Information Hell #

Analysis Of Music Video "Bad Romance"

2009-11-13T14:48:00.000-08:00

FUCK! I didn't want to like her. She's so cheap and whoring in all her music and videos, always going for cheap shock and incredibly retarded word play. But I must now concede Lady Gaga's awesomeness. For it is irrefutable in her video "Bad Romance". Not the song, her music still sucks to me, but the video is amazing and seems to finally staple what Gaga truly likes doing. Let's see if this is fluke. If it's not, then hopefully Gaga and crew will save music videos from the trend of visual flattening into 2 dimensions and over-polishing, and reinstate the spatial and textural depth so lost in today's music videos.

The techno/bohemian "Just Dance" is a song I felt she didn't deserve. Sure the lyrics are whoring but not nearly as cheap as the person we meet in the music video of the song. You can tell alot about Lady Gaga from "Just Dance". In the song you hear someone who has nothing meaningful to say but knows music. She knows melody very well. In the video you see a brave, tenacious attention whore, but one with a small reservation, her fashion sense. She's foremost an entertainer. It's like she can't read but give the girl a broom and she'll sweep that place cleaner than anyone! All her lyrics are a string of effects that she knows sound good, regardless of what sense the words make. Cheap. Her costumes and the videos are all as outlandish as possible, having no aesthetic point. Cheap. But she does seem to have a skill: choreography.

"completely unrelated" Ha! Hilarious, and spot on. Gaga explains her weirdness in this Ellen Degeneres interview: "The whole point of what I do — the Monster Ball, the music, the performance aspect of it — I want to create a space for my fans where they can feel free and they can celebrate. I didn't fit in in high school, and I felt like a freak. So I like to create this atmosphere for my fans where they feel like they have a freak in me to hang out with and they don't feel alone." Ah, so in extracting the weirdos in society by giving them a safe-haven, less instances of weirdos with pent-up emotions occur, causing less weird, tenacious Gagas! ZOMG PARADOX!

I'm trying to figure out who truly directed "Bad Romance". Francis Lawrence is the director but hardly any other of his works show this level of prowess. Gaga's "Paparazzi" is nice visual story-telling; and LoveGame is the most visceral, showing a penchant for spectacle. But even those are no where near the quality this is. So it's either a combo of Lawrence and Gaga, or someone else highly involved that yielded this sophistication. Because the shooting style used here is very alien to music videos, including all of Gaga's and Lawrence's. I found the culprit! The cinematographer, Thomas Kloss: Go ahead and watch the 'Making Of' here: Making of Bad Romance

All the music videos he's been involved in have the same great polished, spacious, and judiciously-edited look. Especially his "Jai Ho" by Pussycat Dolls and "7 Things" by Miley Cyrus. While both Lawrence's and Gaga's previous works all suffer from over-editing and cheap techniques, all of Kloss's vids have been moderately cut and are very conscious of the images' momentum. Thomas Kloss is the reason why this video pops, Gaga's acting is why we're interested, and I guess Lawrence's direction is why it's so assured. Screenshots containing magnificence ahead!:

-0:04

"Eyes Wide Shut" much!?

"Clockwork Orange" much!!?Stanley Kubrick much!!!!? Now is Ms.Gaga knowledgeable enough to make references to late great film director Stanley Kubrick? YES! And I should probably stop treating her like she's stupid! She's shown signs of being very cinema literate. About her 1st video shoot, "Just Dance", she says "Oh it was so fun, it was amazing. For me it was like being on a Martin Scorsese set. I've been so low budget for so long, and to have this incredibly amazing video was really very humbling". And of the lyrics in "Bad Romance", "I was actually listing Hitchcock movies. 'I want your Psycho, your Vertigo schtick/ Want you in my Rear Window, baby you're sick.' "What I'm really trying to say is I want the deepest, darkest, sickest parts of you that you are afraid to share with anyone because I love you that much." Elitism be gone! She now knows more about film than I do.

-0:08
"I wanted to design a pair for some of the toughest chicks and some of my girlfriends they used to keep razor blades in the side of their mouths," she explained. "That tough female spirit is something that I want to project. It's meant to be, 'This is my shield, this is my weapon, this is my inner sense of fame, this is my monster.'" How in god's name was I supposed to get all that from freaky sunglasses? Does this mean that everything means something in here? Every costume element is symbolic? Good grief, that's way too much work for me. Anyone else feel free to pick up where she left off. And you have! Go here for a breakdown of the symbolism in the vid. I'm not a big fan of symbolism in movies because they're usually wholly empty(if not always). I'm into the filmic-storytelling, which I believe is all that matters, so it's all I'll outline here, omitting the least effective.

-0:11
Sweet nonexistent(apparently, very existent!: Parrot By Starck) music player, dude. There's something to be said about the metal mesh. It seems like protection. Like she doesn't want to damage her pretty nails but then puts the ugly mesh on to protect them, in turn fucking up the way they look, forgetting the whole point of making them pretty in the 1st place. Is she describing the mentality of the rich here? Right after she turns off the player playing classical music the actual song starts, and it startles the shit out of her:

Oh but what does it mean!? I believe the classical music represents the elite she is now part of. But there's a dirty story to how she got to be on that throne. The classical music is a facade, she plays it, they all play it to drown out their dirty past that looms in reality, that is remembered when the party stops.

-0:52
Twitching fingers. I guess she was just born?

