STAR WARS anti-drunk driving PSA

The Mos Eisley cantina may be a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but at least they have designated drivers.
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Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt do SID AND NANCY, in drag

In this truly bizarre clip, 500 Days of Summer stars Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt perform a gender-swapped re-enactment of one of the most grim scenes in cinema history: the death of Nancy Spungen from the 1986 Alex Cox film Sid and Nancy.

Deschanel does a surprisingly credible Sid, with Gordon-Levitt really throwing himself into recreating Chloe Webb's quavering, clingy desperation... Although the plug for 500 Days at the end kind of seems like bad taste. I mean, this isn't just a famous movie moment... Spungen really died, and quite horribly too, and they're kind of making a punchline out of it. I'm not sure what the point of this clip is, really, but it was too weird to be left unshared.
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"I'm Dreaming of a Blue Sunset -- on Mars"

Enjoy this Doctor Manhattan-esque footage of a sunset as seen from the surface of Mars.
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A Betamax Christmas

If you need a little retro Christmas TV, right this very minute, Betamax Christmas will put the jolly back in your holly. The site recreates a full evening of Christmas TV programming circa 1986 or so, complete with rabbit ears on the TV that you have to fiddle with to get a better picture. (You change the channel by flipping the remote floating over on the right. It seems obvious once you notice it, but it took me a while to spot it.)

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CHRISTMAS IN THE STARS

If the Star Wars Holiday Special wasn't awkward and embarrassing enough for you, there's always the Star Wars holiday album, Christmas in the Stars. The track above, featuring the vocal stylings of everybody's favorite protocol droid C3-PO, is just the beginning of the squirmy, uncomfortable anti-fun. There's also What Do You Get a Wookie? (When He Already Owns a Comb) and this deathless classic featuring a young Jon Bon Jovi in his first studio recording ever. (It was all downhill from there, Jon.)

Happy Life Day, everybody!

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Christmas with the Doctors

In this quick sketch from the UK series Dead Ringers, Doctor Who's tenth Doctor suffers through a rather tense Christmas with a few of his earlier incarnations. (The Tom Baker impersonator is so spot-on it's kind of eerie.)

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SHATNER SUNDAY: BLAH BLAH BLAH

In this "supercut of movie blah blah blahs," various characters in various films have a bad case of the blahs... Until Shatner steps in to chase those blahs away.
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MUSIC FROM SPACE: Edge of Etiquette - I HATE YOU

Kirk Thatcher is one of those cool Hollywood behind-the-scenes geeks you've never heard of, a guy who has played an important role in all sorts of beloved geek nerd franchises without getting any of the glory. He's done special effects for ILM, written and performed for the Muppets, he was the associate producer of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home... But, as he readily admits in this interview, they will probably put his credit for Star Trek IV's Punk on Bus on his tombstone.

Not only did Thatcher portray the Punk, he was also responsible for the song blaring out of the Punk's ghetto blaster. Apparently the studio wanted to use some other song that Thatcher found insufficiently nasty, so he volunteered to record a suitable punk song himself. Thatcher got together with a few studio sound guys as The Edge of Etiquette, and in a couple of hours they knocked out I Hate You, an absolutely perfect little chunk of '80s punk.

I Hate You turned up again in the Frankie and Annette reunion movie Back to the Beach, but otherwise that was sadly the last the world ever heard of Edge of Etiquette. (The song didn't even appear on the Star Trek IV soundtrack!) Only a short excerpt of the song was featured in Star Trek IV before Spock put the Vulcan neck pinch on the Punk, but you can hear the full version in the clip above. Note that this clip features some very NSFW language as part of Thatcher's Johnny Rotten-esque ranting at the end.

As one Youtube commenter writes, this song would've been so much better than the Beastie Boys for the young James T. Kirk's joyride in JJ Abrams' Star Trek reboot. I think I would've liked that stupid movie about 87% more if Abrams had been cool enough to think of that.

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MUSIC FROM SPACE: The Pixies - WHERE IS MY MIND?

Youtube user TheCrass1984 has created a bloop-y, bleep-y, 8-bit rendition of the Pixies classic Where is My Mind?
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First BACK TO THE FUTURE game trailer

The first Back to the Future game trailer is online, and I'm now just a scootch less enthused about the game than I was the other day. I thought the character designs looked fine in photos, but in motion they seem a little weird and listless to me. Still, hearing that old music again (both the orchestral opening theme and the cheesy Huey Lewis tune at the end) did this old Gen-X heart good.

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DINO D-DAY!

This one almost ended up as a Hi-Fi Pizza of the Apocalypse, but it was just too awesome for that. Seriously, there have been a bajillion dinosaur shooter games and a bajillion bazillion WWII FPS games... But until now, there's never been a WWII FPS dinosaur game! America may have the bomb, but the axis powers have fascist dinosaurs!

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WIZARD OF OZ deleted scene: THE JITTERBUG

There is a scene in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz where the Wicked Witch of the West announces that she's sending a "little insect" to "take the fight out of" Dorothy and the gang. The film is so crowded with colorful characters and weird happenings that you probably never noticed that the "little insect" never shows up and is never mentioned again.

The Wicked Witch's "little insect" is actually a reference to The Jitterbug, a lengthy and elaborate musical number that was cut from the film. Various reasons have been given for why the scene got the axe; by some accounts the studio was worried the song would date the film, by other accounts there was concern that the song was a little too adult and edgy for a children's picture. (The jitterbug was considered a rather scandalous dance at the time.) Whatever the reason, all that survives of the sequence is the audio and some grainy footage shot at a rehearsal. A while back I posted the clip, but it's since been taken down. Here it is again, so enjoy it while it lasts...



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Neil Diamond covers Adam Sandler's CHANUKAH SONG

Yep. That happened. In flash cartoon form.

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A.J. LoCascio's uncanny Marty McFly impression in the BACK TO THE FUTURE game

I am cautiously optimistic about the upcoming Back to the Future game. The little glimpses I've gotten so far look fun, and it's clear that the folks involved have a lot of affection for the original trilogy.

While they were able to convince Christopher Lloyd to voice Doc Brown, Michael J. Fox was unavailable for the role of Marty McFly. That could have stopped the project cold right there, but they got ridiculously lucky and discovered A.J. LoCascio, a young man who does a simply uncanny Michael J. Fox impression. Seriously, he does that squawky Marty McFly voice perfectly, as you'll see in this clip.

There are more clips about the game's creation over on /Film.

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Scooby-Doo meets Harlan Ellison. And H.P. Lovecraft.

If you took my brain when I was about 13 years old and tapped a spigot into it, something a lot like this episode of the Cartoon Network series Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated probably would've come dribbling out. Shrieking Madness features an unlikely combo of my childhood faves the Scooby Gang, perpetually cranky sci-fi author Harlan Ellison and Cthulhu mythos creator H.P. Lovecraft. (Well, they call him H.P. Hatecraft, but they don't fool me with that cunning little ruse.)

Ellison voices himself. Lovecraft is way too dead to provide his own voice, but he's played here by Jeffrey Combs, so that's almost as good.

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