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Lorde debuts gorgeous video for 'Mockingjay' single 'Yellow Flicker Beat'

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Do you remember how you celebrated your 18th birthday? Lorde marked hers by releasing the video for the first single from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 soundtrack. Sure beats doing acid at Disney World while the Goo Goo Dolls played.

Lorde was tasked with curating the soundtrack for the latest installment of the popular movie franchise, and “Yellow Flicker Beat” is the first offering. She released the single back in September, and we got a taste of the song in an official Mockingjay trailer last month. The Hunger Games marketing machine knows how to ramp up anticipation, and the video is yet another pulse-quickener for fans. Also, Lorde’s outfits are on point.

In a post on her Tumblr, Lorde shared her thoughts on the video 10 seconds into her 18th birthday:

when i was dreaming it up, i wasn’t thinking too hard about story or a specific narrative, more a mood; a harsh, crackling heat. yellow flicker beat is about katniss realizing that things have crossed a line, about being pushed to the edge and right over it. my character in this video, whether she’s weaving her way through a decadent ballroom, hiding out in a grimy, neon-lit motel room (her hair ever-so-slightly dishevelled), or waiting in the night for her bus to come dressed in her whitest clothes, is a shapeshifter, full of intensity and impulse, kind of like katniss. whether she’s in a small space or a cavernous one, she’s fiery. i don’t really know what i’m trying to explain to you here, but don’t read the video like a story, just let it take you somewhere.

The movie finally hits theaters Nov. 21.

H/T Pitchfork | Photo via okalkavan/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0) and screengrab via LordeVEVO/YouTube | Remix by Fernando Alfonso III


A behind-the-scenes look at OK Go's drone-assisted music video

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The release of an OK Go video has now become a cultural event, and rightly so. They’re made to go viral, to get the viewer looped into their elaborate mousetraps.

The band is once again inviting us to go down the rabbit hole, with a behind-the-scenes look at their latest video, “I Won’t Let You Down,” which was shot in Japan. Band members Tim Nordwind and Damian Kulash explained how their Honda “personal mobility” devices, which are used in the choreographed scenes, can be activated through telepathy (Kulash calls it “the future chair”), and how the Busby Berkeley-inspired aerial scenes were shot with drones.

The interview also gives you a sense of how much work goes into each video, and how the elements often work against them during shoots. We just really want one of those future chairs now.

Screengrab via OK Go/YouTube

The inside story on Beyoncé's social media strategy

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‘Yoncé might be on everyone’s mouth like liquor, but if there’s one place the pop diva isn’t, it’s Twitter. Though the powerhouse entertainer has amassed a whopping 13.7 million followers since joining the site in April 2009, she’s only tweeted eight times, with the last dispatch in August of 2013.

So what are we to make of Beyoncé’s lack of presence on Twitter? Musically’s Stuart Dredge got to the bottom of the perplexing Twitter silence thanks to an interview with the head of digital strategy for the singer’s management, Parkwood Entertainment, at a the Web Summit Conference in Dublin.

Lauren Wirtzer-Seawood set the record straight as to why the artist eschews the 140-character social media platform for other means of communication.

We don’t use Twitter at all. It is a personal choice. I think as an artist, Beyoncé really prefers to communicate in images. It’s very hard to say what you want to say in 140 characters. This is just a personal preference to her. But also the Twitter channels are so crowded: It’s a different kind of experience that the fan has.

Yet, what the singer lacks in tweets, she makes up for in Instagram posts. “Instagram is something that Beyoncé most of the time uses directly herself: she posts pictures,” Wirtzer-Seawood told Dredge. “It’s her way of communicating to fans a little bit of what her personal life is like.”

Of course that means of communication might be a bit altered at times, with the singer sparking a thigh gap controversy after posting an image of herself to the app in April with what appeared to be photoshopped thighs. Regardless, we’ll take Beyoncé any way we can have her, including following her back to Myspace if that’s what Bey dictates.

H/T Mediabistro | Photo via caotiquemind/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Seth MacFarlane surprises Milwaukee piano bar with a Sinatra cover

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A famous guy walks in to a bar and sings a Frank Sinatra standard.

Writer/actor/comedian, love him or hate him Seth MacFarlane showed up at a piano bar in Milwaukee, took to the stage and belted out "Luck Be a Lady." Needless to say, the performance included quite a bit of improv.

Lucille’s Piano Bar & Grill was the scene on Nov. 1, and a video showed up on the establishment's Facebookpage two days later. TMZ reports that McFarlane was with a group of friends at Milwaukee's best-known dueling piano bar for several hours and spent a thousand dollars on food and drink. Appearing on stage with the creator of Family Guy, the film Ted (with sequel in the works), and other projects was Jessica Szohr, star of Gossip Girl

 

 

Those lucky enough to see the impromptu act in person took to Twitter to share their delight. In fact, one person tweeted out an alert when MacFarlane was mid-song.

As TMZ pointed out, this is not the first time MacFarlane sang Sinatra somewhere other than in his shower. In 2006 in Family Guy guise, Stewie and Brian sang "When We Swing" with a full (animated) orchestra. 

There is no mention of the appearance of a talking teddy bear on stage with the comedian. Next time, if he shows up with Ted, let us all know in advance. That would be something.

H/T Entertainment Tonight | Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)

 

AwesomenessTV launches Bridge, professional Tinder for YouTube creators

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What if YouTube creators could Tinder-swipe their way to new collaborators? AwesomenessTV’s newest app, Bridge, takes a step in that direction, allowing users to discover fellow YouTubers to help expand their networks.

