MTV Throwback: Top 10 Music Videos with Well-Known Actors

Most of these are recollections of a glorious time when MTV & VH1 played music videos. Now I watch music videos on YouTube and mash'em up using Searchles TV. I save my MTV viewing for gems like Real World/Road Rules Challenges and Parental Control...life is sad.



1. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers ~ Mary Jane's Last Dance feat. Kim Bassinger. Back when Kim Bassinger was a Batman hottie and before the well-publicized marital troubles/custody-battles with Alec Baldwin, Kim Bassinger did a quite convincing dead-chick impression. Off-putting? Perhaps...but a great song and solid video.

2. Michael Jackson ~ Remember The Time feat. Eddie Murphy & Iman. In typical MJ epic video style, Eddie Murphy & Iman made appearances as the Pharoah and his Queen. In relation to the storyline - who would you rather sleep with - Eddie Murphy 1983 or Michael Jackson 1985? I think by the time this video was made the answer was neither.

3. Bobby McFerrin ~ Don't Worry Be Happy feat. Robin Williams. Word on the street is Bobby McFerrin hates this song for it's all he's really remembered by and he's done SO much more (what else he's done, I can't think of...so apparently very few people cared). Robin Williams and a few other comedians starred in the video.

4. Fatboy Slim ~ Weapon Of Choice feat. Christopher Walken. 100% Walken. Pure excellence. Did you know he was initially trained as a dancer in musical theater before moving on to dramatic roles in theater and then film? Wikipedia did.

5. Paul Simon ~ Call Me Al feat. Chevy Chase. I pretty much thought Chevy Chase actually sang this song until 5 years or so ago. If two men are lipsynching a song in a video, you tend to assume the taller man is actually singing.

6. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band ~ Night Moves feat. Daphne Zuniga & Matt LeBlanc. If you've ever wanted to see Joe Tribiani and Princess Vespa go at it. I guess this was a bit along the lines of "Before They Were Stars." This is probably the quintessential tune about casual teenage sex though. Nice, Bob.

7. Madonna ~ Music feat. Ali G. I hate this song. What can you do.

8. Counting Crows ~ A Long December feat. Courteney Cox. Courtney Cox also made an appearance as a random fan pulled on stage in a Bruce Springsteen video but she was actually well-known for friends and dating Adam Duritz, lead singer of Counting Crows, when this video came out. Adam Duritz would go on to date Jennifer Aniston as well. Two points, Duritz.

9. Tom Petty ~ Into the Great Wide Open feat. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp playing the role of the all-American boy -- back when he liked America. God he's studly in this.

10. Train ~ Meet Virginia feat. Rebecca Gayheart. Yeah...remember train? Drops of Jupiter? Meet Virginia? Late-90s classics. Rebecca Gayheart plays the diner waitress with a heart of gold. Well I'm going to assume she has a heart of gold...tough to say.

Best Covers of Talking Heads' This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)

Preettty self-explanatory...amazing song that first appeared on the Speaking In Tongues (1983) album and was also featured in the live concert film Stop Making Sense (1984). String Cheese Incident covers it fairly regularly as does Arcade Fire. MGMT performed a cover at Wellesley College back in the day when they were just starting to perform as a band - all captured on good ooooold youtube. Probably my favorite is a pretty acoustic version done by a youtuber named Amy. Do enjoy and mash up your own video playlist using Searchles TV when you see fit.

Put A Ring On It: 8 Best "Single Ladies" Parodies & Fan Vids

Every time a catchy song with a hip hip dance in the music video comes along (read: the "Thriller Effect") you'll have all the folks out there trying to recreate it: the young, the old, the famous, men, women, men dressed as women... Now with YouTube we get to watch all the fun that was formerly relegated to basements and dancehalls worldwide. Here are the best recreations/parodies/little-kid-singing versions of Beyonce's latest hit, Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) with the original video first for comparison purposes. I mashed'em up into a channel using Searchles TV Remash, give it a go.



