‘Her Morning Elegance’ by Oren Lavie. Facts about the video from his myspace page;

* The video was shot all stills - roughly 3225 still photos for the entire video, using one camera, hanging from the ceiling for the main body of the movie.
* It took 4 weeks before shooting to create an animated computer generated storyboard for the video, with 3d dummies for the characters.
* It took only 2 days of shooting for the live actors on set to re-create the 3.5 minutes computer sequence, frame by frame.
* Some of the bed sheets used in the video were taken from Oren’s own bedroom and are now considered collectors items, worth at the moment not very much and therefore used as bed sheets.
*Each of the wonderfully talented people above have worked on the video for a fraction of their normal rates (except Oren who worked for his normal rate of zero).

via myextralife

The above video is a short film by Neill Blomkamp (possible director of the possibly  up and coming geek-a-geddon that could be the Halo film). Similar but different to the 1989 film Alien Nation , featuring James Caan and the ever-great Mandy Patinkin, this short film is to be the basis of Peter Jackson’s next opus as producer, DIstrict 9. The viral marketing for the film has been going for a while now, according to Empire, and here are a few of the websites;

clicky here for maps and things…

clicky here for believable bollocks from the evyil business that is involved…

then clicky here for an alien blogging the ‘truth’ of their plight.

The studios are getting pretty good at this viral marketing milarky. I think I’m excited.

 At first, I thought that the Peter Jackson / Steven Spielberg Tintin sounded like a dangerous foray into a sacred franchise. Today, my worries are crushed as details emerge of the people involved.

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And why the hell not?

Well done Terry.

And so the year begins with a great film. What joy! But bleak, murky, steroid enhanced joy.

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As the world farted a collective fanfare of joy at the inauguration of a clever bloke as earth’s most powerful person, some moon musos thought it wise to reflect on the past 8 years of terror, war and slapstick brought to us by the last president of the united states of america. But, lest we be hasty to think that all the nonsensical jibberings and blatant disregard for human rights and international law were the result of George Walker Bush being evil and thick, let us consider that maybe he was just sick.

Though we may no longer see his monkey arse face on our screens or listen to his verbal jobbies, let us never forget how sad and silly it all was. And if you draw amusement from catastrophic failure you may enjoy

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(image from here)

The new ’season’ of Battlestar Galactica blew my socks off before I could even remove my shoes, so basically it ruined my entire footwear situation. Such an amazing thing, this show, to explore the issues of belief, bigotry, heroism, destiny, sacrifice and self preservation in an adult way, touching on Iraq and similar murky wars, yet still pander to my child-like need for spaceships and magic.  Absolutely astounding acting by the entire cast (I could highlight some favourites, but I think that would be the equivalent of pointing out how blue the sky was). Fantastic. It’s a shame that over here in Britain it’s not been promoted in any way in its entire run, beyond a quick advert which may as well have been about crisps.

SPOILER CLICKY ahead: I love chat about how such a show comes together…click here for a great discussion by some of the shows writers and producers, as to why this episode was what they thought was possibly the last ever. and what lengths everyone went to because of that… SPOILERS LIE THEREIN the clicky!    

 Tony Hart has died. A couple of days ago. Aged 83 and a bit.

And thus the harsh winter of 2008 claims the life of another bold hero.

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On the 13th of January 2009 Patrick McGoohan died. On the 14th of January 2009 Ricardo Montalban died. That just ain’t right.

(Ricardo’s picture from here, McGoohan’s from here, which includes a nice summary of his time on ‘The Prisoner’)

Everyone else better stay alive, or else…. 

Sesame Street is pretty damned unique in televisual history. It is cool, topical, educational, entertaining, moving, funny, clever, and a whole bunch of other positive words. It started november 1979, 1969 so this year will be its 30th 40th aniversary. Yes I do maths… Badly really badly. Part of me thinks we should send the entire collected works of Jim Henson’s workshop into space on the next deep space probe because you learn more from ‘the Street’ about humanity then you ever could reading binary code and looking at pictures of naked bearded men. I imagine. I haven’t tried.

