Once again, the Internet has taken two pop culture behemoths, thrown them in a blender and posted the hilarious, pureed mess on YouTube for our amusement. This time, the folks at Slacktory used their mutant editing powers to celebrate the return of Arrested Development by smashing them together with another famous dysfunctional family. They took portions of the audio from Mitchell Hurwitz's cult sitcom and synced them up with selected scenes from Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy. Netflix really should consider contacting Coppola to turn this into a series instead of the other Italian-American family saga he's got in the works right now. [via Warming Glow]

The new Arrested Development episodes premiere in a few days (duh), and that means it’s time for all the Internet’s content producers to cram in all the AD related content we can before everyone gets too burnt out. Thus, why not watch this supercut of all the Arrested Development chicken dances, put together by the fine people at Flavorwire? Nothing will get you prepped for Sunday night like a few dozen hours of strutting and caw-ca-cawing, so take a page from GOB’s playbook and get stomping. 

All the 'Arrested Development' "Chicken" Dances from Flavorwire on Vimeo.

Now that Steven Soderbergh has completed his Liberace film Behind The Candelabra for HBO and taken his parting shots at the film industry on the fast track to early retirement, he’s set up shop at a new website, Extension 765, essentially a marketplace for his favorite things. Amid the movie props and Bolivian liquor, there’s quite an array of t-shirts, but they’re not your typical movie-spoiler or promo shirts. Soderbergh writes that for film shirts “the design work is kind of inconsistent, and more importantly, the references tend toward the obvious. So this is our attempt to address those issues,” introducing a line of apparel with references ranging from some intermediate Citizen Kane to the outlandishly obscure—the license plate number in The French Connection and a whiskey brand from a five-second pan in Laura. We won’t list out every film here, but it’s a nice little advanced trivia game to go through and match the films to Soderbergh’s favorite obscure references.

Just over a year ago the third season of Community ended with three episodes on a single night, beginning with “Digital Estate Planning,” which took place largely within Journey To The Center Of Hawkthorne, a retro-style video game. Shortly thereafter, an intrepid Redditor recreated a small, explorable version of the game that attracted a small group of dedicated developers, who have continued to update the game over the course of the past year.

The group recently celebrated their one-year anniversary, and though the game isn’t complete, it’s a much more immersive and game-like experience instead of a few different environments to look at. Various contributors have produced over 200 costumes for 20 different characters, including just about every possible permutation a fan could want. The levels have expanded to cover not just New Abedtown and Gay Island, but connector environments that require much more skill, and a weapons system that allows players to pick up and create weapons to take down mariachi players and unicorns that shoot rainbow lasers.

The early versions of the game were always open, easy to skip to any level, look around for a bit, see the environment, and then leave. But as development ...

Music documentaries are seemingly a dime-a-dozen, with nearly every artist, genre, or subculture worth discussing having some sort of coverage. It can make it difficult to determine what is actually worth watching and what's not, but thankfully Pitchfork rose to the occasion and compiled a handy list of 20 music docs that both merit their existence and are currently streaming online. Some, such as 1996's examination of the grunge movement Hype!, are considered to be classics of the form, whereas others explore musical curiosities such as Jandek and G.G. Allin, but they all exude the necessary traits of being both informative and wholly entertaining. 

The Internet is full of interesting things to read outside of The A.V. Club—no, really! In our periodic Read This posts, we point you toward interesting or norteworthy pieces that caught our eye.

The climax of Fast Five features the usual street-racing gang breaking into a Rio De Janeiro bank, ripping out the vault with cars, and dragging it along for a lengthy car chase (so much for that rumored Brazilian-set sequel to The Italian Job). Sure, it was visually engrossing—but does the math check out? Harvard physicist Dr. Randall Kelley helped Vulture run the numbers (on a question that's been posed before), coming to the stunning conclusion that Fast Five may have overstated the realism of towing a bank vault through the streets of Rio. To be fair, the basic feat of towing the vault is theoretically possible, just with significantly more horsepower—467 cars worth to be precise. It's a good read if only for how clean the computation is to see just how exaggerated the scene is from reality—and for a breakdown of how the scene was filmed, look here. But go enjoy Fast & Furious 6 this weekend and watch the ...