“We work with lots of different creators, some are very big like Cameron Dallas and Nash Grier, and some are really up-and-coming, but universally, they all want to collab,” explained AwesomenessTV’s Chief Digital Officer Kelly Day. “It’s the universal thing on YouTube. One of the primary reasons people want to collab is it expands your audience. It doesn’t matter if you have 5 million or 5,000 [followers]; there’s always going to be someone bigger than you, or they have a different audience than you.”

AwesomenessTV attracts a younger set of YouTubers, so a mobile solution is inherently appealing to its demographic. The app serves a function that was often taking up huge chunks of time for the multichannel network. Day said the AwesomenessTV team had been spending lots of time manually orchestrating collabs within their network, getting creators on the phone to hash out ideas. With 90,000 channels and growing, the challenge for AwesomenessTV was how to scale its services, and a mobile solution puts the power in the creators' hands.

The design is straightforward: You log in, and it begins sharing sample videos and bio info on available co-creators. You can then connect with a fellow YouTuber and plan a collaboration between your channels right from the app. (For now, the app doesn’t have a way to geofilter collaborators, which is something Day says they’re working on thanks to user feedback.)

It’s no coincidence that the app feels like a G-rated dating service for creatives. “We started thinking about, to be honest, the online dating space,” Day explained. “How do people meet people online? We thought about the success of apps like Tinder and sites like Match.com, and then could we use this type of functionality to help people find collab-mates. You can do everything within the app. You can message within the app. At some point we’d like to get to the point where you can create the video in the app and publish it.”

AwesomenessTV started development on the app this spring, and after rounds of beta testing it finally released to the wider AwesomenessTV community this week. Within only a few days, Day says the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

“People spend a huge amount of time in the app,” she said. “Just in the first 24 hours, we saw people looking at a 110 different profiles on average.”

Since the app is only for AwesomenessTV and Big Frame users, for now this service sets AwesomenessTV apart from other MCNs looking to attract flourishing YouTube channels.

“We operate in a competitive space, and being able to deliver value to creators that’s exclusive is a big priority to us,” said Day. “Bridge is something that is unique to Awesomeness and only available to Awesomeness and Big Frame creators. It’s something we think is a great differentiator and could be a great competitive advantage when people are thinking about joining a MCN.”

AwesomenessTV should enjoy its dominance for now, because we don’t think it will be long before others get into the collab connection game.

Photo via Johan Larsson/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Fernando Alfonso III

Tim & Eric's brand destruction continues with Totino's pizza rolls

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In late September, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim debuted their commercial for GE’s new “smart” lightbulb, featuring Jeff Goldblum. The comedy duo’s no stranger to riffing on ridiculous products via their Cinco sketches, but they’ve started to blur the lines between real and fake brands, and it’s wonderful.

The latest example: this commercial for Totino’s pizza rolls.

It appears to be a legit collaboration; the sketch is featured on a Totino’s website, alongside this distinctly Tim & Eric-esque couple. The Totino’s Tumblr is a gallery of meme-ified pizza worship tweaked to appeal to the Totino’s "lifestyle."


 

The video also includes a message from Totino’s:

We asked some of our favorite comedians/TV stars/Cinco salesmen, Tim and Eric, to cook up some products aimed at helping you live that Totino’s life. Everyone is a creator of that pizza life in their own way. That’s why we created the Idea Oven, where your genius ideas go to fun harder.

The clip includes the usual assortment of Tim & Eric oddballs, or rather, “pizza freaks,” espousing the Totino’s life. All that's missing is Dr. Steve Brule biting into a piping-hot pizza roll and burning the roof of his mouth. 

I haven’t wanted to eat Totino’s pizza rolls since college, but after seeing them stuffed into a saxophone, they’re all I want now. Great job.

Screengrab via Totino’s Pizza Rolls/YouTube

2 TV adaptations aim to refresh the 'Phantom of the Opera' story

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The Jazz Age brought us our most famous version of Gaston Leroux's Victorian melodrama Phantom of the Opera, the silent film featuring Lon Chaney as a disfigured, mask-wearing stalker who threatens to blow up Paris if he can't have his true love. But what if, instead of hiding in the catacombs beneath the Paris opera house, the Phantom were instead sipping cocktails in a tiny music box in the Pigalle Quarter, listening to his soubrette sing Gershwin and Duke Ellington?

Or what if he were a sneaky member of the modern music industry, scoping out a young unknown destined for pop stardom?

Within a fortnight, two separate proposals for TV series adaptations of the classic novel have surfaced, both promising to transport the classic Parisian tale forward through time.

Late last month, Variety reported that ABC was looking to adapt the series as a modern-day look at the cutthroat world of the 21st-century music industry. Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry is set to produce it for ABC. The series will be similar to Nashville in that music will be organic to the plot but it won't actually be a musical.

Hard on the heels of ABC's announcement came news of a second adaptation. (Leroux's work has long been in the public domain, so creators are free to create as much fanfiction of it as they like.) This proposal, according to Deadline, pulls the novel's setting forward into the early 20th century, focusing on a British fighter pilot who was badly injured in World War I. He becomes obsessed with a celebrated jazz singer in a fictional equivalent of Studio 54, presumably headlined by a fictional counterpart to the illustrious Josephine Baker. Think less Andrew Lloyd Webber and more Cole Porter.

This Phantom's story will be directed by acclaimed French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who helmed Amelie. Its writer is longtime producer Tony Krantz, who most recently worked on NBC's Dracula. Krantz has been developing his concept for the show with Endemol Studios for a while now, which probably explains why it's a much more fleshed-out project than ABC's version.

