Check this out:
I don't know who put that together, but I thank them on behalf of the internet. Also, bear in mind that the technology we use in films nowadays is a relatively recent development. Given that computing power doubles every year, I see no reason we can't climb out of the Uncanny Valley within the next three or four years. (Then the tech will keep growing until we have CGI characters who look more real than you.)
This is my new favorite thing. It's a video of previously recorded interviews with Ryan Larkin, a Canadian animator who is going on the ever-expanding "My Heroes" list. Enjoy. (Watch it full-screen and high quality, if possible. You'll thank me.)
Oh, I almost forgot this; a link to "Walking", Larkin's 1968 Oscar-nominated short.
Those of you unfamiliar with the Afro Samurai franchise, prepare to have your minds blown. There is apparently a manga series in which a man with an improbably large afro moves at impossible speeds in order to kill robot clones of themselves. This already awesome concept got a whole lot awesomer in 2007, when Afro Samurai made the leap to the screen with one of the finest anime I've had the pleasure to watch. (Bebop still wins.) The five-episode miniseries featured music composed by The Wu-Tang Clan's RZA. Yes, the RZA. Even better, the man who lent his voice to the titular* character for the English dub (which is surprisingly good) was none other than Samuel L. Jackson, which just about makes this whole thing the third most awesome thing on Earth. Obviously, the number one spot is occupied by another television show (see above), but the second spot is reserved for the Afro Samurai full length affair released earlier this year, Afro Samurai: Resurrection. The film followed the events of the anime, but with a bigger budget, tighter animation and far more resurrection than you would expect, even for a movie with the word "resurrection" in the title. But I know how hard it is to understand a visual phenom through words alone. Allow me to play you out.
*Seriously. The main character's name is "Afro Samurai". It's unfortunate.
EDIT: I just found these links. They look pretty good. Also, I think you should all know that in my YouTube page's "Videos Currently Being Watched" box, I see not one, but TWO videos claiming to have captured the ghost of Michael Jackson.
Earlier today, whilst whiling away the hours in the normal way - looking up jazz musicians and making fun of their names (dude's name is Bix) - I stumbled onto a lesser known artist who deserves some serious celebration. Rufus Harley is the world's only jazz bagpiper. No joke. While having a comparatively small catalogue of music, he has left an indelible mark on the city of Philadelphia, where he was celebrated as a cultural icon.
If you want more Rufus (and who wouldn't?) you can check out this review page. It has some radio.blog tracks on there.
DISCLAIMER: Not the Bosniak massacre.
It is, however, something to completely destroy any semblance of sanity you thought you might've had. As far as I can tell, Nanny Lynn's animated work of unparalleled genius was discovered in a video reproduction store. Its target audience appears to be children, but no child with a shred of self-preservation would find this entertaining in any way:
So, what do you think?
P.S.: I first found this mentioned on a site that sells DVDs of what the trash cinema elite might call "badfilm". Srebrenica comes packaged with a similarly animated pornographic short called "Rumpenstein's Monster" and a collection of out-of-context freezeframe endings from CHiPs. I'd recommend pretty much anything there.
This is Madeleine Peyroux, a gal I strongly suggest you check out. Elliott Smith fans should be happy with the cover.
If you ever had any reason to think that the frontman of KISS wasn't a complete ass, allow me to change your mind. Download the MP3 of his interview here. Trust me on this, you'll want to listen to it. It's almost as good as the infamous Billy Bob Thornton interview for Q Radio:
If you cringe at episodes of The Office, watch that. He puts Michael Scott to shame.
Among the detritus of late-night basic cable dreck during the Nineties, one might have stumbled across a great little program entitled "Mystery Science Theatre 3000". MST3K was a show in which a man, accompanied by his two robot friends, is periodically subjected to terrible B-movies. His torturers are incompetently evil doctors (or mothers of said doctors, in later seasons) whose motives in this endeavor are mysterious. Do they think the movies will drive this man insane? Who knows? Regardless of how A-W-E-S-O-M-E that premise sounds on it's own, any sane viewer will realize that the flimsy premise is covering for a show that allows audiences to enjoy terrible B-movies from throughout history, accompanied by the three wisecracking protagonists, who lambast the film from their seats. I mentioned them before, you know. The link includes a full episode, so if my description doesn't suffice, you can watch "Space Mutiny" to get the idea.
Anyway, that show ended over ten years ago. Fortunately for us, the genius minds behind the show continued to do what they do best. They started RiffTrax, where they sell feature-length DVD commentaries that sync up to movies people already own. The Dark Knight, The Happening, Pirates Of The Caribbean, I Am Legend, Transformers, and dozens more. It actually doesn't matter if the movie is good or bad, it just gets better when these guys get a hold of it.
There are many ways one might describe Crispin Glover. Some would describe him as "Who?" or perhaps "That dude in Willard? I didn't see it, but he's a weird guy, so... it was probably weird." And then there's the tiniest fraction of you who are like, "Hell yeah, Crispin Glover." I am now one of the latter. And you can too. Just enjoy this:
In the event that you did NOT like the above, then I advise you leave this establishment. Because this... this is AWESOME.
The song is "Rubin & Ed," and was, of course, written and performed by Crispin himself.
Exactly what it sounds like. Easily the most impressive non-studio stop-motion animation I've ever seen (if that makes sense).
There have been many suggestions as to what may constitute the saddest thing. As an exercise, I asked many of my friends, and a young woman as kind-hearted as any I've met suggested that the saddest thing was a three-year-old girl with no arms, falling off a swing on a lonely hilltop. Needless to say, the game ended shortly thereafter. Clearly there was no topping her response; there was also the frightening quickness and clarity with which the answer came to her mind.
