And by thriller, I don't mean a fast-pasted, bad acting film genre. I'm talking the leather clad, hip gyrating, lurking in the shadows of the night Michael Jackson THRILLER!
I wonder what the lyrics to this song are? Is it Jackson or something different entirely.
But being an impressionable child of the 80's, I watched MJ's Thriller ten times over and couldn't resist miming his outrageous dance moves at the next Halloween Bash.
The dance moves and the crowd of zombie followers is almost a DEAD match to the video that scared that pants off me as a child. Maybe I could tell then that one day MJ would grow up to be the monster that he portries in his video.
This Bollywood version is equally as fantastic. I love how the dance adapts to the cultural dance style of India rather than exactly coping the MJ moves.
And the face on this Bollywood stud is frightening...maybe he did learn something from MJ after all.
Halloween is almost here. Check out one this unreleased Tim Burton short which happens to be one of my favorites.
I love this dark poetic piece. Created in 1982, there is something about it that reminds me of every film that Burton has ever has ever done.
Excluding the obvious style of claymation that Burton has crafted and made his own, there are brief moment when you giggle to yourself because an image reminds you of something, that you've seen some where, oh wait...it was in another Burton movie.
The part when Vincent taps his fingers reminds me of Edward Scissorhands and when I saw the smoke in the alley, my anxious mind was waiting for Catwoman to creep out.
I'm a big fan of Poe and Burton and the combination of the two (which I hear maybe happening again in the near future...let me guess, Johnny Depp?)
Another reason why I am enamored by this short is because the over imagination of a small child and clashed with a grim and almost violent twist. I was never that child, but knew a few who fit the character.
It's not easy being vampire pimp. This is actually a party invite for a Birthday Bash I went to a few weeks ago, but I love the vid and it makes me excited for Halloween.
A true tale about the dark creators that lurk in the night. My first thought, this dude looks like Christian Bale. And in this amazing vamp pad, he might as well be.
I may have watched this vid about a half dozen times since the party to get me in the mood for Halloween. And let it be known that being from Massachusetts, I take the holiday's cross dressing and ghost scaring seriously. People have died over this stuff.
When the hunky vamp pulls the fake vamp teeth out of his pocket, I almost died. A subtle spoof on "protection," he converts his hot lady friend for some all-out sloppy smooching. I could go on for another graph or so about the numorous reason that I love this video, but since I actually know these guys, I'm both partial and slightly nervous of them knowing my twisted inner thoughts.
I hear that originally there was a three in a half minute version that was just as spooktacular. I'm trying to convince them to let me have a sneak peek at the unreleased version. Love these guys! Please comment and tell me what you think!
This short from 2002 has been circulating the web for some time, but I love it.
I am a sucker for expressions…whether little kids, pets, or Garbo. I feel like there is something powerful in an unpainted stare or the explosive transformation of the cheeks and eyes when you laugh. For some equally captivating reason, having a notepad for a face makes it possible to convey the same meaning with just a few squiggles.
Tim and Tom are two little men (whose faces are in fact notepads!) trying to keep in touch each other. But the Creator (intended as the one who created them) tries very hard to interfere.
The animation overall is very polished and seemless yet the faces of these two men are simple but expressionistic. As a viewer you almost trust that each expression is planned to be meaningful, rather than preconcieved or unconscious.
I love when he uses the back side of his face to show the lightbulb. And the part where all of the scraps of paper are on the floor. Its almost like he was writing a novel (on the pad that is his face) and couldn't quite get the right word. I am personally a huge fan of post it, my favorite being the really small one's that can only fit about 15 words in pale muted colors.
After watching this short, I almost want to make a roll of simple Felicia faces sketched on post-its and display them on the back of the computer to show how I am feeling. Like today would be a focused with a dash of eager. We'll see how this turns out....
This PSA sounds like it straight of of Jack Black's Tenecious D album, all it needs are some repetative G-tar cords to beef up the background.
Speaking of background, what is my dear friend Jack doing in this vid? Did he join the Union Grip's department (these are the guys who help adjust the lighting and mount stuff to well stuff...its sort of hard to define, but they are the meat of the set and the electricians are the potatoes. Together they make people and places look pretty and well light.)I was so distracted by the c-stand and flags that I couldn't quite focus on what Jack was saying. Flags...maybe thats it, pirate ships have flags maybe some one's off-sided humor thought it would be funny to make a obsure industry joke. Not so funny.
Don't be a douche, your a rock star turned actor Jack, and wouldn't make it a day as a grip or a pirate. Nice try tough, and I love the reading rainbow-esc star at the end.
