YouTube Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It's really hard not to love seeing Tom Waits onscreen, but his role as Renfield in the Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 version of Dracula is a highlight. The movie itself is a sentimental favorite as well, with its super-saturated colors and heaving Victorian bosoms and, of course, Gary Oldman, who transforms from Eastern European sexpot to razor-blade licking undead creep with a bouffant and back again. Also, he has this bed that half-naked lady vampires pop out of.

Renfield is in an appropriately dingy Victorian asylum, where people who handle the inmates wear cages on their heads. Just in case. In Coppola's version, Renfield previously held Jonathan Harker's position before he went mad, or was driven mad by his boss' demands. Now he snacks on bugs and worms and wears a pair of most excellent and inexplicable articulated sort of hand braces that's oh so steampunk.

Dr. Jack Seward, the unfortunate asylum shrink, toys with Renfield a bit after noting, "I shall have to invent a new classification of lunatic for you." He points out that spiders eat flies, birds eat spiders, and cats eat birds, which causes Renfield to kneel on the ground and pitifully beg for a kitten.

"Oh, yes. A kitten. I beg you. A little, sleek... a playful kitten. Something I can teach. Something I can feed. No one would refuse me a kitten!" He would also settle for a cat. Obviously, he is not given a kitten or a cat, because he would probably eat it.

Enjoy the clip after the jump. You can watch the full movie for free at Crackle.com.

Even if you prefer your vampires sparkly instead of slayed, you have to appreciate this expert mashup of scenes from Twilight and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. This video, created by Jonathan McIntosh over at Rebellious Pixel, takes the most outlandish scenes of Edward Cullen and swaps out Bella for Buffy, so when Edward gets up to his usual hijinks, he gets an earful from our favorite slayer. For instance, when our heroine awakes to find Edward watching her sleep, Buffy threatens him "Get out or I will drop you out head first," whereas when he played that trick on Bella, he was rewarded with a hot make-out session.

McIntosh writes, "It's an example of transformative storytelling serving as a visual critique of Edward's character and generally creepy behavior. Seen through Buffy's eyes some of the more patriarchal gender roles and sexist Hollywood tropes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed in hilarious ways."

Or as Buffy says, "Did anybody ever tell you the whole smelling people thing's a little gross?"

Check out the video after the jump.

Honestly, I have no idea why any fan of Twilight would film themselves in full fan-girl mode and put it out into the world to open themselves up for ridicule and contempt on a global scale, but that's is precisely what they have done. To date, hundreds of fans have posted videos of themselves giddy with the prospect of a shirtless Taylor Lautner or a glimpse of the brooding 'deer-slayer' Edward Cullen in the first trailer for New Moon. The trailer premiered during the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, and was released on the net soon after, and the dedicated have been streaming/downloading it ever since. According to MTV, there have been, "4.2 million online views in the first 24 hours, contributing to a total of 7.8 million streams in the first seven days." And those fans are showing no signs of stopping.

I don't know why, but watching these videos is fascinating; I mean, this is like a tween version of the 2 Girls 1 Cup Reactions. You have your choice of seeing girls watch it in stone faced silence (but you know their inner fan-girl is squealing) and then there are those who frankly you just kind of feel bad for them (if you want to see an exercise in humiliation take a look at some of the comments that follow these videos). Personally, I like to play a game where I try and pinpoint the exact moment that Lautner or Robert Pattinson appear on screen by the glazed look that slowly takes over, but I've got a strange sense of humor.

Check out our picks for the five greatest New Moon trailer reactions after the jump ...

"We're more than just dogs on skateboards." YouTube plans to premiere their first * movie, Reuters says (via The Hollywood Reporter), in an apparent bid to increase revenue, reach profitability, and, perhaps, appear more appealing to advertisers. (The opening statement was made by the company's Paris-based partner development manager.) Yann Arthus-Bernard's documentary Home, produced by Luc Besson, will debut simulatenously in theaters and on YouTube, evidently in the near future.

As I'm writing this article, I'm also watching Werner Herzog's Little Dieter Needs to Fly on YouTube. (I have a 19-inch monitor adjacent to my laptop, which makes it easier to watch and work simultaneously.) The quality is good, though the commercial interruptions are jarring, the same as they are with other free, online viewing sites. The ads are played at pre-determined, timed intervals, and so often appear in the middle of a scene.

YouTube gained its fame from user-submitted content, of course, but, as Elisabeth Rappe noted last November, the video site has begun partnering with studios in order to present full-length movies -- MGM was the first. You can still easily find bootleg rips in 10-minute segments, though is quality is often atrocious and, of course, there's the important issues of legality and piracy that shouldn't be easily ignored.

Where do you stand on the subject of watching movies over the Internet on your computer? Have you embraced the concept, eagerly checking new titles added to Netflix's Watch Instantly program (or iTunes or Hulu or SnagFilms or Jaman or Amazon or ...)? Or is the very idea of viewing a film on such a small screen anathema to you?

* UPDATE: Thanks to Eric Kohn for pointing out, via Twitter, that Wayne Wang's The Princess of Nebraska had its world premiere on YouTube last year. I should have remembered, since Eugene Novikov wrote about it for this very site.

