jetpack_monkey_ljarchive

Cherry and I are putting together a vidshow for vids made from older (pre-1969, pre-1973 at a stretch) sources and as we were discussing it, we realized that there was a significant cultural gap -- we were missing vids made from older Asian sources. So we went looking. And looking. And looking. And came up with a couple Youtube vids that were sort of okay, but not really what we wanted.

So I reach out to you, my fellow vid lovers. Do you know of any vids, preferably based on the work of Akira Kurosawa? If you don't know any vids, might you be inspired to make us one? A PREMIERE? 

Some great potential Kurosawa vidding sources include Seven Samurai (proto-Magnificent 7), Ikiru, Yojimbo/Sanjuro (proto-A Fistful of Dollars), The Hidden Fortress (proto-Star Wars), and Throne of Blood (Macbeth!).

We would also welcome premieres for any other pre-1969 Asian source. We're trying to make sure our playlist is properly diverse. Get in touch with me at nate AT monkeyswithjetpacks.com.

I'm traveling on a train to Vividon in August -- 43 hours there and 43 hours back. Exciting! I have some stuff planned to occupy my time. I'm going to put a few choice movies on the iPad and I've downloaded some board games to play with echan. However, I also want to do some reading!

I know my friends' list is fully of savvy book lovers and I want to get some recommendations from you folks. Novels, non-fiction, etc. If it's available for Kindle or in the iBook store, all the better.

Fiction I like: Hitchhiker's Guide (only read the Adams books -- are the later ones any good?), Discworld, Vorkosigan, Dresden Files, Game of Thrones (halfway through book 2 now), 1984, Brave New World, The Running Man, the first Hunger Games book (yes I like dystopia, what of it), Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe, Rebecca (du Maurier), Ender's Game, Flannery O'Connor.

Tried getting into Honor Harrington and the military strategy/tech stuff just went right over my head. Might give it another shot.

Non-fiction I like: Books on movies, mostly. More toward the academic/analytical end of things, but given my vidding, I want to start looking at technical stuff related to editing as well. Most of my books are horror-related for obvious reasons and I'd like to branch out from that, although I am still obsessed with genre as a concept and its eternal chicken/egg struggle.

Also, John Green's Crash Course series on Youtube is making me more interested in world history, so if there's any really great reads there, let me know. Ooh and anything on the War of the Roses. I want to compare and contrast it with Game of Thrones.

Comics: Marvel tends to have more deals in the Comics app on the iPad, so I've been reading a metric ton of their stuff lately. I'd like to switch to DC and get some digital trades from the Kindle store. Any really good DC comics or independent series/storylines lately (by lately, I mean in the last eight years)?

Does anybody know of good fanvids or fannish music videos set to either Elton John's "Your Song" or the standard "They Can't Take That Away from Me"? Edit: Or a similar jazz standard.

Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up:

Late last night while putting the finishing touches on the reception playlist (well, the content, not the actual order), I discovered that there's very little in the way of songs that lend themselves to slow dancing or even slow-to-moderate dancing (except the First Dance which is kind of restricted to echan and I). Given that wedding receptions are great for making people feel all romantic and whatnot, this seems wrong to me.

However, my search for another song is somewhat complicated by the fact that we're doing a video reception -- that is, there will be a fanvid, music video, or other visual element for every song (this also means that Blister in the Sun is cut ridiculously short, much to my chagrin). The two songs above seem the best picks. Worst case scenario, I can cull the related musical numbers from Moulin Rouge and Shall We Dance? but I'd prefer something a bit more fannish.

I have about 24 dollars worth of iTunes credit and I have no idea how to spend it.

So! Recommend me new artists and sounds!

I like Elvis Costello, David Bowie, Stuart Davis, Oingo Boingo, Talking Heads, Monty Python, songs that are very witty, Jonathan Coulton, musicals, Tom Lehrer, REM, Tears for Fears, They Might Be Giants, The Smiths, The Clash, OK Go, The Eurhythmics, Frank Zappa, Goblin, Green Day, a capella groups, Ben Folds, and Barenaked Ladies prior to Maroon.

Suggestions?

Following up on the suggestions received from my post about scary television, I received a metric ton of X-Files suggestions. Which eps are the scariest? I'll probably take the top 4-5 and watch them to research my article.

[Poll #1183726]

Also, I still need suggestions for scary Supernatural episodes. People seemed to be drawing a blank on 'em last time.

ETA: I should clarify -- Classic-Horror.com's server crashed irrevocably on Sunday. I have a database backup from September (I had more recent ones, but apparently having a backup and a redundancy means you're just going to lose two backups instead of one), but I've lost all the content since then. I can recreate some of it from files on my computer, but some of it I can't (and I can't guarantee what I can recreate will match what was on the site, as I'm a compulsive content-fiddler). We now return you to the post, already in progress.

Should you choose to accept it, is to grab the Google caches for the following Classic-Horror pages before they disappear forever. Trust me when I say I will be eternally grateful and will find a way to repay you for your time.

To make it quick and easy, these are broken up into sections of five articles each. Just comment to claim a section so there's no overlap. I'm afraid the cache might expire soon, as many of these were taken over a week ago. All you need to do is go to Google and search for

site:classic-horror.com "name of article"

The title of the article is the same as the last part of the url, except with spaces instead of underscores. Just open the cached version of the page, save the source to a file, and then send the files (in a zip or other archive) to me at nate AT monkeyswithjetpacks.com. I really just need the text. The pictures I can recreate. If Google's cache is already expired, Yahoo also has page cacheing that might be of use.

This means the world to me. Spread the word if you can.

( ALL SECTIONS COMPLETED )

Last ETA: You guys are AMAZING. In just about three hours, you've combed through over 110 links. This will be immensely helpful in getting the site back up and running. Thank you so much.

I'm trying to compile a list of all the different types of DVD special features and rather than dig through every DVD I own, I thought I'd hit up my radiantly intelligent friendslist and see what we come up with as a collective.

• Commentary tracks
• Featurettes
• Making-of documentaries (longer than featurettes)
• Deleted scenes

What else?