Allthyngs

When I chose not to become a marketing major at Tulane, I had to accept that I would now never be able to become Don Draper. I wouldn’t say I’m not dashing enough to be a Don Draper doppelganger, but my creative mind is holding me back from being the real thing. For those who have watched Mad Men as religiously as I have in the past few months, you may be looking for more information on the advertising industry. Enter Art and Copy, a new film that “reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time.” Unfortunately, Don Draper will not be included in the documentary, but I look forward to seeing the interviews with the kinds of people that inspired his character.

Find out more at Artandcopyfilm.org

It’s really hard to keep up with news, because there’s so much of it that just keeping up takes hours a day. Fortunately, The New York Times has started putting up a quick, 5-10 minute video every day around 1pm where they analyze everything that’s going on in the world that day and why it matters. It’s one of those things that’s so good it makes you realize everyone else sucks at their jobs.

Check it out onNYTimes.com

Edgar Wright, the director behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is at it again. Recently, the teaser trailer for his third film, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, hit the internet, and although it lacks a certain lovable British duo, it looks awesome. If you’re not already excited for this movie, you should be. Early reviews have been almost unanimously positive, praising the film’s genuine originality. Hell, Keven Smith even went as far as to call it “spellbinding,” among other things. Hopefully this summer will have plenty of good movies like this to make up for my Transformers 2 lobotomy.

Buddy Rich is an animal, and Animal is a Muppet. In this retro video clip from the classic Muppet Show Animal and Buddy Rich have a little drum battle. It’s excellent puppeteering and percussion.

Sometimes, it’s just so damn clear that we don’t understand nearly as much about the universe as we think we do. Watching this video, which shows how certain mathematical patterns and models show up so precisely in nature, makes it clear that there must be something fundamental about the way stuff works that we haven’t figured out yet. Why else would people like Dane Cook? Check out the video after the jump (click “read more”), it’ll blow your mind.

Jamie Oliver’s new show premiers Friday night at 8pm EST on ABC, but instead of watching that you should watch his TED talk, which is much better. The first half of the premier is up on Hulu already (and it’s embedded after the jump, as is the TED talk), and it’s way too reality-showy to be any good. Jamie’s TED talk on the other hand, is brilliant. He lays out pretty solidly all the problems with food in America, and even manages to give me some hope that we can fix them. Check it out after the jump (click “read more”). You can download the TED talk at Ted.com

In the world of Atheism there are weak Atheists, who don’t believe in God, strong Atheists, who believe there is no God, and Sam Harris, who believes even if there were a God but he’d be retarded and not worth worshiping. Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens make some pretty strong arguments for why Atheism is the only reasonable theism, but only Sam Harris has the balls to flat out call religious people wrong and stupid. In this TED talk, he argues that not only can science answer moral questions, it’s the only thing that should. Maybe I’m biased, but I think he’s dead-on. Check it out for yourself after the jump (click “read more”).

It seems like every year we get at least three new movies about the real story behind some famous band or musician. But what about the eclectic and infamously… well… weird, Weird Al Yankovic? Surely there’s an interesting story behind his pop-culture and polka fueled madness. Fortunately, Funny or Die has put together a trailer for the unfortunately fake Weird Al biopic, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. Look for a cameo from Al himself as a (short-haired) record exec.

Free your mind, explore the spaces of your soul. No? It’s all very zen. Anyways, here are some short animated movies of Allan Watts quotes animated by the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The movies aren’t dirty or crude, but rather insightful and pleasant. They are funny, just not in same way South Park is.

Check them out at Freshminds.com

Thursday night, Jon Stewart spent almost 15 minutes doing a spot on impersonation of Glen Beck. It was wild, scary, and hilarious. Fan’s of the Daily Show are use to Jon’s characters, but this was a whole new level. He really showed his command of acting this time. If only he could have given as good a performance in the Faculty.

Check it out at Thedailyshow.com

This Oscar-nominated short film has all of the best parts of those three to five minute sequences that precede every Disney/Pixar movie: really good animations, humor, an original storyline crammed into a very short amount of time, and a warm and fuzzy aftertaste at the end.

