Imagine growing 12 years in under 3 minutes. That's the trick achieved by filmmaker (and proud father) Frans Hofmeester, who filmed his daughter, Lotte, every week for 12 years and cut the short segments into this timelapse video set to music. In many of the clips she's animatedly talking to the camera, while in others Lotte is laughing or crying. You can't hear her, but you see her growing from an infant to a preteen. (It ends with “to be continued.”) According to Vimeo, it's garnered 2.5 views since it was posted last week.
Hofmeester has a son as well as a daughter. So as not to leave anyone out, he posted a similar video of his 9-year-old, Vince.
English 18th-century essayist Samuel Johnson once offered backhanded praise to women’s ability to preach the gospel, by coining a well-remembered turn of phrase: “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
Contemporary readers likely find Johnson’s sentiments about women archaic, but we can at least take from his aphorism a reminder to judge our canine friends a bit generously when they try to do human things like walking upright, or, say, playing the piano. Yes, you read that right.
The web critter-content aggregator Petsami offers, without anything by way of explanation, a 34-second clip of a small dog howling and accompanying itself on a toy piano. Dogs have been known to react viscerally to music — YouTube has countless clips of pups flipping out in response to the Law & Order theme — but we seldom see them creating any.
Quality-wise, the dog’s tune won’t make anyone forget Norah Jones, but the dog’s adorable and the song is short, so on the whole some viewers might prefer it to Philip Glass.
They say behind every great Olympic athlete there’s a mom. Or at least they will after watching a tear-jerker of a new commercial by Procter & Gamble designed to thank mothers of amateur athletes (while selling some fine P & G products).
The 2012 Olympics are still months away but already the Games have their first viral hit with this two-minute spot entitled “Best Job.” In the commercial, a montage of moms around the world are shown waking up sleepy kids, making them breakfast and bundling them off to early morning practices. A mother’s work is never done, of course, and moms are seen doing laundry, chauffeuring their little athletes around and watching as they train. But all the hard work pays off when it counts.
“Being a mom is the hardest job in the world. But it’s also the best,” states the blurb that accompanies the video posted on YouTube, where it has already received 1.2 million hits since it was posted last week.
A little girl is about to become a big sister. But she doesn’t know it yet.
In order to receive the good news, she must first spell out the words on a T-shirt given to her by her proud parents.
It’s a little slow going (remember when you first learned how to read?) but eventually she sounds out the words “I’m the big sister” and the meaning sinks in.
Her reaction starting around the 3:35 mark is the big payoff.
Toronto Batman is back on the streets of Hogtown, ready to fight evil and take on the bad guys. His latest nemesis?
It’s … beef jerky.
On a recent dark, cold night, we find Toronto Batman hungry and in need of his favourite snack. But the man with the gravelly voice and black suit seems to have trouble with the packaging.
Toronto Batman is the brainchild of Alex Brovedani and Sean Ward, who shot to Internet fame in February with the now-viral video “Batman’s Night Out”. (Beef jerky made an appearance in that video too.)
They promised to capture more of the Dark Knight’s adventures around town and they’ve made good on that vow. There are now multiple videos featuring Toronto's own superhero out and about.
One thing we learned from this weekend’s Coachella concert is that Tupac Shakur is alive. Or at least he can be. The only question is who is next?
The buzziest thing to project from the annual concerts in California is the holographic performance — currently going viral — of long dead Tupac Shakur with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg on Sunday evening, that really needs to be seen to be believed.
The holographic performance was created by a San Diego-based company called AV concepts.
“We worked with Dr. Dre on this and it was Dre's vision to bring this back to life,” Nick Smith, president of AV Concepts told MTV.com. “It was his idea from the very beginning and we worked with him and his camp to utilize the technology to make it come to life.”
Smith would not go into details as to how the performance was created.
A British company called Musion has also done similar work, last making a splash doing five simultaneous performances in five cities with Mariah Carey in November. But this recent high profile performance of a deceased person, and incredible use of holographic technology could have ramifications in a great many fields across entertainment.
Judging from the video, the holographic animation of Shakur had a 3D quality, and the best part is when the rapper throws down along with Snoop Dogg, in an obviously choreographed moment, but it looks very cool. Shakur joined in on performances of “Hail Mary" and “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted.” He greeted the crowd with a “What up, Coachella!”
Commercials have used computer generated imagery to reanimate long dead celebrities, but this live performance could mean a windfall for the estates of deceased performers, particularly other musicians. For bands that have had members who have died, this technology could be used for reunion tours.
Jimmy Fallon's spoof of the Emmy-winning Downton Abbey series debuted on his talk show last night, and the parody is a hilariously spot-on interpretation of the wildly popular British TV drama.
From the opening credits to Fallon's pseudo-British accent and an over-the-top explanation of "Upstairs/Downstairs" classism, the spoof takes satirical aim at the period drama, re-imagining it as a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the late-night talk show.
Studio 6B takes the place of the Yorkshire country house, and we see his "Lordship" Jimmy Fallon holds forth as the Earl of Downton Sixbey, barking out orders in between declarations of extreme affection for his beloved home. House band drummer Questlove plays the Cousin Matthew part, while Late Night announcer Steve Higgins stands in for two of the hired help - Carson the butler and Bates the valet - with an iron foot as a prop.
Of course, there are celebrity cameos. Brooke Shields plays the Lady Nora, and Fred Armisen is plain-jane middle daughter "Lady Hedith."
What happens when a new TV channel places a red button in a public square and waits for someone to push it? Well, 11 million people have clicked to find out.
The publicity stunt was set up by television station TNT to launch the channel in Belgium. The station placed a large red button on a pedestal in the middle of “an average Flemish square of an average Flemish town.” A sign suspended above the button invited people to “Push to add drama.”
What happened when someone gave in to temptation? We won’t give it away, but it involves — among other things — a shootout, football players, a bikini-clad biker and a bunch of stunned onlookers.
When the Hagars met Fiona, she was in rough shape. Blind, infested with fleas and shivering in an alley, the dog was near death.
Eldad and Audrey Hagar, who run an animal rescue organization, Hope For Paws, in Los Angeles, rescued Fiona that rainy day.
The change since has been nothing short of remarkable. The Hagars raised money for surgery to partially restore her sight and the cleaning and general TLC that the couple gave turned the sad creature into a happy dog with a new lease on life.
Watch her transformation for yourself - Eldad Hagar captured it all on video.
The couple hopes the 3-minute plus video, which has gone viral and landed them on television news programs, will help them to raise money to save more dogs like Fiona.
Chuck E. Cheese’s better watch out. Caine Monroy has the most popular arcade on the Internet right now.
In a heart-warming video making the viral rounds, a young boy’s imagination and ingenuity are winning fans all over the world. Monroy is a 9-year-old boy who loves arcades so much, he built his own out of cardboard boxes in his father’s used auto parts store in east Los Angeles.
The detail and elaborate nature of his games is nothing short of amazing, but there was one thing that was missing: customers.
Filmmaker Nirvan Mullick decided to change that. The result is this fabulous short film.
It’s been growing in popularity, viewers have already donated $65,000 to a scholarship fund set up for this bright young man. Just think of how many Fun Passes you could buy with that.
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