The Best of MeTube 2

Last year I posted my favorite clips from the previous twelve months. I'm not going to make it to the two year mark, but I still came up with ten favorites since that posting.

Actually, I came up with more, but some links are no longer live, while others are in constant danger of coming down. So these are my top ten favorites that I hope will stay on YouTube for a long time to come. (The future will show us how ridiculous that last sentence turns out to be.)

10. The top 10 WTF moments in Mystery Science Theater 3000.



9. One of the "Two Girls, One Cup" reactions.



8. The incredibly filthy Ed McMahon.



7. "Thriller" a cappella.



6. The Police via A Charlie Brown Christmas.



5. The Saul Bass Star Wars credits.



4. Fenway Park sings the National Anthem.



3. "The Laws Have Changed" video by the New Pornographers.



2. The final scene from My So-Called Life.



1. Perry Como - Still Alive.



Bubbling under: Woody Allen in Play It Again, Sam...



and "When Your Mind's Made Up" from Once.



Cheating? Hell yeah! Whattaya gonna do, fire me?

And that's just for openers

Saul Bass (1920-1996) was a graphic designer who created some of the most famous opening credit sequences in movie history. Probably his best known was Psycho.



I loved this one, for Walk on the Wild Side; how is it possible for a cat to take direction this well?



Anatomy of a Murder and The Man with the Golden Arm shared a similar look; jazz score and abstract cutouts.




Which leads to the raison d'etre for this entry - someone posted a reimagination of Star Wars's opening if Bass had been at the controls.



Amazingly, some commenters are griping about this - misspellings, too-fast music, what's with Max Rebo? Come on, people, just sit back and enjoy the brilliance.

PS - Thanks to Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule for the tip.

You're the man now, Vader!

On the off chance you're not already familiar with it, www.ytmnd.com is a webpage where people create (usually brief) content - a series of photos, say, or a film or music loop - out of previously created art. I'm making it sound a bit highfalutin - it makes fun of pop culture and much in it.

They've got a channel on YouTube featuring some of their greatest hits, several of which I've posted here. Today I thought I'd focus on a few of their Darth Vader bits.

Here he's a magician. Look at and listen to Luke in the crowd.



Pat Sajak is wowed by his Wheel of Fortune playing ability.



And then there's the roller coaster.



Finally, he orders his Chia Pet to do its thing. Make sure and watch it all the way to the end.

Have a laugh with Harrison

Harrison Ford's not generally thought of as the warm and cuddly sort, which Conan O'Brien asked him about...



In fact, it seems to me he's got a pretty decent sense of humor. Particularly seeing as how he agreed to take part in this. (The embedded link isn't working - try this one.)



Bonus! I refuse to wait ten and a half months to show this clip of Darth Vader getting his Christmas wish.

I Got Me The Death Star Blues

Big thanks to Mike Daisey for bringing this one to my attention.



Darth Vader's on the verge of death; he's entitled to a little "Whoopin' the Blues" by Sonny Terry.

I think I can safely say that a good half the people who see this will think, "I always thought that's what it looked like!"

We all gotta start somewhere

For years I thought Harrison Ford's movie debut was in the 1966 movie Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round with James Coburn.



But I just made the discovery that he had a nonspeaking part in a movie that came out three years earlier. And not just any movie, but the Steve McQueen classic The Great Escape. And not just any nonspeaking part, but the part of a Nazi youth.



Nazi youths. I hate those guys.

The Best of MeTube

One year and 356 posts ago, I began sharing my favorite clips off of YouTube to you, my virtual audience. Today I'm going to share my favorite favorites of the past year. (Sadly, nobody submitted their favorites, so the mix CD prize will just have to go to me.) Sure, they're reruns, but it's summertime and time for reruns anyway.

In reverse order, tenth favorite to favorite favorite, here they are:

#10. The Temptations performing "For Once In My Life."



#9. The Moody Rudy toy.



#8. The Billy Nayer Show.



#7. "You'll Come One Day."

You'll Come One Day | Viral | SPIKE.com

#6. The Ball Buster Toy.



#5. Miami Bugs.



#4. The Hungarian sausage commercial.



#3. "Sister Ray" on Lawrence Welk.



#2. The GI Joe PSA parody with "The Motorcycle Song."



#1. Vader Sessions.



Let's hope there are some equally good clips to come for year two.

Short Attention Span Theatre 3

Yes! It's time once again to cram as many fun clips as possible into one minute, give or take! This time around, that consists of...

another classic commercial from the folks at Red Stripe...



arguably the best line in Dr. Strangelove...



one of those Smokey the Bear PSAs that used to scare the shit out of me...



an unexpected opinion from a very attractive movie critic...



a super-slomo raspberry...



Admiral Ackbar performing an excerpt from The Vagina Monologues...



and an acknowledgment of existence from Jeff Spicoli.

Here's to the crazy ones

I'm going to be spending the next few days visiting my folks, which means no new posts until Thursday. And when I return, I'll be moving away from Star Wars for a while. This'll be the last one for the month.

It's not that I've run out - there's the "Copacabana"/"Star Wars Cantina" song, the Brokeback Mountain parodies, the Donny and Marie Show take (I dare you to track that one down), Admiral Ackbar watching Sonny at the tollbooth in The Godfather and saying, "It's a trap!", and thousands more. It's just that the 30th anniversary proper is on Friday the 25th, and several days off takes away from the steam of the leadup. I've also got a lot of non-Lucasian clips I'm rarin' to post. Plus, as old juror number 8 says in Twelve Angry Men, "I think the point is made."

