Behold the source of the aforesaid Arnett quote. Without a doubt one of the funniest sketches of 2K8. *funny*

1992. Beastie Boys. DJ Hurricane. Cypress Hill. The Arsenio Hall Show. So What’cha Want (including the remix beat drop and guest verses). Live-n-direct.

In my senior year of high school, my buddies and I entered the annual air band competition and did a meticulously rehearsed (in order for it to look natural and unrehearsed…unnatural naturalness as Master Bruce would say), spot-on reenactment of the Beastie Boys and Mix Master Mike’s live performance of 3 MCs & 1 DJ/Intergalactic from the 1998 VMAs (and when I finally get around to ripping that near 10 year-old footage off my VHS tape and online in good quality, I’ll embed it here). Long story short, we won the competition, so I guess all the hard work paid off (we took that sh!t seriously, yo).

Anyways, if I ever got a second chance to do another Beasties/airband live imitation (I wish I did; it was so much fun), I would’ve liked to have emulated what you see in the vid (down to the last grimey detail). So What’cha Want is my favourite Beasties track of all-time, and this live performance in particular has such a straight up hip hop feel with a grungy after taste that’s been topped off with a puff of weed smoke. It all just screams early 90’s in tone, attitude and fashion (speaking of which, I have a complete outfit just like Yauch’s and that alone brings back some dope 90s memories…pun fully intended). Basically, I just love everything about it, most especially Dr. Spock Adrock masterfully flying off the handle with his loose cannon, “adlibbed” stage presence. WOOOOOOOO!

Trailers From Hell presents: Eli Roth commenting on Three On A Meathook

This film reminds me of Deranged, which I caught on Scream one time. Afterwards, I got that proud horror geek feeling of needing to take a shower to clean myself off. I love how Eli (who’s wearing what appears to be a heavy metal styled Ingmar Bergman tee…haha, cool) talks about the rule that he had as a kid whereby the largest boxes in a video store usually contained the sh*ttiest movies.

“He’s still talking! What’s he talking about? Why don’t you just END?”

When I was a kid, I would spend a lot of time wandering around the video stores (while my parents were at a nearby grocery store), just reading the backs of video box after video box, which was a strangely fascinating way to entertain yourself as each description was like a movie trailer in storybook form (my imagination ran wild with some of the things I read…then it was on to the next). Anyways, what I’m getting at is that I also had a rule whereby the absolute, most horrifying and goriest movies NEVER had pictures on the back, just a description (because, in my mind, the studio simply couldn’t show you any pix because they were too shocking…you had to rent it to find out for yourself). Looking back, that theory didn’t always work. But in a couple of cases, it did, with incredible results:

Dawn of the Dead (1978) - I can’t find any images, but the cover of this particular case had 3 iterations of the zombie-fied Roger character slowly sinking in a pool/bed of blood. No images on the back, hence the ultimate horror contained within (oh how true that was).

The Evil Dead (1981) - The EMI Home Video box was the first I ever saw of this film (when I was 7). No pictures on the back, just a lengthy description of the plot as well as the famed Stephen King quote (black print on a gray background). My Uncle further increased my morbid curiosity by telling me stories of how he came across the movie as a teenager and rented it with his friends, THEN saw it in the theatre afterwards. Note: back in the 70s and 80s in the Philippines, home video releases oftentimes hit before the theatrical release, due to delayed theatrical releases in parts of Asia for international films (it’s not as delayed today from what I noticed last December, but still behind North America). He then proceeded to graphically describe each scene to me, much to my excitement. I finally got to see the film in full when I was 16 (after almost a decade of imagining what it would be like). And after many years of build up and twisted anticipation, The Evil Dead not only met those expectations, but exceeded them. That’s probably a big reason why it’s my favourite film. True story.

“As I recall, it was a horror film.”

Update: Re-embedded, as the NBC lawyers are doing their usual cease and desist tactics with all the streaming sites (hey, if you dicks don’t want things uploaded to the web, don’t air it). Also, my almost 2 year old nephew loves the song (even though he won’t understand what it’s about for another decade or so). He vibes to the track and thinks Janitor Justin looks funny. And yes, I know. I’m a cool uncle for exposing him to this kind of stuff.

Update 2: Re-upped in HD and in its purest form w/out audience laughter. Still funny (and that bridge is ill). Full screen it for maximum enjoyment.

