Go on, push play. Everything is explained in the video. This is viral marketing at its finest.

As you wait for the nominations to break, sit back and take in this premiere promo for the 2012 Oscars. It stars Transformers stars Megan Fox and Josh Duhamel searching for this year’s host Billy Crystal. William Fichtner (Prison Break, Entourage), Vinnie Jones (The Cape), and Robin Williams make cameos throughout. If the February 26 telecast is anything like this bizarrely entertaining clip, that’d be really great. Because last year’s snoozefest hosted by an overly excited Anne Hathaway and drugged James Franco is but a blip in my conscious memory.

Check out this kick-ass viral video starring Team 2X, a collective group of professional martial arts performers. Watch as a lone Jedi takes on a hoard of ninjas and a vengeful Sith Lord. Stay for the end–it’s unexpected and absurdly humorous.

Jedi Ninjas was developed as a passion project to recreate the current style of Star Wars action seen in video games into live action. This style often combines elements of Force powers with the use lightsaber combat. As there are no upcoming live action Star Wars movies to this date, this was a project to make many of the fans’ dreams into a reality.

DC and Ken Block present Gymkhana FOUR: The Hollywood Megamercial.  GYM4 surpasses the high-production style of Gymkhana TWO with even more spectacular effects shot in the backlots of Universal Studios, California. Filmed over the course of five days, director Ben Conrad (Zombieland and 30 Seconds or Less) and his team at Logan deliver a Hollywood caliber production complete with pyrotechnics, massive stunts and a series of unbelievable tricks. Featuring robotic sharks, deranged zombies, and a hilarious cameo by the Epic Meal Time guys, Ken Block and his Hybrid FunctionHoon Vehicle (H.F.H.V.) bring the magic of Hollywood and gymkhana together.

Gymkhana, according to everyone’s favorite source Wikipedia, is a type of motorsport whose “courses are often very complex and memorizing the course is a significant part of achieving a fast time.”

Get ready and hang tight, your mind will be blown.

[Via @kpereira]

Disney’s Imagineers have been working hard to retool the Florida theme park’s famous Haunted Mansion ride and now it’s finally ready for the public at large to experience the newly installed frights. If you’ve been on the ride before, you should know that in the ride’s final moments (spoiler alert) ghostly figures appear next to you in the Doom Buggy through the magic of mirroring. Disney decided to upgrade this portion of the ride by making things a bit more interactive. The hitchhiking ghosts referred to as Ezra, Gus, and Phineas not only appear in your cart but they can now rip off passengers’ heads, blow them up like one would with a balloon, and send it flying in the air and it eventually lands back on the shoulders of the unsuspecting passenger. Disney pulls off the neat trick in grand fashion and you can sneak a peek at it in the video above. Obviously little justice is served here, so you ought to check it out first-hand the next time you visit the Magic Kingdom.

[Via InsideTheMagic]

YouTuber Jimmy Wong struts his musical abilities to give Britney Spears’ latest single “Till The World Ends” a modern rock twist it was born to find. Jimmy performs the vocals, MIDI keyboards, guitar, drums, tambourine and claps, adds kick drum and snare hits to the mix, and brings it all together in this highly entertaining video. This talent deserves some props; head over to Jimmy’s YouTube channel and see what else he’s been up to. His Super Mario Bros. a capella cover and Asians in the library reaction song are instant hits.

FreddieW is back and this time he’s brought us a super cool look at what Super Mario would play like if it were a 3D first-person perspective game. Besides the slick animations, what makes this video even more spectacular is that it offers you two perspectives at once; you can follow Mario’s journey through World 1-1 in the reimagined first-person mode and in the top-left corner you can watch the plumber do it the old fashioned way. Neat-o.

Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Sin City, Machete) has teamed up with Nike and its spokesperson Kobe Bryant to direct a fantastic little short called The Black Mamba. Danny Trejo stars as The Crippler, Bruce Willis is Mister Suave, and The Boss is played by none other than Kanye West. “Some take souls, some take scalps…the Boss takes shoes.” For a promotional bit this is so extraordinarily over-the-top in the good kind of way. Can Kobe defeat the sinister West and keep his kicks? Watch and enjoy.

This kid named George Watsky can rap.  He’s pretty incredible.  This might have turned into a viral hit (it’s currently at 3 million views and counting), but Watsky is no one-hit wonder.  He happens to be a professional performer and an extremely talented poet.  He was the 2006 Youth Speaks Grand Slam Poetry Champion and was later featured on HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry.  Jump after the break to watch him perform an epic poem about kids who stutter.

[Thanks, Rob M.] (Click here for more…)

3 Minutes, directed by Ross Ching, was inspired by the short story “The Most Dangerous Game.”  Glee’s Harry Shum Jr. stars in this action-packed independent short film that features through the roof production value. Lightsabers play a part, so just watch it and don’t ask questions.  Shum Jr. promises a prequel and sequel are in the works.

Click here to go behind the scenes and learn more about the production process.