-0:55
#1 I like how they use both her pronunciation and the dancers pantomime to trivialize "love". Does it mean anything? A "what's love got to do with it" moment would be appropriate here but Gaga isn't that good at music. The music added almost nothing to the vid so far, and the video is much too loud for the song to be heard. So the "LAVVV LAAV LAAV!" doesn't mean anything, it just sounds cool and has great melody so that's why it's there. The song's ambient echo-ish aura adds space to the scenes, making the room their in seem bigger. Without the music the room would feel much smaller and the video less sprawling that it looks, but not by much. The music also lends a tragic tone, which is why I see Gaga as mostly a victim here. It's still a light pop song placed on top of a sophisticated video.
#2 There's visual depth in the music video! OMG! When did they start doing this again? Because for the past 10 years they've been busy squishing video into a 2 dimensional picture! Since FOREVER now I've noticed that all music videos deal straight at the camera in every way. They all have a gloss that does away with all photo-realism, everything looks glossy causing everything in the frame to seem like it has no texture or depth. Like it's a flat picture. Also, whatever elements are relevant are usually all huddled around the camera, again causing the feelings that there's no world beyond what you see on screen. Here there is depth. The lights behind the dancers don't upstage them. The cinematography is good enough to capture all the relevant elements, they don't need to huddle around the camera for screen time. And photorealism instead of glossy is one of the main reasons this video works.

-1:24
So cuuuuuuute! Is this not supposed to be baby Gaga? Innocent Baby Gaga? Before the corruption? I say yes. And we get a good naked look at her, we know her now. Before she's pulled away from us and her innocence. This is the 1st time we get to see Gaga's face without any obstructions and yet it's a false picture. She clearly enhanced the eyes to have a doe-eyed effect. And the video never explains it, and it's the 1st time we see her. That's because this is a video from our CGI era and Gaga is confident that her viewers are smart enough to discern that it's fake.

BEHOLD! An instance of cultural shift right before your very eyes! A pushpin in the human timeline! A time when people actually got used to CGI! And were expected to know something was CGI! The time is here. Cool CGI for the sake of cool CGI is no longer cool. It is now transparent, transparent to the audience able to understand this music video. As Roger Ebert concluded in the his "Transformers" review: "I saw the movie on the largest screen in our nearest multiplex. It was standing room only, and hundreds were turned away. Even the name of Hasbro, maker of the Transformers toys, was cheered during the titles, and the audience laughed and applauded and loved all the human parts and the opening comedy. But when the battle of the titans began, a curious thing happened. The theater fell dead silent. No cheers. No reaction whether Optimus Prime or Megatron was on top. No nothing. I looked around and saw only passive faces looking at the screen. My guess is we're getting to the point where CGI should be used as a topping and not the whole pizza."

-1:28
Keep an eye on the Gagas! I think this is the 3rd one so far, they all seem to represent different sides of her. I believe this is the side that listens to the crowd, dances with them, is one of them. She has no face here, no distinct personality. Only a slight bit of personality(face), at most enough to put her at the head of the crowd, but part of the crowd nonetheless. I noticed that these set of "creatures" were a bit lazy before the light came on, once then they whipped into shape and tightened up their act. You're always more alert and direct when people are watching you. This is very much in line with this gaga being a puppet.

-1:35
Crying out from under the mask to be set free. Almost completely faded into the background(crowd), but not quite.

-1:38
Innocence being stripped/fighting back

-1:39
'nother Gaga! There's nothing around her but pure white and she's very close to the screen. Again, very intimate but this time even moreso because she's free of everything. We seem to be inside her head here. Here she's the objective onlooker, seeing things clearly.

-1:41
Existential implosion for having lost the last pinch of her innocence. It's all conveyed in her performance.

-1:42
Rejoicing that she has been raped of her innocence. Yes! She has fallen in line, like clockwork.

-1:44
Left naked and empty, grasping for anything at all. A moment of purity. So traumatized is she that it shows physically, while the other 2 are still able to keep composure. So harrowing is it that she's unable to restrain herself from looking so openly vulnerable to her attackers. Now to build that protective shield so this never happens again.

-1:45
Basking in the perversion.

-1:46
She(as in this Gaga) remembers when all this happened. She isn't as disturbed as the Baby Gaga(stroking shoulders is too nonchalant), but she has tears in her eyes, which means that this can't be present Gaga. This Gaga seems to always be in retrospect mode.

-1:50
We get to see our star get roughed up! Well rounded performance. And we get to see her because there's no fancy gloss. It's reminiscent of the 80s where the whole point of the video was so that we could see the artists we were listening to. Face 1st, fancy shit 2nd.

-1:54
Epic spit! This one's a fighter. She may be able to retain her individuality yet.

-1:56 Clear-headed Gaga still remembering. She has the words "bad romance" in her mouth but they don't ring. They don't seem relevant to the video. The song is just nonexistent, the video is way too good. The song becomes just an excuse for the video to exist.

-1:59
Innocent Baby Gaga not dead yet!

-2:02
She lives! This is the new Gaga with a protective shield, protecting the remnants of Baby G in her head.

-2:06
I presume Dark Gaga, born from the tragedy. She's not Shield Gaga like the one above, she IS the shield wielded by Shield Gaga. GAGAGAGGAGAGAGGAGAGAGGAGAGAGA! and many more to come

-2:20
God I love this part. I have no idea what she's doing here when she holds her belly and lets out the invisible baby, but it's nasty, and that's why I love it. I'm sure that was the point of it. The move and the moan make her look really nasty, it exudes such confidence. She doesn't want to be the pretty girl, she wants to be the boss. She grows into a leader when she gets up from being thrown down. The push causes her to grow a spine, so she steps out and takes the lead. The belly move seems to be her professing her self-assurance. Brilliant, really brilliant. There are tons of moves that can convey confidence but hardly any as dense as this one. One leg kick and she conveys both confidence AND ambition in the same stroke! This is the one part of this video that really blew me away and took a while for me to understand why it did.

