Academy Award Winning Movie Stereotypes

So when I was in high school I watched this video like once a week because I loved the YouTube channel and also I thought the video was genius. Funnily enough I completely forgot about it once I started college. Recently though the video popped into my mind and I re watched it. I still think that it is a pretty great video, and I have a much better appreciation of it since being in school for film/tv production. The video is a mock of common tropes that many academy award winning movies have.

The fake trailer shows a parody of things that a lot of really highly acclaimed films exploit like a privileged adult helping out under privileged kids in a school, and a happily single and wealthy man suddenly having a kid or a relative with a disability placed in his custody. I would definitely recommend this video if you are in the mood for a laugh. I also recommend watching the YouTube channel this video is from, the videos are all pretty good and definitely entertaining.

Childrens Hospital

Lately I have been watching "Childrens Hospital," Rob Corddry's comedy on the Adult. Each episode is about 11 minutes long, but in that short time span, the large ensemble cast packs as many jokes as possible. The humor is very dark and absurd, so it's not for everyone.

The show is a parody of hospital dramas such as "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scrubs." Corddry's show is actually filmed on the same sets as the latter show, a fact that one of the character's references in one episode, an example of the show's meta-humor. The show is about a group of doctors and nurses, most of whom have slept with one another, a parody of the many relationships doctors have in melodramatic hospital dramas. Characters include Blake Downs, a clown doctor who believes in the healing power of laughter, The Chief, the head of the hospital who is part Cherokee, which explains her name, and Sy, a hospital administrator played by Henry "The Fonz" Winkler. The show has great guest stars, including Jon Hamm, Ed Begley Jr., Nick Offerman, and Michael Cera as the voice of the PA system.

Together, the team of doctors face challenges like quicksand, amnesia viruses, Death (played by Michael McKean), criminally insane children, heat waves prompting a "Do the Right Thing" parody, crampt living situations, cancer guns, and Big Pharma. The show also messes around with format; one episode is a fake-live episode, while another one takes place in the 1970s.

Most of the jokes are throwaway lines, such as "Time of death: 9pm, 8 Central." It's hard to describe, so here's a clip, but it doesn't really do the show justice.

Extracurricular Projects

A lot of people may stop after they finish schoolwork or required materials but I often find myself wanting to create and do more. Sometimes class work can get tiresome and boring so finding something you actually enjoy creating and doing is very important. Recently I have created a few different side projects not associated with school that I have been really proud of and would like to share.

My first project I created last week after watching a few parody videos online. After the announced hiatus of a great sitcom called Community there has been an outpouring of fan made videos showcasing how special this show really is. My friend and I stumbled on a video where a user created the opening credits for Community yet in the style of another great show called Parks and Recreation. We then realized that it would be interesting to see Community’s credits in the style of Arrested Development, a show that like Community had cult fans and network scheduling problems in its third and final season.

A few minutes after this discussion I went right to work seeing if this was doable. After playing around in Photoshop about if I could do it, all of the sudden it was all I could think about. For the next two days every free minute I had I would work on this credit sequence. I first created all the images in Photoshop by using pictures of the cast from online. Then I put them all into Final Cut and animated the slides to move and change at the exact same time the original credits changed. Next came adding the videos included on the slides. Finally I had to figure out how to make moving arrows, circles, and the hanging pictures. I then just sat down and tried different things and used trial and error to problem solve these things for myself. Two days later I was done and posted it online. In 48 hours I nearly had 2000 views and now as I write it has over 4000. I am very proud of the outcome and how I may finding people I don’t even know post it themselves on sites like Twitter and Tumblr! To view my video click here and to see the original I based it on click here.

Another side project I have been involved in is called Dual Redundancy. Dual Redundancy is an entertainment and television podcast my friend Mike and I created and host every week. On the show we have different segments where we discuss the week in entertainment. These include “In and Out Points” where we jump in and out of the week’s big headlines and “The Flashback” where we highlight a great new episode of a show from the last week. We also give movie reviews and have done a variety of theme episodes. These have included an Emmy prediction episode and another where we revealed the list of the top ten TV characters from the last ten years. For the latter podcast we created a survey and asked our listeners for their votes. We received over 100 votes before we closed voting! We are still going strong and have created ten episodes so far.