Close-Up: Orson Welles - The 1960 Paris Interview

I’ve watched this entire interview about 5 times via MPix. And it’s been quite a while since it was last shown on TV, so naturally I attempted to find it online. And although it is not available in embeddable-friendly streaming video (the above viddy is a 10 minute sampler which includes the quote about Citizen Kane that I posted a little while back), it IS available in its entirety in streaming Windows Media (better than nothing), the links of which are below.

This interview was conducted by the CBC show Close-Up in 1960, a couple of years after Welles directed what is considered by many to be the final film noir masterpiece, Touch Of Evil; its brilliance as well as Welles’ preferred cut, the majority of which was restored in 1998, years after his death, would not be realized for decades, hence it not being mentioned at all in this interview). It is without a doubt one of my favourite interviews to watch and listen to (a lot of wisdom in this, as I hang on almost every word that Mr. Welles speaks).The formal yet relaxed hotel setting, the thick yet classy cigar smoke, the black and white contrast, all so mysterious yet revealing.

Stream-able vids via the CBC archives:

Part I

Part II

Included are Mr. Welles’ thoughts on Citizen Kane, magic, critics, politics, where he calls home, his great voice, American actors, the importance of practice, theatre, directing while acting, his feelings regarding art, posterity, how Kane became so innovative (great story), making Othello, luck, TV vs. Film, and his future film aspirations (shades of F For Fake in these words) make this interview without a doubt worth your time if you’re a fan of the man’s work and a cinephile with an hour to spare.

So it was partly the great spirit of [Gregg] Tolland (the cinematographer on Kane)…and partly my own ignorance. I didn’t know what you couldn’t do. I didn’t deliberately set out to invent anything. It just seemed to me, ‘why not?’. There is a great gift that ignorance has to bring to anything. That was the great gift I brought to [Citizen Kane], was ignorance. - Orson Welles

TRUE 1080p Teaser for the first ever Astro Boy film (coming in 2009). Fullscreen-it and enjoy the 48 seconds of eye-popping adventure.

Note to the one they call YouTube: It’s great (albeit rather late) that you upgraded your player to a widescreen aspect ratio, yet still none of your content is in true HD format. Even viewed in so-called high quality, the videos are still the same quality as old (but thankfully they are now properly stretched out for widescreen monitors, when applicable). Labeling a video as HD doesn’t necessarily make it high def (just sayin’). It is your choice to take measures to change this in the future as you are still lagging far behind Daily Motion, Hulu and Vimeo in terms of streamable HD content.

I realize I just talked to a streaming video player. It’s late and I had to get somethin’ up off my chest, OK?

Don’t know why it took me so long to embed a Mystery Science Theater 3000 vid, but for that I apologize. Happy 20th Anniversary, MST3K!

A Date With Your Family

“Perhaps booze would alleviate the situation?”

Within The Woods, in its entirety. In October ‘07, I had previously embedded a google video version of WTW righ’chea. It has since been taken down, which is unfortunate since anything on G-Viddy is actually downloadable (best believe I’ve got a copy of it on my computer, and it was the first video I ever put on my iPod Touch). I recommend that you DO NOT view this video in full screen because it gets pixelized like a muthaf*cka (considering the quality is as good as I’ve ever seen it…which is the only way I’ve ever seen it, that being really sh!tty). But whatever, it’s not as bad as say, scrambled cable, since you can still make out shapes and images alright. Yet I (and all the other Evil Dead fans) still REALLY want a good quality version to show up somewhere (for God’s sake, someone just leak it, as there will not be any legal ramifications since it wouldn’t be released for commercial gain, hence no royalty problems).

Regardless, if you haven’t seen this before, boy (or girl) are you in for treat! It’s a fantastic little film from 1978 (30th Anniversary Edition!), and The Evil Dead would not be around without it since it was not only the blueprint to the horror classic, but it was used to demonstrate to potential investors that Raimi, Campbell and Tapert could make a decent low-budget horror flick, which eventually helped to raise $85 000 to jump start The Evil Dead (which ended up costing between $350 and $400 000 after extensive pick up shots, inserts and editing had been completed almost 2 years after principal photography was technically finished in January 1980). Hardcore deadites will immediately notice sound effects and sequences which eventually made it into The Evil Dead in a more polished and fleshed out form (the ominous sound of tree branches/trunks snapping, for instance, created with the use of apple crates). Such a great piece of horror fillm history, right here. Enjoy.