-2:49
#1 Her naturally floating hair shows that this is realtime. It adds so much more gravity to the performance.
#2 The dance moves coupled with not cutting the frickin shot! Oh how I treasure it. A lesser director(which is every director from both music vids and movies)would cut the shot and switch angles when Gaga dips. That trick ruins the effect. Instead what you should do, and what they do here, is wait so that we can see her switch moves from one angle. It makes it so much more visceral. It's cut at the perfect time, making it look as if her dip sparked the cut. This is what could've made Beyonce's Single Ladies so much better, if they had NEVER cut the shot, but just did the whole dance in just one take. It would have been aMMAZZZIinnngg. But no, they don't listen to me.

-2:54
The moving hair, the spatial depth, AWESOME! She's repeating the moves she learned from the "crowd". She's one of them, but not completely.

-3:03
#1 Holy Crap! This is how you use technology! Diamonds suspended in the air, she's still moving around in the middle, and the diamonds look realistic.
#2 She has shown to be a good sport in all this high society depravity so they single her out. She's much more alone this time.

-3:09
She's not completely alone, we're there. Hence the glance. We're there to witness what else she's gotten herself into. She looks at us because we know her, we know her as a living breathing human with a life, a life we've witnessed, while the guys just see her as meat. We know the exuberant life behind that dead, stiff model pose.

-3:12
Zombie dance is sultrily chaotic! I can watch this all day. Again, her naturally bouncing hair making it very all organic.

-3:18
Again! Changing the dance move while staying the shot. And what a dance move it is. It's like the moonwalk(Micheal Jackson approves of Lady Gaga!), where you're doing alot of motions but your body is surprisingly not jerky. You're going against a preconceived notion of how things work, in realtime.

-3:38
Polished when it calls for it. The lights glare all the way to the front, compressing the image into a flat picture. This is something music vids do ad nauseum. Just because there are lights in the image the director feels the need to put them in focus, because light glare is "cool". Doing this causes the image to lose its 3-dimensional feel. Over-polishing is a problem with music vids, where everything is as perfect and in place and as visible as can be--there's no life. Gaga is evoking fashion here, which always calls for polishing. So the fact that this sequence is cut and shot "perfectly" is actually very apt. Now I see no connection between this fashion scene and the story. Gaga said before that fashion was her main influence in both her music and videos, so I guess this is an unrelated tangent. Maybe she wants to make an epic more than she wants to make a story.

-3:39
Baby Gaga is nonchalant about all this fashion crap and doesn't give it the amount of seriousness everyone else does.

-3:56
Again, we're at her level and we know her intimately, and we're here to witness what other depravity she's about to add to her life. We see the next addition right in the glasses, his reflection. Those shades are a shield between him and her mind.

-3:57
Protesting the event. I have no idea who this Gaga is.

-4:04
Fireworks! These dancers are the video's "fireworks" and crescendo spectacle. Her hair is much more frenetic now and her moves are more rigorous and jerky: fireworks. The camera now chooses unflattering angles so that the dance moves look harder, like she's performing at a live show. And live shows always have more gravity. Can you keep up those same sick dance moves on a live stage? Both the angles and her sporadic hair make the place(the same room used for all the scenes) seem much bigger, like an airplane hanger. Or maybe it now looks its actual size now, while the earlier angles made the room smaller than it actually is. Smart.

-4:07
Clear-headed Gaga is most concerned now, because she's not retrospective anymore, this is her right now about to go to bed with the guy.

-4:31

This is where the emotional burning and scaring happens. Not many survive it.

-4:39
Once again, she's not completely in it. She's participating in the depravity but she's still shielding her self from it the best she can. Again, what makes it great spectacle is that her hair and clothes are waving because that's what fire does. Other videos would have the fire but no waving, reassuring us that the fire is fake.

-4:46
Inside joke? I don't know what this is. It could be her "stamp"

-4:51
Congratulating themselves on a job well done. What conveys that is the 3 head motions Gaga does.

-4:53
#1 Look at our conductor/artist. Not alot of boobs or whatever else people consider beautiful, but a shitload of talent. As all great artists. I'm not calling her a great artist, I'm saying she's portrayed as one here. She doesn't want to be the pretty trophy girl, she wants to be the master. The owner of the joint. The orchestrator standing behind the curtains responsible for the masterpiece. But for now she has a need to entertain, and so she will.
#2 "WHAJABI-ROW-MAAAS" reminds us of the crappy song that can't hold itself up.

-5:00
He wasn't as strong as she was. She did take damage but he was consumed.

the end!

I felt it was all very Kubrick-esque. With all the white, starkness, square shapes, and constant overt symmetry. All these elements present the video as no more than a stage for Gaga to act out her story, not a world that we can get involved in but simply a stage that we can only view from the front. The "production lights" are always in the back, because they need light after all and this isn't a movie where you can hide the lights. So there are constantly lights in the background. Every time the camera is watching from the side instead of the front we're getting a closer look at a "live" performance.

"2001: Space Odyssey":symmetry symmetry symmetry

It is a stage--mostly empty until we put something there(white, starkness), occupied by set-pieces constructed by people(symmetry), and at a distance from us("production lights"always visible). Overall the video is breathtakingly self-assured and precise. Gaga's antics and the cinematography are so clear that whatever you feel while watching this may very well be the correct interpretation. While so many other music vids(like Rihanna's "Russian Roulette") fumble amateurishly with expressionism and like a lowlife seem to gratulate itself for simply trying, this one was made by very competent film makers and acts as if nothing less than cinematic mastery exists in the world of film.

more snapshots:

Happy Birthday JULIE ANDREWS!!

