This last week, I continued the music video theme with a selection of videos from director, Spike Jonze. He’s another great music video director featured in the Directors Label DVD collection. In fact, all five of these videos can be found on his Directors Label DVD. Enjoy.

Beastie Boys – Sabotage: Such a fun video. It’s a great take-off/homage to the old cop shows of the 70’s and 80’s.

Wax – California: A mesmerizing slow-motion single-shot of a man running through the streets on fire.

Weezer – Buddy Holly: The first single off of Weezer’s self-titled “blue” album, this clever video seamlessly combines footage of the band and the TV show “Happy Days” to wonderful effect.

Bjork – It’s Oh So Quiet: I love the fun and whimsy in this video. There’s a wonderful play between the quiet, soft verses and the loud, musical dance-number chorus that only gets better when you add the video to it.

Fatboy Slim – Weapon of Choice: Who’s idea was it to feature Christopher Walken solo in a dance number for an entire music video? Brilliant.

I’ve continued to feature music videos as my Favorite Video of the Day this week; and this time around I focused specifically on videos directed by Michel Gondry. Gondry is a French director with a wild, creative imagination and a love for playful, trick photography. He made a name for himself here in the States through his music videos and commercials, most of which have been collected on DVD as part of the Directors Label series (an incredible series of DVD’s, I own them all). In recent years, he’s directed films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind, Rewind. I hope you enjoy this small selection of his music videos.

The White Stripes – Fell In Love With A Girl: How can you not love a music video animated in Lego?

Kylie Minogue – Come Into My World: A delightfully surreal single shot. The direction and choreography taken to pull it off is impressive.

Chemical Brothers – Let Forever Be: A trippy video filled with mind-twisting visuals and choreography.

The White Stripes – The Hardest Button To Button: A great stop-motion-y kind of video that plays wonderfully with the pacing and construction of the song.

Bjork – Bachelorette: This video is not only filled with cool storytelling, it also tells an interestingly provocative story.

For most of May, I’m going to be featuring music videos in my Favorite Videos of the Day. I love music videos and there is so much diverse and remarkable work out there that it’s been really fun to start digging around online to find some good videos to feature. Here’s a round-up of this week’s videos:

Radiohead: “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” – A hauntingly beautiful song mixed with incredible black and white footage that plays with variable speed shooting and high contrast lighting to wonderful effect. Directed by Jonathan Glazer.

Gnarls Barkley: “Going On” – This video just came out in the last couple of weeks and I loved it right away for the energy and movement, art direction, and the great use of text all throughout. Directed by Wendy Morgan.

Red Hot Chili Peppers: “Can’t Stop” – Inspired by the “One Minute Sculptures” of Erwin Wurm, this video is fun, whimsical, colorful, and creative. Directed by Mark Romanek.

The Shins: “Pink Bullets” – A wonderfully animated stop motion story of love found and lost. Directed by Adam Bizanski.

Johnny Cash: “Hurt” – What can I say about this video. It’s brilliant. Johnny Cash covers the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt” and adds a deep poignancy and gravity to the lyrics as the song and video wrestle with the ideas of legacy and mortality. Directed by Mark Romanek.

Here’s a round-up of this week’s favorite videos (as posted on my Twitter feed). Enjoy.

Snickers – Red vs. Green – A brawl breaks out between the light-up red and green figures at crosswalks.

Adidas – Whole World – I really like the Adidas “Impossible Is Nothing” ad campaign and this particular ad ranks as one of my favorites.

Talk Talk Ad – Wonderfully creative and fun.

Young@Heart sing “Fix You” – Besides the fact that “Fix You” is already one of my favorite Coldplay songs, this performance of it by the English chorus Young@Heart is made all the more poignant and beautiful by the story behind it: (from the YouTube description) “The performer here is Fred Knittle, who suffers from congestive heart failure. This song was intended to be a duet between Fred and another chorus member, Bob Salvini. Sadly, Bob died of a heart attack and it was left to Fred to carry the song on his own.” The clip is from a film also titled Young@Heart that’s in theaters right now.

Stevie Wonder – Superstition live on Sesame Street – Stevie gives a fantastic performance of “Superstition” while visiting Sesame Street. It just makes me smile when I watch it.

Over the last week, I’ve posted a video each day on my Twitter feed as my “Favorite Video” of the day. My plan is to post a new one every weekday. Of course, in the back of my mind I wonder if I’ll come up against a time when I can’t find anything I want to post; but for now I’m not too worried as, let’s face it, there’s a lot of fun videos being produced and shared online. There’s no specific formula as to which videos I’m picking. Mostly I’m just picking videos that I find to be entertaining, challenging, interesting, beautiful, remarkable, inspiring, or just plain funny. Some weeks may have themes, others may be completely random; it just depends on what I manage to come across.  I’ll be posting roundups of the week’s videos each Friday, but if you want your daily fix, you can follow me on Twitter here.

Here’s a roundup of this week’s videos:

Burst – A remarkably beautiful ad full of slow-motion water balloons

Awareness Test – How did you do on it?

Karate Slow Motion – I cringed, but could not look away. So fascinating.

Penguins – BBC – So fantastic.

Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace – The is a seriously awesome series that was apparently on the BBC a couple years back. If you get sucked in and need more, there’s several more episodes on YouTube.