As VanRamblings does most mornings, while sipping our morning coffee and finishing off a plate of scrambled eggs (one egg and free-run egg whites), we surf the ‘Net to apprise ourselves of the day’s events, all while attempting to gain some pungent insight into the daily cultural zeitgeist.
Here’s what we’ve run across this chilly late winter Friday morning (a note: you’ll want to take all videos below full screen for a proper appreciation) …
Thom Yorke and the folks in R.E.M. have just released the video for their single “ÜBerlin” featuring actor Aaron Johnson (who starred in the breakout hit Kick-Ass, along with Chloë Grace Moretz, as well as the quite wonderful John Lennon movie Nowhere Boy, both released last year) who, dressed in a yellow T-shirt, tracksuit pants and sneakers, makes Fred Astaire-like dance moves, a wonderful life affirming feat which can only effectively be accomplished when hope springs eternal and you’re in your early 20s.
Shot and directed by Johnson’s fiancée Sam Taylor-Wood (the director of Nowhere Boy) in and around London’s Brick Lane one recent afternoon, REM’s new album, Collapse Into Now, will be released Monday, March 7th.
Also on our radar this morning, the new trailer for Water for Elephants, starring Academy Award winners Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz, along with Twilight’s Robert Pattinson, director Frances Lawrence’s screen adaptation of Sara Gruen’s best-selling 2007 romantic page-turner cum historical novel …
VanRamblings’ daily reads include: tech sites Gizmodo, Lifehacker, BGR, Engadget, and All Things Digital, among other tech sites, and includes political reads, on the local scene CityCaucus and Frances Bula’s State of Vancouver, and on the U.S. scene The Huffington Post (quickly losing favour now that Arianna Huffington, post her $315 million sale of the site to AOL, is refusing to pay bloggers), and Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast.
Of course, we continue to turn to Jeffrey Wells’ Hollywood Elsewhere for our daily hit of movie news, and surf to the home of Anne Thompson’s Thompson on Hollywood, Sharon Waxman’s The Wrap, and Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood, several times a day, at home and on our iPhone. As to TV coverage, Michael Ausiello’s TV Line has become an indispensable read.
The New York Times, The Guardian, the L.A. Times, Salon, Slate, the Globe and Mail, local papers The Province and the Vancouver Sun, radio news site PugetSoundRadio, sports site TSN, and general entertainment news site Entertainment Weekly make up most of the remainder of our daily reads.
This morning, we’ll leave you with the following video from Conan O’Brien’s Monday to Thursday late show, a commentary on the iPad 2 release …
and on a sadder note, Jimmy Fallon’s spot-on impression of Charlie Sheen …