Despite how different both takes on the story are, they have a few very important things in common: Like the original, they're closely affiliated with various corners of the music world. Who knows why we're all so obsessed with a singing madman, but "singing" seems to be the aspect of the story that never changes.

Notably, neither of these adaptations has anything to do with the famous Lloyd Webber musical, which remains the most successful entertainment event in world history. This means that, at the very least, we won't have to sit through any ill-advised techno remixes of "All I Ask Of You" or "Music of the Night." 

It's tempting to think that a truly innovative Phantom would be one that eschews the musical aesthetic altogether: Perhaps an obsessed Minecraft player builds his love an enormous virtual catacomb. Perhaps the Phantom just really likes women's volleyball. 

On second thought, maybe we'll stick to the classics.

Photo by Juliana Coutinho/Flickr; CC BY-SA-2.0

The corny SoundCloud jams of the alleged Silk Road 2.0 kingpin

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As details about Blake Benthall emerge following his arrest in connection to Silk Road 2.0, a resurrected black market for drugs and other illicit goods, the alleged kingpin’s musical dabblings have piqued our curiosity. So we’re going to rank all his SoundCloud songs—which turn out to cover an impressive range—before Rolling Stone or the NME get wind of them.

Ideally you’d listen to these tracks while freebasing Oxycodone, but we’ll let that slide this once.  

Bottom tier: Boring Christmas carols

You already know how Christmas carols go, but here they are again, performed by Benthall and friends with the help of what sounds like an old but reliable upright piano. Charmingly ragged in places—just nothing you couldn’t manage with your own drunk family.

Slightly better: The hymns

Same sessions as the Christmas stuff, just better source material.

Getting there: The cityscapes

Five years ago, Benthall uploaded a bubbly, noodling series of laptop-pop sketches, probably assembled with the canned instruments of GarageBand or the like. They bear a passing resemblance to synthetic strains of the Postal Service, if you’re into that sort of thing. Since these tracks seem to be geography-based, we’ll mention that the West are best.  

OK, then: The Christmas Journey cover

You might be sick of karaoke classic “Don’t Stop Believin’” by now, but what about a parody version featuring holiday lyrics and sung with cheerful gusto? Come on, you love this.

 Not bad at all: “To Reddit, For Jetydo” 

Composed for a stranger as part of a Reddit mixtape swap, this is a fairly emo piano ballad, and more than a bit meta, though damn if it’s not uplifting. Unlike most of Reddit

Top tier: Valentine songs

These 12 ditties, dedicated to various women, show Benthall really stretching his wings, stylistically speaking. There’s gentle folk (“For Jenna”), a rollicking Bruce Springsteen-style number (“For Alicia”), spirited bluegrass (“For Kori”), bizarro funk (“For Kait”), overprocessed hip-hop in the vein of MC Chris (“For Brianne”) Auto-Tuned club R&B (“For Alli”), reggae (“For Reagan”), gospel (“For Laura”), and more. Like tapas for your ears. 

And that’s all! Until Benthall gets around to penning his prison album, of course.

Photo by Steve Snodgrass/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)


The Vlogbrothers' 'Crash Course' is heading to the classroom

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Starting in January 2015, teachers will have the PBS seal of approval to teach John and Hank Green in schools. That’s because PBS Digital Studios has announced a partnership with the brothers to bring Crash Course to a wider audience, including into the classroom.

Through the partnership, PBS Digital Studios will create two new topics for the series, as well as distribute their library of videos history, psychology, chemistry, biology, and literature lessons through the PBS Digital Studios YouTube network. Crash Course will also be available to educators through PBS LearningMedia, a media on-demand digital service available for free to pre-K through 12th grade educators nationwide.

Crash Course is just one arm of the Nerdfighteria empire, but it's an extremely popular one. Started in 2011, the channel has already racked up more than 150 million views around the globe, and the series has more than 2 million subscribers. The PBS partnership will only serve to amplify that momentum.

PBS has become one of the most innovative and interesting media properties in online video, and we've long admired their work on YouTube presenting educational content in a fresh new way,” said Hank Green in a press release. “We're so thankful that PBS Digital Studios is helping create two new Crash Course series, and for bringing Crash Course directly into classrooms via PBS LearningMedia.”

Those two new series will focus on astronomy and U.S. government, with Crash Course tapping tried-and-true YouTube talent Craig Benzine, also known as WheezyWaiter, for the government videos, while astronomer and author of Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog Phil Plait will helm the astronomy series.

The addition of Crash Course will boost the PBS Digital Studios network footprint, with a portfolio that includes PBS Idea Channel, Blank on Blank, It’s Okay To Be Smart, and The Art Assignment, created by John Green and wife Sarah Urist Green.

Screengrab via Crash Course/YouTube

My secret life as a 'Game of Thrones' non-fan

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I'll come right out and admit it: Despite my friends' insistence, I have never seen a single episode of Game of Thrones.

In fact, my knowledge of the series is basically limited to the facts that fans have formed a love/hate relationship with George R.R. Martin (whom I wouldn't be able to pick out in a crowd) and that Bolivar Trask from X-Men: Days of Future Past is in it.

As a result, it was unanimously decided by the Daily Dot staff that I should review BuzzFeed Video's recent YouTube effort "What It's Like to Not Watch Game of Thrones." Minus the trendy clothing styles, I was able to directly sympathize with the video's two lead characters, who are constantly trying to fake their way through knowledge of the series that the rest of their friends are apparently obsessed with. As a non-fan, I was able to gather that "Hodor!" is some sort of catchphrase and that to call someone a "Joffrey" is an insult, akin to referring to someone as Voldemort.

