"Recut" Movie Trailers

"Shining", a Feel-Good Fatherhood Movie

One kind of internet video I love is the "recut trailer", where different music and sequencing makes horror films out of family movies, and romantic comedies out of slasher films. There are a lot of them out on YouTube, but it takes some really good editing skills and awareness of cliches to really make a good one. Here are ones that have given me a lot of laughs.

• "The Shining" recut as a feel-good fatherhood movie
• "Mary Poppins" recut as Scary Mary, an Exorcist-like film
• "Office Space" recut as a psycho-killer movie
• "Taxi Driver" recut as a When-Harry-Met-Sally romantic comedy
• "The Matrix" recut as a romantic weepie about a love-at-first-site encounter
• Gump Royale...a merge between "Forest Gump" and the 007 movie "Casino Royale"
• "Field of Dreams" recut as a thriller about a sinister neighbor
• Will Ferrel comedy "Elf" recut as a horror movie
• "Brokeback Mountain" recut to have over-the-top heterosexual themes
• Brokeback to the Future, a recut of "Back to the Future" with latent homosexual themes
• "Peter Pan" as a steamy love triangle
• "The Matrix" recut with a Brokeback Mountain plot

These aren't movie trailer spoofs, but are still funny audio/video recuts:

• A scene from "The Simpsons" recut as the "Go get your shinebox" scene from Goodfellas
• The Hitler biopic "Downfall" recut as the story of Blu-Ray format winning over HD-DVD
• Sesame Street Casino...Bert and Ernie do some Pesci and Deniro dialog
  

Timeline of Top Internet Memes

Check out this brilliant timeline of Internet Memes.

I love it...it starts with the Cambridge University Trojan room coffee pot! I remember that when it happened.

How many do you know? Dancing Baby, All Your Base, Don't Tase Me... One that I found noticeably missing is the Subservient Chicken, whose URL is still live (even if the chicken isn't).

I Look Like THAT Guy?

A few minutes ago I was waiting by the elevator at the Tribune, and the following conversation took place:

Guy: Oh, while I've got you Andy, could you forward that email to the rest of the group?
Me: (Does a 360 around self and sees that there is nobody else nearby) I'm sorry, do we know each other?
Guy: (Embarassed) Oh, I do apologize, you look exactly like someone I work with.
Me: What's his name? I'll look up his photo on the HR site.
Guy: Andrew Countryman. You will be shocked at how much you two look exactly alike.

Nothing is more disappointing when someone picks up on all the wrong features when they compare you to someone else. I think we all probably think we still look like we did when we were 25. Like say, my old Northwestern photo.

But no, apparently I look more like Andrew Countryman (left).

Well I've got a surprise for him when someday someone tells him he looks like me. Here is my awful Tribune company photo (right).

Links to Interesting and Fun Stuff

Just found today: a funny car commercial with a tie-in to "The Transformers" movie.

A really well-written introduction to post-modernism. Ironically it's written for a Christian audience, but it's pretty spot-on with the detail.

A collection of fantastic ship wreck photos.

Someone found a way to get a camera inside the cylinder of a car engine. It really does work exactly like they tell you in the illustrations!

I just like this cartoon of overly aggressive customer service. Another geeky cartoon by the same artist.

Ain't it the truth: life summed up in a one-panel cartoon.

In case you ever have to imitate him on SNL, learn how to talk like Frank Sinatra.

This page is served up by a web server operating off of a single AAA battery. There is also a photo of its predecessor, which ran on potato power.

YouRememberThat.com is a site full of rare and memorable TV clips. Here is rare clip of Sinatra and Presley singing together.

Mix some samba music, including girl singers whispering "kitchee koo".

If you have small children, you may have had a lot of fun giggling over the sneezing panda. Now check out the spoof.

If you missed "There Will Be Blood" at the movies this year, you should get around to watching this fantastic film. A lot of people are having fun over the ending scene with the line "I drink your milkshake!" Here is SNL's spoof of the scene; here's a YouTube video by Brandon Hardesty.

Speaking of SNL, they did a great sendup of the Elliott Spitzer press conference earlier this year. Here's the original; here is the SNL spoof.

Here's a great flashmob kind of event, where 16 actors staged a 'spontaneous' musical in the food court of a Los Angeles shopping mall.

The president of Tribune Interactive, where I work, hates meetings and has actually banned them from being held by anyone in the company for a whole week. I plan to show him this cartoon.

Digital Clock. Dancing Girls. Ok.

I found this screensaver that consists of, uh, a digital clock alternating with dancing Japanese girls. And some breezy samba music as well. Don't think too hard about this one. It is what it is.

Musical Roller Coaster

An animation that takes a roller coaster through a musical score, with symphonic music: http://www.diretodoforno.com.br/zko-roller-coaster. It appears to be an advertisement for a Chamber Orchestra in Zurich (Zürcher Kammer Orchester), produced by an ad agency called Euro RSCG Zurique. It would have been better if the notation actually reflected the music the whole time, but you can't have it all.