Tag Archives: online

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Sunday Diaries, Means I Watched YouTube Videos and Loved It (As Usual)

Sunday is the day of rest! Actually, it’s the day of YouTube. Especially during winter. The temperature dropped only a few degrees below zero and my hibernation instincts kicked in to full gear.

Thanks to some links sent to me, this day of YouTube went incredibly well, and as I can’t resist sharing, here goes with some short reviews.

Ever felt like this? Sure! While it’s not always advisable to rip up your notes and pull this approach during actual exam study time, keeping the seriousness of a situation within reasonable bounds isn’t a bad idea and this video helps along with the ride. It’s also just really funny and further confirmation of how Disney’s Frozen keeps blowing people’s minds. Oh, and there’s humorous and sarcastic rewriting of lyrics, which I do on a daily basis, yay, there are others out there!

Some more Frozen inspiration to laugh at and maybe laugh at yourself in the process, if you have memories from the past that might pop up after this video. For the record, knowing all the digits of pi is impressive. My favorite line among the laugh-out-loud rewritten lyrics: “Here’s a lock of my own hair/ Honestly, I think I’m made for you…”

Watching videos inspired by the release of the full-length movie trailer for Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast (God, I cannot wait to see it) led me to this adorable gem. This was the trigger for the pure tears I may have needed to shed today. No words, just feels, all of them.

Has this day of YouTube been somewhat Disney-centric? Nah, come on.

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Monday Diary: Rise Up Lights and Beauty and the Beast Trailer

Seriously, just try this, and see if you can ever stop thinking about this phrase in a new light (feeble pun!):

As shared on Girl Gone International Facebook

As shared on Girl Gone International Facebook

I first whispered and then just said this out loud to myself, and it works! Burning questions follow this entertaining linguistic trick. Do British people have an easier time switching to “razor blades” in their mind as soon as they hear themselves speak because of their accents? Do American accents still work nonetheless? Do various Aussie accents unwittingly get imitated as a result? If so, are they existing accents? Do we unconsciously try to Australian-ize our pronounciation (without really being able to, except after several episodes of McCleod’s Daughters in my case) as soon as we attempt to rise up lights? And most importantly: what will happen if an Australian simply says “rise up lights”? Life’s profound mysteries.

The internet was not done with us today, nor is it ever. A momentous event has taken place and I’m still fanning myself from excitement. Uploaded seven hours ago as of the time this is being typed and with close to half a million views already, I add my own click(s) to the official full-length movie trailer of Disney’s upcoming live-action version of the animated classic Beauty and the Beast. As soon as I hear those first piano bars from the opening track, despite having heard them thousands of times before, I’m gone.

If the teaser trailer already had me in pieces, this further gem makes me wriggle like an over-excited child and think, “OH MY GOD, this is real!” I can only hope that we will not be disappointed by the movie after the mood both trailers have successfully harnessed, and that Belle didn’t drop that candelabra after her first glimpse of the Beast. If there is one thing I’m certain of, it’s that I can’t imagine anyone other than Emma Watson playing our book-loving, plucky, dreaming heroine in this version.

“I want adventure in the great wide somewhere/ I want it more than I can tell…”

It was a Monday of joyful, thought-provoking discoveries, and with all this talk of the supermoon, which I currently can’t see because of foggy Hamburg conditions, I’m in a witchy mood and will look up scenes with Piper Halliwell from Charmed on YouTube.

 

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Lindsey Stirling. Night Vision

Lindsey Stirling has released a new music video! Oh joy! Repeated viewing and sharing of opinions required. What’s different in this video is that she integrates a promo for her upcoming 2016 summer tour (in the U.S. and Canada, plus one stop in Berlin at Lollapalooza this September, according to her official website). Go, Lindsey!

Considering how busy she is and how much mind-blowing output she regularly generates, the additional promise of a new album leaves me tingling with anticipation and admiration as well. Both of her previous albums still feel fresh and energetic, and listening to them on repeat is something my week cannot do without.

But back to Night Vision. This is one of my favourite tracks, because the way the music sounds and the way the various violin tones come together, especially the lower ones, make images of nighttime landscapes pop up in my mind, and fluorescent lights were in there as well. So it’s exciting to see Lindsey incorporate just that in to her music video. Not to mention the nods to superwoman themes, the action genre, and clearly Mission Impossible. Lindsey becomes her own super-violinist, dancing and playing her way through a laser maze in a black leather suit to let fans know about her news.

Strong, graceful, spunky, sharp of step and quick of bow – in short, Lindsey Stirling.

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Dying for You by Otto Knows (feat. Lindsey Stirling and Alex Aris)

Somebody told me you had given up on your smile

Plenty of very satisfying reviews have been written about this fantastic track, and after listening to it on repeat for a week, I thought I’d contribute my own review of the music video. In my humble, non music critic style.

The excitement I feel every time a new musical release involving Lindsey Stirling comes out is addictive. This video delivers and once again shows that she is a performer to be reckoned with. The fact that she is an instrumental artist, as well as her masterful grasp of numerous genres and unique interpretation with her violin music make it possible to integrate her playing in practically any collaboration. At the same time, she not only showcases herself, but compliments the artists she works with on a given project, bringing out the best in all those involved. Different talent coming together requires good choosing, and happily it looks like “Dying for You” is a result of just that.

A pianist plays inside what looks like a roomy, abandoned church or cathedral, while Alex Aris begins to sing the story, not with hopelessness, but with mounting force. To me you don’t have to keep hiding away who you are/ Remember how we said together we would go far. It could be a love story, it could be about friendship – the lyrics seem comfortingly suitable to multiple interpretations.

When all you have is doubt, know that I’m around/ I will be dying for you, dying for you.

And then Lindsey appears, gathering power with her violin. In those scenes where we don’t see her, we hear her, always, as soon as she starts playing. It’s like straining for something familiar that’s reaching your ears from a distance, and then bam, recognition, this is it! She plays, and oh boy, it’s an explosive, terrifically executed speedy violin frenzy.

The color and light scheme of the music video play up the expected associations with “dying” in the track title – black, grey, beige, brown, switching between what might be a cloudy day outside to darkness, in which Lindsey’s auburn braids dance like flames around her pale, chiselled face while she does her signature twirling.

The theme of an impending mini-apocalypse surrounds the visual aesthetic of the video, but rather than drag the viewer down, it adds a note of raw reality, as well as making you think of destruction clearing the way for creation, like a forest being naturally reborn after a fire.

I will be dying to hear this one again for a long time.

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Some YouTube Laughs

If I need a laugh, these are some of my favourite selections on YouTube (and once I discover something that clicks with me, it is absolutely not difficult for me to watch it over, and over, and over again. And then one more time).

The already mentioned in this blog and always brilliant Lindsey Stirling posted this video a while ago about… dressing up as bees for Halloween. It’s cute AND funny. Nothing like grown-ups having fun in Disneyland. Plus Lindsey’s editing skills and presence in front of the camera.

Scottish comedian Danny Bhoy starts off with a comment on something else and then gets to the segment that cracks me up every time. It’s scarily accurate and ridiculously hilarious in its imitation of drunk women exiting a bar. I also think I could answer one of his questions.

Continuing on the alcohol theme, this golden oldie from very naughty and very talented Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis also successfully depicts the embarassing aspects of being drunk.

And finally, while this takes place in a bar and also includes drinks, it’s a very witty and elegantly acted scene from Criminal Minds, the kind of thing you’d like to see happen in real life.

 

 

 

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