Star of The ArScheerio Paul Show Paul Scheer has joined forces with MadTV and Key & Peele star Jordan Peele to remake one of Arsenio Hall's most awkward interviews for YouTube's Comedy Week. This time around, Scheer trotted out the transcript for Arsenio's weird sit-down with rapper Tupac Shakur, who, during the original interview,was making the promotional rounds for his film Poetic Justice with Janet Jackson and spent an inordinate amount of time relishing the fact that he got to make out with her on set. Scheer has been doing word-for-word reenactments of Arsenio's more memorable celebrity interviews like Bill Clinton's legendary appearance on the show with Will Arnett that included a saxophone performance with the show's house band. [via Splitsider] 

Every day, the Internet gods choose a handful of weird news stories to become viral hits, from burglars leaving their wallets at the scene of the crime to the latest squirrel- or monkey-related assault. It's easy to forget in the midst of such endless amusement that there are still real people behind these stories whose lives may or may not have been profoundly affected.

One such story that caught in the Internet's attention in 2007 involved John Wood, a man who lost a leg in a plane crash and kept the severed limb preserved in a barbecue smoker. The smoker (complete with leg) was left in a storage unit to await Wood’s eventual cremation, but it was eventually sold at auction to Shannon Whisnant after Wood failed to keep up with the payments. It got stranger when Whisnant decided to turn the leg and smoker into a tourist attraction that made both men celebrities and sparked a dispute the leg's true owner, according to the New York Times.

Director Ed Cunningham, one of the filmmakers behind The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters and the Oscar-winning sports documentary Undefeated, wants to turn Wood and Whisnant ...

Everyone has watched Disney movies as an adult and questioned just how much of history the films ignore in order to tell simple little romantic stories of a princess finding her prince. And Disney even tried to get meta with its own princess constructions in Enchanted. But writer and comedian Rachel Bloom—a UCB alum who has written for Robot Chicken—took it a step further in an animated music video that puts all of the difficulties of Disney settings right beneath the surface of a cheery pining-for-love song. While it doesn’t skewer any particular Disney story in animation style or melody, it’s closest to Beauty And The Beast, a medieval provincial locale in the midst of a violent plague, resorting to primitive medicine while subjugating young girls and trying to eradicate the Jewish people living away in the woods. “Historically Accurate Disney Princess” comes from Bloom’s new comedy album Please Love Me—which contains her previous viral hit “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” as well as song sketches titled “Marry Poppins Is Efficient” and “I Steal Pets.”

If Disney Cartoons Were Historically Accurate -- powered by Cracked.com

The Lonely Island may have just dropped a new clip, “Diaper Money,” on Monday, but the group’s commitment to #WackWednesdays apparently hasn’t waned one bit. The trio just dropped a new collaboration with Solange (a.k.a. Beyonce’s sister), and it’s hot, naturally. “Semicolon,” an ode to the punctuation that not enough people use, both educates and entertains, sort of like a much hipper Schoolhouse Rock for the 21^st century.

The Lonely Island’s The Wack Album arrives June 11 and features guest contributions from Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams, and more. 

When the decision was made to shine the TV Club 10 spotlight on The Middle, a great deal of thought and consideration went into selection the episodes that would make it into the final list. There was also a great deal of hesitation and procrastination, however, along with many occasions amidst the bursts of uncertainty when the question was posed to others, “So, uh, what are your favorite episodes?”

Among those asked: Patricia Heaton, Neil Flynn, and Eden Sher.

Heaton and Flynn each offered up a list of their 10 favorite episodes, along with a one-liner explaining either what the plot was about or why they liked it. Sher’s enthusiasm, however, could not be restrained to a mere single sentence: not only did the plucky young comedienne quickly whip up her own list of 10 favorite episodes, but she dedicated a paragraph-long love letter to every single one of them.

Here, for instance, is her take on “The Map”:

“The cold open of this episode was a 7-page scene of the whole family just sitting in the car talking. Much like my feelings towards ‘Hecks on a Plane,’ I will always remember that hot, crowded car with unique fondness ...

Atlanta hip-hop group and original home of Cee-Lo Green Goodie Mob has set an August 27 release date for Age Against The Machine, its first album since reuniting last year and the first to feature the full line-up since 1999. “Special Education,” the just-released first single, sets a ridiculously high bar for the rest of the album. The track features an insane, almost industrial exploding funk beat, a stately chorus from fellow Dungeon Family member Janelle Monáe bemoaning uniformity in music, and a pretty killer verse from Cee-Lo himself.

Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky created some of most visually arresting films of his generation—Solaris, Andrei Rublev, Stalker, The Mirror—in a brief career cut short by lung cancer. But despite influencing contemporaries like Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, not to mention countless others since then—three of his films made the Top 50 in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll—there has never been a comprehensive English-language documentary on the director until now. PJ Letofsky’s project Time Within Time uses Tarkovsky’s own diaries as its basis, as well as interviews with Tarkovsky’s surviving collaborators and family members to create a complete portrait of the legendary director, from his early life and exposure to nature through secretive communication with his collaborators to avoid persecution from strict censors.

Letofsky even brought in renowned Soviet/American actor Oleg Vidov to narrate Tarkovsky’s words throughout the film. Principal photography is complete, so the funding will go toward securing archival footage, photo, and music rights, as well as other postproduction costs. This is also another prime opportunity to point out that all of Tarkovsky’s seven feature films are still available online for free, in case you’ve never seen them.

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer series finale "Chosen" on UPN. (Also it’s been more than 10 years since the show made the bizarre jump from The WB to UPN.) To mark the occasion, we thought it might be fun to look back at how the network previewed the end of the series in promos. They detail the Scooby Gang’s prodigious statistics—“526 demons slayed, 1,342 vampires dusted”—and all the returning players in the final season—Angel, Faith, Giles—in such quaint fashion that it undersells just how incredibly influential and still perennially underrated Joss Whedon’s first calling card is today. But considering the entire series is available on Netflix, now is the perfect time to go back and revisit some old favorites—and maybe check back in on Noel Murray’s excellent TV Club Classic coverage.

Sports and hip-hop are a match made in heaven, but sometimes an unusual reference gets used so many times over the years that it stands out. Courtesy of an endorsement from Bethlehem Shoals (of dearly departed but never forgotten NBA blog Free Darko), now there’s a roundup by Vancouver-based Young Braised of many different rappers referencing former NBA star Alonzo Mourning in songs ranging from 1993-2012. Unfortunately, unlike other sports references, where a name gets used because of how great, say, Michael Jordan is at basketball, Mourning is such an ever-present name-drop because he goes well in any line using the word “morning.” You know, instead of highlighting the fact that the guy got a kidney transplant, then returned to the NBA and won a title. The tracks range from the standard name-drop in Fu-Schnickens’ “What’s Up Doc? (Can We Rock)” which featured Shaquille O’Neal, to Wale’s “Georgetown Press,” which actually references the infamous incident when Mourning’s Georgetown coach John Thompson confronted Rayful Edmond, the notorious drug dealer generally credited with introducing crack cocaine to Washington, D.C. It’s a wide range of songs showing that Mourning is a go-to for hip-hop wordplay, and ...

Even when a book gets published, becomes a bestseller, wins a glut of awards and launches successful film adaptations, it doesn’t mean that an author wouldn’t change a few things when given the chance, or offer up some commentary on their choices. That’s the thinking behind “First Editions, Second Thoughts,” an auction to benefit writers’ association English PEN, which offers the chance to bid on 50 first editions annotated by their authors. Tom Stoppard reveals an alternate title for Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, Nick Hornby adds details about the Hillsborough stadium disaster to Fever Pitch, and Yann Martel still isn’t happy with the first line of Life Of Pi, but the big-ticket item is bound to be a J.K. Rowling-annotated copy of Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone. Rowling reveals she originally planned to use a bear as Hufflepuff’s house mascot, and that she invented Quidditch “in a small hotel in Manchester after a row with [her] then-boyfriend.” Check out previews of all the books, including work by Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Seamus Heaney, Lionel Shriver, and other, over at The Guardian. 

An unofficial (probably) version of a cut of the new Beyoncé record has hit the net and—surprise, surprise—it’s pretty damn good. “Grown Woman,” the song that she first teased in a Pepsi commercial this spring, finds Mrs. Carter blending afro-pop and R&B as she extols the virtues of being able to do whatever the hell she wants and stuff. It’s a little cheesy on the first listen, but give it a few go-arounds and it’ll be stuck in your head all damn summer.

