We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today: Amanda Seyfried is a terrific sport, Sam Mendes is overshadowed by a brief glimpse of James Bond, and Portlandia gets a big plug from an NBA big man.
Conan O'Brien gave Amanda Seyfried a stuffed raccoon last night because she's a taxidermy enthusiast. Ordinarily, the introduction of a hypothetically funny prop leads to a 45 second lull where everyone involved is forced to admire the ingenuity of the prop department, but it turns out Seyfried really is a taxidermy enthusiast, and was thrilled to receive such a grotesque gift. (She already has a stuffed horse named Antoine that she bought in England.) This is probably why Amanda Seyfried is never going to break through, which is to say, why she'll never be paid $12 million to star in terrible movies like This Means War. But she seems like someone who can live with that, which is a good quality, particularly in a talk show guest. [Team Coco]
The life of Adrian Fenty, the former mayor of Washington, D.C., has inspired a 12-part "animated biography" that reaches levels of silliness seldom seen outside of animated viral videos from Taiwan. It's pretty strange. What's stranger is that the animation is credited Sinclair Skinner. Fenty and Skinner were fraternity brothers in college, and the mayor was investigated for steering a city building contract to Skinner's company. In other words, He's not known for making these kind of things, and it shows. So there are a lot of questions here, including why The Root DC, a vertical of The Washington Post, inserted it without comment in a video loop featuring Jay Carney press conference and other bits unremarkable, unanimated news footage. To be fair, this could all be addressed in one of the 11 upcoming episodes. They have time. [The Washington Post]
Here's a look at Sam Mendes directing the new James Bond film, which is still called Skyfall. Ordinarily, footage of directors directing doesn't set our hearts racing. Mendes is no exception, but he has something his colleagues don't: James Bond (or Daniel Craig, if you prefer) hanging around, taking instruction, or waiting for the lighting to be right. It's like every other in-production Web series: but with James Bond! [JamesBond007 via Paste]
If being named to the All-NBA team in his fourth season didn't endear Portland Trail Blazers center LaMarcus Aldridge to the citizens of the Rose City, his appearance in a new promo for Portlandia should do the trick. Portlanders adore the Trail Blazers almost as much as they enjoy good-natured jokes about how liberal and outdoorsy they are. [NBCSports]