If interested in learning more about Dual Redundancy you can find us all over the Internet. We have a Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube page where you can find out about the latest episodes, contribute content for the show, and even participate in contests. Most importantly you can subscribe and listen to our show on iTunes or download it to your MP3 player.

It's the Muppet Movie!

It's time to play the music. It's time to light the lights. It's time to meet the Muppets in the Muppet movie tonight!

I just got back from watching The Muppets, the first Muppet theatrical released film in twelve years. In the film Walter, a Muppet himself is the world’s largest Muppet fan. Along with his human brother Gary played by Jason Segel and Gary’s girlfriend Mary played by Amy Adams they must raise 10 million to save the Muppet Theater from Tex Richman. But before they can do that they need to reunite all of the Muppets who have since parted ways and are all over the world. Overall I really enjoyed the film that has the heart warm message that everything is better when you are with the people that you care about.

The first thing I liked about the film was the meta jokes calling attention to the movie the characters were in. For example when reuniting the gang they realize that this could take awhile and that we should probably cut to a montage. Instantly a montage begins until we see all the Muppets assembled into the car. One of the Muppets, Rowlf, then asks how come his story wasn’t included in the montage because he thought his was very interesting. The film then cuts back to the group waking him up from a hammock and asking if he wanted to join them, which he quickly answers yes. Other meta-references were to the songs that were supervised and written by the hilarious Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchrods. Characters would reference how they were tired from doing an earlier song and dance number. Other times like when The Muppets meet with Tex Richman and he raps them a song about how the answer of giving them the theater back is no the Muppets said a simple no would have been good enough.

Long before the movie came out I was excited to see because of the great marketing behind the film. In the months leading up to the movie they created numerous spoof trailers and posters of popular films with the Muppets as the stars. These included a spoof of the romantic comedy genre with a film called Green With Envy, a parody of The Hangover Part II called The Fuzzy Pack, and a parody of the upcoming David Fincher film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo called The Pig with the Froggy Tattoo. Other films parody included Green Lantern (Being Green), Paranormal Activity (Abnormal Activity), Puss in Boots (Fuss in Boots) and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (Breaking Prawn). By drumming up anticipation with these funny and successful parodies of popular movies ticket sales should be high for a movie that already has a loyal fan base and already stellar reviews.

Overall the movie was a great and sweet story perfect to watch with your family this holiday weekend. In one related note very much like the plot of the movie of bringing the Muppets back for a new generation, NBC has recently announced this week that it is currently working on a new sitcom with the Jim Henson Company. “The New Nabors” will explore the humorous repercussions of a human family living next door to a puppet family. If it is anything like the movie I am sure the world is in for quite a treat and for the Muppets to bring everyone, as they say, the third greatest gift of all: “laughter.”

David Fincher and The Social Network

The Social Network is an award winning film by David Fincher. It tells the story of how the social-networking site of Facebook was founded but it is also so much more than that. It uses this story as a backdrop of friendship and betrayal. Based on the novel The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, The Social Network is arguably one of the best films from the last few years.

David Fincher known for movies like Se7en and Fight Club is considered a visual artist. His films are very stylized in terms of color and composition. Looking past the technical side he also works well with actors. Not only does he allow and plot time for experimentation for the actors, he is also determined to get their best performances. In the opening scene between Mark and Erica, which was over eight pages of straight dialogue, he took 99 takes. He did this to break the actors and strip the acting away from them. Instead of sounding like rehearsed lines it looks and feels like two college kids simply talking as their characters. There is no acting going on. They know the lines inside and out and now Jesse Eisenberg and Rooney Mara have become Mark Zuckerberg and Erica Albright.

Fincher is also great with special effects. Actor Armie Hammer played both the Winklevoss twins but there are many people out there that think that there are two Armie Hammers in the real world. Josh Pence actually played one of the twins from the neck down and had Armie’s face digitally replaced over his. To further match each other’s movements and rapport they spent 10 months in twin boot camp together. This makes scenes like the rowing scene at the Henley Sequence possible.

