So after the break, check out Seth MacFarlane's Oscar promos for ABC, ILM's featurette for their recently-nominated Visual Effects in "Marvel's The Avengers", Will Ferrell and Ryan Gosling selling some knifes, Paul F. Tompkins singing Adele's "Skyfall" theme, The Credits' fascinating article 'Your Brain on Movies', and some neat looking Marvel & DC superhero iPhone cases!
First, I'll start with some of these Oscar promos that ABC recently put together featuring this year's ceremony emcee, Seth MacFarlane. There are five different promo clips combined into one video, all of which are, for the most part, pretty clever and funny. I'm slowly coming around on MacFarlane, and I think if he can restrain himself from doing any Family Guy voices during the event, I will see it as a success (barring other disasters, of course). I can't stand those voices, but when MacFarlane is himself, he seems like a pretty smart and funny guy.
Next up, we have Industrial Light & Magic's Oscar featurette for their Academy Award nominated work in "Marvel's The Avengers". It's obvious that with a film of this magnitude, extensive time and effort is put into making everything come together in one place. Unfortunately, watching these little behind-the-scenes videos removes us from some of the movie magic, but overall I love seeing how things like this are made.
This is a fun little segment from Jimmy Kimmel Live, in which Kimmel's show interrupts the regular recording for Will Ferrell's knife-selling program, "Knife Guys". It's pretty standard Will Ferrell stuff (and unfortunately the audience is too overpowering to ever really let Gosling get a word in), but Ferrell sells it. I like to really imagine these two selling knives as a side gig. I'd buy one. Heck, anything that cuts through chocolate milk that seamlessly has my vote!
If any of you are familiar with comedian Paul F. Tompkins, then you know he's one of the smartest and funniest comics working today. I've long been a fan, so when I came across this video, I thought it was pretty great. At a gig last month, Tompkins decided to break his comedy act and belt out Adele's hit, Skyfall, instead. Audience members continue to laugh uncomfortably for a while, until they realize that he's just rocking the song. It's a pretty solid rendition, sung in something of a 50's lounge/swing style.
That's it for the videos I have. I wish this next article was in video form, because I think more people would give it the time if they could just watch it. Even still, the website The Credits recently released an article titled "This Is Your Brain On Movies: Neuroscientists Weigh In On The Brain Science of Cinema". As the title references, this is a scientific article, examining the way our brains react, process and store various elements that we absorb when watching movies. It really is a fascinating and thorough read, full of various graphs and charts. I highly recommend it to any movie enthusiast.
No official pricing information has yet been released for these items, but here are the images of the designs that will be available. It's unfortunate that they "kidded these up" so much; Superman should be my favorite, but it's the one I would least likely ever own. Iron Man and Batman still play pretty well, and I do dig the old school The Joker and Harley Quinn. None of these are my taste regardless, but they're pretty cool in concept.
