Rob Masters

Alasdair Beckett-King is an absolute gem. Here, he takes on the Scandinavian Crime genre and nails it. Unfortunately (or fortunately) this has proven worryingly versatile with one small shift. You can take almost any promotional still or clip for almost anything and ... well. "It was me." "It was me." But it gets worse. It gets much worse. As I will now demonstrate. "It was me." "It was me." "It was me." So thank-you Alisdair. You have now completely ruined every bit of entertainment there is. Everything on the planet is now a Scandinavian crime thriller. Everything. I hope you're happy.

 She's still got it where it counts - her cutting humour is still impeccable! (To paraphrase the Scream Queen herself, what did you think  I meant?) Via Boing Boing.

Quintessentially British humour here...    Discovered thanks to BoingBoing.

Let us turn to the more mainstream world of pop, and a bit of comedy. Dark Horse, by Katy Perry (modulo various claims by christian rap/hiphop artists) is not what I would call musically exciting. It is, however, extremely saleable, helped in no small part by this wonderfully comedic/horror video. Let's face it - if you took what our sorcerer queen does at face value it would be dark, dark horror. Imagine it re-worked by Hammer Films, for example. But the bright lights, the goofy outcomes, and the over-the-top sets and costumes manage to overcome the core of horror, and create something that is undeniably hilarious. So, without any further discussion, here's the video. >

This week let's go to Japan, and an instrumental dance track " 自主制作アニメーション『the TV show』" (2009) , directed by  SUGIMOTO Kousuke and music by MANABE Takayuki . The music is frantic synth - almost chiptune - with an accelerating beat. The video is something special. After a test pattern opening we see a videowall with (presumably) Manabe and Sugimoto at the controls. We then dive into the video stream an see each screen from the wall as videos nested inside each other... until the fourth wall fractures and one of the videos breaks into another. After that, things get complicated, but helpfully colour-coded for your convenience. Featuring tropes from almost every genre of TV, and the chaos caused by the genre boundaries melding, it is a sight to behold. A visit to Sugimoto's site has dozens more of his animations - all quite amazing! https://sugimotokosuke.com/contents/works.html