Start with an affluent, handsome white man, add in a complicated female love interest and a special-needs brother, find an addictive catchphrase destined to be repeated on Facebook, and you’ve got what it takes to make an Academy Award-winning film.

Mandatory plot points, thematic imagery, character conflicts, and musical cues are detailed in “Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer“  — a Cracked.com video produced by the comedy duo Britanick. Watch it, and you’ll recognize great moments from many fabulous films, though probably not in the way you’re expecting…

Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher are two NYU students who decided decided that they didn’t want to use the knowledge and experience they garnered in college for anything but creating short stupid videos that would make people laugh.  The duo from Atlanta majored in film and drama, and have been working together since collaborating on a freshman year film project in 2004.

They’ve produced nearly two-dozen short films. Most recently, their short film ‘Eagles Are Turning People Into Horses’ was screened at this month’s 2010 South By Southwest Film Festival. “Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer” is their latest, and most successful, endeavor. Since it was originally posted on YouTube on March 7, 2010, the film has garnered more than 1.288 million pageviews.

Want to see more videos by these funny guys? Check out their entire collection at http://www.britanick.com/videos.php Read more about the video here at Time.com

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Here’s another way you can be a winner:
Recycle your used printer cartridges & cell phones too!
Your inkjets, toners, and cell phones are worth more than you think.
Why not recycle them at eCycleGroup.com?

So, how much did you love those Super Bowl ads? For some of us the advertising is more entertaining than the game. Well, according to this website,  Drive-In Music Company is in a tizzy, about one Super Bowl ad in particular, and is hurling lawsuits at Kia Motor Company, CBS, the NFL, and anyone else they can reach. Apparently, Drive-In feels the backing track used in Kia’s Super Bowl commercial for the 2010 Kia Sorento, is a rip-off of a tune by 60s funk band Dyke and the Blazers. Quite honestly, I think the commercial sounds more like James Brown on a good day.

Well, Drive-In, get over it: as this video by Axis of Awesome demonstrates, pretty much all popular songs are created using the same four chords. Apologies in advance: they do drop a couple f-bombs in the intro, but once you get past that, the music mix will keep you grinning all weekend long.

Creative commons guitar photo by Taliesin at morguefile.com

“Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle” are the three most popular chords in our eco-friendly theme song

If you already recycle empty cartridges and used cell phones, you’re among a growing number of people who understand the benefits to the environment. What you may not realize is that your inkjets, toners, and cell phones are worth more than you think. They can be reused again and, that way, they definitely reduce waste. Why not recycle them at eCycleGroup.com?

Pi — the ratio of circumference to the diameter of a circle — has captivated imaginations for thousands of years. Pi is generally rounded to 3.14 though it was calculated out to 2.7 trillion places in December by French computer scientist Fabrice Bellard.

Mathematicians know that pi is not algebraic, and it cannot be represented as one number divided by another. Theoretically, its digits will continue on randomly and indefinitely without ending in repetition.  It’s so random, that there are no occurrences of the sequence ‘123456′ in the first million digits of pi.

Well, the mysterious number has its own holiday today: March 14 (3/14, get the pun?) the same date as Albert Einstein’s birthday. It was only last March that the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution supporting Pi Day and encouraging schools to teach students about the magical number.

An article at CNN.com pays homage to Marc Umile, a math geek who holds 10th place in the world for pi memorization; in 2007, he typed out 15,314 digits from memory. (The world record for memorizaton was set by Chao Ly in 2005: he memorized 67,890 digits.) According to the article “any string of numbers you can imagine is somewhere in pi — for instance, look for your birthday. Coincidentally, ‘360,’ the number of degrees in a circle, occurs at digits 358 to 360.”

Dozens of memorization enthusiasts (like Umile, here at 1,000 digits)  have posted videos of themselves reciting or typing out digits on YouTube; there are also plenty of poems and songs online dedicated to pi. One of my favorites is the video below of Folk Singer Lucy Kaplansky singing her own ode to Pi. And don’t miss this parody of the hit song “American Pie“   written by CNN SciTech blogger, Elizabeth Landau.

I’m not so good with numbers, myself. Remembering birthdays and phone numbers has always been a challenge, so for me, pi is best expressed as simply 3.14. I’ll have to enjoy its enormous majesty through the others who are saluting it on this day!

You don’t have to memorize and recite enormous strings of random numbers to show you can be eco-minded!
You can help the environment by recycling your used printer cartridges and cell phones. Your inkjets, toners, and cell phones are worth more than you think!
Why not recycle them at eCycleGroup.com?

