The finale of the last stop of the @harmontown tour at The Egyptian Theater in LA. With Bobcat Goldthwait.

The pilot for LEARNING TOWN, a great new comedy musical web series from @joshacagan & @paulandstorm.  Josh Cagan is, in full disclosure, a friend, but also one of the funniest human beings I know.  He’s one of the minds behind the upcoming JON DAVIS GETS A SEX ROBOT (which will blow your effing mind), so he’s my frontrunner for this year’s king of YouTube comedy.

Evil Elevator Pranks Part 2

Black Friday at a 99 cent store.

c/o Improv Everywhere

HALO web movie by Neill Blomkamp.

Abhay Khosla (aka TwistStreet) wrote in response to by BSG post: “There was a Halo webseries— I watched some of it because I thought Fincher had something to do with it (he didn’t). It’s VERY bsg influenced, but with Halo-people. Wasn’t my bag but they’d spent some money on it.”

I THINK this is what you’re talking about, a tie-in to the underrated HALO: ODST (about the ordinary troops, not the super-powered Master Chief dudes). It’s not directed Fincher, but District 9’s Neill Blomkamp.  Who I think was supposed to direct a HALO movie produced by Peter Jackson.  I remember being blown away by this at the time, and wishing that they’d actually gone ahead with a feature.  I’d rather Blomkamp direct the next Star Wars film, or better yet, another original film.

AMAZING Star Wars fan anime (h/t @aaron_sparrow).  Yes, I’ve had this posted before but it keeps getting taken down by the user.  Enjoy this one, via screencrush.com while it lasts.

IT HAS BEGUN: BANANAPOCALYPSE

A video written by my friend Jonathan Davis along with my other friends at the Job Factory (Matt Allen, Josh A. Cagan, Rob McKittrick and Caleb Wilson) and directed by Justin Lin.  It’s for the YOMYOMF (You Offend Me, You Offend My Family ) “Asian Pop Culture” YouTube channel, which will soon host Jon’s show “Jonathan Davis Gets a Sex Robot”.

APPLESEEDS

I’ve mentioned before that, in addition to writing, I also teach writing for The Writers Boot Camp.  I read an insane number of scripts a year, but two have stood out as particularly brilliant.  One involved an action-thriller about a one-armed CIA agent on the run, the other a true story about filmmaker kidnapped by Kim Jong Il and forced to make monster films for him.  Both were riveting, intense and darkly funny.  And both were written by one of my favorite former students, Ashley Perryman Quach.

(Ashley is also, as it turns out, a supremely talented cartoonist.  Check out her webcomic “Sassquach”.)

Along with director Robyn Dettman, Ashley is making a short film called “Appleseeds”, about an abducted child bride on the day of her planned escape.  If it’s anything like everything I’ve read from her, you’re going to be unable to tear your eyes from the screen.

Ashley’s funding the movie through indiegogo, a Kickstarter-like site, and as I right this is about 1/5 towards her goal.  She’s offering some great perks, including downloads of the film, hand-drawn digital postcards and even an illustrated guide to making salted caramel madeleines.

There are also plans to screen the film to help raise money for womens shelters.

So, if you want to contribute to making great art, do a little good for the world, and get some cool stuff out of it, please contribute here.

“Sweatbox” - a documentary by Sting’s wife Trudie Styler.  Despite the title, it’s not about Tantric sex, but rather about the failed production of Dinsey’s “Kingdom of The Sun” and how it became “The Emperor’s New Groove”.  This will probably get taken off YouTube soon, so enjoy it while it last.s

from cartoonbrew:

Disney has kept The Sweatbox locked out of sight for the past decade, but the 2002 documentary was posted online yesterday by an eighteen-year-old cartoonist in the UK. First, a little background on the film from Wade Sampson:

In 1997, musical performer and composer Sting was asked by the Walt Disney Company to write the music for a new animated feature called Kingdom of the Sun. It was to be directed by Roger Allers who was basking in the success of his work on The Lion King. Sting agreed, on the condition that his wife, filmmaker Trudie Styler, could document the process of the production with their own production company, Xingu Films…Sting’s wife was given unlimited access when it came to Production No. 1331 (aka “Kingdom”). She and her camera sat in on story meetings for the movie, rolled while actors auditioned as well as taping Sting while he recorded the score. No one expected two years into the production, it would shift direction drastically.

The Sweatbox is at turns infuriating, hilarious and enlightening. You’ll cringe in sympathy with the Disney artists as you see the gross bureaucratic incompetence they had to endure while working at the studio in the 1990s. The film not only captures the tortured morphing of the Kingdom of the Sun into The Emperor’s New Groove, it also serves as an invaluable historical document about Disney’s animation operations in the late-1990s. If any questions remain about why Disney fizzled out creatively and surrendered its feature animation crown to Pixar and DreamWorks, this film will answer them.

I cannot.  Wait.  For this. #sixseasonsandamovie

areasofmyexpertise:

As you have likely already seen on the internet, here is the trailer for the return of COMMUNITY on 3/15/12. 

If you ever wanted to see me sit in a chair and look official, or see John Goodman do his famous Rip Torn, or just see mind-implodingly good comedy, you may watch it again and again. 

That is all. 

(via neil-gaiman)