People of Walmart song

It surpassed 2.5 million views on YouTube last week. Jessica Frech‘s original song and video set to images from PeopleOfWalmart.com is a prime lesson in successful self-promotion: take an Internet site that thrives on our love of laughing at people and pair it with a seriously catchy tune (seriously, don’t listen to it more than once if you don’t want to wake up singing it tomorrow) and voila: Internet meme! Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Frech is a talented musician with an ethereal voice (and a ukulele!) — but her mastery of grass-roots internet marketing is what will propel her to fame.

Bb 2.0: online collaborative composing

Inbflat.net is the home of Bb 2.0, a web-based sound experiment that harnesses the power of YouTube, namely the user’s ability to play an unlimited number of YouTube videos at the same time. In what is perhaps the most creative application of this feature, Bb 2.0 is basically an online music-making platform that allows the [...]

Gaga versus Britney

Now that Cher’s been snubbed by Oscar, Christina’s career is in a slump, and Madonna’s gone silent, it is safe to say that the world’s stereotypical gay homosexuals can be lumped into two camps: Gaga and Britney. Some queen, who obviously speaks English as a second language, is well aware of this division in our [...]

Sundance Watch List: LIFE IN A DAY

Something to seriously look forward to from the Sundance Film Festival, whether you’re headed to Park City or not, is the LIFE IN A DAY project, which promises to tell “the story of a single day on Earth.” How, exactly, does it plan to do that? OK, here’s the deal. A while back, the project’s [...]

YouTube-inspired art

Anyone that’s dealt with trying to access YouTube while on slow bandwidth is familiar with the spinning loading screen. For most of us that’s a source of frustration. For Dutch artist Helmut Smits it’s a source of artistic inspiration as seen here in his piece “YouTube (Staring at the Wall)” which is formed from different [...]

BLACK SWAN, intentionally funny

I know, I know. Yes, I have a penchant for posting hilarious YouTube videos on this blog probably far too often. But wait! Seriously, I have discovered a girl who is so freaking funny, I cannot even stand it. Please let me introduce you to Gloria Shuri Nava. With a name like that you better be fierce!

The assassination of Yogi by the coward Booboo

The 2007 ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD ranks high on my list of favorite films, which is why I’m so enthralled by the recent YouTube video, “Booboo Kills Yogi,” an alternate ending to Warner Bros.’ embarrassingly bad “Yogi Bear” release. In this version, Booboo decides to cash in on the $5,000 [...]

Radio-controlled model airplane tour of NYC

The Internet is abuzz over this f’awesome video of YouTube user “nastycop420″ (lolz) piloting a RC airplane (with a POV camera attached to it) over Manhattan and Brooklyn on a nice clear day. It’s even more remarkable considering that this wasn’t shut down by the post-9/11 NYPD. I was also struck by how the close-up, [...]

New season of Craigslist TV

A few weeks ago, Craigslist TV (on YouTube) launched their second season of mini-documentaries based on real Craigslist ads. (Watch the trailer for the series here.) If you think reading the ads is great entertainment for inducing second-hand embarrassment, try watching them. There’s “Charity’s Casting Call for a Husband” and “Hollywood Superheroes Unite” and “Michael [...]

A better way to channel our outrage: “It Gets Better”

A great article in the NYTimes this past weekend about cyberbullying — and in particular cyberbullying over sexual orientation — included this line which really made us stop and think: “the punishment must fit the crime, not the sense of outrage over it.” It’s wise and it’s true, but we’d forgotten that — and it doesn’t answer the question, what do you do with all the outrage you feel? The outraged part of us feels that Tyler Clementi’s college roommate — who secretly filmed Clementi hooking up with another guy then posted it online, leading to Clementi’s suicide — deserves to go to jail for a long, long time. Same goes for the assholes who bullied 13-year-old Seth Walsh about his sexual orientation — Walsh hanged himself from a tree in his backyard last month and died after more than a week on life support. And countless other gay teen suicides across the country — often as a direct result of peer bullying.

Montage of “I could tell you but I’d have to kill you”

Posted on YouTube is this video montage of various movies using the cliche phrase “I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.” Maybe it’s time for writers to retire this?

Iamamiwhoami returns

The unknown artist iamamiwhoami continues to release videos with little explanation surrounding them. For months now, these beautifully art-directed clips, mysterious and creepy even, have made their way onto YouTube. Bloggers began asking who the artist was. No one seems to know. The songs being released, on YouTube and iTunes, could very well spell out the [...]