Hint: It’s not an Inception/Toy Story mashup, although it might seem like it.  Find the answer after the break.

[Via Gizmodo] (Click here for more…)

Freddie Wong is back with one of his best action-packed videos to date!  It’s a video game first person shooter recreated in real life with some animations added for effect.  Wong used a GoPro mounted to a helmet to get the job done.  Look after the break to catch a behind the scenes look into how it all came together.

[Via Gawker] (Click here for more…)

Filmmaker and dancer Daniel Cloud Campos choreographed, shot, and directed this fantastic video all by himself.  I don’t want to give away too much since that would diminish the effect of the video.  Let’s just say this is how I wish cleaning would get done at my apartment.

[Via @kevinpereira; steveyeuntumblr]

The famous Looney Tunes cartoon gets brought to life thanks to Apache Pictures.  Meep meep, and enjoy.

[Via Nerdist]

You might know him as the six-time Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest champion, but Takeru Kobayashi caught a new kind of attention this month when he agreed to eat as many bananas as he can in one minute to celebrate the release of Donkey Kong Country Returns for Wii.  The pre-release (marketing) stunt took place in Toronto and you can watch Kobayashi do his thing in the banana eating challenge video embedded above.  It’s on like Donkey Kong!  Oh wait–can I say that?

[Via Kotaku]

Comedy legend Leslie Nielsen passed away on Sunday due to complications from pneumonia.  At the time of death in a hospital near his home in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida he was surrounded by family and friends.  He was 84.

Nielsen is a television and film icon who will always be remembered for his deadpan perfection as Lt. Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun and Dr. Alan Rumack in Airplane!.

And don’t call me Shirley.

[Via THR]

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, aka the creators of South Park, are writing a musical…for Broadway!  The plot does not revolve around Kyle, Stan, Cartman, and Kenny.  Stone and Parker are finalizing a story “about a pair of mismatched Mormon boys sent on a mission to a place that’s about as far from Salt Lake City as you can get.”  This is an elaborate musical they’ve been working on for the last five years.  And if you’re a fan of the brilliantly raunchy duo you should know that they hold a special place in their hearts for musicals.  Their very first feature film was Cannibal! The Musical (1993), and this was followed by Orgasmo (1997) which they say “should have been a musical”–they wrote it that way.  And although South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999) and Team America (2004) were not billed as musicals, Stone and Parker admit that they not-so-subtlety injected tunes into them because they just couldn’t help it.  If you’re an avid South Park fan I’m sure by now you’ve picked up on the creators’ passion for musicals.  With all that said, it shouldn’t come to a surprise that these guys are living their dream by actually making a live musical for Broadway.

Josh Gad (The Daily Show With Jon Stewart) and Andrew Rannells (Jersey Boys) are set to play the two male leads.  Other cast members include Nikki M. James, Rory O’Malley, and Michael Potts.  The Book of Mormon‘s music and lyrics are by Stone, Parker and Robert Lopez, the showrunner for Broadway’s long-running puppet show Avenue Q.  Stone and choreographer Casey Nicholaw will direct.  Preview performances begin February 24, 2011 in New York at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre and opening night is expected to roll around in late March.  Get your tickets now before they go on sale to the public at large!  Look after the break to hear Stone and Parker talk about the show.  You know it’s gonna be pure adulterated gutbusting insanity.

[Via SouthParkStudios] (Click here for more…)

This video of a supposedly homeless man performing the Queen/David Bowie classic “Under Pressure” has gone viral and it truly is a must-see.  The man says it’s a street performance “meant to entertain and inspire.”  That it does.

[Via @andrewseely]

Pokémon Apokélypse is a fan-fiction trailer “responding to the common trend of ‘dark and gritty’ reboots of popular franchises.”  But when it first “leaked” on the Internet fans of the popular trading card game (that also enjoyed a short stint on TheWB), rabid fans were led on to believe that this was actual footage from an upcoming live action Pokémon movie.  It turns out the leak was staged and the production team behind it revealed that this was simply a side project.  From the live incarnations of Ash, Misty, and Brock to the super cool CG Pokémon, the trailer is pure win.  Read the synopsis and mash play!

Celadon City hasn’t been the same since the Gyms closed down. Pokémon fighting has gone underground, and the sport has gotten a taste for blood. Ash, Misty, and Brock have been forced deep into the city’s seedy underbelly to keep training, but the Pokémon aren’t the only ones in danger. Now, Ash must choose to either become a master in the grim world of illegal pokémon fighting, or make a desperate stand to free them all from the criminal grip of Rocket Industries.

Interested in learning more about how this trailer came to be?  Head over to ShogunGamer to read an interview with director Kial Natale and exec producer Lee Majdoub.

Watch five daring Intel employees base jump from the six-story Romanian headquarters onto giant airbags to “hoot” the famous Intel chime.  Spoiler: They break Finland’s record for World’s Largest Intel Chime.  The Finnish did it with cannonballs, remember?

[Via Engadget]