Jason Kisvarday

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Arcade Fire "We Exist" w/ Andrew Garfield (David Wilson, dir.)

Off goes the hair, on goes the bra and so Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield's gender-swap journey begins...

A honky tonk crowd greets him with uneasy stares that, of course, leads to outight brutality. But, there's an escape hatch of music, even if it's just in his mind...  Soaring choreography transports him from the on-the-floor pummeling to a place where his tormentors are nothing more that a dance troupe ushering him to heaven, which in this case is a catharctic climax on-stage with Arcade Fire.

Hopefully he's also up there rocking with Hedwig...

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Discovering More Unfortunate Details with Placebo, Bret Easton Ellis and Director Saman Kesh

Even the simplest situation can be made awfully complicated. Director Saman Kesh enlists narrator Bret Easton Ellis to solve yet another mystery for Placebo. This time we have projectile vomit, a slaphappy creep, a rash and a possibly spiked blue drink.

And, we also have some NSFW elements, so you might want to study this like a Zapruder Film in the comfort of your own home.

PS: There's a quiz at the end. Good luck.

In Depth

Solving the Placebo "Too Many Friends" Video with Director Saman Kesh

Placebo "Too Many Friends" is one of those great videos that can be easily summed-up in a couple bullet-points to a newbie — it's narrated by author Bret Easton Ellis and ends with a quiz — but also stands up to repeated viewings and close studies. The video is a mystery, but also a critique about how we've been lulled into submission by our digital devices and the well-chose pharmaceutical.

We recently chatted with director Saman Kesh via email about how the video came together, the irony of it all, and what it means — including how the video is slyly, if a bit coincidentally connected to The Dark Knight Rises.

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Placebo "Too Many Friends" (Saman Kesh, dir.)

Narrator Bret Easton Ellis — yes, the dude who wrote Less Than Zero — and director Saman Kesh (aka Saman Keshavarz) explore the anatomy of a seemingly simple scene that reveals itself to be far more complex upon closer inspection. But the moral here isn't the unreliability of perception; it's the danger of relying on technology and drugs that actually amplify, instead of serving our desires and fears. 

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Paramore "Still Into You" (Isaac Rentz, dir.)

Paramore: Still Into You [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

Pastel colors pop as Hayley Williams and her Paramore cohorts get happy in a mansion that looks like it was designed by a dollhouse aficionado. Each room offers a new delight: The very birthday bedroom, a ballroom with walls mapped by projected fireworks, plus a boat ride through a ballooon sea, ballet dancers and even some in-house BMX biking for the boys.