Even though the video appears to paint its non-fan leads as protagonists, it still wasn't enough to get me to sit down, pop open Netflix (or whatever streaming service has this program), and see what all of this "winter is coming" stuff is about. To Game of Thrones fans and non-fans alike, you can believe me when I say, from the bottom of my heart, "Hodor."

And I mean it.

I think.

Screengrab via BuzzFeedVideo

Play along with Rooster Teeth murder mystery 'Ten Little Roosters'

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Rooster Teeth has unveiled Ten Little Roosters: an in-joke-packed weekly whodunit that aims to keep viewers guessing as to which of the cast will be killed off in each episode.

The action begins at a banquet thrown for the stars from across Rooster Teeth’s offerings. Here we find Chris Demarais from A Simple Walk Into Mordor, resplendent in Hobbit feet but struggling with the dress code, and Red vs. Blue writer Miles Luna suffering from beard envy in the presence of Adam Ellis’ luscious follicular eruption. But soon Achievement Hunter’s Michael Jones confronts the rest of the party’s guests with their RT-related past crimes—such as Gus Sorola’s murder of “Baby Gus”—and a mysterious poem is found taped to the wall. And then… people begin to turn up dead.

If it all sounds a little too incestuous and self-congratulatory, then that’s probably because it is. But on the other hand, it’s this ultra-knowing quality that has no doubt attracted those who are already dissecting the first episode in search of clues as well as jamming to the poem. There are prizes on offer for successful sleuths, but the main reward is the opportunity for fans to submerge themselves in the spirit and lore of a channel that has now had over 3 billion views.

Screengrab via Rooster Teeth/YouTube

The couch gag for the 'Futurama' episode of 'The Simpsons' is a fun start

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The Planet Express crew is back once again, thanks to the Simpsons.

Futurama may no longer be on the air, but they’re returning for a crossover episode with The Simpsons. And while we won’t know if it’ll be a hit or go the way of the Family Guy crossover episode, the first surefire test comes from the episode's couch gag.

As you can see below, the couch gag balances the series' usual tongue-in-cheek humor with an appearance from one of the many recognizable minor characters from Futurama. It’s both funny and awkward, but hey, Homer isn’t complaining.

When you pair this with the first clip of Simpsorama from Entertainment Weekly, it's clear that the crossover will probably do just fine. The fact that Matt Groening created both shows probably helps, too.

H/T Yahoo | Screengrab via Animation Domination/YouTube

Get stuck in a loop with Vine's Avery Monsen

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One of Avery Monsen’s best vines only contains two words: “hello” and “hey.” It’s what happens around those words that nails exactly what Vine is good for. You get stuck in a loop with him.

The L.A.-based Monsen’s also a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, has appeared on 30 Rock, and co-authored All My Friends Are Dead, a very dark kids’ book for misanthropic adults. He’s currently involved with a Kickstarterproject to create an emoji Ouija board, a logical conclusion to creating 100 new emoji, which, sadly, have not been adopted into the traditional emoji template. Most recently, Monsen has been making vines for SundanceTV and finding creative ways to highlight their programming.

“They’ve been great to work with,” he told the Daily Dot. “I was hesitant at first to make any sponsored Vines, but then I saw that they’d let me do the same weird stuff that I do already. Also, I’m poor and it’s hard to say no to people offering you money for silly little videos.”

We asked Monsen a bit more about his process, whether repetition is funny, and the mental anguish of creating 100 new emoji.

Are you able to actually make money off Vine?

There’s probably only a handful of people who are making money from Vine. They’re dreamy-eyed teens who shout a lot. They will spend their money on board shorts. But there’s also a bunch of people who, like me, are freelance artists and animators making a living by cobbling together little jobs here and there. I make my living from book royalties, acting gigs, writing projects, and Vines. I try to stay busy.

What's your process with Vine? How many ideas get nixed?  

I have a note-taking app on my phone where I jot down any little half-ideas that pop into my head. I have no idea how many get nixed, because they usually just get shuffled around, combined, or turned into other things. Sometimes they end up as tweets. Other times they are unusable garbage.

Is there something about the format that lends itself to comedy, specifically in terms of repetition?

I think there’s something great about getting to watch something funny over and over as many times as you want. On the other hand, a looping unfunny thing is brutal. Thus is the nature of duality. Good loops, bad loops. Namaste.

Do you think good comedy includes an element of being a little uncomfortable?

Hmm. I don’t think all good comedy requires discomfort. Nor do I think everything uncomfortable is necessarily funny. But there’s a pretty big overlap in the funny/uncomfortable Venn Diagram. Humor usually comes from a break in expectations—a violation of how things “should be”—and so does discomfort, so the two often come hand-in-hand? I will be thinking about better ways I could have answered this question for weeks.

I watched this Vine at least a dozen times. Where did this idea come from?

It was a while ago, but I’ll try to recreate my train of thought: First, this scene is hilarious. Anything with men being overcome with emotion is funny to me. Plus, it has looping dialogue. Robin Williams and Matt Damon basically say, "It’s not your fault, son" and "I know" over and over until Matt cries. That’s perfect for a Vine loop. OK, cool, I’ll do something with this scene. It’s really emotional and well-acted; what’s the best way to highlight that? Re-enact it with computers who are unable to feel. Boom! Vine!