When watching fashion models stroll down the runway, besides asking “What on Earth is she wearing?” many a viewer wonders how they are able to walk in “those heels.” Depending on the designer, shoe styles may range from strappy and shiny to anteater-type ankle booties or skyhigh ankle-threatening platforms.

As a matter of fact, it can be quite difficult to sashay effortlessly down a glossy runway and stay footed like a mountain goat.

This cringe-worthy video from CNN.com and Youtube.com demonstrates what can happen when disaster strikes those high-fashion heels. You’ll only want to wear flats after watching this one!

This man’s home built of Budweiser cans is the envy of his friends and neighbors. It’s eco-friendly and great-looking — until his visitors discover the cans are not empty!

You don’t have to build a house out of cans to show you can be eco-minded!
You can help the environment by recycling your used printer cartridges and cell phones. Your inkjets, toners, and cell phones are worth more than you think!
Why not recycle them at eCycleGroup.com?

Each week, Jonathan Ross presents music and celebrity chat on his BBC television show “Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.” In this entertaining video clip,  quirky Oscar-winning Hollywood anti-hero Christopher Walken reads a few lines from Lady Gaga’s hit song “Pokerface.”

I suppose we should be thankful he didn’t request “more cowbell!”

Click here to see Lady Gaga perform Pokerface. » Read more

It doesn’t matter whether you’re with the Chin or Coco, this entire situation has become an embarrassing mess for NBC, and EV-erybody has been talking about it.

Here it is in a nutshell:
Several, many, some, years ago, NBC made plans for Jay Leno to retire from his job as host of “The Tonight Show” and lined up Conan O’Brien to take his place. Conan took Lenos place in June 2009, and soon after NBC gave Leno a different show at an earlier time, put Conan (who was lovingly nicknamed “Coco” by some) into Leno’s old spot, and gave Conan’s old spot to Jimmy Fallon.

Just this week, NBC decided this arrangement isn’t working for them, so they’ve decided to muck with the lineup a little more. They want to give Leno a half-hour spot at 11:30, bump Conan back to 12:05, and move Jimmy Fallon later behind them.

According to Mashable,  Conan put The Tonight Show up for sale at Craigslist  though the listing titled “4 SALE: BARELY-USED LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW,” has been removed (thank goodness for screen captures, or this wouldn’t have been quite so funny). Over at Twitter, #teamconan is topping trending topics, and even the little Reddit Alien was sporting Conan’s hairstyle for a few days this week.

Jimmy Kimmel attempted to explain the situation by cutting a pie into pieces,  Rosie O’Donnell said she thinks Jay Leno “should walk away”  and  David Letterman has offered up his own suggestion as well–watch the video below to hear his take on it.

What do you think about all of this? Personally, I’m with Coco.  Please share your opinions with us at twitter.com!

I remember the first time I saw a musician do live music looping on stage: It was this amazing guitarist Newton Faulkner at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles last summer, and at first I didn’t know what he was doing. He was moving around on the stage, making a sound on one mic, then another sound with another instrument on another mic; a few moments later, I could hear the sounds building as each of his musical moments looped around and built upon the other create an amazing soundtrack that he created and then sang and played along with. It was fabulous!

While looping is commonly performed in the studio, It’s an amazing thing to watch as a musician employs this talent live. In this YouTube video, violinist Mark Russell rocks out, building a tune live, one musical loop at a time. Mark is also a composer and teacher who began studying classical violin at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia. Find out more about Mark Russell at www.myspace.com/markrussellviolinadventurer.

Have a great week!

The soldiers of the 101st Airborne, 159th Aviation Brigade found a newborn puppy on an Afghanistan battlefield — so they rescued the puppy, and made her a part of their brigade.

“It obviously had been abandoned. There was no mother around… It was very, very young, so if they would have left it there, it would have never made it,” said Teri Lemmons, mother of Army Cpl. Michael Lemmons.

Unfortunately, when the time came for the soldiers to return home, military law prevented the soldiers from bringing their beloved pet back with them on military planes. The cost of shipping the dog was more than $2500. Faced with the possibility of leaving her behind, the soldiers got creative.

The touching story was broadcast on the ABC News with Charles Gibson last week. Watch the video below to see how this shaggy dog story ends.

To paraphrase some familiar song lyrics, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas everywhere you go! With that in mind, we wanted to share this awesome light display.

Looks like somebody must have had too much time on their hands and access to some pretty high-tech equipment to pull this one off! And I don’t even want to think about the cost of the electricity!

The Best Christmas Lights Show Around – The most popular videos are a click away