I fell like this video by Okkervil River doesn’t match the song. Watching it several times, I took a moment to appreciate each part separately.
This video is trying to take two artistic mediums and throw them in a blender; instead of Margaritas they got and chunky clumps of paint trying desperately to attach to its favorite cord.
Refusing to give up on the video itself, I tuned out the song and played this video to several tracks in my music library. If you ignore the lipsynch and the band gratuitously appearing in the wilderness, the best match visual/audio match I could find was with “Free Until They Cut Me Down” by Iron and Wine.
Still not entirely satisfied I closed my eyes, listened to the song and visualized each idea. I can see where the creative content for this video may have stemmed from, but I fell like it would have been far more effective using black and white with a gritty texture, combining static landscapes with intimate close-Ups. Frantically lost with nowhere to turn, haunted by deamons while looking for some one to free you from the monster you hide inside. Heavy stuff. I like the song but I think they should give this video another go.
Test it out with your music library and tell me what you think...
This is why McDonald's gives out toys and has the bright, colorful play gyms...so that you always remember how simple life was at age 5 when you were climbing up the slide, covered in chocolate milkshake.
The younger cuter version of myself used to love going and getting it a Chicken McNugget Happy Meal. The fact that my mom didn't want us to make a habit of it made the whole experience even better. McDonalds was a "special treat" only to be allowed when on the run or when my dad was out of town and my mom didn't want to cook.
As a child, there was never a care in the world when you trusted that clown and dined-in at the "golden arches".
I feel like this commercial capitalizes on the innocences of youth and the simplicity of life as seen by the eyes of naive children. But, I love it anyway. The image of one's inner child crawling out of his or her body is amazing. Plus,kids acting like grown-ups are always pretty darn cute.
Mah-mah... I get gitty over anything that uses "mah" in place of a boring or aggitating voice. Ever since I first heard the repeated trombone riff as the voice of the teacher in Charlie Brown, I realized that "mah" is probually one of the most brilant sound effects ever.
Some times, you just dont care to think up the most mundane or annoying thing for a character to say. And even if you did take the time to think it up, no one would want to hear your brillant attempt at immitating everyday life.
Besides the fantastic addition of an aggitating femme, this Real Audio clip takes an actual voice session with Academy Award-winning Americanactor, Jack Palance. Best known for playing the characters of Curly and Duke in the City Slickers movies, Palance is also one of the the most sinister cinematic villains of 1950s.
A characture of a not-so-uncommon moment in time, when some one may have wanted to slap this man for being so self-serving, animator Russell Arch brings Palance to life with texture and squiggles.
There is a certain vibe of calmness and history that inhabits the park. It’s a cultural gem that unites countries and communities.
Sitting in the round theatre on a hot summer day, the breeze lingers in the open space and people gather. Dressed in light layers, people from different neighborhoods, countries, and backgrounds sprawl like chameleons across the cement and stone fixtures.
For me, Washington Square Park is a place to be free. Students, teachers, and families with children and dogs gather to sing, eat lunch, talk with complete strangers.
As a student of NYU, I would often sit under a tree and have class, read books, discuss poetry and sociology. It was a place to stroll, not power walk or run to your next appointment. It is where I stood and watched the towers engulf with flames and fall.
The Village, or the area of lower Manhattan that lives between 14th Street and Houston, has been gentrified with big business and new “projects” that are slowly killing the passion and culture of this unique neighborhood. Projects, such as the one described in this video, are taking away art, history and culture of the Village and replacing it with cold, corporate shops and landmarks.
Save our park, a landmark that belongs to not only New York but the world. Living on the other side of the country, I think that any one who has ever stepped foot in its stone should speak up and how important a place is to keep alive. It as a little piece of Paris with hints of Rome and Madrid. It is a place of revolution and change. It is a place that deserves to be protected and the voices of the people need to be heard.
A cohesive, perverted Space Ghost, that has almost nothing to do with the news.
It looks like the creators of the Ambiguously Gay Duo may have a new cult hit with Steven Colbert's Alpha Squad Seven: The New Tek Jansen Adventure. Even I am mildly obsessed. A visual comic strip, Tek is like a big hunk of brownie in your double fudge ice cream, a sinfully guilty pleasure.
This is the third piece of the Tek Jansen epic. After airing some time last week, The Colbert Report episode re-run last night.