Guggenheim teams up with YouTube

You probably never thought you’d live to see the day when those little white museum placards would list YouTube as a material. That day has finally arrived and it might not be such a bad thing. The Guggenheim recently announced a partnership with YouTube for their first Biennial of Creative Video, a collaboration that embraces [...]

Fun Facts from a Certified Cynic

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (left). Justice nominees should henceforth be determined on how well their poker face holds when boredom ensues. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) Aha! So finally Mercury got the hell out of retrograde — and miraculously all my phones, tv, electronica and communications issues were solved! Seriously. I was having [...]

Virtual choir

Using the YouTube community and platform, composer Eric Whitacre via a prerecorded video virtually conducted 185 separate singers from 12 different countries into this astonishingly coherent virtual choir.

Online piano

Play the piano online right within this recently posted single YouTube video. There’s been a growth of what I like to think of as dynamic YouTube videos and this piano is a great example of how people are adapting YouTube into a more interactive experience. Have fun, kids, and let me know if you want [...]

Most popular YouTube videos in 2009

On their official blog YouTube ranked the most viewed videos and most searched words on YouTube in 2009. The segment of Susan Boyle’s beautiful voice featured on Britain’s Got Talent (120+ million views) was number one this year, but the next most watched video, “David After Dentist” on YouTube was actually this year’s most “viral” amateur video with over 37 million views. If you’ve been living in a cave this year and haven’t seen it, then here it is:

Bon Qui Qui for kids

The gays love their cult classics. In film we’ve worshipped John Waters, BABY JANE, SHOWGIRLS, and GLITTER. TV: Absolutely Fabulous and The Comeback. Sometimes the television and films we embrace become mainstream hits. Sometimes, the straight world ignores them completely.

Facebook breakup: Throw’d TV’s hilarious send up

Yes, I am a sucker for stupid YouTube videos and blogs that take me away from real work. You must be too. Why else are you reading this? This video, done by Throw’d TV, had me LOLing. Or better yet, LMAOing. It is a send up of an all too familiar story these days: the Facebook [...]

Beef on the internet

The New York Times today ran an interesting story on an old topic: beef between rappers in the hip-hop community. The article focuses on Joe Budden, a new school rapper, and Raekwon, a 90s rap relic, famous for being a member of Wu-Tang Clan. Budden has built a following, and a means of attack, via the [...]

Hand shake

We are halfway through summer and many of us have dedicated countless hours in the gym in the hopes of having that perfect beach body. Now if only I’d found Shake Weight sooner! At first I thought this commercial was a joke from SNL. I kept looking for Kristen Wiig. But think again. The product [...]

Hard bodies and a hello

Hello there. I am Bradford Shellhammer and I am new around these parts. While my fellow SUNfiltered bloggers have done a bang up job finding unique culture, film and music stories across the globe I intend to shake things up differently around here. I’m here to gay it up. Bedazzle the blog. Bring a disco beat. So [...]

American Idol meets organic food

If singing isn’t your thing, and you’d rather not have Simon Cowell dress you down in front of millions of people, the Organic Institute and Organic Trade Association are holding a greener, friendlier version of American Idol. These organizations have taken their search for a consumer ambassador on organic farming and products to YouTube, and invite you to submit a thirty-second video “explaining the moment you realized organic products are worth it.”

Social TV: Watch online with your Facebook and MySpace pals

Mashable, the site devoted to coverage of the social-media industry, posted a cool report about SplashCast, a widget that adds revolutionary commenting capabilities to offerings from Hulu and other online video providers. It’s easy to add a comment to the discussion thread on, say, a YouTube page, but SplashCast, or “Social TV,” as they call it, is different.

The longest film you’ve ever seen

This is a weekly column written by Annie Howell and Lisa Robinson, two filmmakers and film professors who are wondering where modern storytelling is heading.

What’s the shortest film you’ve seen that’s been satisfying as a story?

In turn, what’s the longest screen story experience you’ve ever sustained?

I’m flashing back to my long long movie-going experiences … a five hour documentary on Cassavetes, A CONSTANT FORGE—THE LIFE AND ART OF JOHN CASSAVETES, dir. Charles Kiselyak, at SXSW in 2001. (After the movie, my husband Michael and I bonded with the five other people in the theatre, including Blaine Thurier of The New Pornographers, a Cassavetes fan and the winner of that year’s Best Narrative Feature for his film, LOW SELF-ESTEEM GIRL.)

The work of Hungarian director Béla Tarr. (Okay, that wasn’t me that endured the 7.5 hour SATAN’S TANGO, it was Michael again, and he stayed for the whole thing at Brooklyn Academy of Music — even after Gus Van Sant left.)