In honor of this online blackout, I’ve decided to evaluate the best blackouts in film. I’d better get to it before Wikipedia goes dark.

Summer of Sam

This Spike Lee joint takes place in the Bronx during the summer of 1977. Residents live in fear of the Son of Sam killer and a curfew has been put into effect. As tensions in the Bronx escalate, so does the temperature, resulting a heatwave that knocks out the power. This causes things to reach a fever pitch as suspects are subjected to mob justice.

Blackoutiness: 4 out of 5

The Trigger Effect

In this early directing effort, screenwriter David Koepp proved that he loooooves blackouts. The story of civilization’s quick breakdown in the face of no electricity is seen through the eyes of Kyle MacLachan as a husband and father struggling to get his family to safety amidst a world of gun-toting paranoids.

Also, it’s worthwhile for Elisabeth Shue topless in mom jeans.

Blackoutiness: 5 out of 5

I can’t help but feel like I’m walking into a trap here. By all accounts this seems like an honest, straightforward news clip and given the light research I’ve done (asking a guy), this is in fact real. But it just seems so tailor made for Internet ridicule. The earnest cluelessness of the anchors. The empty threats from the Attorney General’s office. The chick up on the roof. It screams put-on but shows no wink, wink. To paraphrase Terri Hatcher, “It’s real. And it’s spectacular.”

Your move, Internet.

Check out out our latest gallery where we rank the Victoria Secret models on their acting, for some reason…

There are actually a few gems out there that might keep your mouse away from the dislike button. Are are my 6 choices for web series that are worth watching.

The Guild

The Guild is hands down the best web series out there.  Set around the real life members in a World of Warcraft guild, Codex (Felicia Day) decides she and her guild members should all meet in person and, naturally, hilarity ensues.   The great thing is you don’t have be into World of Warcraft to enjoy it (though it is marketed towards Gamers).  It’s not so much about the game as it is the relationships that develop from them meeting each other, and having Geek Goddess Felicia Day as the star doesn’t hurt either.  Now in their fifth season, it should only take you a few hours to completely catch up.

RCVR

If you like the X Files (which I know you all do), then RCVR is the web series for you.  Set in the 1970s, we follow Weber (Daniel Bonjour), a government agent tracking down a crashed Air Force jet in Rural Arkansas.  Naturally, the closer he gets to the answers, the stranger things become. Produced by Machinima, RCVR has some of the best web series production quality I’ve seen so far.  If you’re into conspiracies, UFOs, and little green men, RCVR is well worth it.

Jackass 3D, a film the Academy should be deeply ashamed for snubbing this year for Best Picture, returns on April 1st with an 85-minute half-sequel released right to the internet. Called Jackass 3.5, the film is a collection of unused bits featuring Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Bam Margera and should be Oscar-contender Wee Man. I’ve never seen Javier Bardem kick himself in the head or wear an Oompa Loompa costume. Not even once.

The movie will be available via the Jackass Facebook Page and Joost, the streaming media site I knew existed but never cared to use until now.

This is an awesome idea. Yeah, it’d be cool to see more 3D donkey nut punches, but $25 is still $25. My only worry is that the film is scheduled to release April Fools Day, so hopefully playing the movie doesn’t result in getting some kind of hilarious computer virus that forces your desktop pattern to be an animation of Steve-O vomiting. Actually, for a free Jackass movie, I’ll take that trade. (/Film)

"No! Not the Invisi-jizz!!"

Quiet down, nerds. Your leader is speaking. Patton Oswalt wrote an op-ed in WiReD that laments the death of the nerd movement, whose abused corpse now lays ‘neath the feet and bloodied fists of Internet culture. Here’s a segment of his missive:

Fast-forward to now: Boba Fett’s helmet emblazoned on sleeveless T-shirts worn by gym douches hefting dumbbells. The Glee kids performing the songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And Toad the Wet Sprocket, a band that took its name from a Monty Python riff, joining the permanent soundtrack of a night out at Bennigan’s. Our below-the-topsoil passions have been rudely dug up and displayed in the noonday sun. The Lord of the Rings used to be ours and only ours simply because of the sheer goddamn thickness of the books. Twenty years later, the entire cast and crew would be trooping onstage at the Oscars to collect their statuettes, and replicas of the One Ring would be sold as bling.

The topsoil has been scraped away, forever, in 2010. In fact, it’s been dug up, thrown into the air, and allowed to rain down and coat everyone in a thin gray-brown mist called the Internet. Everyone considers themselves otaku about something—whether it’s the mythology of Lost or the minor intrigues of Top Chef. American Idol inspires—if not in depth, at least in length and passion—the same number of conversations as does The Wire. There are no more hidden thought-palaces—they’re easily accessed websites, or Facebook pages with thousands of fans. And I’m not going to bore you with the step-by-step specifics of how it happened. In the timeline of the upheaval, part of the graph should be interrupted by the words the Internet. And now here we are.

The problem with the Internet, however, is that it lets anyone become otaku about anything instantly. In the ’80s, you couldn’t get up to speed on an entire genre in a weekend. You had to wait, month to month, for the issues of Watchmen to come out. We couldn’t BitTorrent the latest John Woo film or digitally download an entire decade’s worth of grunge or hip hop. Hell, there were a few weeks during the spring of 1991 when we couldn’t tell whether Nirvana or Tad would be the next band to break big. Imagine the terror!

Now, with everyone more or less otaku and everything immediately awesome (or, if not, just as immediately rebooted or recut as a hilarious YouTube or Funny or Die spoof), the old inner longing for more or better that made our present pop culture so amazing is dwindling. The Onion’s A.V. Club—essential and transcendent in so many ways—has a weekly feature called Gateways to Geekery, in which an entire artistic subculture—say, anime, H. P. Lovecraft, or the Marx Brothers—is mapped out so you can become otaku on it but avoid its more tedious aspects.

Well put. Just ignore the hypocrisy he displayed with that crappy Internet parody he did of The Room.

^{No shoes on the couch please.}

Here’s a sexier, red bandier look at George Gallo’s Middle Men. I’m guessing this trailer exists for anyone skeptical that the movie would feature F-bombs and boobies. Upon reviewing this footage, I can say it most certainly does. As well as some housewives with bigger things on their minds than light dusting. And perhaps hottest of all, Kevin… Pollak… FAPPING. Now that I’ve piqued your desire to a fever pitch, I won’t waste anymore of your time with words.

ON TO THE SWEET, SWEET IMAGES AFTER THE JUMP…