Category Archives: Video

Frozen Flamingos

Robert Krulwich was reading Ian Frazier’s new travelogue, Travels in Siberia, and got interested in the flamingos that had landed there (and then gone to live in a nearby zoo). He pursued the story, talking to more than the Siberian locals.

Marita Davison, who studies flamingos at Cornell University, says she regularly sees Bolivian flamingos up in the Andes Mountains. And at that high up — 16,000 feet — the lakes freeze around their feet. She sent us this video of flamingos stuck in ice. There are two on the right trying to get free.

“It’s really an amazing sight to see,” she told us. “They’ll just wait for it to thaw and then go on [with] their business.”

This is just a small detour from Krulwich’s exploration of the mystery.

Irresistible

Isaiah Mustafa remains ridiculously charming in this new making-of video:

Some people ask to ride me, which … depending on which saddle they have, the English or the Western…. I don’t like the Western. If they have the English, I usually agree.

RIDICULOUS.

Blah blah Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, whatever. I still don’t care about Old Spice, but I love this campaign and this actor. What a trouper!

Dafoe Dafoe Dafoe Dafoe Dafoe Dafoe Dafoe Dafoe Dafoe Dafoe Dafoe Dafoe

I couldn’t care less about Jim Beam, but this is a beautiful ad.

It stars Willem Dafoe in about a dozen roles. It is directed by Dante Ariola, whose “First Taste” (for Coke) also touches on branching out, while his “Idle Thumbs” (for Virgin Mobile) tackles a series of characters. He also made one of my favorite ads: “Snowball” for Travelers. He does a nice job with these stream-of-situations stories. Maybe because of all his videogame work!

The Best Star Trek Movie Ever Made

I am speaking, of course, of Galaxy Quest. I saw it on a whim while I was visiting my brother – neither of us had heard anything about it, and our expectations were low. It was a great experience.

E! broadcast a mockumentary about the “history” of the show around the time the movie was released, and a kind soul has uploaded it to YouTube. This is segment one of three:

I’m going to go ahead and put it out there: don’t watch this little confection expecting to see a lot of Tony Shalhoub. Alan Rickman, however, is as perfect as you expect (as are Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver).

Parts two and three are linked from the YouTube page for Part 1.