Regardless of how a lot you’re keen on your loved ones, everybody wants a little bit downtime in the course of the holidays. Add these video essays to your queue. Pull them out once you want a little bit break — pop in your earbuds and escape. We’re rounding out the yr with movies about rates of interest, on-line playing, slipping on banana peels, and extra. Thanks as all the time for coming alongside on this trip, and comfortable holidays.
“Making a Mess: a History of Megalopolis” by Be Variety Rewind
Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (the Godfather trilogy, 1979’s Apocalypse Now, and many others.) launched his long-gestating epic ardour mission Megalopolis this yr, to… detached audiences and a typically derisive vital reception. How did we get right here? How did many years of planning and greater than $100 million in wine gross sales carry us the supremely odd, singular movie that’s Megalopolis? Be Variety Rewind, among the finest movie historical past channels on YouTube, lays all of it out.
“Oh baby, we’re talking interest rates” by Good Work
“The Online Gambling Epidemic” by Drew Gooden
The continuous loosening of legislative restrictions round on-line playing is among the most alarming modern tendencies in American society. This video demonstrates how predatory playing apps are, and the way straightforward they will make it for an unwary person to hurl themselves into debt over the end result of a soccer sport with out ever leaving their sofa. Gooden does this by testing out an app himself, bringing the viewer alongside. As in a lot of his movies, his goofy humorousness belies a pointy social critique.
“Do Grand Theft Auto V’s Power Lines Connect To Anything?” by Any Austin
Any Austin is a channel devoted to scrutinizing the simply missed minor particulars of online game environmental design. The place do the rivers in a Zelda sport circulate to? How does the economic system in a Mario city work? Right here, because the title suggests, he follows the facility traces within the expansive simulacrum metropolis of Grand Theft Auto V to see the place they lead. It’s a little bit of background taste to assist the sport really feel extra life like, however how far does that realism go? This isn’t mere nitpicking; Austin is demonstrating the tough stability video games strike when constructing convincing worlds, how verisimilitude bumps up towards technical limitations.
“The history of slipping on banana peels | Pretty Good, episode 14” by Secret Base
Do you assume that slipping on a banana peel solely occurs in cartoons, hacky outdated comedies, and Mario Kart (1992–ongoing)? If that’s the case, not solely are you mistaken, however you’re extra mistaken than you possibly can probably think about. Jon Bois, YouTube’s documentarian wizard of knowledge, surveys each recorded occasion of this pratfall occurring in actual life. Individuals have died. This video may turn into my new go-to instance of how there’s no topic so mundane that it may well’t make for attention-grabbing exploration.
Dan Schindel is a contract author and replica editor residing in Brooklyn, and a former affiliate editor at Hyperallergic. His portfolio and hyperlinks are right here.
Extra by Dan Schindel