I feel like you've nailed what Vines are supposed to be, but then I look at the "Popular Now" page and see a bunch of teenage boys braying at each other. Who are people on Vine you think are doing it right?

Thanks! Vine is a tricky place. For better or worse, the app has lots of teenage users, which means the most popular stuff tends to be very loud and very broad. Lots of pranking and scaring and slapping. Lots of “white people dance like this, black people dance like this.” Lots of board shorts. That’s all fine, but it’s not really what I’m into. But, if you look around, you can find people doing cool, weird stuff too. Simply Silvio, keelayjams, Karen Tozzi, Alicia Herber, and Tom Shea are all great. Follow them for good feelings in your eyes and brain.

Can you tell me about your involvement in this [Emouija board] project? Why do you think emojis have become so culturally accepted?

My buddies Taylor Moore and Ryan Williams—both hilarious comedians that I met at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater—came to me with the idea of an Emoji Ouija (“Emouija”) Board. They knew that I had experience with fake emojis so they asked if I wanted to help. I think the project is not only funny, but important. Modern ghosts don’t have time to spell out their messages on old fashioned Ouija boards. If we want to talk to today’s ghosts, we need to speak their language: emoji.

How long did your 100 new emojis Vine take to put together? Were those ideas you were saving up over time?

Oh, I wish I had them saved up. No, I had the idea, wrote, and illustrated them all over the course of three terrible days. I didn’t shower; I barely ate. I just wrote and drew emojis. After about 85, I almost gave up. But then I asked my UCB sketch team, Beige, for suggestions, and that pushed me up to 100. If anyone reading this is considering making 100 fake emojis, I urge you to reconsider. 100 is too many. There’s no reason to do that to yourself.

What currently resides in your "recently used" emojis?

I’m a smiling red ogre kind of guy. I use that to answer almost everything.

Photos via Avery Monsen/Vine | Remix by Jason Reed 

The Internet is obsessed with 'Too Many Cooks'

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BY MEGAN VICK

Adult Swim has provided the Internet with the dose of sitcom nostalgia no one knew they needed until "Too Many Cooks" arrived. 

The 12-minute short repeats the same verse and chorus over and over in parody of every stereotypical opening credit sequence possible. Quirky family comedy? Got it. Family comedy with weird alien puppet a la "Alf?" Nailed it. Cop drama with reliably funny goofballs? Just scoot three minutes in. Don't forget the old school Saturday morning cartoon sequence or space adventure show. Seriously, they cover everything. 

The short was created by Casper Kelly—who is also the mastermind behind "Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell." His writing credits include gems like Harvey Birdman and Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Adult Swim first aired the short at 4am. It has since been transferred to YouTube and has immediately developed a cult following. It seems like a straight up parody but as it progresses through each type of show the sequences begin to get weirder and weirder. Towards the end one of the "Cooks" pulls a severed foot out of the oven? And that's after the phenomenal 80s super hero costume appearance in, well, who knows what that show was supposed to be? 

Since the airing "Too Many Cooks" has become a trending topic on Twitter. The Internet has spoken and it, along with some of your favorite TV stars, are in love. 

Join the Internet in its new favorite obsession relive the classic days of television. How far do you make it through the short? Tell us your favorite part of the parody in the comments below.

Photo via Christopher Barson/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Fernando Alfonso III

'Open Windows' is Nacho average thriller

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BY RICHARD WHITTAKER

Do you know who's watching you? Really know? Do you even want to know? With techno-thriller Open Windows, director Nacho Vigalondo said, "I wanted to bring back the feeling of being permanently exposed as a negative thing."

In Open Windows, Nick Chambers (Elijah Wood) is the webmaster for a site dedicated to actress Jill Goddard (Sasha Grey) who finds himself dragged into a bizarre conspiracy to manipulate and expose the starlet using webcams and live feeds. Spanish native Vigalondo's first English-language film, set and partially filmed in Austin, uses the annual Fantastic Fest horror, sci-fi, and genre film festival as its backdrop: Vigalondo went so far as to reenact the fest for the opening sequence, because it holds a special place in his heart and his career trajectory. His first two films, Timecrimes andExtraterrestrial, received their world and U.S. premieres there, and Vigalondo has become its unofficial mascot. He said, "It's a love letter to Austin and Fantastic Fest, as much as telling a story involving extortion, torture, and murder can work as a love letter."

Wood, like Vigalondo, is a Fantastic Fest regular. In fact, the actor said, "I don't know if it could have happened without Fantastic Fest." His first filmed collaboration with the director was dramatic in a different way: The duo was locked in a Faraday cage at the FF 2010 closing party, headbanging as local arts/physics collective and America's Got Talentfinalists ArcAttack played Slayer's "Raining Blood" using lightning from Tesla coils. "That happened, that really happened," said Wood. The pair had become email pals after Wood told the Spanish press how much he loved Vigalondo's 2007 debut, Timecrimes, and in 2011 the director told him about his idea for a movie set completely on a laptop screen. "I've always wanted to work with Nacho," Wood said. "He's a very good friend of mine, and the concept's insane."

Like a high-tech Rear Window, Open Windows is a thriller with a gimmick: The entire movie is told in real time on Nick's computer monitor, through a mixture of video and audio feeds. It has all the hallmarks of a modern thriller, with tense surveillance sequences, car chases, shoot-outs, and virtualized grand larceny, but Wood didn't get to see much of the action. He said, "The actual shooting was a relatively solitary experience, in that I was sitting in front of a camera or running with a camera, and looking at it or slightly below and imagining everything that was happening on my computer screen." He didn't even get to spend much time on set with his co-star. "It's not until the end of the film that my character interacts with Sasha Grey's character, because prior to that it was all communication via webcam."