Color me too busy to actually "follow" people on YouTube, but for those who have the time, the patience and the sanity, there seems to be quite the amount of fascinating content to devour. The Hollywood Reporter tells us that producers Chris Adams, Steve Kearney and RJ Cutler have teamed to create a documentary out of a real-life YouTube love story. Essentially, two teenagers -- Daniel from Australia and Shannon from America -- met through YouTube and documented their relationship before deciding to actually meet in person. However, when Daniel traveled to the states, Homeland Security snatched him up on suspicion of terrorism, and, well, they both lived happily ever after.

Actually, I don't know what happened after that (did she think her internet boyfriend was a terrorist, and/or did he show Homeland Security his YouTube videos on his iPhone?), but we'll find out soon enough -- the producers plan to piece together a doc out of YouTube footage and other footage, and will deliver it either in movie theaters or through some other form, like, um, YouTube. Are any of you familiar with this story? Do you think it would make a good doc? Are there videos of these two still available to watch online? And are you a terrorist currently trying to romance some Yank on YouTube?

As any hardcore Little Shop of Horrors fan can tell you -- and there are tons of us -- the 1986 cinematic version once had a much darker ending ... one that was much more in line with the dual source material of this musical and this Corman flick. But since this was 1986 and Frank Oz's movie had a lot of funny people in it ... a few test audiences deemed the finale too dark, and so we got a so-so ending tacked on to an otherwise excellent musical comedy.

When Warner Bros. first released Little Shop of Horrors on DVD, the original ending was included as part of the special features -- but that release was recalled right quick, which means that most of us actually own this particular DVD. But now, through the magic of YouTube + Cinematical, we can finally sit down and pick through the original ending of Little Shop. Obviously it's not "final print" material in any way, but you can definitely get enough to make you wish, oh I dunno, that someone would toss some money at the flick and let Frank Oz re-create a director's cut.

So if you own the "original" WB DVD, well goody for you. The rest of us can watch the fascinating footage right after the jump...

Few leading male actors have followed the roundabout career trajectory of Josh Hartnett. Though indisputably tall, dark and handsome, Hartnett still manages to avoid the pratfalls of typecasting by landing roles in strange projects with questionable appeal. While this choice comes at the expense of a quality resume, his performances can lend barely competent films at least one redeeming ingredient: I could give or take Wicker Park, Resurrecting the Champ, and even the good intentions of The Black Dahlia, but each benefits from Hartnett's expressive glare, furrowed brow and whispered delivery. He's an instant generator of gravitas.

Although August, director Austin Chick's second feature after the relationship drama XX/XY, doesn't qualify as Hartnett's best movie, it's certainly one of his meatiest roles – right up there with his work in the unfairly maligned Lucky Number Slevin. As the crudely pompous CEO of the mysterious start-up company Landshark in New York City during the summer before 9/11, Hartnett offers a maddened, garrulous anti-hero replete with dark humor and sustained by a surge of baseless confidence. The movie follows the audacious entrepreneur, Tom, as his fifteen minutes begin to run out – and it concludes with him facing off against a freakishly powerful David Bowie as the icy corporate foil. Despite the age gap, both men exude an eerie amount of restraint – which is not the case for the film. August adds up to less than it aspires to be, but it's populated with enough curiosities to keep you watching.

Today YouTube launched a new section of its site titled The YouTube Screening Room, which it calls a "platform for films from around the world to find the audiences they deserve." Here, they will showcase four short films every two weeks and will even offer an occasional feature. Some of the films have been previously screened at film festivals and some have been nominated for or have won an Academy Award. But others will be premiering on the site. Apparently, the filmmakers will be paid a percentage of YouTube's ad revenue based on views and each film will also feature a "Buy Now" button so that you can purchase that film or other films.

Today's debuts include Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?, a 2005 short written by Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know), directed by Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl) and starring John C. Reilly, Mike White and July. I've embedded it above for your viewing pleasure. The other three are The Danish Poet, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2007, Love and War, which is a stop motion opera from Sweden, and Our Time is Up, which was nominated for Best Live Action Short in 2006 and which stars Kevin Pollak.

There's nothing quite like watching two people break up. When it's not us, and when it's not someone we care deeply about, then watching two people break up is almost as exciting and adventurous as jumping out of a plane strapped to a hungry lion. Later on tonight, we're going to go over some of our favorite on-screen breakups in honor of this week's new release, Forgetting Sarah Marshall -- but what about those humiliating off-screen breakups? I'm not talking about a celebrity, their spouse and the nanny; I'm talking about real life people.

Like the woman who decided to air her and her soon-to-be ex-husband's dirty laundry all over YouTube in an attempt to ... I have no idea. For those who've seen this gal's video, the entire thing just screams "Adapt me!" At one point she actually calls her husband's office, gets the secretary on speaker phone and tells her, first, that her and her husband don't have sex, and then says to interrupt the guy and ask what she should do about his collection of porn and condoms. Seriously, one of the funniest scenes I've watched all year -- and it's real! On YouTube!

Who knows what this gal was thinking when she made this, but I bet screenwriters everywhere are studying that video today; searching for the next great on-screen breakup idea. After all, when it comes to movie breakups, we've been there, seen that. It's tough to be original these days. So thanks Tricia Walsh-Smith -- we look forward to seeing this video parodied in the next rom-com.

Oh, and if you missed it, catch the video after the jump.