Though this new Tek episode continues to provide dry and overly sexualy humor, the hightlight for me was George Lucas in the studio watching the cartoon space spoof. After losing the Steven Colbert's Green Screen Challenge, Lucas stayed as a guest on the news show. Watching George Lucas watching anmiated space drama, very entertaining.
I'm personally not a fan of Dick's humor and after the William Shatner Roast, I felt like much of his audience may have tired of the puns on his open bi-sexuality. But, this video clip is actually pretty clever. It would be even more so if Jay Leno hadn't spoofed the Audrey Hepburn Gap skinny black pant commercial on The Tonight Show.
If you are unfamiliar with the original Gap advertisement, I suggest reading Adfreak's commentary on the campaign:
a Funny Face-era Audrey Hepburn dancing to AC/DC’s “Back in Black”? The new commercial, which landed in my e-mail box over night, is meant to relaunch Gap’s skinny black pant, according to creative director Trey Laird, who talks about the ad in this video on the Gap site. While I get the point, there’s something so discordant about Angus Young teamed with Audrey Hepburn.
After “Fox New firecracker” Michelle Malkin spoke out to the creators and community of YouTube in a video post, addressing to issue of content censorship of her “conservative” videos, the topic has become widely discussed.
The YouTube user agreement forbids users from submitting material that is “unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or encourages conduct that would be considered a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, violate any law, or is otherwise inappropriate.” And incase a video slips by the eyes of the company's seventy employees, YouTube allows users to flag videos that they feel are inappropriate. Some users of the site, mostly those who have been victims of censorship themselves, find the practice unnessecary.
YouTube is not the first place to implement “unnecessary” censorship. This Censorship Video posted by headbanger6313 is a brief visual history of media censorship. Such mediums as cartoons, music videos, and album covers have been banning content for decades due to violence, sexual content, and references tragedy and sensitive world events. For more information on YouTube censorship and Malkin's video, check out this New York Times article and Virginia Heffernan's Screens blog.
In my media savvy mind, this video from The Daily Show last night proves Indiana University's recent study.
Julia R. Fox, assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University, recently conducted a study that found The Daily Show to be “as substantive as network news.”
"Our findings should allay at least some of the concerns about the growing reliance on this non-traditional source of political information, as it is just as substantive as the source that Americans have relied upon for decades.
The analysis was run again using the half-hour program, rather than the story, as the unit of analysis, and Fox still found no significant differences in substance. The study does not address differences in the ways viewers of both programs process and remember political information or the differences in tone between them.
"It is clearly a humor show, first and foremost," Fox said of Stewart's program. "But there is some substance on there, and in some cases, like John Edwards announcing his candidacy, the news is made on the show. You have real newsmakers coming on, and yes, sometimes the banter and questions get a little silly, but there is also substantive dialogue going on … It's a legitimate source of news."
With no analysis to back my addiction, I have been relying on Stewart as a primary news source for at least a year. I think I learned more from Stewart coverage of the CNN reports on North Korea's reported nuclear weapons test than I would have from the clips themselves. And as an added bonus, it its pretty darn funny. I almost fell out of my chair. Don't believe me? Just ask the Arrowhead delivery man who watched me laugh so hard I could barely breath.
The Nursery is a collective of young animators, filmmakers, writers, and illustrators devoted to creating fresh, edgy entertainment for your enjoyment.
Predators of the (Urban) Sprawl is a crude yet funky look at hipsters in the city. Now in their third episode, Predators takes issues that are commonplace to city dwellers and transform them into animated vignettes.
In this episode,
Life in the Sprawl heats up as summer temperatures soar and brainless hipsters take to the streets for relief. There is danger in them hoods hater: QuarterWatersaurs!
As a former New Yorker, I must say that Predators III perfectly present summers in the City when the heat becomes stifling, oxygen feels slimy, and the brain starts hallucinating.
You can find more Predators of the Urban Sprawl on the Nursery’s YouTube channel and their website. Here’s a Behind the Scenes video created by The Nursery.
An NYU student film by Martin Scorsese titled What's A Nice Girl Like You Doing In a Place Like This?
You would think being a former student of the NYU film department, I would have seen this brillant little number. (Alex tells me that she had seen it the first week of film school; us Cinema Studies folks missed out) Instead, I found the early cinematic works of Mr. Scorsese posted to The Little Round-Headed Boy's blog. He called the short film:
a mini-masterpiece. It's a comic autobiography of Algernon, a cheery Brit who comes to the big city as a writer and tries to discover who he is through a series of misadventures. It's full of witty comic touches, visually inventive montages and one shadowy character who reminds you of the Mobsters who would inform his later films.
