OK Go presents their sweet cover of “The Muppet Show Theme Song” from the new Muppets: The Green Album.
As you might expect, I’m pretty excited about the big screen return of the muppets. This little video from OK GO starring some of our Muppet friends is a pretty tasty morsel, especially if you’ve ever seen any of the OK GO music videos featuring treadmills, dogs, unitards and other such meme-y-ness.
THE MUPPETS will hit theaters Nov 23rd, 2011. (Kermit the Frog voice: Yayyyyyyy!!!!!)
Rick Mereki and Tim White made these brilliant little short films that celebrate travel. Simply titled MOVE, EAT, and LEARN. The films were recorded over the course of 44 days and 38,000 miles of travel. I’m so inspired, I’m booking some flights around the world as I type this.
via Nerdcore & whudat.de & Laughing Squid
Jack Conte, from the musical duo Pomplamoose, is creating a new video every week. His latest video is a stop-motion animation of adorable creatures violently shooting fruit.
Speaking of adorable creatures shooting things… Pixar just released a teaser trailer for Brave, an original fairy tale coming to us Summer 2012. There’s not much here to go on here, but it sure is pretty and worth a peek for the red hair alone.
Shout out to Laughing Squid for todays goodies.
It’s very hard to believe, but every frame of this spot is computer generated.
CGI animation genius Alex Roman followed up his mesmerizing The Third & The Seventh with this wondrous commercial titled “Above Everything Else” for countertop maker Silestone. Both projects take my breath away. They point to the future of film and video games, seamlessly merging reality with the impossible without so much as a single location or prop.
{via Boing Boing and Laughing Squid]
Cinematographer Tom Guilmette was working in Las Vegas with a new Phantom Flex digital camera and apparently had some fun in his hotel room. Nice and slow. Just how I like it.
via Laughing Squid.
When Nell and I watch Mad Men and the theme song comes on we sing made up lyrics. We basically croon “Mad Men” again and again in the style of the song. It soars at the beginning with big string like bursts: Maaad Men – Maaad Men – Maaad Men. The best part comes at the end as they get short and lower: MadMen-MadMen-MadMen.
So naturally, I would be dubious of anyone else’s imaginary Mad Men lyrics. And then this link above had to come along with it’s awesomeness. You’re not just hearing things. This is the Mad Men theme (which is actually sampled from RJD2′s “A Beautiful Mine”) gloriously mixed with the lyrics from “Nature Boy” (made famous by Nat King Cole) and sung by Allison Willaims (NBC’s Brian Williams daughter, naturally) and performed in a single take. Oh, and that’s me on the drums.
I promise not to go all muppet crazed on you today. But you should watch this little piece of inspiration featuring twin Kermits performing an epic rendition of the Bowie/Queen song “Under Pressure”. A slow starter, this video gets better every second and builds to a powerful finish. (you know, just like me)
This stop-animation short is crazy cool on a number of levels. It stars a 9mm girl named Dot as she struggles through a microscopic world. Beside it’s obvious twee charm, there are two things about this that are hugely impressive:
-Dot is officially the world’s smallest stop motion character according to Guinness.
-All the minuscule detail was shot using CellScope technology and a Nokia N8, with its 12 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics. Check out The Making of Dot below!
Shout out to Mr. Wonderful‘s Nate Stone for the find!
The beautiful minds at Dentsu London and BERG teamed up to create this fantastic stop motion technique using 3D typography and an iPad.I’m sure I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and while still a bit rough, I can’t wait to see what magical animations we’ll see in the future from this approach.
Jim Henson filmed this for public television in Iowa eight years before I was born . It’s a bit long, but a wonderfully rare look at Jim’s naturally gentle vibe when he’s not hiding behind a puppet. Plus, it’s hard not to love a guy who can rock a burgundy velvet jumpsuit and doesn’t seem the vaguest bit creepy.
I love this! “Marcel The Shell With Shoes On”, directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp with the voice of Marcel by SNL’s Jenny Slate.
I think this video is worth watching for the imagery alone. It’s about a group of skateboarders who have been cleaning out abandoned swimming pools in Fresno so that they can skate in them.
Some of you may be keeping up with my obsession with the DSLR cinematography. A trend that makes crisp 24 frame HD and a spectrum of high end lenses affordable to artists everywhere. Still, we have learned that this technology has a way to go. Shooting with a CMOS sensor has disadvantages when shooting movement (jello-like image distortion) and of course there’s still “the sound issue” (no XLR inputs on the Canon DSLR’s, yet).
Fear not! The next generation is just around the corner and I am outright giddy: The RED Scarlett is coming, not to mention the countless other technologies emerging by the day. With the cost of high-end digital production becoming nearly non-existent, the only thing left to discover are good ideas and old fashioned inspiration. We are living in the rarest of times where the cost of our resources are priced wildly below their value in the right hands.
If Fresno is a wasteland of empty swimming pools representing the movie business today (abandoned, depressing, empty) then we are the skaters taking full advantage.
The next masterpiece is going to come from one of us.
["Cannonball" video by California Is A Place. Shout out to the eternally dependable Laughing Squid for the find.]
Who doesn’t love zombies? When Merit Badger created an awesome poster for the new film “Eat Brains Love” staring an undead Julia Roberts it caught my attention instantly. From Merit Badger himself:
ZOMBIES MAKE ANY STORY BETTER. Any story at all. It doesn’t matter how classic or sacred or seemingly ill-suited a book may be—you throw a zombie apocalypse in there and it instantly gets at least 250% more awesome.
It’s like you got your peanut butter in my chocolate and I got my chocolate in your peanut butter. Only replace “peanut butter” with “living dead” and “chocolate” with “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” See what I mean? Two great tastes that taste great together.
If you’ve been thinking of writing the next great zombie crossover, better claim your source material ASAP. Books are getting snapped up faster than fresh brains at lunchtime.
[via Laughing Squid via Boing Boing. Silly internet.]
