Rocketboom have produced a nice breakdown of the Double Rainbow video which recently became an unlikely viral sensation.
If you haven’t seen the original, it has over 9 million views on YouTube:
For Stanley Kubrick fans, this 2001 remix is especially impressive:
> Rocketboom’s Know Your Meme series
> More on the Double Rainbow at Mashable
This trailer mashup of Toy Story 3 and Inception by Mike Eisenberg of Screenrant is ingenious.
A clever video mashup of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) off and Fight Club (1999) that seems to have originated from a discussion on Metafilter.
[Via Buzzfeed]
Those clever folks at Improv Everywhere have staged a re-enactment of a scene from Star Wars featuring Princess Leia and Darth Vader on the New York City subway.
It is always interesting to observe how the public react to this kind of unexpected, live theatre. Note how many of the passengers start filming on their own cameras.
There is a behind-the-scenes feature explaining more about how they did the scene on Improv Everywhere’s website here.
Based in New York they have previously staged plenty of others like this, including one where they got around 200 people to freeze in Grand Central Station, the video of which has been viewed over 22 million times on YouTube.
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I want you to imagine that Orson Welles once had a TV chatshow in the late 1970s.
Then I want to you to get a little bit more creative and imagine that the guests on this show include Burt Reynolds, The Muppets and Angie Dickinson.
But wait. This actually happened.
This is the intro for an unaired pilot Welles did for a chat show back in 1979.
Note how he talks about the possibilities of television like someone evangelising about the Internet circa 1997.
But the really good stuff is yet to come.
Welles introduces Burt Reynolds (“I like him. I like him very much.”) and for some reason they are wearing matching red shirts and jackets (“simple, lousy coincidence!”).
Also note the unconventional format where they ditch the ‘what are you plugging’ banter and dive straight into questions from the audience, some of which prompt interesting answers.
After that we get some contributions from Fozzie Bear, Kermit the Frog and Sam The Eagle, followed by more pontificating from Welles about the nature of television:
To finish off, Welles indulges in some magic with Angie Dickinson, which may remind viewers of his film F For Fake (1973):
> Find out more about Orson Welles at Wikipedia
> The infamous frozen peas commercial featuring Welles
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This footage of Marlon Brando doing a press junket in 1965 is hilarious.
It took place at Hampshire House in New York and features him talking to a variety of journalists about Morituri, a World War II film which also starred Yul Brynner, Janet Margolin and Trevor Howard.
As the voiceover says at the beginning, the reporters ask predictable questions but he gives few predictable answers.
My guess is that he was was deeply fed up with the process but decided to have a few drinks and enjoy talking about anything but the film.
You can also check out Part 2 and Part 3.
Highlights include:
[Via Hollywood Elsewhere]
If Steve Jobs introduced the Death Star, then it really would sound like this video mash up.
The George Lucas connection here is that Jobs bought the computer animation division of Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic in 1986, renamed the new company Pixar and the rest is history.
[Link via Adam Buxton]
Is it just me, or could the tag-line for this Shrek Aero McFlurry poster be taken the wrong way?
I wonder if the Wikipedia entry for Lost answers all the questions in this College Humor video…
For their latest prank, New York based troupe Improv Everywhere have re-enacted a scene from Ghostbusters at the New York Public Library.
According to the New York Times the library approached Improv Everywhere to stage the scene in order to raise awareness about its Don’t Close the Book campaign, as the library is facing budget cuts of around $37 million.
The group have a detailed behind-the-scenes report on how they prepared and executed it all.
Fans of the original film will note that the 1984 comedy features the library in its opening scenes:
The New York-based group specialises in “scenes of chaos and joy in public places” and in the last few years have staged similar performances such as Frozen Grand Central, the Food Court Musical, and the No Pants Subway Ride.
> Improv Everywhere
> Buy the book Improv Everywhere
> New York Public Library and the Don’t Close the Book campaign
> Improv Everywhere on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
This is the funniest animal video I’ve seen in a long time.
Is there a four-word phrase that has been used in movies more often than “Get out of there!”?
[Via BuzzFeed]
Someone has done a video ‘Mexican standoff‘ between the various climactic duels in four Sergio Leone films.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly gets my vote.
I’m not really sure what to make of this bizarre Iron Man meets Dirty Dancing mash up, but it was the AC/DC music that made me laugh.
I’m not sure when Bill Murray started moonlighting as a roadie but this video from SXSW last month shows him helping out The Like and playing the tambourine before the cops show up.
[Via HM]
Someone has mashed up the infamous Christian Bale rant with that spectacularly misjudged Tiger Woods Nike advert.
[Link via BuzzFeed]
Given that we are in an election period here in the UK, when politicians say what they think the public wants to hear, this bout of truth telling from George Carlin is a breath of fresh air.
This owl looks like it’s auditioning for a remake of The Shining.
[Image Source: Flickr user SteveB]
Someone has created an amusing chart of characters based on The Big Lebowski. (Click the image to enlarge)
[Via BuzzFeed]
This video of a Chinese girl freaking out people who walk into a building reminds me a lot of Asian horror films like Ring and The Grudge.