Certain things just don’t get old. MGMT’s catchy electronic hit Kids is one of those things. Chiddy Bang, a spankin’ new rap group out of Philly, exemplfies the immortal quality of Kids by using it as the beat for their beyond catchy breakout single, Opposite of Adults. The music video’s cool to boot, bringing back fond Goldeneye-era memories.

We can’t embed it, but check it out on YouTube Read more

This Ted Talk by Jane McGonigal, who may or may not be a professor at Hogwarts, is yet another really interesting argument that video games aren’t just a waste of time. It makes sense, I mean, nothing people work that hard at could ever be a waste of time. On the other hand, I’d love to play games in her universe, where apparently Halo players form tight-knit communities because they have to trust each other to play by the rules. Although, I don’t play much Halo, so maybe the rules include tea-bagging and being an obnoxious retard on chat? I can’t be sure. Still, check out the video after the jump, and if you want you can download it from Ted.

When one of the first moving pictures (nothing more than a series of everyday occurrences captured on film) was premiered almost a hundred years ago, people ran screaming from the exhibit at the sight of a train barreling towards the camera. Nowadays it’s a little harder to shove movie magic down our cynical throats. Enter the age of special effects. Special effects are like roofies: if you don’t notice them, that means they’re working. With movies like Avatar, it’s easy to forget that there was once a time when movies like Jurassic Park, Star Wars, and even The Wizard of Oz blew people’s minds. Here’s a video to give a little perspective of how far we’ve come, and how much more magical movie magic (holy alliteration Batman!) has grown from its humble black and white beginnings. Music is Rods and Cones by The Blue Man Group.

I frequently walk across campus at Tulane with a smug look on my face, taking everything for granted. What we need here is a sniper, someone to keep us on our toes (FBI people please don’t raid my room I was just kidding). Anyway, in this video a village of seemingly nice people inherit a town sniper who with his friendly eastern European accent and deadly accuracy teaches us all a lesson on how valuable our lives are. Check it out after the jump.

Remember those movie trailer mash-ups that were really popular a few years back? Well french video company AMDS took the idea one step further with a series of nothing-but-action movie fight scene mash-ups. Check out Robocop vs Neo and the epic three-part Robocop vs Terminator after the jump.

I wouldn’t usually post a Youtube blooper video, but this is the first Youtube video that has had me laughing out loud in a long time. If you don’t know who Bill Dance is, which is totally acceptable if you don’t live in the Deep South, he’s a professional fisherman with an extremely boring show where he takes himself entirely too seriously. Check out the video on Youtube, gosh darnit!

Band of Brothers, for those of you who missed it, was an epic WWII miniseries on HBO that came out a few years ago detailing the immortal bond between soldiers, and the intense Hell of the battlefield. Now HBO is begining to air a follow-up series called The Pacific, taking the Band of Brothers formula and switching the setting from Nazi-occupied Europe to, you guessed it, the Pacific. I think this is an awesome idea because the Pacific side of the war hasn’t seen as much coverage as the Hitlerey part, aside from Clint Eastwood’s also-notable Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of our Fathers.

For another reminder why our generation is so much worse than the one with the title of “The Greatest,” check out The Pacific on HBO (new episodes air Sunday at 9), or watch episodes online here. (there’s a short registration process, but for those without HBO it’s definitely worth it).

Wade Davis seems to be a little out of breath, uses unnecessarily big words, looks unshakably like Tim Robbins, and is named after a piece of legislation from 1864, but this talk is mindblowing. He paints a picture of the world exactly the way you have to see it. As he puts it, “there’s no pyramid with Victorian England at the top and all the primitive people at the bottom.” The world is the story of a bunch of different threads going in a bunch of different directions, and each one leads to something profound and amazing. Ours is only one of those threads. This is what “open-minded” is supposed to mean.

In this video, The Onion sums up exactly what all news looks like to me.