Some videos I’ve seen lately…

Updated on February 1, 2021 By Ken Begg 13 Comments

Did I mention the Dark Corners Reviews channel on YouTube posted a documentary on Bela Lugosi a few months ago? It’s quite a good piece, or two pieces actually, since it was posted in two parts. I imagine many of us know so much about Lugosi that there’s really all that much new stuff here. Even so, it’s very well put together and it’s a very enjoyable way to spend an hour. DCRs is one of my favorite YouTube review channels. The reviews are smart and punchy (generally lasting five to ten minutes), and don’t rely on swearing and scatological humor like a lot of the young Vtubers seem to these days. Good stuff.

On another note, I really like Jenny Nicholson’s stuff, again on YouTube. I like the fact that she really just seems to make a video whenever she feels like it, and on whatever topic she feels like. It might be an amusing review of Jurassic World, or a history of an old theme park, or her cross country trek to go pick up this gigantic stuffed spider.

Said plush arachnid, by the way, can be seen in the background of her latest video. It’s a two and a half hour examination of the Vampire Diaries TV show. I know that sounds insane, but really, anyone who’s read a lot of my stuff obviously has a long attention span, and I can honestly say the piece never wears out its welcome. It’s consistently entertaining, funny and insightful. Like most long form exploration of some media object, many of her comments can to applied to zillions of other shows.

I like how she really doesn’t follow any of the YouTube ‘rules’ for success. Productions values are scant. Ms. Nicholson’s videos can be sharply edited in terms of integrating clips, but otherwise they generally involve her sitting on her bed with some stuffed toy that ties into whatever the topic du jour is. She’s smart and funny and has a charming ability to dissect the silliness in things without ever seeming snide or mean. I think that’s in large part because she always displays a lot of affection for whatever her video is about. I don’t think she would ever bother to make to a video on something that she just didn’t like.

I really like her stuff, and I admire the fact that she clearly never feels constrained to keep making one sort of video because the last one like it drew well on YouTube. Perhaps because of this, she has a very loyal audience. When I saw the length and subject of her latest video, I was momentarily worried for her. Then I saw that in the two weeks since she posted it the video has drawn 1.5 million views. For a two and a half hour Vampire Diaries review. By the way, I won’t blow it, but she has one running gag throughout the piece that made me laugh every single time she used it. Good on you, Ms. Nicholson.

In Praise of Shadows is one of my favorite general horror channels, although I admit I was disappointed by his two-part, three hour (!) History Of Golden Age Horror videos. Pretty much the whole thing was about the horror comic hysteria of the ’50s, Fredric Wertham, the creation of the Comics Code and all that jazz. An interesting subject, but one I’m been reading about for nearly 50 years. I would have loved more of a general overlook of the comics themselves. However, the videos are certainly well made, and if you’re interested in the subject you’ll learn a lot.

He also does an entertaining and informative series on various horror movie franchises, and a nice series on witches in history, then literature, then movies. His latest video is a defense of the much maligned Return to Oz, which alienated audiences (and a lot of critics) at the time for capturing the dark fairy tale tone of the original books rather than the more cheerful, colorful tone of the 1939 movie.

Anyway, do you guys have anything to suggest?

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  • Beckoning Chasm

    Two pretty entertaining channels I like are OwlKitty and Ryan George. In the OwlKitty videos, this guy puts his cat into various movies. The editing is seamless; the guys got real talent. All the videos are pretty short, so there’s that.

    Ryan George is the guy who does those “Pitch Meeting” videos for WhatCulture (I think). His own stuff tends to be short observations in skit form, usually about stuff we take for granted.

  • KeithB

    I had kind of a Dean Stockwell day yesterday.
    We saw “Shadow of the Thin Man” on Movies!
    And then a few Quantum Leap episodes on Comet in the evening.

  • The Rev.

    Oh, that Return to Oz thing has been recommended to me lately (I don’t think I’ve watched anything of theirs; I’m guessing it’s a “Based on this…” type of recommendation). Maybe I’ll check it out.

    I’ve also had Jenny’s stuff come up for me (including the recent one you mentioned up there) but I don’t think I’ve watched anything of hers, either. You’re not the first person to recommend her, though, so I shall make a point to check her out.

    I don’t think I have anything to plug that hasn’t already been offered here. The Critical Drinker’s been killing it lately; his reflections on why we need heroes and what has happened to villains are a bit more serious than his reviews tend to be, and are extremely well-thought-out (I mean, even for him).

  • Ken_Begg

    Yes, those pitch meeting videos are really good. That’s the YouTube dream, isn’t it? To come up with a nice short form concept that you can milk for years and years.

  • Ken_Begg

    Yes, I should have remembered that CD piece on the death of great villains. That’s really good stuff.

  • Critical Drinker is my current obsession as well. Under all the swearing and gross-outs he is a damned astute film critic. Also he watched the last two years of Doctor Who so I didn’t have to.

  • Oh, and Good Bad Flicks, which is less movie criticism than a series of brief documentaries on the productions and challenges of making various Bs and oddities, followed with a brief defense of why it is ‘good bad flick’ vs a ‘bad bad flick’. Although I’d often argue with the last, some things are indefensible. :)

  • Eric Hinkle

    I’ll say that Return to Oz is a great movie if you can take some darkness in your fantasy. It’s not Lovecraft or the like but it is a well-done movie.

    Without getting too spoilery, I found the scene in the 1930’s mental hospital the creepiest of the lot. I had relations who saw those places back when they were called ‘the snake pit’. According to what they said when we watched it together so many years ago, those scenes were frighteningly accurate.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Yeah, I haven’t seen the Pitch Meetings for a while now. The problem was that for a while he was doing two a week, and while there was still some cleverness and insight, he started to rely a lot on his various catch phrases, and those became the focus of the pieces. It’s what happened to Saturday Night Live–they found they could get laughs just by repeating their lines (“Never mind!” “Jane you ignorant slut”) and started doing just that.

  • How Ridiculous is quite good. It has three Australian guys doing, well, ridiculous things, like shooting baskets from a cliff and making bullseyes with darts bouncing off boards. They’ve also been dropping things off towers on top of other things, like a giant dart on bullet proof glass or an airplane onto a trampoline.

    Not even joking with the last one. It was a sight to behold.

    Slightly more serious are the Slo Mo Guys, two Brits who film various things in really, really slow motion. Lightning strikes, for instance, or CDs sped up to an incredible rate until they shatter. Like the How Ridiculous crew they have also been known for their sillier experiments, though unlike the boys from Australia they tend to get into the actual science behind things more.

    Finally, if you’re in the mood for an excellent series of cartoon shorts, there’s Autodale, a sci fi/fantasy set in the worst town not named Silent Hill.

  • Ken_Begg

    Catch phrases are tight!

  • The Rev.

    I recently watched his old Resident Evil retrospective series, and it was a bit of a surprise to find out his current persona is a recent development. The videos were lacking in gags (not that he didn’t toss jokes in), and he used what I’m guessing is his normal speaking voice, which is less guttural and faster-paced. Naturally, they were also well-done pieces by an obvious fan (like recognizing like in this case). They were a pleasant change, although I quite enjoy his current way of doing things.

  • Yeah, watching an older video of him reviewing Clan of the Cave Bear was how I found out about the change in style. Also learned that he is a much bigger fan of Jean Auel’s sex-among-the-cavemen epics than is usual for a guy.
    .