2009-10-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Julie happy birthday happy birthdayyyyyyy! Damnit, why can't you hear me? I wonder why...

check out this great picture thread

and my other Julie Andrews Post

check out this site that details her life and has interviews

Profile:
One of the most beloved performers in the world, Julie Andrews made her Broadway debut at age 18 in The Boy Friend. Historic successes followed in the original productions of My Fair Lady and Camelot. She won the Oscar for Best Actress in her first film, playing the title role in Mary Poppins. Perhaps the greatest triumph of her career came with the leading role in The Sound of Music, one of the most popular motion pictures of all time. Her crystalline singing voice, wholesome appeal, natural elegance and sly humor made her a top box office draw around the world.

Biography:
The American film studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which had recently opened a London branch, made a screen test of the young singer, perhaps seeing her as a successor to the child singing stars of the pre-war era. The studio failed to offer her a contract, dismissing her as "unphotographable." Nevertheless, she soon appeared on one of Britain's first television variety programs.

Interviewer:You mentioned that the schools had shut down during the war. Does that mean there was really no school to go to?

Julie Andrews: Yes. There was a lot of evacuation going on at that time. All the children were being evacuated into the country. I was, too, for a while. The air raids towards the end of the war particularly were coming so fast and furiously -- with the doodlebugs (buzz bombs) as we called them -- that no housewife could get anything done and everything just ground to a halt for a while.

Quotes

"I hate the word wholesome."

"I have been called a nun with a switchblade where my privacy is concerned. I think there's a point where one says, that's for family, that's for me"

"I've got a good right hook."

"I am a liberated woman. And I do believe if a woman does equal work she should be paid equal money. But personally I am feminine and I do like male authority to lean on."

Article

She was 14 when her mother asked her to sing at a party at an upper-middle-class house. After it was over, the owner of the house approached her. Andrews had recognized him from a few earlier visits he had made to their home. He seemed intently interested in Andrews, "asking questions almost piercingly." Afterward, her mother revealed that the man was Andrews' biological father, that she'd an affair with him when she was married to Wells. Years later, Andrews' aunt told her that Wells was so in love with her mother, it didn't matter that she wasn't his legitimate child. "I believe he loved me dearly. And because I did not know then that he knew, I didn't have the heart to ask him about it before he died."

with daughter Emma Walton

Test Page

2009-09-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Crack feels ssoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good!

Blog Log

2009-08-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

I will try to keep a log of every HTML related change I make to this blog, for those who'd like to learn how I did them. As you can tell I freakin love tricking out the template and have gotten pretty addicted to learning all the snazy tricks web pages are capable of. Note, these edits work for my template and might not for yours. I also linked to where I got the help from. Anyway, behold!:

13. How To Change Blogger's Default Favicon. (9.16.09) Link, Link, Link.

cool sites:
-20 Free Favicon Icon Sets
-favicon.cc gallery
-Favicons R Us
-Create your own (1)
-Create your own (2)
-This trick here allows favicons to change automatically

for animated:

put either of these right above the </head> tag. It basically needs to be planted inside the <head> </head> tags but away from all the more important elements, therefore you put it right above the </head> for safety.

Now to me the only time favicons are worth something is when I'm looking through sites in my bookmarks list where then I'm more likely to watch the icons than the site names, and when I have a site I like alot where then it'll stand out in the tab bar and I'll attend it before others. And maybe a 3rd instance where you have a really cool icon that shows off the web's capabilities and stretches my imagination. Like this one
. The shade of black around the image gives a feel like the globe made a dent in the tab bar....3-D!

Now the whole point of a favicon is branding. So that anyone can recognize your site a mile a way, but that'll only be the case if they already know and like your site. Since branding is the objective then in my opinion an animated favicon is a no-no, because then there's nothing to "recognize". It's always moving and therefore your brain has nothing definitive to register. an Another reason animated favicon is bad is that it's distracting. Don't think that something that small has no effect, that clock at the bottom right of your screen is already an incredible subconscious distraction. And distraction is the internet's #1 problem overlooked in my opinion. There's so much crap everywhere on every page(like mine) that I don't see how the authors believe you'll be able to concentrate on the content, especially when it's text.

As you see my animated favicon is minimalist, importantly, it doesn't change colors and it doesn't shift or dance. It's as slow and yet unique and yet animation-y as I could get it. If you don't want one this lame then I suggest getting a static image. With kickass colors and preferably no text unless it's actually readable!

12. How to remove subscribe to post comments (atom) (8.28.09) Link

replace:

.feed-links {
clear: both;
line-height: 2.5em;
}

with this:

.feed-links {
display:none;
}

11. Link Color (8/23/09) Link
my settings, I believe they're the default settings:
Link color: #4D4DFF
Visited Link color: #820BBB
other colors

10. Code Box For Blogger:(8/16/09) Link

Mine:

.codebox{
background:#FBFEFF;
font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
border:1px solid #B3E7FF;
color:#333333;
clear:both;
padding:10px;
}

9. Drag And Drop Images:
On any image upload page(not just Blogger's), instead of clicking "Browse" you can right away drag and drop multiple image files into the gray box next to the "Browse" button with this firefox extension/add on.

8. Hover Effect Buttons:(8/4/09) Link, Link
To my knowledge there are 3 ways to do this:
-replace the image with another(that doesn't seem to work for me)

-join the 1st image and its hover-button, and have it toggle

-what I use, place semi-transparent .png over 1st image

the "style" tag only needs to be used once, while the "div" is used for each button

special thanks to spavel

7. Remove Blogger's Navigation bar for more slightly more space: 8/13/09 Link

6. Remove Blog Name From Page Title In Blogger(effect can be seen in search engines and blog) 8/14/09
Link

5. Centering Posts(or anything)

"something"

<div style="text-align:center;">"something"</div>

4. Adding Borders Around Elements: Link

3. Centering Middle Column: Link
add "margin-left"(because my middle column clings to the left) Remember to reduce other columns so it may still sum up to your "#outer-wrapper" width.

