Inspired by the seminal 1986 documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot, we sent our nymag.com camera crew out to Queens last week to capture the crowds at Billy Joel's final shows at Shea Stadium. Find out which Billy Joel songs his fans love to sing, what the new age of Joel fans look like, and why Billy Joel is "the white man's Jesus," in our exclusive video.
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LinkNew Girl Talk Album Spawns Crazily Ambitious YouTube Mash-Up Project
In what's surely one of the most awesome, flagrant, and work-intensive copyright violations we've ever seen, an enterprising YouTube user has set about creating videos for every track on Girl Talk's new album, Feed the Animals, by editing together clips of performance footage from all of their component mashed-up songs (he's made it through three fourteenths of the album's track list so far). Above, in BunnyGreenHouse's amazingly constructed video for "Still Here," Youngbloodz, Procul Harum, and Lil' Jon vie for attention before Blackstreet and the Penny Hardaway puppet reinterpret "No Diggity" over Kanye's "Flashing Lights" and Radiohead's "15 Step." What have you ever done with your life?
BunnyGreenHouse's Channel [YouTube via Fimoculous]
This Is Why ‘American Idol’ Should Never Have a David Bowie Night
Often — particularly while suffering through nights devoted to the oeuvres of Andrew Lloyd Webber or Mariah Carey — we've wondered how it was possible that American Idol has never tackled the music of David Bowie. Certainly his legend dwarfs that of most of the terrible celebrity mentors they had on this season, and the scope and quality of his discography means that even the nichiest contestant could find something decent to sing. Wouldn't it have been great to hear David Archuleta take a crack at "Starman"? And we're pretty sure that not even the an off-key post-grunge makeover from David Cook could ruin any of the songs on Hunky Dory. But, last night, on Canadian Idol, our neighbors to the north proved that this is actually a terrible idea. Check out the above video, in which a vest-wearing idiot — who could've chosen any song on Ziggy Stardust or Aladdin Sane! — performs "Dancing in the Street." Also, some girl sang "Cat People."
Canada's "Idol" Hopefuls Try To Emulate The Thin White Duke [Idolator]
Disney’s Synchronized-Swimming Comedy Will Be Hard-pressed to Match This
Look, we're sure that Synchronicity, the men's synchronized-swimming comedy that Scott Rudin apparently jump-started at Disney, will be exactly as funny as Balls of Fire and Blades of Glory and Dodgeball and every other buffoons-playing-unlikely-sports project that's been out recently. But it won't be half as funny as this SNL skit, arguably the progenitor of the buffoons-playing-unlikely-sports genre, starring Martin Short, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest, which we just spent half an hour tracking down online and sure hope NBC doesn't remove.
Is ‘Tropic Thunder’ Mockumentary ‘Rain of Madness’ Real?
Okay, fans of Hollywood meta-marketing, get ready. First there was the movie: Tropic Thunder, a big-budget action comedy starring Ben Stiller and Black Robert Downey Jr. Then there was the movie-within-a-movie, the mock war drama whose filming is the subject of actual comedy Tropic Thunder. Now there's a documentary about the movie-within-a-movie, Rain of Madness, which of course is actually a mockumentary. The crack Tropic Thunder marketing team just released this trailer for Rain of Madness, which is very funny and uncannily reminiscent of Hearts of Darkness, Eleanor Coppola's legendary portrait of the catastrophic filming of Apocalypse Now. But is it a real mockumentary, which would potentially be included on the Tropic Thunder DVD? Or is it a mock mockumentary about a movie-within-a-movie? We're sure this movie is gonna be hilarious and all, but right now we need an Advil.
Rain of Madness ["Official" site, but what does that even mean ARRRGH]
Holy Crap: 50 Cent’s New Video Game Looks Awesome
Admittedly, we've been a little hard on 50 Cent in the past; for all his talk, his most recent album turned out sort of crappy, plus his acting is terrible. But after watching the above video preview of his new video game, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, we're actually excited for a Curtis Jackson entertainment product for seemingly the first time in ages. In the game (we are not making this up) 50 Cent performs a concert somewhere in the war-torn Middle East, but, afterward, the show's promoter refuses to pay him in cash and instead gives him a diamond-encrusted skull. On the way to the airport, 50 gets robbed by mysterious attackers, and it's up to him and his weed carriers to reclaim the skull using only rocket launchers, AK-47s, and an endless fleet of tanks and helicopters. It's also a love story, apparently. Why does this guy even bother recording albums anyway?
New 50 Cent Trailer: Still Amazing [Kotaku]
Video: Artist Joshua Allen Harris Turns Garbage Bags Into World's Greatest Balloon Animals
Call us boring and simple-minded, but before we saw the work of street artist Joshua Allen Harris we never once considered the artistic possibilities of subway exhaust. Using only tape and garbage bags, Harris creates giant inflatable animals that become animated when fastened to a sidewalk grate. Steven Psyllos caught up with Harris recently to discuss his older works (including a bear and a giraffe) and unveil a new beast that looks not unlike the Cloverfield monster.
So Wait, What Is Peter Greenaway’s ‘Last Supper’ Thing?
The Times today features British filmmaker Peter Greenaway and his multimedia presentation at Da Vinci's Last Supper in Milan. The presentation seems fascinating, except that we can't exactly tell what it is. We know that Greenaway is somehow projecting things onto Da Vinci's masterpiece, but what exactly? What does it look like? Is it cheesy or cool? Sentences like "Divine and natural light blurred as Marco Robino’s rhythmic music culminated in a furious crescendo" don't really help. We looked to YouTube for evidence of Greenaway's last similar production, based on Rembrandt's Night Watch in Amsterdam, but all we got were cheesy-looking trailers for Nightwatching, the currently-in-festivals feature Greenaway made out of the project, starring a startled-looking (and buck-naked) Martin Freeman as Rembrandt. Luckily, the Guardian has high-quality video accompanying their story about Greenaway's Last Supper presentation, which shows just how cool the project was.
A Filmmaker Adds a Cinematic Scope to a Storied Painting [NYT]
Greenaway's hi-tech gadgetry highlights da Vinci for the laptop generation [Guardian]
Kanye West Mounts Viral Campaign to Repopularize Drinking
Blogging phenom Kanye West took a short break recently from alerting the world to the existence of exciting new bathroom fixtures to film this short infomercial-style Web ad for Absolut. In it, it's implied (in a somewhat roundabout, soft-sell-y way) that regular Joes can transform themselves into Kanye-like gods simply by imbibing vodka. Truthfully, we're probably more excited to see Eddie Izzard's upcoming Absolut commercial (part of the same campaign, apparently), but if Kanye is indeed telling the truth, and drinking alcohol in the morning is all it would take to make our blog look more like his, then we'll do it.
You Guys, We Should Drink More Vodka: Part 2 [Videogum]
‘Umbrella’ Watch 2008: Can Jay-Z’s Endorsement Help Make Estelle’s ‘American Boy’ the Song of the Summer?
In the middle of a pretty spectacular headlining set at England's Glastonbury Festival on Saturday night, Jay-Z dropped this short remix of Estelle's "American Boy" on an excited crowd of more than 100,000 dirty, unshowered (but seemingly very receptive) British people. If you've been paying any attention to our unending search for 2008's song of the summer, you'll probably know that we've not yet found a track we like better than Estelle's infectious, Kanye-assisted single, currently No. 37 on Billboard's Hot 100. Will Jay's cover be the thing that finally puts "American Boy" over the top? We sure hope so! The remix is only about a minute long, but surely he can write a few more verses, record a studio version, and get this thing back on the radio, right?