Film historians may look back on Open Windows as the third act of an unofficial trilogy of Wood movies playing with the cinematic fourth wall. First there was 2012's remake of sleazeploitation classic Maniac, told from Wood's POV as a deranged killer. Then last year there was the real-time thriller Grand Piano, written and directed by Vigalondo's old friend and Timecrimes composer Eugenio Mira. Like Open Windows, it casts Wood as the panicking pawn of a malevolent disembodied voice, a slave to an electronic god. Vigalondo called the similarities "a cosmic coincidence. I wrote Open Windows years ago, and Eugenio offered Elijah Grand Piano without knowing both movies would deal with a character suffering the same set of threats. We even made jokes about including clues suggesting Elijah was playing the same character."

Vigalondo's movies have always blurred the line between high-concept sci-fi and kitchen-sink relationship comedies. In Timecrimes, schlubby husband Héctor (Karra Elejalde) struggles with his past and future selves as a time machine wreaks havoc on his marriage. His follow-up, 2011'sExtraterrestrial, puts an awkward love triangle against the background of an alien invasion as Julio (Julián Villagrán) uses the threat of intergalactic war to turn a one-night stand into an extended sleepover. With Open Windows, the technology is less fantastical, but don't expect it to pass rigorous inspection for accuracy. "If you ask a geek, he'll tell you it's absolutely impossible for a current laptop to work the way it does in the movie," Vigalondo admits. "We have faked the syntax of the webcams, the security cams, the cell cams, but we manipulated the image where it made sense, for the benefit of tension or drama. As it happens with the best found-footage films, like theV/H/S series, we played with the rules instead of being slaves to them." He was far more interested in the technology making narrative sense, rather than subscribing to literal accuracy. "The first draft of the Open Windows script was written in 2008. If I tried to be realistic back then, the movie would be a period film today." When he finally started shooting, what intrigued him was how quickly people got used to cameras everywhere. "Two centuries ago we were worried a photograph could steal our soul, and now it feels like if you are never in the picture you may be the soulless." 

The technology – and how it can be abused – would have been unrecognizable in the era of Vigalondo's inspiration, Rear Window. If any of James Stewart's neighbors wanted to stop the surveillance, they could just close the curtains, but it's not so easy anymore. Wood said, "We are a very observed people, and we choose to ignore it most of the time, because if we let that into our headspace, we could get very paranoid." It's not just government surveillance or professional paparazzi that have people worried. There have been multiple prosecutions of hackers who turned on someone's computer, console, or phone cameras without the owner's knowledge, and Internet security firm Norton has issued blunt advice: Don't have any webcam-enabled tech in your bedroom. "It's a software manipulation away from someone observing you in your space without you knowing it," Wood said. "It's a creepy notion." For him, what it comes down to is choice. "If you're an unconsenting person with someone trying to get something out of you, something vulnerable, that's an uncomfortable thing, regardless of who you are."

That question of consent makes Grey's casting as Jill even more pointed. Vigalondo wrote the part the year before Grey started her transition from the adult industry to mainstream cinema with Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, but, he said, "her identity as an ex-adult movie star not only echoes the character perfectly, but also gives a funny layer of irony." In key scenes, the camera becomes extremely intrusive, culminating in an uncomfortably erotic webcam session. He said, "The movie can be seen as a story about exploitation, and talks about how we came to a point when we, as a mass of consumers, have a crush on a teen star, to the point of demanding we see her naked, and at the same time we hate her loudly."

Do you know who's watching you? Really know? Do you even want to know? With techno-thriller Open Windows, director Nacho Vigalondo said, "I wanted to bring back the feeling of being permanently exposed as a negative thing."

In Open Windows, Nick Chambers (Elijah Wood) is the webmaster for a site dedicated to actress Jill Goddard (Sasha Grey) who finds himself dragged into a bizarre conspiracy to manipulate and expose the starlet using webcams and live feeds. Spanish native Vigalondo's first English-language film, set and partially filmed in Austin, uses the annual Fantastic Fest horror, sci-fi, and genre film festival as its backdrop: Vigalondo went so far as to reenact the fest for the opening sequence, because it holds a special place in his heart and his career trajectory. His first two films, Timecrimes andExtraterrestrial, received their world and U.S. premieres there, and Vigalondo has become its unofficial mascot. He said, "It's a love letter to Austin and Fantastic Fest, as much as telling a story involving extortion, torture, and murder can work as a love letter."

Wood, like Vigalondo, is a Fantastic Fest regular. In fact, the actor said, "I don't know if it could have happened without Fantastic Fest." His first filmed collaboration with the director was dramatic in a different way: The duo was locked in a Faraday cage at the FF 2010 closing party, headbanging as local arts/physics collective and America's Got Talentfinalists ArcAttack played Slayer's "Raining Blood" using lightning from Tesla coils. "That happened, that really happened," said Wood. The pair had become email pals after Wood told the Spanish press how much he loved Vigalondo's 2007 debut, Timecrimes, and in 2011 the director told him about his idea for a movie set completely on a laptop screen. "I've always wanted to work with Nacho," Wood said. "He's a very good friend of mine, and the concept's insane."