#main-wrapper {
width: 559px;
margin-left:8px;
float: $startSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

2. Editing the width of columns

#outer-wrapper {
width: 1000px;(this is the whole page, the sum of all the other values must equal this amount)
margin:0 auto;
padding:0px;
text-align:$startSide;
font: $bodyfont;
}

#main-wrapper {
width: 559px;
float: $startSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

#sidebar-wrapper {
width: 231px;
float: right;
border-left: 2px solid $bordercolor;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}
#newsidebar-wrapper {
width: 201px;
float: left;
border-right: 2px solid $bordercolor;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

1. 3 Column Template
Mine (3 Column Minima)
More

What happened to "Youtube Reviewed"?

2009-07-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

There used to be one helluva site called "Youtube Reviewed" which would point out the most interesting videos on Youtube they could find(and damn were they interesting, and interesting). They eventually expanded to reviewing any video on the web(besides porn of coarse), bringing you pretty much the best videos the net had to offer. On top of all that they were hilarious. The little they said in their post was sometimes witty enough that you'd remember their commentary all day!

BUT they seemed to have disappeared with no warning!
This was their latest website:
http://www.youtubereviewed.typepad.com/

What the hell? I assumed that they would pop back up eventually but it's been 3 months. They seemed to have stopped their web activity at around April 9th, all their sites:
youtube.com/user/UTubeReviewed
youtubereviewed.wordpress.com/ old home, till they migrated to:
youtubereviewed.typepad.com/
twitter.com/YouTubeReviewed

With their last post being:

I assume it was more than one person running the blog since he kept referring to himself as "we", "us", and "our". So why do several people running a blog stop all their "services" at the same time? They just shut down YoutubeReviewed as a whole? Good god why? I used to read their stuff all the time until they stopped. I post about it now because now I remember that I thought they would pop up again, which they never did. Does anyone know where the writers went? My Google Reader has all their posts from since last year September indexed if anyone needs cached posts, for whatever reason. It'd be great if they came back, I can only imagine what cool videos I'm missing.

Videos they've posted, along with their commentary:

Zombies and Sloths: Friends Forever

This video is great because it combines three of our favorite things: zombies, decapitated sloths and nearly dialogue-free animation.

Reason #273 Why Your Boyfriend is a Loser: He Doesn't Make You Cute Muppet Animations Starring Your Cat

Ladies: Scott Gairdner is the kind of guy you wish you could date. Why? Because for his girlfriend's birthday, he created this video featuring her favorite foreign muppets and her cat, Beenie.

Quick note for all the fellas out there: Don't let your girlfriends or wives see this. Because then they will realize that you are shitty boyfriends and they will all try to date Scott Gairdner.

Jason Statham is Going to Kick Diabetes in the Ass

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

We're not 100% sure this is how diabetes works, but we're 1,000% sure this is how every Jason Statham movie ever made works.

Big Man Japan Should Win All the Academy Awards

The more we see of Big Man Japan, the more we wish every movie ever made would feature a giant fat dude and a weird Stink Monster whose odor is "equivalent to 10,000 human feces."

In these difficult times, we know that it can be hard to reach consensus on anything. But can we all just go ahead and agree that Big Man Japan is the best movie ever made? We can? Perfect. Thanks for being so agreeable today, Internet. You're the coolest.

Guinea Pig Love

Let's start the morning off with a quiz:

What does this lady love most?

A) Captain & Tennille

B) Her guinea pig

C) Her dignity

If you answered C, you are totally and completely wrong.

Hai Karate Forces You to Punch Women

As the person who posted this video on YouTube points out, Hai Karate was rocking Axe Bodyspray's ad campaign before Axe Bodyspray was a glimmer in its old man's eye.

Who Loves Animals More Than This Guy?

Um, wow. This guy really loves animals. We've heard of people valuing their pets' companionship and whatnot, but this guy takes it to another level.

At least his love is indiscriminate; he loves dogs, cats, birds and even reptiles.

The Adventures of Longfellow and Mortimer

Gonzalo Cordova found out his great grandfather used to direct old-timey comedic silent films and posted this recently discovered gem for the whole world to enjoy.

Our favorite part is near the end when the mean man in the white shirt seems to be forcibly extracting tears from both the baby and the chimpanzee. We're not sure why he wants those tears so bad, but certainly no good can come from the stolen fluids of a baby and a diaper-wearing monkey.

Hopefully there are more films hidden away in Gonzalo's great-grandfather's stash. We are dying to know what becomes of Longfellow and Mortimer.

WALL-E Burger

2009-07-08T20:21:00.001-07:00

Day 241 - WALL-E Burger, originally uploaded by cappndave.

walle

Great Emmy Rossum Pictures

2009-07-07T16:52:00.000-07:00

Is it not the most fitting name ever? Emmy, cute little Emmy, cute little rosy Emmy, rosy little Emmy Rossum! Blogger has a 1600x1600 limit so go here for the original +3000 pixel versions

(Vogue 2007)

Gorgeous much? yes

Emmy fulfilling her daily routine of outshining the sun

Emmy busy caring about the future
(the Proposition 8 march on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles 2009-05-26)

('Dragonball Evolution' premiere in Tokyo, 10.03.2009)

Real live Cinderella

Ms. Rossum > Kittens

Well excuuuuuse you...

Paying tribute to Bulma, a DragonBall Z character

plays Bulma in the 2009 movie "Dragonbal: Evolution"

Pow!