What started as a songwriting project for Chicago's Evan Weiss under the moniker Into It. Over It. quickly blossomed into a band more ambitious than the endeavor that bore it. After a year of writing and releasing songs—all compiled on No Sleep Record's 52 Weeks—Weiss released six split 7-inches chronicling his experiences in various cities across the U.S. before releasing his first full-length album, the aptly titled Proper, in 2011. 

Although Weiss had been touring for years on his own, offering up stripped-down versions of full-band numbers and plaintive acoustic tracks, last fall Weiss assembled a band featuring members of Noumenon, Cut Teeth, and CSTVT and took Into It. Over It. on the road as a full band for the first time. Along for the ride was Hilary Corts who documented the tour, and this June Topshelf Records will be releasing a 7-inch of two live tracks and an accompanying book of Corts' photos entitled Life Is Suffering. 

The A.V. Club has an exclusive stream of the two live tracks from Life Is Suffering, the aching "Anchor" and the energized "Wearing White" which both originally appeared on 52 Weeks.

Zooey Deschanel is a lot of things—gamine, adorkable, intensely annoying, depending on who you ask—but she’s also undeniably talented. Fresh off a great season of New Girl, the singer has once again teamed up with M. Ward to release a new She & Him record. Volume 3 came out earlier this spring, but the first video from the record just dropped today.

Deschanel stepped behind the camera for the first time ever for the clip, “I Could’ve Been Your Girl.” The singer says it’s inspired by some of her favorite ‘60s musicals, meaning it’s both insanely tame and a little sweet. In it, a cute Deschanel and her cute friends cutely dance and goof around, adorably trying to woo Ward, who’s billed as “the star” and just sits grumpily reading a newspaper, immune to cute things like some sort of asshole. (Seriously, his behavior is totally not cute.) It’s a little fluffy, but whatever. Why would anyone expect anything else from She & Him? 

The Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” is already a near perfect song, but a newly unearthed version featuring cello master Arthur Russell has taken the track to a whole new level. The track comes courtesy of Dazed And Confused, which has a little more information about Russell on its site, including some details about an upcoming celebration of the late avant garde musician’s life and work.  

YouTube kicked off its Comedy Week by commissioning one of today's funniest musical humorists to create a viral cover of one of the Internet's unintentionally funniest videos. Van Halen aficionado and Comedy Bang Bang co-host Reggie Watts re-created Rick Astley's video for "Never Gonna Give You Up," only with his own version of the song attached. Watch for special guest Jordan Peele as the red-suspendered bartender. [via Splitsider]

The storied struggle and resurrection of one of TV's most cult-ish comedies could itself work as some kind of tragiccomic series. Arrested Development found massive acclaim when it first hit the airwaves but struggled to find a big enough audience to make Fox happy. Now a whole new season is headed to Netflix after its creator Mitch Hurwitz used every ounce of muscle he had to bring it back to life.

Rolling Stone's Andy Greene sat down with Hurwitz in the middle of a busy-sounding 18-hour workday prepping the new episodes for their debut this Sunday. Hurwitz laid out the skinny on the frustrations he experienced trying to keep the show afloat without weakening his original vision ("Not getting an audience meant there was a lot of struggle to change the show in fundamental ways") and Fox executives' itchy trigger finger despite the show's dogged and determined three-season run. ("They also had no Emmy campaign because the last thing they wanted in that third season was to win another Emmy.") 

Longtime This American Life contributor David Rakoff died of cancer last August, inspiring a deeply moving tribute episode from Ira Glass and company. Now, in anticipation of the release of Rakoff’s posthumous first novel Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish, Random House has put out an extensive book trailer featuring Glass, Jackie Hoffman, Jodi Lennon, George Stroumboulopoulos, and many other writers and comedians, reading Rakoff’s tale of the scorpion and tortoise from “Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace.” There’s even a clip of Rakoff himself, looking haggard in the final stages of terminal cancer, reading the audiobook he scrambled to complete before his death, a haunting image to go along with the final act of This American Life’s tribute episode. The novel—say the title and “a novel by” to get the lyrical, Seussian rhythm of Rakoff’s verse—hits stores in July.

