Here are my favorite videos, a new one each month!
April 2012
After 13 years on the air, today was the last edition of my beloved Gilles Peterson's Worldwide show on BBC 1.
March 2012
British Pie.
February 2012
2011 was a decent movie year, we had Attack the Block, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Super 8, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or Bridesmaids (below), just to name a few that I enjoyed. The
common denominator of these movies is that they were all not nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. Indeed, going through the list of awardees and nominees, I can only come to one conclusion: For me the Oscars are irrelevant. Surely, every now and then
there are nominations of movies that I care about (last 5 years we had Juno, Up, District 9, Inception), but by and large the nominees are at best orthogonal to my taste. For instance, computer
animation has become mature recently, and surely changed Hollywood quite a bit since 1995. But brilliant recent animation movies such as Wall-E or Ratatouille were not nominated for best picture.
Instead we now get the second ever Oscar for a silent film, the first one was very first Oscar in 1927. 1927 was also the year the first feature-length movie with synchronized dialogue was
released. By the way, The Artist is quite charming. Five minutes into the movie my three year old said "this movie is mega-dumb", and fell asleep.
January 2012
Gervais is on a roll.
December 2011
Literal video, with astonishingly accurate vocals.
November 2011
I never quite understood why beauty contestants have to talk in the first place. Never mind, here is a fun video. If you want to see a sad video, you should check the original instead.
October 2011
Can't resist to post one more election video. This one is coming straight from the Dadaists, it seems. Translation -- Male: "I'm going to vote for party X, they make sense". Female (I'm
smelling an Oscar here): "Me too!". Headline: "Don't offend the zebra. Vote for party Y." If you get the message, please tell me.
September 2011
Elections in Switzerland! Here's my favorite election video, from my favorite Aussie TV show. Disclaimer: This video should not transport any message whether I think one should or should not
vote for the Green party. In fact, in Switzerland we have at least two Green parties, (i) left-wing Greens, and also (ii) middle-of-the-road Greens known as Green-Liberals.
August 2011
Artsy fun for kids.
July 2011
Detroit house is my passion. Alas, no videos. Today however there is the 15th birthday of one of the best house tracks ever, so I'll post even without proper video. The track sounds pretty
fresh, despite technically being an oldie. As many house tracks, "I can't kick ..." is based on a disco
classic. If you're old enough, try guessing which; if not, just hit this.
June 2011
The iPad is a fun portable gaming platform. The video shows Achtung, my favorite iPad multi-player game (runner-up: King of
Opera). The best single-player game on the iPad is in my opinion Slay by Sean O'Connor, a turn-based strategy game with
clever level design. Although the 400+ levels look random, I suspect that they can all be won, as I eventually managed to win the complete bottom "R" row of the level matrix. (Try the light version for free.)
I'm not in the mood of posting a joyful video this month. My best wishes go to the people in Japan.
February 2011
The hilarious opening monologue from this year's Academy Awards! (Ugh, I mean that other award show, the funny one.)
January 2011
The revolution will not be televised, but is it on YouTube?
December 2010
My favorite music video 2010, speaks to the teenager in me. Yes, Arcade Fire's debut album is still unmatched. No, I can't explain the video.
November 2010
My all-time favorite Rube Goldberg machine (which is also a car commercial).
October 2010
Geek humor, even funnier than the original. (If the video does not work, try this copy instead.)
September 2010
Interview with my former student, entrepreneur Dominik Grolimund (in Swiss German).
August 2010
Microsoft invited me to try Kinect a few months before the release. Here's my brother and me making silly moves. (The video features a fancy electronic version of Olivia Newton-John's classic
disco hit "Physical", which inspired my ICALP 2010 keynote.)
July 2010
My list so far is focussing on music and videos, so it's basically incomplete without OK Go. Like it? Here's another one.
June 2010
Not sure whether this is funny.
May 2010
His Exhibits A and C prove that he is the new J Dilla. But here is a classic with video instead.