1. Beyonce's Official Video, 2. Put A Ring On It Alaska, 3. Beyonce's SNL Parody feat. Justin Timberlake, 4. Little Girl in Carseat, 5. All the Pregnant Ladies, 6. Cubby Dances, 7. The Big Girl Remix, 8. Single Man Dances to Single Ladies, 9. Single Ladies Parody

The Bestest of the Best Holiday Movies

This is entirely subjective and sort of generic even, but I was just enjoying trailers of my fave holiday movies on Youtube this morning so much that I decided to mash'em up into a Searchles channel and share them with you! Happy Holiday Season!

Pop Quiz A**hole: Top 8 Movies with Ridiculous Hostage Situations

Most hostage situations - not funny...sorta serious. Some hostage situations? Laughable, ridiculous, involve long-haired Brendan Frasers or Nicolas Cages, use nose jobs as a threat to retrieve a code to an air shield. You know? Who are they kidding. I guess some on this list are actually shooting for 'ridiculous' but all entertain nonetheless. Here are the top 8 movies with ridiculous hostage situations. You can make your own vid mashup/playlist using Searchles TV here.



1. Airheads (1994). Brendan Fraser, Steve Busceme and Adam Sandler have a band called The Lone Rangers and take radio station employees hostage with fake Uzis filled with hot sauce to get their demo played on air. Now there's a plan. Forget the old fashioned way of making it big in the music industry by not playing sucky music or having Brendan Fraser as your front man.

2. Con Air (1997). A good man is released on parole and arranged transport to be flown back home on the same flight as fellow prisoners bound for a Supermax prison. Technically hostage on this "Con Air" flight home to see his Baby and his Baby's Mama, Nicolas Cage will play no victim. Steve Buscemi makes a second appearance on this list.

3. Speed (1994)**. Wow, there's so much to say about Speed...and it's hard to pick a favorite hostage moment. When he says 'shoot the hostage?', the elevator incident?, when the 'bomb on bus' sign smacks against the windshield? I'm gonna go with the 'jumping the gap'. For it is a scene truly ridiculous enough that it was parodied in the Spice Girls' feature film...Spice World.

4. Spaceballs (1989). So I unfortunately couldn't find an exact clip of Dr. Plotkin threatening to give hostage Princess Vespa back...her OLD NOSE, but I was at least able to catch the "ransom" being given - the code to the air shield of Planet Druidia...which may be even better.

5. The River Wild (1994). Kevin Bacon's in it which adds a slight element of ridiculous to the matter...cheesy acting rounds out the deal. Mr. Bacon takes Meryl Streep and her family hostage to guide he and buddy down through "The Gauntlet" - a murderous stretch of Class 5+ rapids. Adventure and suspense ensue.

6. Blazing Saddles (1974). Blazing Saddles can find its way onto nearly any movie list. A hostage situation develops as the new (and black) Sheriff of Rockridge takes himself hostage in order to get out of a sticky situation with the townsfolk. He is able to pull this off...because they are two thumbs up short of a "this guy" joke.

7. The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming (1966). A Soviet submarine accidentally runs aground near a small New England town and a family is taken hostage by faux-Russian Alan Arkin (plays the part quite well) in order to use their car to get to town.

8. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007). Most things about this movie sucked. I don't even know if this really counts as a hostage scene but since two people are tied up and hanging upside down, I'm gonna go with it. A bunch of pirates argue and point guns at each other while shoving phrases like "Davy Jones Locker", "Shiver Me Timbers" and "Shipwreck Cove" down our throats.


** Sidenote: Jeff Daniels starred in American Civil War epic Gettysburg in 1993...then went on to star in both Speed and Dumb and Dumber in 1994. What versatility as an actor.

Top 9 Covers: The Many Sounds of Dylan's 'You Ain't Goin Nowhere'

Just a top 10 in tribute to one of my favorite songs (so good, in fact, that it has its own wikipedia article) that happens to have inspired some pretty stellar covers - the Byrds & bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs, The Swell Season (the actors from the movie 'Once' who fell in love on-set), Counting Crows, the Desert Rose Band, so on and so forth. Also included is the original recording by Dylan & The Band on The Basement Tapes as well as the rerecording on his Greatest Hits Vol. II - guess they don't necessarily qualify as covers but the versions have different sounds nonetheless. Videos mashed up with Searchles TV. Go on...try it yourself.