Re-cut Trailers

I’ve made several posts linking to humorous or unusual fan-made recuts of movie trailers. The Wikipedia entry “Re-cut trailers” is a pretty authoritative reference that includes links to most of them:

Re-cut trailers refers to a re-edited film trailer that is created by re-editing footage from that film, or possibly just from that film’s trailer. Re-cut trailers have become a popular internet phenomenon since fall of 2005. In almost all cases, these re-cut trailers derive their humor from casting the film’s plot in a different light- these fake trailers present the film as something that it is very much not. For instance, a film with a murderous plot is made to look like a light and happy film, or vice versa.

95 Theses of Geek Activism

Science Addiction’s 95 Theses of Geek Activism is an interesting read:

Geek activism has not taken off yet, but it should. With the gamers recognizing the need for a louder voice, EFF gaining momentum and Linux taking on the mainstream on the one hand and recent severe losses in privacy, freedom of speech and intellectual property rights on the other, now seems to be the best time to rally around the cause.

Geeks are not known to be political or highly vocal (outside of our own circles)- this must change if we want things to improve. So here is my list of things people of all shapes, sizes and sides of the debate need to know. Some of these are obvious, others may not be meant for you. But hopefully, some of these will inspire you to do the right thing and others will help you frame the next discussion, debate or argument you have on these topics.

The Big Lebowski – Fucking Short Version

Filmrot muses on the word “fuck”:

The word “fuck” has recently attracted the cinematic spotlight. There’s a documentary featuring the word on the way, Utah-based DVD Rental companies have staked entire marketing efforts around sanitizing it from films, and Wikipedia even has an f-word list, which ranks films based on the number of times the four-letter word is used. “Fuck” has never been bigger, nor more accepted by theater-goers.

Which brings us to the newest fan-film trend: editing all but the saltiest of moments out of a film.

The Filmrot post has links to four fan-film edits: Scarface, Joe Pesci in Casino, The Blair Witch Project, and The Big Lebowski (all YouTube videos). My favorite is The Big Lebowski – Fucking Short Version… 🙂

Learning From Atari

Atari 1981 ad
Jason Santa Maria has a great post entitled Learning from Atari in which he reminisces on the fact that although “classic” videogames used to be a lot less detailed, their advertising artwork still managed to stimulate your imagination enough so that you suspended your disbelief and “put you in the mindset for what you were about to experience.” He took the time to scan in the entire Atari Game Catalog from 1981 and posted it to flickr as an homage to the great artwork used in Atari’s advertisements. Awesome…

J! Archive

J! Archive has taken the time to archive every question on every Jeopardy! show ever. The site even presents the questions on the game board as it appeared on the show, including graphics and sounds if applicable, and allowing you to see the “answer” by mousing over the dollar amount. Very cool…