Norah Jones in the clip above, and a few other of the many many famous musical guest stars that have been on ’the street’ include

 R.E.M singing ‘Furry Happy Monsters’  

BIlly Joel and the hot woman from the West Wing, Marlee Matlin, sing to Oscar the grouch,

Ray Charles jams with Bert and Ernie (Yeah, ’Let’s deal with it’ Bert and Ernie)

This great clip of Paul Simon entertaining some kids  through the power of music

Opera singer Andrea Bocelli shouts Elmo to sleep with his beautiful but loud voice

I could go on and on, and probably will, but this is the year of Sesame Street! Long may it prevail! Let’s all revel in its greatness.

 Sesame Street web page here.

Also, if you’re like me and always dreamed of seeing Natalie Portman and Elmo in elephant outfits trumpeting at each other, click here.

EDIT: corrected maths. Thanks to Birdy Putt and his strange voice.

Thanks must go to Daddy Rosscoe here, because I grew up with these guys yelling in my ears every time we went on a car journey. The Flying Pickets were an awesome group that didn’t use any kind of instruments, except for their voices. They rock. Oddly the following video looks like it is the opposite of wide-screen… Shall we call it short-assed-screen? Yes. We shall.

Chris Morris, the brain child behind The Day Today and Brass Eye has been given the opportunity by a private film company to make a comedy on a group of British terrorists:

Morris has said that he wanted the film to explore “the Dad’s Army side of terrorism” and look at the human foibles of would-be martyrs. In it, potential suicide bombers attend a terror training camp where they argue about honey and get thrown out for smoking. One accidentally shoots another’s foot. In Britain, the terrorists squabble over washing-up duties and their leader confuses a gram of triacetone triperoxide, a powdery explosive, for cocaine.

The synopsis cites an incident when real-life terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed invited a journalist to Pakistan to hear about his role as a ringleader in the 9/11 bombings, and then kept them waiting for two hours while he deliberated over which clothes would make him appear less fat on camera.

His paedophile and drug specials for Brass Eye were hilarious so Im expecting big things from him, but is it too close to the bone? Will he be feeding the firey belly of furious terrorists exacerbating the situation? It seems so for Channel 4 and the BBC who didn’t want to touch it. But personally I think not, we Britains should laugh in the face of adversity and talk about cricket whilst sipping on Earl Gray.

Click uponst for a link to YouTubes of Chris Morris on Brass Eye.

Quote from cook’d and bomb’d.

Yadda yadda whatever. I don’t think I even need to manifacture a reason to show a video which features the yummy Lisa Hannigan , but hell; this video has something to do with christmas. (not the christmas I imagine wherein I wake up with her by my bed in stockings…)

Mick Flannery is also in the video…and it is his song. Shut up Flannery, You’re not beautiful like a sunset. Carry on Lisa…

Very little needs said about this video beyond the obvious, like “no frakking way” and “If that’s real, I feel bad for that dude so much” and not forgetting “don’t give him a smoke! HE’S MADE OF WOOD!”…

EDIT: I just noticed the google ads running at the bottom of the video for ‘tree surgeons’ and ‘mulchers’. why am I apologising about being inappropriate?

He is of course, not made of wood, but is a human apparently suffering from the ultra rare genetic disorder Epidermodysplasia verruciformis  (say that three times whilst drunk…nothing will happen. Trust me). Despite the real human emotions at stake here… it is hard not to make jokes. I feel appropriately evyil. He definately wins the excuse of the month award as to why he doesn’t turn up for work, especially if he was a receptionist.

It’s such an incredible disease, like out of a fantasy novel or something. The sad side is that after thinking he’s dealt with his problem this guy has this to deal with this;

On December 12, 2008, MSNBC reported that his warts had returned and it appears he will need two surgeries a year for the rest of his life to keep them at bay

Ouch. After hearing this, he leaved.

(sorry).