So I'm going to close with this, a mashup of the soundtrack to Apple's award winning "Think Different" ad and shots from all the Star Wars films. I think it's a nice way to go out. Hope you enjoyed...

George Lucas in Love

I couldn't not post this...



Back in the pre-YouTube days, people were paying money to order this nine-minute masterpiece off of Amazon. It moves Shakespeare in Love to the 20th century, and it gives a wholly believeable look at how Lucas (and Martin Hynes deserves some kind of medal in the part) wrote what he knew.

Yub Nub

The Ewok song at the end of Return of the Jedi was replaced in the rerelease by some warmed-over Yanni wannabe. This made no sense to me, on account of the original song's catchiness and sense of triumph. Now it's "We just defeated the Evil Empire and freed a galaxy - let's listen to some Earthfart Tranquility!"

Anyway, here's a couple clips of the song. First, one sung by a drunk lady on the bus. The old lady sitting next to her is semi-priceless.



Now for something a little more polished. Complete with English lyrics if you want to sing along. Too bad that facial hair is probably fake.

Brought to you by the letter R and the number 2

Star Wars had to make an appearance on Sesame Street, didn't it? If there were two things that kids loved more in 1977, I can't imagine what they are. So here are everyone's favorite droids, talking about Artoo's newfound love.



Thirty years later, Artoo mailboxes sprung up around the country. So it looks like there was a happy ending after all. (Insert cruddy laugh here.)

Feel the Force at your local PTA meeting

Christopher Knight wanted a seat on the Rockingham County school board. He wanted to get his message out to as many people as he could. It was time to advertise.

Here's what he came up with.



Sadly, he didn't win. Even more sadly, he didn't think of calling himself Christopher "Jedi" Knight.

Banjo. Accordion. Just Accept It.

There's an old joke: "What's the definition of perfect pitch? When you throw a banjo in a dumpster and it lands right on the accordion."

Aw, hell, they're not that bad. And as if you couldn't guess, I've got the proof right here.

First, John Williams's main theme, seen over half a million times on YouTube already...



...and now a medley of multiple themes, seen less than two thousand times.



Now why is that? Is the banjo that much cheerier than the accordion? Is the theme that much better known? Is the clip that much shorter? Well, at any rate, good on them.

Oh, wait, one more joke: what's the difference between a (banjo)(accordion) player driving down the road and a frog driving down the road? There's a slight chance that the frog might be going to a gig. Thank you! I'll be here all week!

Trooper Clerks

Once more into the breach, dear friends...

Kevin Smith has so much Star Wars worship in his movies that he had to get a shout-out this month, but rather than take the obvious approach of showing clips from his films, I thought I'd show a tribute he wishes he could have done.

Here we have a shot-for-shot remake of the Clerks trailer, with everyone wearing stormtrooper gear. It's quite well done, really.

Goodjedis

Here's a lengthy mashup of Star Wars and Goodfellas.



The guy who made this has the Scorsese rhythms down perfectly. It's great when "Jump Into the Fire" by Nilsson shows up with these images. Frankly, this may be the first of these mashups that made me want to watch the source material more than the SW films.

Return of the Jedi: Yea or Nay?

Return of the Jedi is commonly seen as the weakest of the original Star Wars trilogy - "just a bunch of Muppets," as Dante puts it in Clerks. But let's not forget that that doesn't make it indefensible.

This is an interesting clip from a 1983 episode of Nightline, where Ted Koppel moderates a discussion between John Simon and Siskel & Ebert.



Simon has some valid points, but he's such a joyless reprobate that he makes it hard for us to wallow in the displeasure with him. Likewise, Siskel & Ebert are so good at communicating the sheer fun of the film that it's easy to root them on.

A Little Lando Love

Billy Dee Williams has appeared in more than a few good movies - the original Brian's Song, Lady Sings the Blues, and Batman among them - but we'll always remember him as Lando Calrissian, the modern-day Judas Iscariot who got the chance to redeem himself and made the most of it. (And can I just say that his may be the best made-up name in the saga? Opposing viewpoints welcome...)

How do we reward him? By making a clip of a blatantly phony Lando lip-synching "Let's Get It On." But then, if it wasn't so phony, it wouldn't be so funny.



Just remember - if the Falcon's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'.

Hello Dantooine! Hello Dantooine!

You have no idea how many YouTube videos there are where someone does something with a Darth Vader mask on. From hitting a drive-thru to salsa dancing to reenacting the Numa Numa dance, there's something for everyone. But for this post I'll just focus on what happens when a Vader wannabe is also a musical prodigy.

Here's a Vader playing violin in Vancouver, with one of the friendliest "You're welcomes" you'll ever hear.



Then we have one bulling his way through "Blackbird" by the Beatles.



Best of all, a Guinness lovin' Darth puffing the pipes.

Greedo Does NOT Shoot First

Movie Theater Memory #1: I attended opening night of the revamped Star Wars in '97. When Han faced off against Greedo, we all waited for his sneaky shooting under the table - only to see Greedo take a shot at him first, somehow missing despite being two feet away and BEING A FRIGGING BOUNTY HUNTER. I can tell you that there were no boos - just confusion. Greedo wasn't the only one who didn't see this coming and didn't like it.

Movie Theater Memory #2: I'm watching Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in a sparsely populated theater. It contained the line "Making a Jay and Silent Bob movie is about as stupid as having Greedo shoot first." And I, completely involuntarily, jumped up and went, "YEAH!" Everybody turned around. Embarrassed the hell out of myself.

Anyway, here's the way it once was...



...the way it became after Lucas did his dirty work...



...and the way it would be in a perfect world.