The creative clan at JibJab claim that “the whole world went nuts in 2011” and so they put together this elaborate Year in Review musical to cover all the insanity (read: Rebecca Black’s stardom) that went on. “The goal was to create the typical “JibJab-look” but to step away from the computers for a bit and do it all in-camera,” shares the team behind the clip. “Ya know… the good ole fashioned way.” So using popsicle sticks, cut paper, and hands JibJab has developed another catchy video that succinctly summarizes 2011 for the masses. Head over to JibJab’s blog to peruse their detailed making-of section.
By now you should be anticipating DJ Earworm’s mashup of the top 25 hits according to Billboard Magazine when the year is near its end. Like always, in addition to masterfully mashing together all these songs he also manages to fuse together all of the corresponding music videos that accompany the tracks. Adele, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, LMFAO, and Rihanna dominate this year’s selection; for the full tracklist jump after the break. Download “United State of Pop 2011 (World Go Boom)” right here. Now turn your speakers up and sing-along…you know all the words, don’t deny it.
She’s done it again. Gen Ip, a communications student from Vancouver BC, has mashed together 230 movies that made in 2011. The annual retrospective “celebrates this year’s movies and their amazing capacity to transport us through the boundaries of space, time, and identity.” Head over to Gen’s Tumblr page to view the entire list of films used in the video; they’re listed in the order of their appearance.
This is neat. A developer by the name of Phillip Mendonça-Vieira “accidentally” collected about 12,000 screenshots of the front page of The New York Times‘ website. Instead of trashing these images, he put them to good use by creating a time-lapse video that binds together important (front-page worthy) news events that happened over the past year. Specifically his computer captured the site’s images twice an hour from September 2010 to July 2011. Watch it all unfold in the video embedded above and read some poignent words from Mendonça-Vieira below.
Having worked with and developed on a number of content management systems I can tell you that as a rule of thumb no one is storing their frontpage layout data. It’s all gone, and once newspapers shutter their physical distribution operations I get this feeling that we’re no longer going to have a comprehensive archive of how our news-sources of note looked on a daily basis. Archive.org comes close, but there are too many gaps to my liking.
This, in my humble opinion, is a tragedy because in many ways our frontpages are summaries of our perspectives and our preconceptions. They store what we thought was important, in a way that is easy and quick to parse and extremely valuable for any future generations wishing to study our time period.
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.
Shortly after releasing the very first trailer for The Hobbit, director Peter Jackson uploaded a fifth production video. This one focuses on “the logistics of location shooting.” It shows how the massive production team establishes the beautiful landscapes of Middle Earth in New Zealand. After 110 days of shooting indoors, the team finally ventured outside to recreate Hobbiton, the tranquil neighborhood of hobbits such as Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. “It’s weird when you come back to a place that you literally thought you’d never see again,” says Jackson. Elijah Wood also feels nostalgic stepping back into the town of Bag End. “I’ll never forget that feeling of coming to Hobbiton for the first time.”
When the Hobbit huts were originally built in 1999 for the Lord of the Rings films, they were constructed with polystyrene and later torn down when filming completed. This time around, the construction crew rebuilt all the Hobbit holes using real wood, stone, and brick. Now they won’t deteriorate as fast and fans of the books and movies can schedule tours and visit the set. In the video you’ll even see that the Prime Minister of New Zealand approves!
At the end of the clip Jackson teases that there’s more to this location shooting-themed video diary; part two is coming in 2012. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey hits theatres December 14, 2012.
After four extensive behind-the-scenes looks at Peter Jackson’s upcoming sequel two-fer The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings mastermind has finally released a full-length trailer. Return to The Shire in this beautifully edited clip embedded above. Part 1, An Unexpected Journey, hits theatres next December the 14th.
