Red Letter Media – Brilliant, Hilarious, and… Annoying?
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on April 6, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010It would just be silly for us to review a preview of a review of a movie, so we’ll let you decide for yourself what to think about YouTube celebrity critic Red Letter Media.
What’s one half brilliant comedy, one half insightful critical analysis, and one half annoying? The movie reviews by Red Letter Media, that’s what. Yeah, I know that’s three halves, but the math just feels right. I’ve never been a big fan of critics and movie reviews; there’s something intrinsically annoying about someone who doesn’t know how to do something sitting around telling you how someone who does didn’t do it right. We’ve mentioned the “meta” nature of recent pop media before, and this is where the Red Letter Media reviews of films like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace shine. If you haven’t seen them before, the reviews are a strange mix of childish complaints mixed with brilliant insights, delivered with a simple-minded but self-aware lowbrow humor. All read in a contrived voice that sounds like a cross between Strong Bad and Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs . The reviews are sometimes almost as long as the movies they’re skewering, and sometimes worth the marathon, sometimes not. It would just be too meta even for my tastes to review a review of a movie, so I’ll let you decide for yourself. So who’s behind this madness? Surprisingly, it’s not some tormented nerd with a video camera like CopperCab, it’s an indy film actor/director/writer named Mike Stoklasa, who apparently collaborates with fellow indy filmmaker Jay Bauman. Read an interview Stoklasa here, and explore the reviews on Red Letter Media’s YouTube channel. Read the rest of this entry »
So It’s Canadian Pirates vs. The RIAA, eh?
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on February 20, 2010 by admin in Music
Saturday, February 20th, 2010Not content with suing dead people, old ladies who don’t own computers, and their own artists and distibution channels, the record industry is going after those archvillains of the arctic, CANADA.
In their never-ending quest for most absurd litigation to make its way into the apparently oblivious judicial system, the record industry is stepping it up a notch. No, it wasn’t enough to steal from their own artists and corrupt the legal system, or to sue a single woman for $80,000 per allegedly pirated song (oh wait, it got reduced to a mere $2,250!), or sue dead people, people who don’t even own computers, and the entire radio industry. No, now they’re taking on the country that – as we all know – is home to the most ruthless criminal networks of the Americas. You know, Canada. Who knew that aside from being a country full of pretty nice people whose greatest crime may be occasionaly finishing sentences with “eh?”, Canada is also a hotbed of profit-robbing music piracy? As far as I knew, the only threat that Canada had brought to the established music industry recently was a really awesome indy scene, but the RIAA sees things a little differently. Fortunately, this may be one of the last times that you’ll have to endure wingnuts like me ranting about this; dinosaur labels like EMI are soon likely to be laying about in massive heaps gasping for their last breaths like their metaphoric counterparts at the end of the Jurassic period, as they continue to blame their $2.7 billion losses on piracy rather than their failure to adapt to competition. I tend to get a little over-the-top when I discuss this topic; for a much more sane overview from an artist’s point of view, check out this New York Times piece by Damian Kulash Jr. of the band OK Go, in which he calmly describes how EMI’s disabling of the “embed” feature on YouTube has probably lost them exponentially more than what they made by “protecting” their property.
YouTube As A Musical Instrument
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on September 30, 2009 by admin in Music
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009My wikiphiliac ways lead to the strange discovery that not only is YouTube a musical instrument, but Ohio is a piano.
Although clearly not as epic a project as the incredible Kutiman – who remixed hundreds of YouTube music clips to create mindblowing mashups – Audiogravity is still pretty cool. It’s just a bunch of YouTube clips embedded in a single page, but you can start and stop any of them at the same time for some simple atmospheric “jazz”. Created by Darren Solomon of New York musical collaborative Science for Girls
So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star – Part II
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on August 4, 2009 by admin in Music
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009Well, since your music probably sucks, you might as well plan on getting naked.
 If you play your cards right, you could end up as happily successful as this fellow! |
If you really have an interest in succeeding in pop music, there’s one way to avoid having to do many of the things we’ll suggest in this piece: be an absolutely f***ing brilliant songwriter with solid musicians to play your broadly accessible music. Then some top-notch management will find you, and your only battle after that will be not getting screwed by all the deals you’ll be offered. Since you almost certainly don’t have that particular set of attributes in your possession, ask yourself a few more questions about why you’re seeking to promote your music: Do you want to make a living at it? Are you convinced for some reason the world just needs to be exposed to your genius? Do you think you might have some reasonably marketable music, and wouldn’t mind getting paid for it? Have you been hitting the crack pipe pretty hard again? The fact is that even the established music industry has one of the highest failure rates of almost any business, and you’ll be entering one of the “noisiest” markets on the planet, alas, with a “naked” product. For some interesting thoughts about the new marketplace, check out Digital Music Can’t Be Marketed, which points out that you can’t really package and Read the rest of this entry »
80′s One Hit Wonders
[ 5 Comments ]Posted on July 23, 2009 by admin in Music
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009Was the music & fashion so bad because we did so many drugs, or did we do so many drugs because the music and fashion was so bad?
At last, the “Official” video for 88 Lines About 44 Women. Rather peculiar, and NGSFW* |
I’d completely forgotten about the 80′s song “88 Lines About 44 Women” by The Nails until the other day when the “Official” video (also at left, NGSFW*) appeared on YouTube. I guess it isn’t so odd I’d forget about it; as much as I loved the song back then, I now remember clearly the drug-addled morning that I first heard it. I had just awakened in the San Francisco apartment of some woman I’d met the night before and she thought it really funny to play it under the circumstances. Honestly, I sometimes wonder if there were so many one-hit wonders in the 80′s simply because people were doing so many drugs that they couldn’t remember the bands’ names from release to release. I know that I, for one, remember very little of lasting value from the years 1983-1990, and given our hairstyles, clothing, and musical preferences, probably prefer it this way! But I thought it would be fun to try to recall – without using the Internet or VH-1 as a memory aid – a list of these tunes. By the way, compiling this list made me realize that there’s a previously un-named micro-genre in here somewhere that’s epitomized by tunes like Trio’s Da Da Da, The Flying Lizards’ Money (That’s What I Want), and The Nails’ song featured above. I hereby christen this genre “Clock Rock”. Remember me if that catches on. The list is below, feel free to share your own in the comments…