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2005 Wiener Dog Nationals Video
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The week in a minute: 10/07/05
A compilation of some of the past week's best and strangest video, brought to you by the Download.com Video team. This installment brings racing weenies, sketchy supermodels, and a puppet singing hardcore.
1.) iPod Nano spoof
2.) Shining
3.) Insane football hits
4.) 2005 Wiener Dog Nationals
5.) GG Allin: "Bite It, You Scum"
6.) Showbread: "Mouth Like a Magazine"
7.) Kate Moss drug video
8.) Litwit Junkies: "One Day Away"
9.) The Simpsons: "The Shinning" clip
10.) Arcade Fire: "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)"
11.) "El Escape De Los Sanots" ("The Escape of De Los Santos") trailer
12.) Utah State Fair Napoleon Dynamite commercial
13.) Spoon: "Sister Jack"
14.) Linsday Lohan on SNL
15.) He Is Legend: "The Seduction"
16.) The Weekend
17.) Devo: "Whip It"
Click here for the Week in a Minute archive.
Ep. 7: Meet the Nook Tablet; Samsung's new laptops; the great video game subtitle debate
This week, Scott reports from the Nook Tablet launch event; we check out Samsung's new Series 7 laptops and slates; and the great debate on video game subtitles gets a little heated.
The Dead Texan: "The Struggle"
A breezy video montage set to soft intrumentals
Thanks to Microsoft's Silverlight streaming video software, more people than ever before are tuning in...err...logging on to watch the Olympics online. CNET's Kara Tsuboi reports on the popularity of the free service and the technology involved in transmitting that gold-medal relay race from Beijing to your home computer.
The Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Skulpture Race 2005
For the first time in its 23-year history, a course correction was required at the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Skulpture Race. The white kaps in the bay were so foreboding Sunday morning that a conference of course and city officials was quickly convened. All concurred to move the water segment of the course to the protected area at the Fort Worden State Park pier, next to the quicksand course. The stiff, chilly winds failed to deter anyone from the pre-race ceremonies, not even the BBC crew filming the event for its children's TV series, "Only in America." After surviving the beach and water at Fort Worden, the 16 entrants endured an especially windy and More-Dismal-Than-Usual Bog churned up at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. A stalwart crowd cheered and hooted as some teams slogged through the mud the hard way while others bribed their way down the sidelines. "Look the other way everyone, the judges are cheating!" Efra announced as Supreme Court reversed its motion and was lifted out of what had appeared to be a permanent restraining order of knee-deep mud." Port Townsend, Leader Newspaper (Wednesday, October 4, 2005)
This heart racing tune from Jaga Jazzist is a gem of rough animation. Plus, there are lots of zebras. This video is from "Zen TV," a collection of videos from Ninja Tune that includes some of the biggest figures in electronic music, paired with some of the most creative directors in the world.
Since the mid-nineties and the groundbreaking Stealth parties at the Blue Note in Hoxton Square, Ninja has been almost as well respected for its engagement with visuals as it has for its audio. Now at last, the two come together on this massive retrospective of almost a decade of experiment, innovation, humour and weirdness.
Let's get the spec out of the way first.
The ZenTV DVD has twice the capacity of a normal DVD, containing as it does 35 promo videos from the label, a fifteen minute audiovisual mix and a 30 minutes audio mix from Hexstatic. And as if that wasn't enough, the DVD has a state-of-the-art menu system which means you can watch the videos either in the order we intended, randomly, or chronologically from the oldest to the newest or the newest to the oldest. You can also look up any specific act and check out their videos and album art. Or just leave a gallery of some of Ninja's finest covers running in the corner of the room as a kind of ambient art installation dahlink? Mwah.
But that just scratches the surface, really, cos after all, in the kingdom of the blind content is king. Or something like that. You know the music is going to be good (we hope you know the music is going to be good), but what about the visuals?
Well, one advantage with not having hit records (Coldcut's "Beats & Pieces" remains our one top forty for 12 years work) is that you don't have to worry about getting your promos shown on daytime MTV or TOTP or any of those hellholes of visual mediocrity where all the bands have to look fabulous and if they don't, well you better make sure you put some models in there who do? So instead, you can be (whisper it) creative.
Which is why some of the top up-and-coming names in video direction and animation have worked for Ninja in the last few years. Because they know that if they pitch an interesting, visually striking, innovative idea, they will be left to get on with it without interference. Established directors like Alexander Rutterford (Amon Tobin, now working for Radiohead) Sam Arthur (DJ Vadim) as well as young turks like Conkerko (Bonobo). Fizzy Eye made their first music video for Wagon Christ (the truly excellent "Receiver") and have since gone on to do commercials for Honda, proving that a track record with Ninja doesn't ruin your business prospects.
