Un chien andalou (English: An Andalusian Dog) is a sixteen-minute surrealist film made in France in 1929 by writer/directors Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. It is one of the best-known surrealist films of the French avant-garde film movement of the 1920s. It stars Simone Mareuil and Pierre Batcheff as the unnamed protagonists.

i understand why you want the method to be secret, but it's kind of frustrating at the same time. for one thing, it's hard to help if we don't know what's happening behind the scenes.

"popular" is the wrong word for it, "hot" or "active" is closer. you seem to be giving points for triggering downvotes and gaining comments. so far, there have been a lot of controversial videos (9-11 conspiracy, osama on family guy, the masturbating dog, even the avant-garde metronome music) higher up in the hot-rankings than simple "upvotes-per-hour" math would suggest.

i hope the new focus on rewarding "other metrics" (besides upvotes) doesn't end up encouraging flamewars, comment spam, and shock-value videos. the site has become much friendlier to Obscure and Artsy content over the last few months, and i hope that doesn't get squashed under a pile of masturbating dogs.

probably lots of people here are cheering for more dogs.

anyway, your target seems to be casual viewers, and the goal is to consistently give them more high-impact content up front. for people who click past basically every video posted to this site, it's more efficient to go chronologically, since that way you don't miss anything and you never see the same thing twice.

as a pretend casual user, i think the /hot pages are turning over at a decent rate, but not too fast. they're easy to use, and i probably don't care why videos are in any particular order. finding the front page full of "hot" content is going to hold my attention better than a bunch of random weird things that i probably don't care about.

as a serious VS user, the main benefit would be having a /hot queue where older videos with 8 or 9 votes don't get lost. right now, the 72-hour queue has nothing older than 24 hours in its first 6 pages (lamb video for "gorecki" has 9 votes in 24 hours and is on page 7), so that's not quite happening yet. suggest you'll have to re-weight the queue regarding recent activity to adjust for that.

meanwhile, the family guy "dumpster baby" song is still on the front page of the hot queue after 9 hours with only 4 votes, just because it's offensive enough to have earned two downvotes (so it's 6 up, 2 down). maybe if it gets another downvote or two it'll hit the top?

My all time favorite VU song.

The Velvet Underground (sometimes abbreviated as The Velvets or VU) was an American based rock band first active from 1965 to 1973. Its best-known alumni are Lou Reed and John Cale.

Although never commercially successful during their time, The Velvet Underground remains an influential rock band; a famous remark, often attributed to Brian Eno, is that while only a few thousand people bought a Velvet Underground record upon their initial release, almost every single one of them was inspired to start a band.

The Velvet Underground was one of the first rock music groups to incorporate avant-garde influences. The group's often raw, sometimes difficult sound influenced many later punk, noise rock, and alternative music performers, and singer Lou Reed's lyrics brought new levels of social realism and sleaze to rock. Critics Scott Isler and Ira Robbins argue that "The Velvet Underground marked a turning point in rock history. After the release of The Velvet Underground and Nico, knowing the power of which it was capable, the music could never be as innocent, as unselfconscious as before."

Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girlchild in the dark
Clubs and bells, your servant, dont forsake him
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

Downy sins of streetlight fancies
Chase the costumes she shall wear
Ermine furs adorn the imperious
Severin, severin awaits you there

I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears

Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather
Shiny leather in the dark
Tongue of thongs, the belt that does await you
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

Severin, severin, speak so slightly
Severin, down on your bended knee
Taste the whip, in love not given lightly
Taste the whip, now plead for me

I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears

Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girlchild in the dark
Severin, your servant comes in bells, please dont forsake him
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Underground

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Pretty avante garde for a car commercial, gets my vote. Designed for viral distribution rather than TV? It's longer than a normal TV spot.

Tags changed from "chein, buenel, dali, noir, avant" to "chien, bunuel, dali, noir, avant" by gold star member rickegee.

massively influential group.

there were other avant-garde artists working in electronic music before and parallel to kraftwerk, but kraftwerk figured out how to make music that was very new butimmediately likeable (pop hooks certainly helped), and of course present it in an interesting way.

The local New Orleans Academy of Fine Art maintains the following philosophy: if you can master the human figure, you can paint anything you want. At the other end of the spectrum, the avant-garde has embraced porn in art. ARTNEWS has already had two issues devoted to the subject in the last three years.

As Attorney General, John Ashcroft found it necessary to hide Liberty’s (the statue) exposed boob behind a blue curtain when he addressed the press. An art teacher in Texas lost her job because a kid saw a nude statue and complained.

I did sit through a documentary about the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) rating system, “ This Film Has Not Been Rated Yet.” It did point out that in the US we’re harsher on sex in films than violence. In Europe it is the opposite. There were interviews with directors who had to fight NC-17 ratings. Non-missionary, pubic hair and weird sex seemed to put a film in NC-17 territory. Sometimes the amount of seconds made a difference.

And now thanks to John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) there is “Shortbus.” It’s an art film with real sex scenes. Three guys do for the “The Star Bangle Banner” what “American Pie” did for apple pie. There are several plotlines involving relationships and the main characters go to a club called Shortbus.

Anyway, I’m torn on the whole issue. I’m tired of folks making such a big deal of nudity. But at the same time I don’t need to see every bodily function up close and personal. I’ll vote as needed.

I think it's funny b/c it's just someone's home movie... but it could totally be from some avant garde film.

butoh is an avant garde performance art,created in 1960s by tatsumi hijikata and kazuo ohno.

"This legendary artistic short comedy film borders on the hilarious and the avant-garde. A must-see for any comedy fan (or snob) who might have had film school ambitions. It is most certainly not for everyone, but it is definitely hard to forget. Pay close attention to the final words spoken in the film."