Yes, you

Beacon of light shining across the entire galaxy much? Yes

Angelina Jolie's Best Pictures

2009-07-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

Okay maybe not best, just the ones I found most interesting...and hot. Also I tried to sniff out the where and when of the pics, for those who care. Blogger has a 1600x1600 limit so go here for the original +3000 pixel versions

Mother Teresa 2.0 (InStyle 2008)

click picture to physically meet Angelina Jolie, in all her yummy-face goodness. (Munawar Hosain portraits at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, November 3, 2007)

subtle, Vanity Fair, subtle. (July 2008)

promo from the TV film "George Wallace" (1997)

NBC's Today show, New York City - 16.10.2008

(at left)Brad Pitt, (at right)Brad Pitt after special effects to look like an incredibly hot old man for his role as Benjamin Button. (Screening of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" in New Orleans 01.12.2008)

Kung Fu Panda Press Conference 2008

in the film "Alexander" (2004)

Ahh the ol' "hot girl sensually eating the world's best looking strawberry" portrait

from "Life or Something Like It" (2002)

on production of the TV movie "Gia" (1998)

"sigh. My hotness bores me..."

channeling Charlize Theron

Angelina Jolie controls you!

(Harry Langdon Shoot 1991)

"Hello Lolita..."

Promo for "Hackers" (1995)

I love my dad...not"

her film debut at age 7 in "Lookin' to Get Out"(1982), a comedy starring her dad Jon Voight. video

satire of the 70s

(Marie Claire Photoshoot 2005)

good lord...have mercy!

the ol' "hot girl sensually posing with a deadly snake that is somehow able to be subdued by, let alone comprehend, the hotness of said girl" portrait.

god damn! Is this not for Brad's eyes only?

I believe This is the martini

channeling Micheal Jackson

C'est l'art

with her brother James Haven Voight, Gilles Bensimon Shoot

(Robert Erdmann Shoot 2003)

channeling Salma Hayek

Hitchcock Blond 2.0: Hitchcock Brunette

from "

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" (2001)

From "

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life" (2003)

On the set of "Wanted" (2008)

14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards 2008-01-27

Martin Schoeller Shoot (2008)

Yariv Milchan Photoshoot 2006

from the movie "

Mr. & Mrs. Smith" (2005)

From Thew Film "

Original Sin" (2001)

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" premiere in Los Angeles, 08.12.2008

"Kung Fu Panda" Premiere during the 61st International Cannes Film Festival, 15.05.2008

Angelina Jolie attends a screening of MTV's 'Diary' series at The Museum of Radio and Television on September 12, 2005

"Inglourious Basterds" premiere during the 62nd International Cannes Film Festival, 20. 5. 2009

13th Annual Critics' Choice Awards dinner in Santa Monica, 07.01.2008

Catwoman slinking down an alley

2009-07-04T21:01:00.001-07:00

Catwoman slinking down an alley, originally uploaded by I_Am_Catwoman.

Batman Returns

DJ Starscream

2009-06-29T19:08:00.000-07:00

dj starscream by ~prisonsuit-rabbitman on deviant ART
decepticon remix

Required Listening: "Rez(boss battle)"

2009-06-29T17:59:00.000-07:00

never got the finish it

Required Listening: "Benjamin & Daisy"

2009-06-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

by Alexandre Desplat

Barbi Benton

2009-06-25T12:14:00.001-07:00

Intelligent Animals

2009-06-24T15:19:00.000-07:00

I recently read a cracked.com article about smart animals, so I felt like compiling some articles about animals intelligence. If you're really interested, make sure to read the whole articles I quote from, they have more examples and info. Also, I found this to be interesting, from "Animal Minds":

It's a common complaint among animal researchers. Whenever they find a mental skill in a species that is reminiscent of a special human ability, the human cognition scientists change the definition. But the animal researchers may underestimate their power—it is their discoveries that compel the human side to shore up the divide.

"Sometimes the human cognitive psychologists can be so fixed on their definitions that they forget how fabulous these animal discoveries are,"

Orangutan's great escape causes zoo evacuation

A 137 pound orangutan with a history of mischief short-circuited an electric barrier, then built a makeshift ladder to escape from her enclosure, forcing Adelaide Zoo to be evacuated on one of its busiest days of the year.

Lying Monkeys

Spider monkeys, brown capuchins and long-tailed macaques were shown how to access food that was hidden or just out of reach. They were then put in cages with a socially higher-ranking monkey from the same species. Dominant monkeys in all three species would normally have priority over food, but in this case they did not know how to get to it.

Subordinate monkeys of all three species went straight for the food when their dominant partner was not around. But as soon as the dominant monkey was introduced, they held back. This suggests they were intentionally withholding information in order to get the food for themselves.

Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms

A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey's bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say.

The rhesus macaque monkeys also splurged on photos of top-dog counterparts, the high-ranking primates. Maybe that's like you or me buying People magazine.

The research, which will be detailed in the March issue of Current Biology, gets more interesting.

The scientists actually had to pay these guys, in the form of extra juice, to get them to look at images of lower-ranking monkeys.

Peter Gabriel and Tom Levin jam with Apes

In the opening lyric of his newly released song “Fragile As A Song,” renowned musician Tony Levin writes, “What makes one day unlike another?” For him, it was playing music with a great ape named Panbanisha.

Panbanisha is one of eight bonobo chimpanzees that are part of a scientific research program at Great Ape Trust of Iowa that studies ape intelligence, culture, tool use and language. The 20-year-old female was transferred to Great Ape Trust in Des Moines one year ago from the Language Research Center (LRC) at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

It was there, several years ago, where internationally acclaimed artist Peter Gabriel("Down To Earth" for the film "Wall-E") asked Levin to play music with Panbanisha and Kanzi, a male bonobo at the LRC who also lives now at Great Ape Trust.

