In today’s media-saturated market, who has time to invest in watching and reading everything out there? Not us — and we assume that we devote more time to pop-culture consumption than most. But you don’t have to feel left out of your friends’ conversations about Harry Potter, Doctor Who, or even The Bold and the Beautiful. Luckily, there’s a way to catch up the television shows, movies, and other classics that everybody’s talking about — and it’s much more fun than reading the summaries on Wikipedia. We’ve put together some of our favorite video condensations of famous franchises to keep you up to date.
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Epic nerd and talented musician Lindsey Stirling has just released a follow up to her popular Legends of Zelda medley with an even more impressive video featuring a medley of the music of Lord of the Rings. The video is actually shot in New Zealand, and the cinematography is pretty fantastic, as sweeping and magical as the music (and the elves and stuff). Apparently, she even used a helicopter, which is pretty advanced for a nerdy fan-video dedicated to a film adaptation of a cult fantasy novel. Stirling’s skills, however, are undeniable, and the goofy grin that’s plastered on her face the whole time kind of makes us love her forever. Click through to watch the video, and get psyched for The Hobbit.
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Have you ever held a kitchen match and thought, “Why make fire when I could make Hogwarts?” Yeah, we haven’t either. Does that make us pyromaniacs? Possibly, but let’s take a minute to admire the special few who view tiny flammable sticks as art supplies for elaborate creations. Some matchstick artists devote years to building a single structure, using hundreds of thousands of matches along the way. Pretty cool, eh? Check out an incredible collection of matchstick cities, matchstick instruments, and matchstick cars after the jump, and try not to imagine how fascinating it would be to set them all aflame (that is, unless you’re a matchstick Voldemort in a matchstick battle).
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Earlier this week, we discovered a set of lovely golden Lord of the Rings-inspired nails over at io9, and we have to admit that we’ve been daydreaming about our perfect literary dream manicures ever since. After all, we’ve already gushed over (and failed at trying to replicate) these awesome Twin Peaks nails, so it’s only fair we give a little love to the literary side of fingernail-based super-fandom. Because if you’re serious about being a literary nerd, why not extend your love of books to the very tools that let you turn the pages and proclaim your great taste in reading material to the world all at once? Click through to get inspired by a few of our favorite works of literary nail art, and let us know which books you’re dying to have at your fingertips in the comments!
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Today at Flavorpill, we imaged what this teddy bear skin rug would feel like beneath our feet. We learned about the science behind bursting water balloons in this video. We were pretty impressed by the art of Jello origami. We wondered if microwavable footwear would be the next Snuggie sensation. We tried to tell the difference between Lady Gaga and Jem in this fun quiz posted at Mental Floss. We were glad to hear that Lindsay Lohan got gold stars on her probation report. We read about the return of Atari. We weren’t shocked to learn about this Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark countersuit against director Julie Taymor. We counted the werewolves in this trailer for FDR: American Badass!. We enjoyed this solo performance by Adam Ben Ezra covering the Mad Men theme, live and on upright bass. We approved of this Lord of the Rings manicure. And finally, we saw where all the trees in the U.S. were located and determined that the Midwest won’t be enjoying a shady picnic anytime soon.
Today at Flavorpill, we enjoyed Ann Powers’ thoughtful analysis of the growing popularity of the word “swag.” We watched the pilot episode of Showtime’s new big business dark comedy, House of Lies, which stars Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell and makes its official debut on January 8. We were sad to learn of former SNL writer Joe Bodolai’s apparent suicide. We got a look at the tracklist for Glee’s forthcoming Michael Jackson tribute episode. We revisited some of the best TV lines of 2011. We got a look at a few new pieces of concept art for The Wachowskis’ film adaptation of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. We listened to what famed filmmaker Errol Morris had to say about the issue of truth in photography. We imagined that getting this epic Lord of the Rings back tattoo inked was pretty painful. We were fascinated by the stories behind the picks in Mental Floss’ roundup of the 25 most powerful songs of the past 25 years. We were impressed by this sculptural time-lapse of artist Katie Grinnan doing yoga. We wished that a red panda would randomly decide to move into our house. We weren’t surprised to hear that AMC has decided to renew its popular new Western series Hell on Wheels for another season. And finally, we wanted to take a shower with Dave Eggers — or rather, a monologue told to Dave Eggers by his shower curtain.
Welcome to “Trailer Park,” our regular Friday feature where we collect the week’s new trailers all in one place and do a little “judging a book by its cover,” ranking them from worst to best and taking our best guess at what they may be hiding. This week’s seven trailers include several big-franchise sequels and (sort of) prequels (we think); check ‘em all out after the jump.
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For those of you who grew up watching the 1977 animated version of The Hobbit, this on-going series depicting the characters from Lord of Rings by Mexican illustrator and graphic designer Francisco Guerrero will create some serious feelings of nostalgia. At the same time, Guerrero’s animated take on Tolkien is much more Disney-inspired than what we saw in the classic Rankin/Bass special. It’s also obvious that he’s taking visual cues from Peter Jackson’s film adaptations — especially with Gandalf and Gollum. Click through to check out Guerrero’s illustrations of Frodo, Samwise, and the rest of the gang, which we spotted thanks to our friends over at The Mary Sue. Read More »
Today at Flavorpill, we were amazed by the wealth of Perfect Strangers fan art to be found on the Internet. We discovered that Charleston has more hot people than any other American city, at least according to Travel + Leisure. We were surprised that Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was the both most- and least-favored Person of the Year in TIME’s annual poll. We couldn’t believe that Russell Brand is supposedly getting his own animated series — will this trend ever stop? We met the “Krampus,” a mythical monster so scary that it was banned from Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations Christmas Special. We were impressed by the amount of detail in this Lord of the Rings-inspired nail art. We saw some new work from Banksy in Liverpool. We wondered how quickly these mini models of Jeff Koons’ BMW art car will sell out. We looked at some of the highlights of the 2011 Black List. We were excited to hear that funny lady Rachel Dratch is working on a book that will come out this spring. We wanted to take a bite out of a few of these brains. We couldn’t believe that an escalator that features the Star Wars opening crawl exists in Tel Aviv. And finally, we were thoroughly depressed after spotting this visualization of student loan debt in 1990 vs 2000 vs 2011 on Mother Jones’ tumblr. Now you can be too!
Ah, to be a film character, and have everything you say come out scripted and pithy, down to your final breath. In recent weeks, we’ve been inspired by a great list of the last words of 25 geniuses that has been making the rounds, so this weekend we decided to explore the last words of what are arguably the creations of genius: fictional characters from some of our favorite movies. Click through to see our picks for the 25 greatest last words of characters in movies, from robots to witches to businessmen, as they die in heroic, tragi-comic, or just plain emotional scenes. Since we know how very many of these there are, be sure to let us know if we’ve missed any of your own favorites in the comments.
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