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I can’t get this to work (because I’m in the US?) but the BBC has put up a collection of David Attenborough’s favorite moments from his last 30 years of shooting nature documentary videos. More info here.
It has always been my hope that through filmmaking I can bring the wonder of the natural world into people’s sitting rooms, inspire people to find out more and to care about the world we share.
(via @dunstan)
My wife almost wet her pants at this part of a TV ad for the Neckline Slimmer. This odd little device reminds me a bit of the eye exercises that Speed Reader did on The Great Space Coaster. (Congrats if you get that reference.)
How to win at Scrabble if you’re perhaps not that good at the words thing.
Scrabble isn’t a game of who can get the best 6 letter words. It’s a game of points and squeezing 2 letter terms into corners. Mehal Shah takes us through clean and sometimes dirty ways to win at Scrabble.
(via radar)
This is the most ridiculously implausible tennis shot you’ll ever see.
Federer says “it was the greatest shot I ever hit in my life”.
Michael Jordan is set for induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend and in honor of the best player ever, ESPN is counting down with video of his 23 most memorable moments.
Novak Djokovic, the clown prince of tennis, did his impression of John McEnroe after a victory at the US Open the other day and McEnroe came down from the booth to do his best Djokovic impression.
Watch as some fire ants built a lifeboat (out of themselves!) after the Amazon floods.
If I’m ever in a vegetative state after an accident or anything, just cue up a bunch of BBC nature videos and I’ll be good.
Rufus Hussey is a crack shot with a slingshot.
Rufus hit the big-time when he was invited to appear on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. After a bit of small-talk, Johnny asked, ” I understand you’re going to demonstrate your skill… is that right?” Rufus replied, “Sure! I’d rather shoot the beanshooter than shoot the bull.” Soon Rufus was shooting a corncob from Johnny’s hand.
(via reference library)
A wonderfully concise video tour of how special effects in film have evolved since 1900.
A Continuous Lean recommends Anthony Bourdain’s Disappearing Manhattan episode of No Reservations…with the pertinent YouTube embeds.
Fuck, it’s worth a watch even if you have seen it ten times. Eisenberg’s, Manganaro Foods, Keens, Le Veau d’Or, this show is like my NYC gastro-playbook. Watch it, love it, live it.
Grub Street has some textual CliffsNotes if you’re not into the video. If I had one of them life lists, sharing a meal with Bourdain would probably be on it.
A New York TImes video explains Roger Federer’s footwork and how it helps him be so effective and efficient on the court. Bonus: the creepy CG version of Federer makes him seem like even more of a robot. (via clusterflock)
The video starts off with synchronized motorcycle riding but give it a minute.
A bunch of videos that show the world from the perspective of several animals, including an armadillo, a wolf, a scorpion and a house fly. Here’s a bison’s view of moving with a herd:
(via @dunstan)
Rocketboom recently profiled some parkour practitioners in NYC. Is 35 too late to take up a new sport?
Jimmy Tarangelo lives in Manhattan in a van down by the river.
He doesn’t like paying rent, but he does like living in Manhattan. So what does he do? He lives in a van down by the river, literally. I spent a few hours with Jimmy and let him speak his mind.
A man demonstrates a pair of wrist-mounted flame throwers in his garage.
This somehow does not end in tragedy, but I see a very painful sneeze in this fellow’s future. (via minizud)
I had no idea you could get celebrity voices for your GPS navigation device. There’s Mr. T (“what does he say if you need to go to the airport?”), Yoda, KITT from Knight Rider, Michael Caine, Kim Cattrall, the Star Trek computer voice, Homer Simpson, Gary Busey, and Dennis Hopper.
And then of course you’ve got the mashups like Mr. T navigates Mr. Bean, Mr. T navigates Frogger, and Mr. T navigating in Mario Kart Wii.
You may even be able to get a Bob Dylan voice soon.
This video features a number of directors talking about the difference between viewing films in widescreen vs. pan and scan. Martin Scorsese:
[Converting to pan & scan] is, technically, re-directing the movie.
Update: Thoughts from David Lynch about pan and scan taken from a 1997 interview:
I would like to see everything done letterboxed and with great sound. I’m not too interested in doing the commentary, you know, like a lot of people do. But in some strange way I kind of like pan-and-scan. Because you see things. It is a compromise, and in a couple of things you really say, “Why am I doing it?” But it’s just an interesting thing that happens- another composition. It’s not so bad, but I wish really that people could see the thing in a theater and that laserdiscs and videos didn’t exist. Because on the big screen with the sound, you become inside the film, and that’s the beauty of cinema. And it never happens on video, and it doesn’t happen on laserdisc, either.
(thx, bill)
Seth Menachem takes his video camera out on the streets and collects Life Advice From Old People. Menachem is in the movie biz so he even got advice from Jon Voight and Errol Morris.
This 1930 newsreel footage shows Helen Keller and her companion Anne Sullivan demonstrating how Keller learned to speak.
Much is made of Keller’s method of sign language, but I had no idea she could talk. (via gulfstream)
Update: Here’s an audio clip of Keller giving a speech.
I almost wet my pants laughing the other night watching this little bit on Family Guy:
It was so hot in New York City last week — HOW HOT WAS IT? — it was so hot that the first event of the Midtown Games was held in a fountain on 50th St.: a 50m freestyle swim.
Friday, August 14th at 1pm marked the opening event of the Midtown Games: Olympics, and was attended primarily by the city’s punch-drunk, heat-stroked interns. With the blare of a foghorn the crowd closed in like a shield, trumpets sang out “Eye of the Tiger” and five swimmers in Speedos and caps leapt into the burbly water of a decorative fountain to swim its 50 metres or so in elegant racing style.
Momus is first out of the gate with a summary of the 00s, what he calls a “mister narrative of the decade”…a one-man master narrative.
Other things that looked dead or dying this decade: I personally stopped going to the cinema. Why sit behind someone’s head in a fleapit when you can download all you need to see and project it at home? Copyright effectively died, overtaken, de facto, by events on the internet. Magazines and newspapers ended the decade looking very unhealthy indeed, although books seemed strong. Young people got a lot less interested in cars, leading some to label Japan a post-car society. Detroit pretty much collapsed. The polar ice caps melted rapidly; climate change is a fact. Banks — having invented what they thought were clever ways to spread risk around, and play with planet-sized sums of entirely fictional money — looked pretty shaky.
Embedded in Momus’s post is a video called Rise of the Rest, the title of which was borrowed from Fareed Zakaria.
From the video:
In ten years, the number one English speaking country in the world will be
USAIndiaChina.
This is why you shouldn’t text while driving. While you’re at it, knock it off with the phone conversations, lipstick application, and crossword puzzles. NSFW or for the faint-of-heart.
JD’s girlfriend was not a good listener. He was leaving on a trip to Europe for two weeks. She wasn’t aware he had left. Then the emails started.
(via that’s how it happened)
Quentin Tarantino talks about his 20 favorite movies that have been made since he became a director.
Here’s the full list in handy text form:
Battle Royale
Anything Else
Audition
Blade
Boogie Nights
Dazed & Confused
Dogville
Fight Club
Fridays
The Host
The Insider
Joint Security Area
Lost In Translation
The Matrix
Memories of Murder
Police Story 3
Shaun of the Dead
Speed
Team America
Unbreakable
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