Tony Levin“I knew something very unusual was afoot when we walked into the facility,” Levin recently told the Poughkeepsie Journal. “Peter said, ‘Panbanisha, this is Tony, he’s going to play bass with us today.’”

Aside from Panbanisha, Tony Levin – often called a musician’s musician – has played bass with some of the best in rock history: Gabriel, John Lennon, David Bowie, Pink Floyd and King Crimson.

With Tony on bass and Peter and Panbanisha on separate keyboards, the three of them played what was called a “grooming song.” The result was an unforgettable experience for Levin. During a recent interview on WAMC Radio’s Vox Pop program in Albany, NY, he said, “As I left hours later in a taxi back to the airplane, I thought, this is going to take me a long time to process what happened here.”

PanbanishaProcessing it he did, into Fragile As A Song on his Resonator CD that was released earlier this month.

I saw you and you saw me
How music passed between us is a mystery
But there was a connection and it took me by surprise
A look of understanding in your eyes

As Tony Levin writes in his liner notes next to a photograph of Panbanisha’s fingers on the keyboard, “Processing the magic of that day – that new kind of connection – took me a long time, but how better to process with a song.”

Why no Planet Of The Apes

But if apes have the power to reason, learn skills, feel emotion and co-operate in a frenzied tree-top hunt for Colobus monkeys as chimpanzees do, why don't we have a planet of the apes?

The film reveals that although apes will co-operate to obtain food they don't have a shared commitment, they don't have the passion to urge or cheer on a tribe member and they do not have control of their emotions. They are also violent, impulsive and display deadly rivalry.

Although they can be taught to recognise symbols and words they don't have the mental capacity to contribute to a 'conversation' - and they don't make small talk. And most important of all although they can imitate, they can't teach or build on the achievements others have made - unlike more successful humans.

Their mental rocket is on the launch pad but it hasn't taken off

Bear Intelligence

The only other land animals of comparable trainability are primates. In fact, bears are comparable in intelligence to the higher primates short of the great apes. In North America, bears have the largest and most convoluted brains relative to their size of any land mammal. They are considered by many wildlife biologists to be the most intelligent land animals of our continent
.....
One of the most remarkable photos I have shows a black bear walking upright on hard-packed snow and holding a large stick. The bear is making big curlicues in the snow with the stick and examining his handiwork with intense concentration. Another example is from the National Zoo in Washington. A black bear there figured out how to escape from his enclosure. He was smart enough to keep it a secret. He would escape late at night after everybody left with his friend, an Indian sloth bear, and the two of them would tour the zoo, being careful to return to their enclosures before dawn. They kept this up for quite a while before the zookeepers got suspicious and caught them at it

No Joke: Animals Laugh, Too

Studies by various groups suggest monkeys, dogs and even rats love a good laugh. People, meanwhile, have been laughing since before they could talk.

"Indeed, neural circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the brain, and ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals eons before we humans came along with our 'ha-ha-has' and verbal repartee," says Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University.

When chimps play and chase each other, they pant in a manner that is strikingly like human laughter, Panksepp writes in the April 1 issue of the journal Science. Dogs have a similar response.

Rats chirp while they play, again in a way that resembles our giggles. Panksepp found in a previous study that when rats are playfully tickled, they chirp and bond socially with their human tickler. And they seem to like it, seeking to be tickled more. Apparently joyful rats also preferred to hang out with other chirpers.

Laughter in humans starts young, another clue that it's a deep-seated brain function.

Animal Minds

For the next 20 minutes, Alex ran through his tests, distinguishing colors, shapes, sizes, and materials (wool versus wood versus metal). He did some simple arithmetic, such as counting the yellow toy blocks among a pile of mixed hues.

And, then, as if to offer final proof of the mind inside his bird's brain, Alex spoke up. "Talk clearly!" he commanded, when one of the younger birds Pepperberg was also teaching mispronounced the word green. "Talk clearly!"

"Don't be a smart aleck," Pepperberg said, shaking her head at him. "He knows all this, and he gets bored, so he interrupts the others, or he gives the wrong answer just to be obstinate. At this stage, he's like a teenage son; he's moody, and I'm never sure what he'll do."

"Wanna go tree," Alex said in a tiny voice.

Alex had lived his entire life in captivity, but he knew that beyond the lab's door, there was a hallway and a tall window framing a leafy elm tree. He liked to see the tree, so Pepperberg put her hand out for him to climb aboard. She walked him down the hall into the tree's green light.
.....

Most owners talk to their dogs and expect them to understand. But this canine talent wasn't fully appreciated until a border collie named Rico appeared on a German TV game show in 2001. Rico knew the names of some 200 toys and acquired the names of new ones with ease. He could learn and remember words as quickly as a toddler.
.....

Kaminski(cognitive psychologist)handed Schaefer(Betsy's owner) a stack of color photographs and asked her to choose one. Each image depicted a dog's toy against a white background—toys Betsy(dog) had never seen before. They weren't actual toys; they were only images of toys. Could Betsy connect a two-dimensional picture to a three-dimensional object?

Schaefer held up a picture of a fuzzy, rainbow-colored Frisbee and urged Betsy to find it. Betsy studied the photograph and Schaefer's face, then ran into the kitchen, where the Frisbee was placed among three other toys and photographs of each toy. Betsy brought either the Frisbee or the photograph of the Frisbee to Schaefer every time.
.....

They gave Betty(crow) other tests, each requiring a slightly different solution, such as making a hook out of a flat piece of aluminum rather than a wire. Each time, Betty invented a new tool and solved the problem. "It means she had a mental representation of what it was she wanted to make. Now that," Kacelnik said, "is a major kind of cognitive sophistication."

