Here's the new music video for Tenacious D's comeback album Rize of the Fenix. Or rather, the comedy video that features Val Kilmer leaping in front of a bullet, Dave Grohl and Josh Groban coaching a training montage, and a hug lasting for seventeen days, plus a teeny-tiny bit of music. No complaints here.
Here's Aubrey Plaza in a music video for "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings," the new single from former Fleet Foxes drummer J. Tillman. She plays, in her words, "a crazy person who destroys the funeral" that she's attending. She also eats flowers and smokes apples and stands in billowing red smoke like a supernatural villainess. Just another crazy night at the Snake Pit for April Ludgate.
Here's the new video for "Senator," the latest single from Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks' Mirror Traffic. Directed by The Daily Show's Scott Jacobson, it stars Jack Black as a cattle-prod-toting senator running for reelection, Gary Cole as his cowboy-hat-sporting second in command, and Derrick's DC Pierson as a young campaign volunteer just looking to have a good time. Shit gets a little dark for our dear senator, but doesn't it always?
Shit's getting dreamy, ya'll. Community's Danny Pudi stars in Jones Street Station's "The Understanding," in which he inadvertently manages to attract a lady with the world's tinniest camera. Which seems like a real Abed move on his part, right?
There was a prophesy made long, a legend about the coming of an Arrested Development movie that would redeem us all. Every so often, a prophet by the name of Jason Bateman must emerge from his shabby chic hermit's cove to breath new life into his people's faith. "Nothing would make me happier," Bateman said last night on Conan. "Unfortunately, I have no update of any sort of substance. As soon as we make the bosses' deal, the genius Mitch Hurwitz, when he gets what he's asking for, we will work." The film will arrive when the time is right. I mean, was it two years too late [...]
Why does Will Ferrell sing songs in Spanish? Yo no se! Just kidding, I do know, it's to promote his Spanish comedy Casa de Mi Padre. Along with this video comes the full soundtrack list for the movie, which includes tracks entitled Fuzzorama, Chubby Duckling, and Luv Butts, along with more than one songs by a group called Mayan Ghost Choir. There are music-related Academy Awards in this film's future, for sure.
Comedy videos might be considered the scrappy, comes-to-school-with-wet-hair jealous younger bully to music videos' cool older kid. But sometimes a music video earns even comedy's begrudging respect. This one, directed by Tom Scharpling and featuring Chris Gethard, Jake Fogelnest, Gabe Delahaye and Leah Giblin, is pretty funny for a music video. Now give me your lunch money and don't let me catch you trying to sit on the swings at first recess again.
Take a ride down memory lane in Weird Al's brightly-painted, frantically bouncing jalopy. The video for "Polka Face," his latest polka medley of pop hits from the last few years, features robot pole-dancer Britney Spears and Lady Antebellum drowning some bowling alley mice in her tears. So, pretty normal for Weird Al.
Tom Scharpling's latest directorial effort is a music video for The Ettes' "Excuse." The premise: Patton Oswalt is director "Tom Scharpling," who was given a gigantic budget for special effects but managed to blow it all on various devious things. So the whole video is just the green screen footage they shot, with occasional concept art tossed in so you know what you should be imagining. I hear there will be a similar version of Avatar on the upcoming Ultimate Edition Blu-ray, so they're in good company.
There’s a scene in Dave Chappelle’s Block Party where the comedian summarizes comedy and music’s long-standing marriage by positing, “Every comic wants to be a musician. Every musician thinks they're funny. It's a very strange relationship that we have.” It’s a fitting appraisal, especially when considering the source, whose intertwining of the two is unrivaled by his contemporaries.
The following list, which features genres ranging from indie rock to commercial hip hop to dancehall, supports Chappelle’s theorem that musicians think they’re funny, and, in the process, seek to prove that occasionally they are.
Tyrus Smackey and the Scoot-Tootin' Bunch 're hotter'n a pair of wet mackerels in an Alabama noon, and this here's their latest single, "Arcade Daze." (Odds are they may've had but a lick of help from Scott Gairdner and Funny or Die.) Corral the youngin's, cook up a can o' beans, stroke yer mutton-chops and enjoy, hoss.
What? Wait, what? Leslie David Baker – Stanley on The Office – stars in this music video with N.U.M. for his new pop song "2 Be Simple." Also, he's credited as "Black Hugh Hefner." So this is what Stanley does every night after work. I mean, we knew he had a mistress, but I don't think anyone was expecting this level of studliness. Crimson satin robe studliness.
Well, here's a pretty awesome combo of talents: The Best Show's Tom Scharpling wrote and directed this music video for Wild Flag's first single off their debut album, "Romance." Wild Flag is comprised of Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss, Helium's Mary Timony, and Minders' Rebecca Cole. If you are not familiar with Sleater-Kinney (although you really should be, as they are awesome), you probably recognize lead singer Carrie Brownstein from her other gig, which is rocking Portlandia with Fred Armisen. It's all coming together.
Just like twins share a kind of psychic connection (according to Sister, Sister), so to did Parks And Rec co-creator Michael Shur and The Decemberists' front man Colin Meloy experience a mind meld over the concept for the band's new "Calamity Song" video. Independently both men imagined a cast of tweenlers reenacting a game of Eschaton, the tennis-based reenactment of global nuclear warfare featured in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
"Thankfully, after having a good many people balk at the idea, I found a kindred spirit in Michael Schur, a man with an even greater enthusiasm for Wallace's work than my own," explains Meloy. Says Shur, "The band's [...]