She just stands there silently but their reaction is act like they’ve just seen a ghost.
Here is some of the worst acting of the 1980s courtesy of Ryan O’Neal in Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance.
This is William Shatner singing Elton John’s Rocket Man at the 1978 Saturn Awards.
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Producer Nicolas Chartier should have been on stage at the Kodak Theatre on Sunday night for producing The Hurt Locker, but had to make other arrangements after being banned from the Oscars.
As the race for Best Picture heated up Chartier broke Academy rules by sending out a mass email urging members to vote for his film over a certain sci-fi epic with blue aliens, saying:
“If everyone tells one or two of their friends, we will win and not a $500M film.”
Once AMPAS caught on they flipped out and demanded he send an apology to the entire Academy, which he duly did, before also banning him from the ceremony.
So as his fellow producers Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal and Greg Shapiro walked up to collect their Oscars for Best Picture, what was Chartier doing?
It turns out he was at a viewing party in Malibu which was organised by producers Lynette Howell, Mike Fleiss and WME Global chief Graham Taylor.
They even had a poster of the producer with the word ‘banned’ designed in the colours of the French flag.
When Tom Hanks announced on the Oscar stage that The Hurt Locker had won Best Picture the place erupted and Chartier was given a replica Oscar, before making an alternative acceptance speech.
Someone was smart enough to film it and post the footage online:
According to Howell, it was longer than he would have been permitted at the Kodak and after that he headed off into Hollywood to all the post Oscar parties to celebrate even further.
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If there is one image that sums up this year’s Oscar race, it is this hilarious shot of Avatar director James Cameron and The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow from last night’s ceremony.
They were once married, but contrary to a lot of lazy media coverage in the build up to the awards, remain friends and even consult each other on their respective film projects.
Cameron urged his ex-wife to do The Hurt Locker after reading the script and even screened Avatar for Bigelow several times in post production to solicit her opinion on the sci-fi blockbuster.
Also, both films were – in their different ways – about the Iraq War as Cameron pointed out in an interview with CBS recently.
Someone has also done a nice Muckety map of the connections between the two directors.
In a way, it all worked out nicely as Avatar scooped the technical awards it deserved, as well as becoming the biggest grossing film of all time.
Meanwhile The Hurt Locker went from a film that almost no major studio wanted to make or release to a Best Picture winner that also made Bigelow the first woman to get a Best Director Oscar.
Sandra Bullock is in the rare position of winning a Razzie and an Oscar in the space of 48 hours.
Last night she turned up at the Razzies to collect her award for Worst Actress, in the widely panned comedy All About Steve.
Given that she is almost certain to win the Oscar for Best Actress tonight, for her performance in The Blind Side, she was a good sport to turn up and make fun of herself.
Quick bit of trivia: Who was the last person to win a Razzie and an Oscar in the same weekend? (Clue: He has a film out very soon)
College Humour have had some fun with the posters of this year’s Best Picture nominees, including Avatar, The Blind Side, Inglourious Basterds, District 9, A Serious Man, Up in the Air and Up.
Whilst snarky, they are also very funny – especially the one for Up.
The rest can be found here.
Is this bus stop poster for Kung Fu Panda a clever piece of marketing or a creative act of vandalism?
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An amusing montage of famous actors and directors saying who they’d like to thank at the Oscars.
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Some people have got creative mashing up Disney’s Pocahonatas with James Cameron’s Avatar.
The man on the left is the co-founder & CEO of Apple and Pixar, whilst the man on the right is the director of The White Ribbon.
Both are very talented and share a penchant for black turtle necks and mean beards.
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Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich recently tweeted that he was editing the new Pixar film at 36,000 feet.
He then posted the following picture to prove it.
Tech savvy readers might like to note that he appears to be using Avid Media Composer on a MacBook Pro.
[Via Matt]
This short film by Adam Curtis recently aired on Newswipe with Charlie Brooker and puts forward the argument that we are all becoming like Richard Nixon.
Martin Scorcese and Leonardo DiCaprio were recently on the French TV show Le Grand Journal promoting Shutter Island and were asked a question (via video) by actor-director Guillaume Canet that managed to reference a famous Scorcese movie.
A bit of background: Canet worked with DiCaprio on The Beach (2000) and is married to Marion Cotillard, who stars with Leo in the upcoming Christopher Nolan thriller Inception.
[Via Hollywood Elsewhere]
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That Guy is a neat site compiling a list of character actors who you have probably seen in films.
To make the cut they must have appeared in a ‘solid number’ of movies and TV shows, preferably 75 movies/series and 100 TV guest appearances.
Bonus points go to those that have ‘non-recurring roles in multiple hit movies’ or ‘guest appearances on popular TV shows’.
Traits of these character actors usually mean that they:
[Via Metafilter]
I think it is fair to say that too many horror films have used the ‘mirror scare‘ cliché.
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