought us great gadget watches flexing new time-telling muscles, but this time, you'll rip flesh trying to determine how late you are. The all-stainless steel Biohazard Alien Detection Watch has an advanced multi-color LCD display. The top row has 12 helix bars, each lit for the hours of the day, the bottom row of blue blocks represent five minute increments, green are one minute each and, more than just a gimmick, the animated "Alien DNA" calculation in the middle determines the date by the percentage shown (12.04% = December 4th). With free shipping, the ¥15900 price converts to approx $138 US. Fun for the whole spacefleet!

Musicovery

by Evan Orensten

Like a customized online radio, Musicovery is a free flash-based site streaming a playlist of music dictated by an easily navigable set of criteria that the user chooses. Animated star-like graphics, in colors that correspond to genre, map the current lineup and an intuitive sidebar enables quick selection of different criteria. Organized into 18 genres, you can eliminate types you don't like, choose between hits, non-hits and "discovery," pinpoint mood and dance factors on a matrix, and define by era. Though the sound quality isn't much better than FM, for €2 monthly you can get CD quality.

via Thrillist and Josh Spear

Coldcut Christmas Message

by SummerSeventySix

Premiered by the BBC's Culture Show in the U.K. over the weekend, Coldcut have applied their cut-and-paste ethic to critique George W. Bush's environmental policy with devastating effect. Words spoken by the President have been manipulated to make it appear like he's crooning along to "White Christmas," but it's juxtaposed with images that leave you in no doubt what Coldcut think. As the program's movie critic Mark Kermode says, it does more in two minutes than Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth managed in two hours.

Watch it here.

Three Gift-Worthy T-Shirts

by Letizia Rossi

Everyone has a T-shirt wearer on their gift list. These picks combine eye-catching original design with high-quality cotton shirts for tees a step above vintage reproductions and wink-wink-nudge-nudge one-liners.

This mesmerizing Dots Tee (pictured left) is made by Brooklyn based T-shirt designers Rise and Fall. The cotton T-shirts are hand-printed and custom-dyed making each one unique. Available for $38 from Urban Outfitters.

The Elio-Tree T (pictured center) has a asymmetrical screen-printed design inspired by traditional Japanese graphics. The 100% cotton T-shirt is available in women's small, medium and large online for £23 from More T Vicar.

Momimomi, one of our favorite tee companies that aims to treat the t-shirt "as a billboard for the body, not the other way around" is offering a new monthly T-shirt subscriptions service that they're calling Tea Party. Subscribers will receive a original custom-dyed silkscreened t-shirt in the mail once a month. Subcriptions are available for 3 months ($120), 6 months ($210) or 12 months ($360).

Second Run DVD

by Letizia Rossi

Issuing their first releases little more than a year ago, the U.K.-based Second Run DVD has rapidly become the most exciting label around. Eschewing the canonical focus of industry giants like Criterion, in just fifteen months this upstart company has managed to release a slew of esoteric but essential works from the around the world. They’re shepherds of the under-represented, releasing films not based on their sales potential, but because they love them.

A sampling of their most exciting releases includes:
• Nighthawks (1978)—the first British film to accurately depict the life of a gay man in London.
• Portrait of Jason (1967)—a confessional conversation with an African-American gay hustler by avant-garde filmmaker Shirley Clarke.
• Avenge but one of my two eyes (2005)—a controversial documentary the cycles of violence surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian situation today.
• Blissfully Yours (2002)—the resplendent 2002 feature from Thai-phenom Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Best of all, they’ve tied together a wildly varying group of films by embracing a cohesive aesthetic for the packaging of all their releases. The covers are generally composed of an emblematic still from the film and a generous area of stark white space. The titles are always rendered in a vibrant solid color, that same color running down the case’s spine, giving them a sharp, singular look when lined up on your shelves.

Available from Amazon U.K., these are the DVDs that will charm any film-love on your list.

By Michael Talbott