Like a high-tech Rear Window, Open Windows is a thriller with a gimmick: The entire movie is told in real time on Nick's computer monitor, through a mixture of video and audio feeds. It has all the hallmarks of a modern thriller, with tense surveillance sequences, car chases, shoot-outs, and virtualized grand larceny, but Wood didn't get to see much of the action. He said, "The actual shooting was a relatively solitary experience, in that I was sitting in front of a camera or running with a camera, and looking at it or slightly below and imagining everything that was happening on my computer screen." He didn't even get to spend much time on set with his co-star. "It's not until the end of the film that my character interacts with Sasha Grey's character, because prior to that it was all communication via webcam."

Film historians may look back on Open Windows as the third act of an unofficial trilogy of Wood movies playing with the cinematic fourth wall. First there was 2012's remake of sleazeploitation classic Maniac, told from Wood's POV as a deranged killer. Then last year there was the real-time thriller Grand Piano, written and directed by Vigalondo's old friend and Timecrimes composer Eugenio Mira. Like Open Windows, it casts Wood as the panicking pawn of a malevolent disembodied voice, a slave to an electronic god. Vigalondo called the similarities "a cosmic coincidence. I wrote Open Windows years ago, and Eugenio offered Elijah Grand Piano without knowing both movies would deal with a character suffering the same set of threats. We even made jokes about including clues suggesting Elijah was playing the same character."

Vigalondo's movies have always blurred the line between high-concept sci-fi and kitchen-sink relationship comedies. In Timecrimes, schlubby husband Héctor (Karra Elejalde) struggles with his past and future selves as a time machine wreaks havoc on his marriage. His follow-up, 2011'sExtraterrestrial, puts an awkward love triangle against the background of an alien invasion as Julio (Julián Villagrán) uses the threat of intergalactic war to turn a one-night stand into an extended sleepover. With Open Windows, the technology is less fantastical, but don't expect it to pass rigorous inspection for accuracy. "If you ask a geek, he'll tell you it's absolutely impossible for a current laptop to work the way it does in the movie," Vigalondo admits. "We have faked the syntax of the webcams, the security cams, the cell cams, but we manipulated the image where it made sense, for the benefit of tension or drama. As it happens with the best found-footage films, like theV/H/S series, we played with the rules instead of being slaves to them." He was far more interested in the technology making narrative sense, rather than subscribing to literal accuracy. "The first draft of the Open Windows script was written in 2008. If I tried to be realistic back then, the movie would be a period film today." When he finally started shooting, what intrigued him was how quickly people got used to cameras everywhere. "Two centuries ago we were worried a photograph could steal our soul, and now it feels like if you are never in the picture you may be the soulless." 

The technology – and how it can be abused – would have been unrecognizable in the era of Vigalondo's inspiration, Rear Window. If any of James Stewart's neighbors wanted to stop the surveillance, they could just close the curtains, but it's not so easy anymore. Wood said, "We are a very observed people, and we choose to ignore it most of the time, because if we let that into our headspace, we could get very paranoid." It's not just government surveillance or professional paparazzi that have people worried. There have been multiple prosecutions of hackers who turned on someone's computer, console, or phone cameras without the owner's knowledge, and Internet security firm Norton has issued blunt advice: Don't have any webcam-enabled tech in your bedroom. "It's a software manipulation away from someone observing you in your space without you knowing it," Wood said. "It's a creepy notion." For him, what it comes down to is choice. "If you're an unconsenting person with someone trying to get something out of you, something vulnerable, that's an uncomfortable thing, regardless of who you are."

That question of consent makes Grey's casting as Jill even more pointed. Vigalondo wrote the part the year before Grey started her transition from the adult industry to mainstream cinema with Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, but, he said, "her identity as an ex-adult movie star not only echoes the character perfectly, but also gives a funny layer of irony." In key scenes, the camera becomes extremely intrusive, culminating in an uncomfortably erotic webcam session. He said, "The movie can be seen as a story about exploitation, and talks about how we came to a point when we, as a mass of consumers, have a crush on a teen star, to the point of demanding we see her naked, and at the same time we hate her loudly."

This article was originally published in the Austin Chronicle.


20 of the best moments from the original 'Dumb and Dumber'

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This Friday, Dumb and Dumber To opens in theaters nationwide, with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels reprising their original roles as, respectively, Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne. Not only was the 1994 film a tentpole for Carrey (fresh off of box office success from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and The Mask), but it launched the career for the Farrelly Brothers, who went on to produce other comedic greatness like Kingpin, Shallow Hal, and, of course, There's Something About Mary.

While reaction to the Dumb and Dumber To trailers has been mixed, nothing can take away the dimwitted, raunchy charm of the first Dumb and Dumber, whose gags ironically reeked of brilliance. To commemorate the two decades of time that have elapsed between the movies, we compiled 20 of the best scenes from the original for you to enjoy once again.

"I drove her to the airport. Sparks flew. Emotions ran high. She actually talked to me, man."

"It's OK! I'm the limo driver!"

"Senior citizens, although slow and dangerous behind the wheel, can still serve a purpose."

"We've got no food, we've got no jobs, OUR PETS' HEADS ARE FALLIN' OFF!"

"It feels like you're running at an incredible rate!"

"You sold my dead bird to a blind kid?"

"Suckin' back on grandpa's old cough medicine?"

"No, I'm cool."

"Wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?"

"Do you want an atomic pepper, Mr. Mentilino?"

"Skis, huh?"

"Just when I think you couldn't possibly be any dumber, you go do something like this...and totally redeem yourself!"

"There ya go. There ya go. There ya go."

"Come on, Cinderella, we have to get you ready for the ball!"

"Boy, this party really died."

"It'll only hurt for a moment, like a Band-Aid."