My friends and I were so excited for this movie to come out that we even decided to recreate the amazing trailer shot for shot all in one 24 hour span during finals week of last year. Without telling our friend who looks like Jesse Eisenberg (so he would not know what he was doing) we ran around campus recreating the scenes from the movie. We later spent weeks editing it all together to make it match with the original trailer. If played side by side with the original they would match perfectly (which I have actually created a file doing so). Even though it is filled with inside jokes between friends it was posted online and have since received a large number of views (currently we just hit 800). A few weeks ago I was even asked to talk about the trailer on Ithaca College’s television show The Screening Room: Director’s Corner. If you are interested you can check out the interview here. I am the third and last person interviewed in episode five from the Fall 2011 season.

The Social Network is a brilliant film by David Fincher that I cannot speak more highly of. The acting, directing, writing, and soundtrack are just amazing. This film actually made me want to go back and re-watch other Fincher films and currently has me very excited for the upcoming Fincher release of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. If anything like Fincher’s previous work I am sure it will be spectacular.

Community's Halloween Episodes and Parodies

To many people Community is a television series about a group of students at a community college but it is so much more than that. The series heavily uses pop culture references and meta-humor often parodying film and television clichés. These episodes include a holiday stop-motion episode, a clip show of memories that never happened, a parody of westerns, and even a recent episode that had seven alternate timelines. Every single of one these are worthy of an entire blog post but today in the spirit of Halloween I am focusing on their annual Halloween episodes.

In the first season their Halloween episode was called “Introduction to Statistics” and dealt with Jeff and his decision to blow off his study group’s Halloween party in order to score with the young Statistics professor. However the b-plot of the episode is a great parody of superhero films and Batman. Abed is a student that is obsessed with pop culture and entertainment, much like the show’s creator Dan Harmon and the writers. At Halloween he dresses up as Batman and more specifically as the Christian Bale reboot version. At the end of the episode he saves the day as a chair and desk fort begins to collapse on Jeff who is trying to comfort Pierce about realizing he is old and “un-hip.” Jeff is usually the first to complain about the absurd behavior of Abed but at the end of the episode after he made his decision to choose the study group over the teacher he accepts Abed, his behavior, and his new batch of friends. The ending moment is then a straight parody of the heroic music and narration Batman will often do which was just recently seen in the movie The Dark Knight.

Last season the Halloween episode was called “Epidemiology” but most fans know it has the zombie episode. In this episode the study group is left to fend for themselves when their classmates become “zombies” due to tainted food the Dean cheaply bought. While it was actually an outbreak of rabies instead of them actually being zombies, the episode features numerous horror movie clichés the would be seen in a zombie or horror movie. First was a cat rustling in an abandoned area. Many times in movies characters are often spooked by some animal like a cat flying past them when they are trying to hide and escape the real evil outside. Community parodied this by having the cat constantly keep reappearing and showing it unconvincingly flying across the screen. Another funny comment on horror movies the show made was on music. Usually horror movies have scary, dark, and very intense music but on Community the music was the greatest hits of ABBA mixed in with the Dean’s voice memos. Unable to leave that section of school to change the playlist, upbeat songs like “Dancing Queen” played as the zombies attacked and bit the study group. Finally another comment on horror movies (or any movie in general) came when Troy tries to run through crowd to save the day and turn down the thermostat (which is believe to slow down the symptoms of the zombies before they suffer brain damage). While normally the action hero will burst through the group and destroy all the bad guys in his path, Troy is immediately attacked and stopped. He ends up reaching the goal but after he was bit himself.

I love Community and their themed episodes like their past two Halloween episodes. Tomorrow night at 8 pm on NBC their third episode airs called “Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps” and I am sure based on the title and the prior history of the show that it will continue to make fun of and comment on horror movies, pop culture, and entertainment in general. I for one can’t wait for the hilarity and references to ensue.