James Cameron’s cash cowAvatar saw its first home release on April 22, 2010. Months later on November 16 Avatar was re-released into the wild as a “Three-Disc Extended Collector’s Edition.” Unlike the original release, this one included bonus features like 45 minutes worth of deleted scenes. While we wait for the Blu-ray 3D release to end its exclusivity with Panasonic, Cameron’s inviting fans of the movie to revisit Pandora by purchasing a new digital version of Avatar. This release is dubbed the “iTunes Extras Special Edition” and it comes with new, never-before-seen bonus material. Features include scene deconstruction, allowing viewers to interact with the performance capture and visual effects levels in 17 of the film’s scene; green screen x-ray gives viewers an interactive look through the visual effects levels to see the original green screen footage hiding behind certain scenes; it also comes with an original screenplay penned by Cameron, his scriptment, a gallery of 1,700 images, “and more.” Interested? Click over to iTunes, hand over $19.99 and immerse yourself in Pandora once more. At least until the 3D version comes out. Video promoting the new edition sits after the break. Continue reading New ‘Avatar’ special features come to iTunes→
2011 has been one helluva year. One question that should be lingering on your mind: what did people search for and tweet most about in 2011? Answers come straight from the source. This week Google pushed out their Zeitgeist 2011, an interactive look at the most popular and the fastest rising terms in many categories across many countries around the world. The results are in and the #1 fastest-rising global query in 2011 is… Rebecca Black! That’s right, the YouTube star famous for the annoying but admittedly catchy song “Friday” is at the top of the chart. Rounding out the top five is Google’s very own social network Google+, the late Jackass star Ryan Dunn, defendant Casey Anthony, and the video game Battlefield 3. The second half of the top ten includes three Apple-related items (iPhone 5, Steve Jobs, and iPad 2), singer Adele, and Japan’s Fukushima plant. At the Zeitgeist website you can view top ten lists from a myriad of countries.
Twitter followed suit and released their own Year in Review portal. Things are broken down by the year’s top stories and hot topics. It should come as no surprise that Charlie Sheen was the most talked about actor (the #2 worldwide hashtag was #tigerblood) and four of the ten tech trends are Apple-related. In another section Twitter calculated how many tweets per second occurred during major events over the course of the year. The MTV Video Music Awards saw 8,868 tweets per second; Steve Jobs’ resignation 7,064; and the raid on Osama bin Laden 5,106.
All in all, it can easily be said that 2011 has been a year of change. Google does a good job highlighting our impact on the world on a global scale in the video embedded above.
The very first phone running Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich is now available on Verizon Wireless. The 4G LTE compatible Galaxy Nexus by Samsung packs a 1.2GHz processor, a big 4.65″ HD Super AMOLED display, 5 megapixel rear-facing and 1.3 megapixel front-facing cameras, 1GB RAM, and 32GB on-board memory. Android ICS brings with it a whole slew of new features including Face Unlock, Android Beam, an enhanced Camera app, a new People app, and of course an entirely redesigned user interface. Get all the juicy details here. As of December 15 the newest Nexus was made available on VZW and can be yours for a cool $299.99 with a two-year contract. Pics below, PR and video after the break.
This past week was packed to the brim with new movie trailers. Following The Three Stooges and Men in Black III is Rock of Ages, The Dictator, Jack the Giant Killer, and another look at the stop motion animation ParaNorman.
We start with Rock of Ages, a film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical. This movie has two things going for it: a fantastic collection of classic rock songs and a killer cast. It features music from Def Leppard, Foreigner, Journey, Poison, and Twisted Sister, and the talented cast is comprised of Julianne Hough, Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Malin Ackerman, Mary J. Blige, Alec Baldwin, and Tom Cruise as the rocker women pine over, Stacee Jaxx. Directed by Adam Shankman (Hairspray), Rock of Ages brings “the music of a generation” to theatres on June 1, 2012.
A decade after our last encounter with The Men in Black, they’re back. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones return in the third installment in the Men in Black franchise as Agent J and Agent K, respectively. Also returning is director Barry Sonnenfeld who helmed the original way back in 1997 and the sequel in 2002. The first trailer reveals an interesting plotline involving Agent J traveling back in time to save K. In the ’60s, young K is played by none other than Josh Brolin. Here’s the official synopsis:
In Men in Black 3, Agents J (Will Smith) and K (Tommy Lee Jones) are back… in time. J has seen some inexplicable things in his 15 years with the Men in Black, but nothing, not even aliens, perplexes him as much as his wry, reticent partner. But when K’s life and the fate of the planet are put at stake, Agent J will have to travel back in time to put things right. J discovers that there are secrets to the universe that K never told him — secrets that will reveal themselves as he teams up with the young Agent K (Josh Brolin) to save his partner, the agency, and the future of humankind.
With updated CGI, a fun time-travel story, and a Will Smith who hasn’t seem to age at all over the last ten years, Men in Black III looks like it’s going to be a winner for Sony Pictures when it hits theatres May 25, 2012.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. The trailer shows no sign of a catchy Will Smith tune to hype you up for the film’s release. My question is… will it live up to the 1997 diddy “Men in Black” or (dare I say) 2004’s mega-hit “Black Suits Comin’ (Nod Ya Head)”? And you know he’s gonna star in an equally thug music video, too!