On a whim, I wondered what the internet had to say on the subject, and with the help of my friend Google, I found The Saddest Thing, an online user-generated pit of despair. Check out the Saddest Of Them All. These are the ones that were voted saddest, and they are SAD, people. Fun stuff. These are found among the much more numerous sad-but-still-sorta-funny things, like this story, or this picture:*
The brutally honest webcomic Achewood has an excellent (read: heart-shattering) suggestion to add at this point:
(click to enlarge)
I, sadly, do not have a definitive answer to offer you. Perhaps one day I'll stumble upon something so sad I instantly fall into a coma from how bummed out I'll be, and then I'll know. Until then, dear readers, I remind you that you're free to comment below with your contribution to this ongoing dialogue. I would also implore you to consider this video in your own deliberations.
*I know EXACTLY where he got that photo. This spectacular website has been a favorite of mine for a while now.
Okay, so watch this:
If YouTube is to be believed, Fred Astaire once called that the greatest example of tap dance ever caught on film. If that were so, on would have to wonder if he ever saw the dance trio Tip, Tap & Toe in the movie Pardon My Sarong:
First things first. If any of you see someone wearing this Sargon Ivy cap, I am telling you that it's alright to hit them as hard as you can. Here's a photo of it.
Just to be clear, that's an ivy cap with an embroidered dagger on it. The dagger is intricate and fancy, and lies broken amongst the lilies. It is meant as a tribute to Sargon, a Mesopotamian king who seems kind of sick and twisted and cruel. I mean, this is a guy who "marched to Kazallu and turned Kazallu into a ruin heap, so that there was not even a perch for a bird left." I get angry at places with stupid gimmicky town names as well, but I don't flip out and torch the place. And if I did, I wouldn't want to be memorialized on a hat whose target demographic would be purchasing them for "irony".
ANYWAY! Kutiman is a DJ, musician, producer, composer, animator, and, what the hell, artist. He's been the recipient of some fairly high praise of late, with the release of "ThruYou", an album composed entirely of remixed YouTube videos. This has garnered some minor nerdy applause, but has also revealed this Israeli musician's oeuvre to US audiences.
That's the first track off of the album, "The Mother Of All Funk Chords". If you liked it (you should have), you can watch the rest on the album's website here. Enjoy.
Hey gang! Great news; evidently Cookie Monster has downplayed his pro-vegetable stance, the one adopted in 2006 after parent watchdog groups got all "concerned" about "childhood obesity". Apparently, ratings plummeted and Cookie Monster fell back off the wagon. I can find no evidence to either confirm or deny this baseless rumor, but I heard it from someone who probably wouldn't lie to me, so just trust me here.
For the past few days, I've been stuck on these parodies of the famous "I'm a Mac"/"I'm a PC" commercials. These are from the 2007 season, when Spiderman 3, Superman Returns, and Batman Begins were all relative newcomers. Enjoy.
These are all from the 2008 summer season, which saw the release of Iron Man and The Dark Knight. These skits also tend to be better in quality. If anything, watch these.
Among the numerous new artists I find every week or so, there is sometimes the occasional performer that I will keep coming back to. The ones I'll still be listening to in a year. Over the past few weeks, I've learned to love Andrew Bird. I mentioned him in passing twice before; the first time being a link to a zeusaphone playing "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left" (video, sadly, now removed), and the second time being a brief intro to my post on sand art. Well, now I've heard more than one song by the guy. In fact, I've heard almost all of his albums. And you can too.
His 1996 album Music Of Hair is a good deal different from the rest of his oeuvre. In it, he truly shines as a violinist (which is his whole thing). It's a slightly funky mix of bluegrassy, almost-Irish sounding melodies, which is a little off-putting. However, if you're going to put in the effort, I would recommend the tracks "Ambivalence Waltz", "Oh So Insistent", and "Ratitat/Peter's Wolf/Oblivious Reel". Especially "Oh So Insistent". It's divided into an A section and a B section, where the A section reminds me of Firefly and the B section is just awesome. You may also notice that none of the recommended tracks have vocals. That's because his 1996 vocals are weird and creepy.
Next up, his 2003 album Weather Systems. I only link to it out of some sense of continuity, because I honestly don't really like any of the tracks. If I must choose a few, let them be the songs "I" and "Skin", if only to serve as some form of groundwork for his later, better stuff (you'll see).
His next album, 2005's The Mysterious Production Of Eggs is my favorite of his albums.This is because it contains the tracks "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left", "Fake Palindromes", "Measuring Cups", "Opposite Day", "Skin Is, My" (the sequel to "Skin"), and "MX Missiles". They're all... they're just great.
Unfortunately, his most recent album, 2007's Armchair Apocrypha, really only has one good track, nowhere near the great selection on his last album. That track is "Imitosis" and it really is one of his best. It's a musical sequel to Weather System's "I" and is the only Andrew Bird song to have its own music video. So, that's pretty good.
Other than that, the only things left to talk about are his Fingerlings albums. That's all his live stuff: Fingerlings, Fingerlings 2 and Fingerlings 3. In many cases, the live stuff is better, but in many more cases, they're worse. Try "Gotholympians", "Sweetbreads", "The Water Jet Cilice", and his live redition of "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left". Fingerlings 2 is a Rapidshare link, sorry. From that, I'd really only recommend "Banking On A Myth", but you have to download it all. Enjoy.
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