Beyond this, artists like Kid Koala and Jaga Jazzist often even commission their own videos, working with close associates to find the perfect match between their sound and the director's vision. As if that wasn't enough, there are artists on the label who are intimately involved in the creation of their own videos, whether it's the Scruff cartoons that make up the basis of his Cosgrove Hall-animated "Sweet Smoke," the pioneering audiovisual cut-ups of Hexstatic and Coldcut, Funki Porcini's satires of adverts or his weird, otherworldly concrete moving abstracts.
Overall, since those early audiovisual mash-ups, the driving force behind all of Ninja's visual work has been that the video is not merely an unrelated promo item to sell a single but should be intimately related to the sounds it represents. The budgets may be small, some results may be more effective than others, but there's no denying that the attempts to realise this ideal are never less than interesting.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Click here for the rest of the exciting videos from this collection.
Amon Tobin featuring MC Decimal R: "Verbal"
This heart racing tune from Jaga Jazzist is a gem of rough animation. Plus, there are lots of zebras. This video is from "Zen TV," a collection of videos from Ninja Tune that includes some of the biggest figures in electronic music, paired with some of the most creative directors in the world.
Since the mid-nineties and the groundbreaking Stealth parties at the Blue Note in Hoxton Square, Ninja has been almost as well respected for its engagement with visuals as it has for its audio. Now at last, the two come together on this massive retrospective of almost a decade of experiment, innovation, humour and weirdness.
Let's get the spec out of the way first.
The ZenTV DVD has twice the capacity of a normal DVD, containing as it does 35 promo videos from the label, a fifteen minute audiovisual mix and a 30 minutes audio mix from Hexstatic. And as if that wasn't enough, the DVD has a state-of-the-art menu system which means you can watch the videos either in the order we intended, randomly, or chronologically from the oldest to the newest or the newest to the oldest. You can also look up any specific act and check out their videos and album art. Or just leave a gallery of some of Ninja's finest covers running in the corner of the room as a kind of ambient art installation dahlink? Mwah.
But that just scratches the surface, really, cos after all, in the kingdom of the blind content is king. Or something like that. You know the music is going to be good (we hope you know the music is going to be good), but what about the visuals?
Well, one advantage with not having hit records (Coldcut's "Beats & Pieces" remains our one top forty for 12 years work) is that you don't have to worry about getting your promos shown on daytime MTV or TOTP or any of those hellholes of visual mediocrity where all the bands have to look fabulous and if they don't, well you better make sure you put some models in there who do? So instead, you can be (whisper it) creative.
Which is why some of the top up-and-coming names in video direction and animation have worked for Ninja in the last few years. Because they know that if they pitch an interesting, visually striking, innovative idea, they will be left to get on with it without interference. Established directors like Alexander Rutterford (Amon Tobin, now working for Radiohead) Sam Arthur (DJ Vadim) as well as young turks like Conkerko (Bonobo). Fizzy Eye made their first music video for Wagon Christ (the truly excellent "Receiver") and have since gone on to do commercials for Honda, proving that a track record with Ninja doesn't ruin your business prospects.
Beyond this, artists like Kid Koala and Jaga Jazzist often even commission their own videos, working with close associates to find the perfect match between their sound and the director's vision. As if that wasn't enough, there are artists on the label who are intimately involved in the creation of their own videos, whether it's the Scruff cartoons that make up the basis of his Cosgrove Hall-animated "Sweet Smoke," the pioneering audiovisual cut-ups of Hexstatic and Coldcut, Funki Porcini's satires of adverts or his weird, otherworldly concrete moving abstracts.
Overall, since those early audiovisual mash-ups, the driving force behind all of Ninja's visual work has been that the video is not merely an unrelated promo item to sell a single but should be intimately related to the sounds it represents. The budgets may be small, some results may be more effective than others, but there's no denying that the attempts to realise this ideal are never less than interesting.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Click here for the rest of the exciting videos from this collection.
Renaissance Fair of San Diego County
This is a short film about the San Diego north county Renaissance Fair in Escondido's Felicita Park, April, 2006. Swordsmen, wizards, fair ladies and more make the Renaissance Fair a memorable event. Enjoy good food and drink and watch history come alive as you walk among people like yourself who want to be a part of something bigger and older that you can find anywhere else.
Natali Del Conte and crew take a look at the Nintendo 'Wii Fit' launch event in New York's Central Park.
