Video Round-Up: Reductionist Edition

Video Round-Up is a weekly post collecting an assortment of videos from around the web. Whether they be music videos, creative viral marketing, just plain cool, or just plain ridiculous, they will all be found on Video Round-Up.

Rémi Gaillard, French parodist made popular in the States through viral videos, shows off his talent for comedy in this Pac-Man "re-imagining." This is the best video of his I've seen yet. His and his cohorts' unabashed extroversion makes the most out of the hilarious and very public re-enactment. The low-budget-ness of it (and the accidents) only makes it funnier.



If you wish to write off this song as unsavory, first consider that Jonathan Mann (pictured) wrote that song in one day. Or, at least, he has kept up the pace of one song per day for over a year now. Featured on 1UP and G4TV, Mann (aka GameJew) decided to write and record a song a day to (if I understand correctly) figure out his place in the universe. This is just one of many (390+) daily songs. And he doesn't just write in the board-game-pirate-sounding genre, either.



What I like best about this video from the 90s in which Joan Rivers interviews Gwar isn't the ridiculousness of this statement; it's more that it makes a historian's passion for analyzing the past that much clearer to me. Watching this at the time might have seemed strange enough, but watching it now sums up so much of 90s America to me. The bland, formulaic talk show (host, set, etc.), the clothing, the absurd extremes of "heavy metal" culture. Heck, even the camera quality is a window into the past. But just as interesting is the conversation. It's really entertaining.



Does stop-motion animation ever get old? What's great about it is that the low frame rate is the point, allowing pretty much anyone with a camera and a unique idea to make a video worth watching. While this is no Fantastic Mr. Fox, it's excellently simple. And way to keep that amazing SMB3 soundtrack!



We end this week's Round-Up with more satire -- this time quite overt. This news segment about news segments pins down the formula perfectly, with charming results. Or is it just cynical? Maybe a little of both. This video only makes my bias toward BBC programming stronger. Incredibly funny, this one.