Tagged: YouTube

See Two New ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Viral Videos

Just in time to blunt the release of X-Men: First Class, new Dark Knight Rises teaser videos have popped on up YouTube, uploaded by “The Fire Rises” who posted even more cryptic videos over the past few days.

One is a news report from GCN from TV anchor Mike Engel (Anthony Michael Hall), with sketchy TV footage that’s labeled “Arkham Breakout?” There’s also a quick flash of a Facebook page URL, which also belongs to The Fire Rises (aka Warner Bros. Entertainment, according to the user info page).

The second video, titled ‘Outbreak,’ features an Abu Gharib vibe and the same creepy chants.

Am I the only person who is worried that Batman’s heart is going to be ripped out by Mola Ram?

Watch Classic ‘Doctor Who’ for free on YouTube

The BBC has recently released four stories from the original run of the show on YouTube.

The stories are:

If you’ve never seen them before, now’s your chance.

#SDCC: What did we learn on the Show tonight, Craig?

SDCC StormtrooperWe’ve now had a day or three to recover from the convention, and there are a few things we’ve learned– some particular just to this convention, some that will hold for the year to come, and some that are permanent changes to the way we’re doing business.

  • We’ve almost hit the point where we can have a virtual shadow convention alongside the real one. I would argue that this may be the major lesson of the convention, particularly now a few days after the con when everybody is uploading their videos to YouTube and pictures to Flickr. Keith R.A. DeCandido illustrates the phenomenon for his Farscape panel: “clear-8568651There’s a whole mess of YouTube video from the tenth anniversary panel I moderated: Not enough Twitter love from the nerds? Screw you and your marketing plan. Try talking to your audience for a change. Or even better, listening to them. You think it’s just dumb luck that everybody loved Flynn’s Arcade?

All in all, San Diego is still a good show. It’s exhausting, it’s insane, but it’s still the standard to beat.

A Good Day for ‘Monty Python’ Fans

It’s a good day for Monty Python fans.  First, Amazon is offering the just-released box set of the entire pioneering television deeply discounted for 24 hours. The normal $99.99 list price is down to a mere $39.99 until midnight.

Meantime, the Monty Python troupe now has a YouTube channel featuring about 24 collections of clips, outtakes and interviews with the gang. And instead of pretending its all about getting to know its audience, the group admits the channel is a direct ploy to sell Monty Python DVDs and merchandise, utilizing YouTube’s new partnership with Amazon (see above).
 

An Animated Buffy the Vampire Slayer?


Long after the notion of a Buffy Animated Series has come and gone, a brief clip from what would-have-been has popped up on YouTube. The idea that the show is still in the works seems pretty far fetched, seeing as how most of the cast has moved on far from the world of Sunnydale and Vampires, but its still a nice piece of Buffy nostalgia to watch.

 

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at San Diego Comic-Con 2008

One of the most popular bootleg videos at comic book conventions before the YouTube era was of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog making fun of geeks waiting in line for Star Wars.

Our favorite foul mouthed puppet set his sites on nerds once again when The Late Show with Conan O’Brien sent him to this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. And this time you don’t have to buy burned copies from a weird guy at a booth with Micronaut figures. I kid. I kid. (Oh, and consider this your official "Not Safe For Work" warning.)
 

 

 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: That’s PvP webcomic creator Scott Kurtz getting the Triumph treatment around three minutes into the video. Owch! -RM]

The Saga of “Italian Spiderman”

Sure, he has nothing to do with the Spider-Man we know and love, but <a href=”

The Italian Spiderman recently caught the eye of Newsweek.com, who examined the viral video saga’s origins — as well as that of its creators. The final chapter of the YouTube sensation, which chronicled the adventures of a swingin’ 1960s Italian superhero, was posted just a week or two ago.

According to Newsweek, the video’s rise to viral superstardom was an unplanned — but pleasant — development for its creators:

The trailer was supposed to be a one-time lark. But Russo says that when he posted it on YouTube last November, it was watched 1,800 times within two days. In March, it was featured on YouTube’s homepage. As of this writing, it has been watched more than two million times. When Russo realized he had touched a nerve with his joke, he raised a little money ("we could have bought a 1990 or ’92 Toyota Corolla for what this project cost," he says) and began filming Italian Spiderman episodes in January. The first was posted on May 21 to both YouTube and the website for Russo’s production company, Alrugo. A new episode followed every week and eventually a fictional back story evolved—that only one 1968 print of "Italian Spiderman" ever existed, that it was recovered from a shipwreck last year.

 

Random Video: ‘Riki Oh’ – The Most Awesome Movie Ever?

The most awesome movie in the world features a villain with a hook hand and a glass eye that’s full of breathmints. It has extreme violence and horrific English dubbing. And it has Ricky, the real one-man army corps.

I happened across Riki Oh (also called The Story of Ricky) a couple years ago. It’s a little-known 1991 martial arts flick set in a futuristic prison run by gangs. If I had to guess, I’d say three quarters of the movie’s budget went to fake blood. Sure, it’s not comics, but it certainly qualifies as "comic book-esque."

You can now see this wonder <a href=”

its entirety on YouTube – but be warned, it’s extremely graphic in a not-quite-believable Evil Dead sort of way. File it under my highest recommendation.

[NOTE: This film also provided the crazy head-smashing scene used during The Daily Show‘s "Moment of Zen" feature for several seasons. -RM]

Here’s one of my favorite scenes:

 


 

 

MoCCA Catches Fire!

Smoke in the sub-basement, fire in the sky…  As if this weekend’s MoCCA Art Festival weren’t already the hottest ticket in town during the hottest couple of days so far this year, there was a fire condition around 3 PM on Sunday that wound up causing an evacuation of the building.

An earlier video of the event was taken down from YouTube for some reason, but Brian Heater of The Daily Cross Hatch posted one of his own. Have a look:

According to MoCCA founder Lawrence Klein, there was apparently a "smoke condition" in the building’s sub-basement, nowhere near either of the convention floors or window-based air conditioning units. Attending professionals and fans were probably not all that thrilled to be ushered out into the 90-degree heat, but better safe than sorry!

The Ghost of Wertham, by Mike Gold

As comics fans, we should always be on the frontlines of the war to protect freedom of expression.

After all, it was our medium that was forced into a severe case of arrested development for a decade. Beginning in late 1940s and led by mascot psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, the Saturday Evening Post and the Readers Digest, comic book creators became seen as nothing less than child molesters and the medium was pressured into “Comics Code Authority” censorship and became trapped in its “childish claptrap” image for a generation. Hundreds of cartoonists, publishers, editors, and engravers lost their jobs; those that were among the fortunate few who remained gainfully employed told their neighbors they were “commercial artists” or some such lest they be chased out of suburbia by an angry mob.

For the past 20 years we’ve had a dangerous clown in the Senate who, when he’s not trying to get our armed forces to blast every Moslem in the middle east into smithereens (yep; it’s Memorial Day, so let’s honor our brave men and women by bringing them home from Iraq) is busy trying to raise our nation’s children on behalf of their evidently incompetent parents. Sadly, I’m talking about one of my own senators,

“independent” Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a man no more independent than Karl Rove or Dick Cheney.

Senator Joe has actually threatened artistic creators with government censorship if they do not bow to his whims. Yeah, I know, I already compared him to Rove and Cheney so telling you he wipes his ass with the Bill of Rights is kind of redundant. Joe’s spent the past two decades – and our tax money – intimidating the forces that produce video games, movies and music he doesn’t appreciate, all the time hiding under the Great Flag of Cowards, the one that reads “save the children!” Now, he’s turned his attention to YouTube. (more…)