"We've landed on the moon!"

"One half teaspoon...for fast effective relief."

"So you're telling me there's a chance…"

"Two lucky guys are going to be traveling around with those girls for the next couple of months."

Photos (1) (2) (3) (4) via Insomnia Cured Here/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) | Remix by Jason Reed

Jimmy Kimmel's faux reality show turned into an existential experiment

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How desperate are people to make it in Hollywood? Still very desperate, apparently.

Master troll Jimmy Kimmel recently placed an ad on Craigslist for a show called Do You Have What It Takes?, mimicking the look and feel of shows like So You Think You Can Dance. The ad simply asked for people interested in “reality auditions,” with no other info. And people showed up anyway. 

The judgesChilli from TLC, The Cosby Show’s Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Bachelorette star Ali Fedotowsky, and Kimmelthen proceeded to vet the candidates by essentially repeating, “Do you have what it takes?” as the contestants question their existence and life choices. If anything, this bit illustrates the tired phrases (“I think you have it”) delivered to contestants on shows like The Voice and American Idol.

But seriously, I’d watch a show that featured no performances, just people questioning their existence.

Screengrab via Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube

Vine star Cameron Dallas gets himself 'Expelled' in feature film debut

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If six-second snippets aren’t enough, Vine star Cameron Dallas is now coming to a theater near you with a full-length feature film.

AwesomenessTV announced today the release of Expelled, the story of a teenage prankster who finally goes too far and gets himself expelled from school. He then spends the film in a madcap, Ferris Bueller-type adventure to keep his parents from knowing his fate. The film will also star fellow YouTube and Vine celebs like Lia Marie Johnson, Marcus Johns, Teala Dunn, and Andrea Russett. The film premieres in limited release Dec. 12, with download and streaming options rolling out starting Dec. 16.

"The movie industry is changing in terms of not only who teens want to see on screen, but also how, when and where they want to watch,” said Brian Robbins, Expelled producer and founder of AwesomenessTV, in a press release. “Expelled gives fans of this new generation of stars a chance to see them on the big screen… or whatever screen they prefer.”

Dallas boasts 6.1 million followers on Vine, as well as impressive social presences on Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms. His celebrity is not without controversy, however. Last year the teen took heat for a video in which he and two other teen celebs talked about beauty expectations of their female fans. Dallas has continued to thrive despite the backlash, though, and the film is already getting rave reactions from his fanbase, although they're particularly focused on the moment when Johnson and Dallas kiss in the trailer.

Screengrab via Cameron Dallas/YouTube

GoPro captures a cat's trip to a vet gone horribly, horribly wrong

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If you’re a cat owner, you’ve probably had to struggle to get your fur child in its carrier and to the vet. In the first episode of Upright Citizens Brigade performer Vincent Moore’s new webseries, Points of View, he tells this familiar story with a twist.

He’s apparently strapped a GoPro to his cat’s head, so we get the feline’s point of view as Moore walks to the vet. Then he stops to tie his shoe, and things get weird.

GoPros have given us access to the insides of animal’s mouths and dishwashers, but this might be the first time they’ve been applied to sketch comedy. 

“The idea came about after watching a bunch of GoPro videos online and being inspired by how adventurous the filmmakers are with their cameras,” Moore told the Daily Dot. “As GoPros are so portable, you can really put them anywhere and film from a seemingly infinite amount of angles and perspectives. Considering the wide variety of uses and the surprisingly powerful footage that comes out, I decided to get one and play with how it could be applied to sketch comedy.”

Moore says another episode is scheduled for release next week, exploring a different point of view. In the meantime, be the cat you want to see in the world. 

Clarification: No actual cats were harmed in the making of this video. Moore explained he set up the GoPro inside the carrier "using rubber bands." 

H/T Death and Taxes | Screengrab via Vincent Moore/YouTube

The NOFX kick to the head felt 'round the world

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During an Australian show on Tuesday, lead singer and bassist of NOFX, Fat Mike, punched a fan resembling Hunter S. Thompson in the face, knocking him to the stage floor. He followed the strike with a swift kick to the head, hardly missing a beat in the band’s rendition of “Linoleum.”

The incident has resurrected a discussion that died in approximately 1998, that deep philosophical quandary of what is and isn’t punk. For Australians, jumping on stage is a tried and true tradition, and something that certainly wouldn’t rattle the sort of frontman that tricks audiences into drinking his urine

Americans, however, remember a time when Dimebag Darrell was shot and killed by a fan that hopped onstage and are generally quicker to defend a quick and definite takedown of an overzealous man in a bucket hat putting his hands on a lead singer.

But the talks of Dimebag, Australians, and what defines an Act of Punk are probably beside the point. Bottom line, Fat Mike had told the audience that night, multiple times, that he’d recently thrown out his neck, asking politely that they stop throwing so many beers at him, which, due to the Streisand effect, resulted in him being pegged at greater regularity with beer cans. By the time he felt somebody’s hands on his neck, the geopolitics of punk rock didn’t matter much. He was mad as hell, and he did as much damage to the perpetrator as possible before the wildly incapable security pulled the fan offstage. 

However, all ended well enough between the fan and Fat Mike, thanks to Twitter, where the frontman and the busted-lipped fan shared this warm exchange:

It might seem poignant that this particular violence transpired during this particular song—"My closest friend, linoleum / Linoleum supports my head, gives me something to believe"—but this was a NOFX show; it would have seemed poignant no matter what was playing. 

H/T Black Planet HD | Screengrab via Black Planet HD/YouTube

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