Animals That Count

Rosa Rugani and Lucia Regolin at the University of Padua took advantage of this quirk to test whether chicks could perform simple calculations. They placed each chick in the middle of a platform and showed it two groups of balls or paper. Next, the researchers hid the two piles behind screens, and sequentially moved objects between them in view of the chick. This forced the chick to perform simple computations to decide which side now contained the biggest number of its newfound brethren (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, vol 276, p 2451).

Without any prior coaching, the chicks scuttled to the larger quantity at a rate well above chance, correctly determining that 1 + 2 was greater than 4 - 2, that 0 + 3 exceeded 5 - 3, and that 4 - 1 was more than 1 + 1. "They are doing some simple, very simple, arithmetic," Regolin says. This suggests that numeracy is an innate ability in many animals that does not require training.

Dolphins

All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean.

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

Her cunning has not stopped there. One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins

Dolphins and Man.....Equals?

Outside of his striking friendliness, the Dolphin seems to have been blessed with a well developed sense of humor. Dolphins have been known to silently maneuver behind an unsuspecting pelican and snatch its tail feathers -- usually leaving the bird minus a few. Other pranks include grabbing unsuspecting fish by the tail, pulling them backward a few feet as well as bothering slow turtles by rolling them over and over. Once a dolphin was seen placing a piece of squid near a grouper's rock cranny. When the fish came out, the dolphin promptly snatched the bait away, leaving the puzzled fish behind.
.....

A dolphin kept in complete captivity (with only human contacts) was trained to raise to the surface, emit a sound when any word was shouted over the surface of the water. After a careful examination of all the tapes, a conclusion was made that 18% of the sounds he emitted were considered humanoid emissions -- in other words, the dolphin was imitating our words.

Stanley Kubrick on Dolphins

But an equally fascinating question is whether there could be another race of intelligent life on earth. Dr. John Lilly, whose research into dolphins has been funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has amassed considerable evidence pointing to the possibility that the bottle-nosed dolphin may be as intelligent as or more intelligent than man. He bases this not only on its brain size—which is larger than man's and with a more complex cortex—but on the fact that dolphins have evolved an extensive language. Lilly is currently attempting, with some initial success, to decipher this language and establish communication with the dolphins. NASA's interest in this is obvious, because learning to communicate with dolphins would be a highly instructive precedent for learning to communicate with alien races on other planets. Of course, if the dolphins are really intelligent, theirs is obviously a nontechnological culture, since without an apposable thumb, they could never create artifacts. Their intelligence might also be on a totally different order than man's, which could make communication additionally difficult. Dr. Lilly has written that "It is probable that their intelligence is comparable to ours, though in a very strange fashion...they may have a new class of large brain so dissimilar to ours that we cannot within our lifetime possibly understand its mental processes." Their culture may be totally devoted to creating works of poetry or devising abstract mathematical concepts, and they could conceivably share a telepathic communication to supplement their high-frequency underwater language

What is particularly interesting is that dolphins appear to have developed a concept of altruism; the stories of shipwrecked sailors rescued by dolphins and carried to shore, or protected by them against sharks, are by no means all old wives' tales. But I'm rather disturbed by some recent developments that indicate not only how we may treat dolphins but also how we may treat intelligent races on other planets. The Navy, impressed by the dolphin's apparent intelligence, is reported to have been engaging in underwater-demolition experiments in which a live torpedo is strapped to a dolphin and detonated by radio when it nears a prototype enemy submarine. These experiments have been officially denied; but if they're true, I'm afraid we may learn more about man through dolphins than the other way around. The Russians, paradoxically, seem to be one step ahead of us in this area; they recently banned all catching of dolphins in Russian waters on the grounds that "Comrade Dolphin" is a fellow sentient being and killing him would be morally equivalent to murder.

Dolphins Smarts

Consequently, you may surprised to know that the dolphin brain is actually much larger than the human brain. Dolphins have two hemispheres just like humans however, theirs are split into four lobes instead of three. The fourth lobe in the dolphin's brain actually hosts all of the senses, whereas in a human, the senses are split. Some believe that having all of the senses in one lobe allow the dolphin to make immediate and often complicated judgments that are well beyond the scope of a human ability.

When studying the neo-cortex, which is the outside surface of the brain that is responsible for forming perceptions, memories and thoughts, dolphins have more convolution than the most intelligent humans. It is thought that dolphins may also be able to use the hemispheres of their brain separately as they have separate blood supplies which is something that is exclusive only to the dolphin. To add more weight to this supposition, dolphins are also able to move their eyes independently which has lead some researchers to suggest that the dolphin may actually be able to sleep with one side of it's brain at a time.

Where Do The Smarts Come From?

Social Competition

Mia Wasikowska

2009-06-23T20:03:00.000-07:00

Photoshopping Movie Posters

2009-06-02T10:17:00.001-07:00

Photoshop in movie posters and ads... blog for some interesting examples of the original photos and the manipulation they would've undergone for the poster designs.

Abortion Doctor Killed In Church

2009-05-31T18:05:00.000-07:00

Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher.

Article

Throughout his career, Tiller was a frequent target of anti-abortion violence. On August 19, 1993, Tiller was shot in both arms by pro-life activist Shelley Shannon

George Tiller wiki

Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling

2009-05-30T13:52:00.000-07:00

Something about Mitchell Henderson struck the denizens of /b/ as funny. They were especially amused by a reference on his MySpace page to a lost iPod. Mitchell Henderson, /b/ decided, had killed himself over a lost iPod. The “an hero” meme was born. Within hours, the anonymous multitudes were wrapping the tragedy of Mitchell’s death in absurdity

Article