A big fan of Scorcese, I have to agree with the Little Round Headed Boy. His early work shows growth and potential. The writing, the music, the shadows, the slow pacing, are all unmistakeable Scorcese. I just can't look away.
Maybe this YouTube capture of Marty's early works will pump me up for the several hours that l am about to commit to see The Departed in theatres. Pretty sure it will be worth it!
The Muppet Show meets JibJab, the Moogie show offers a virtual escape by combining current political figures with sketch comedy.
I came across The Moogie Show when it was first introduced to Youtube about a month ago. The opening is what you would expect of toddler’s educational program and then introduces the to a crude and “bovine ball breaker”.
With only 5,000 views, the channel isn’t hugely popular, yet I think there is unique and inventive about this personified hand puppet.
In his short-lived career, Moogie has also interviewed Osama Bin Laden and Ahmadinejad. In this episode, the cuddly cow who asks hard-hitting questions sits down with an Elvis-impersonating King Jong Il. Watch as he uncovers hidden secrets about the Supreme Leader of North Korea!
This video adds an unexpected twist on the common "what did I do last night?" crawling out of bed scenerio.
I swear, nothing makes me more uncomfortable than seeing a man coming to terms with his own mistakes. There is no happy ending or needless reality in this video clip.
It is just a small glimpse into denial. It's the moment you wake up and realize that the life you are living is so unfamiliar to you that you just need to pick up your pants and run away.
If this bloke looks somewhat familiar, you may have realized that he is Brit. actor Nick Frost. A friend and frequent co-star of Simon Pegg, Frost appeared as his on-screen best friend in my favorite film to be released in the past three years, Shaun of the Dead. The zany zombie feature is comedic genius. I highly recommend that anyone who hasn't seen it should go to the nearest video store or move it up to the top of your Netflick’s list.
Much like the answers in the back of a Where’s Waldo puzzle, this video highlights and exposes Alfred Hitchcock infamous cameo appearances.
Set to the music in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, this video is a friendly reminder of the many historic and memorable films created by auteur, Alfred Hitchcock. Using DVD’s of the feature length films, the video creator strings together the title cards and cameo's of Alfred Hitchcock.
The creator notes on his YouTube post that some of Hitchcock’s cameo appearances are missing: Easy Virtue (1927), Blackmail (1929), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Spellbound (1945), The Paradine Case (1947) and Under Capricorn (1949).
I have seen almost all of Hitchcock’s films, yet I am always so absorbed by the plot and the numerous details that I never focused entirely on his cameos. My favorite appearance has always been Lifeboat when Hitchcock is featured as a fat guy in a weight loss ad on the back page of the newspaper, the image created from his shadow in The Wrong Man wins my aethestic tastes.
In my opinion, The Back to the Future Trilogy is one of the three most recognizable cultural classic film series, the others being Indiana Jones and Star Wars.
With no snakes or intergalactic wars, the enemy or dramatic dilemma in Back to the Future is accidentally changing the Future, losing time, and Biff.
Playing a school bully with cronies in tow, Tom Wilson’s character tries to steal Lorraine (Marty’s mother) from his father and threatens the main character’s entire existence.
With no masks or face altering make-up in his Role as Biff, Tom Wilson still looks like a slightly older, not so mean, version of his classic character. In this comedy sketch that is currently topping the highest ranked and most watched videos on YouTube, Wilson jokes about his life after the "I love the 80's" classic film.
With life so consumed by professionalism, busy schedules, firm hand shakes and an affirming nod, I have noticed increasingly less social interaction between myself and those I encounter in my every day life.
It is easy to ignore one’s lack human contact especially in a big city that surrounds you with similar unaffectionate people.
Free Hugs is a real story of Juan Mann, whose sole mission was to reach out and hug a stranger to brighten up their lives. Instead of offering money or advice, Mann targeted those in need of affection. Such unsolicited affections may be prejudged and misunderstood in a society full of paranoia and mistrust.
Many, including myself, would fall to scheptism upon the idea of welcoming the arms some a stranger on the street. Who is this guy? What does he expect in return? Who else besides some “sicko” would spend their time donating hugs to people they have never seen before and may never see again? I think that for this reason, the callous and mistrust of society, free hugs were banned.
Featuring music by the Sick Puppies (sort of ironic that the band would be called this), Mann proves that a hug can be a sign of affection, welcome, or the willingness to accept people for their similarities and differences. The campaign for Free Hugs has become popular on several user-generated sites to become the most watched videos currently on the web.