We already knew this weekend’s Saturday Night Live would mean saying goodbye to Bill Hader and to the younger, more innocent Kanye West who hadn’t yet gotten really into Nine Inch Nails and Naomi Klein. But it wasn’t until the hours just before the show aired that longstanding rumors of Fred Armisen’s departure were seemingly confirmed via this tweet from his pal Carrie Brownstein. Armisen’s quiet exit from SNL—which still hasn’t been officially announced, by the way—received an appropriately low-key acknowledgment on the show, with Armisen reprising Margaret Thatcher-loving punk Ian Rubbish for a farewell he and Hader framed as the two of them “going on tour… but it doesn’t mean we won’t still play together.” (Read into the inclusion of drummer Jason Sudeikis, also rumored to be leaving, what you will.)

And then, because he’s Fred Armisen, a bunch of punk and indie-rock all-stars joined them on stage for a rendition of “A Lovely Day,” including Brownstein, Steve Jones, J Mascis, Kim Gordon, Aimee Mann, and Michael Penn. And then, because he's Fred Armisen, all of those people starred in one last sketch of "The Californians ...

As Saturday Night Live’s Stefon, Bill Hader always knew New York’s hottest nightclubs, as well as what it meant to be a human parking cone. Even though Stefon did his best to explain what Hobocops were, most of the time fans were just left to imagine what they might actually look like. Fortunately (and sadly), this weekend brought the biggest Stefon skit in the character’s history, complete with actual depictions of Ferkels, German Smurfs, and a drowned albino that looks like Axl Rose. The entire clip of the sketch is below, along with a bunch of gifs that some wise web user and fan put together, because he or she is the best.

Watch, laugh, cry, and then get incredibly pissed because there will never be a Stefon movie. 

Every Wednesday for a couple of weeks now, The Lonely Island has been premiering videos for cuts off its forthcoming record, The Wack Album. While it’s not Wednesday, it is YouTube’s Comedy Week, and so the group has just dropped a new clip a couple of days early.

This time around, Jorma, Akiva, and Andy take on heavy adult issues with “Diaper Money.” While “I Fucked My Aunt” and “Spring Break Anthem” extolled the virtues of incest and gay marriage, “Diaper Money” reps hard for solid family life, “wife pussy,” and purchasing cemetery plots in advance.

The Wack Album is out June 11. 

Back in April, The A.V. Club premiered an almost 9-minute clip of Patton Oswalt spouting off an improvised Star Wars filibuster during a taping of Parks And Recreation. Millions of people watched it, marveled and laughed, and the world was good. Now, because the Internet is the Internet, some awesome person has made an animated version of said speech, and it is, of course, fantastic. Isaac Moores’ take on Oswalt’s spiel is funny, smart, and full of excellent Star Wars clip art. Watch it below, and may the nerdy, nerdy force be with you.  

Archer star Aisha Tyler may have starred in a boatload of movies and TV shows, but she’s only directed one thing to date: a 2010 short called Committed. That’s changed now, as she’s just filmed, directed, and edited another short, Simmer, about the Silversun Pickups tour.

Set to the track of the same name from the band’s latest record, Neck Of The Woods, Tyler’s clip is all arty black and white, and features a bunch of shots of pedals and guitar cords. It’s not the most original thing in the world, but hey, Aisha Tyler! Silversun Pickups!

In the interest of science, creativity, and the science of creativity, we're posting a film or TV still every week, and we're going to ask you to come up with a clever caption. Whoever's caption gets the most likes will win some kind of nonsense prize from The A.V. Club office, most likely a Simpsons toy of some sort. The winner of the last contest, featuring a still from The Great Gatsby, was Arthur Edens And His Bread, who offered the inside-jokey "What?! Rabin, Tasha, Koski, AND Noel?!" Well played, Arthur.

Make sure you post your caption as a new comment, not as a reply, so we can sort out the winner. And though we know you'll be tempted to go for the easy, gross joke, remember that our commenting policy isn't out the window here. This week’s still comes from Star Trek Into Darkness. Here's one to get you started:

"Is it one-way glass? I can't tell. Should we knock?"

It seems like a pretty foregone conclusion that, barring any impending Kanye West bangers, 2013’s summer jam will be Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” With that honor comes both great responsibility and a great number of YouTube parodies of or tributes to the song.

Today’s most popular “Get Lucky” clip, for example, comes from a YouTube user who set the song to an edit of the funkiest Soul Train dancers. It absolutely works, and it makes a pretty convincing case for the resurgence of both hot pants for women and polyester jumpsuits for men.