Here is an awesome ad for the Abadia Rolled Paper Company that is currently on display at MoMa in New York. It was made in 1923-1924 by artist/graphic designer Milhaly Biro. The fact that he apparently worked on this over the course of two years explains in part why it is so much better looking than modern ads.
If I remember I'm going to try and post more old school illustrated advertising here in the coming weeks, such as Norman Rockwell's ads for Typewriters and Plymouth automobiles.
I feel like having to take the time to hand paint an ad inherently caused it to be better because if someone is going to spend that many hours creating an image they have a greater incentive to make something that doesn't suck. If you are photo-shopping a movie poster, and you spend ten seconds on it (for example see every movie poster that I've ever reviewed on this site), and it sucks, you don't really care. You got paid to do it, and you will spend far less time looking at it than I will have to when it gets put up on every subway platform in New York. But if you're going to spend weeks creating a piece of art you have a lot more invested in it and want to make both the concept and execution of it worthwhile.
The Insane Clown Posse can add these Mannequins to their list of Miracles that science can't explain. I mean, what's freakier than a "yellow ass, long neck giraffe"if not two dapperly dressed mannequins with long ass necks.
To be briefly actually analytical, as someone who tends not to notice clothing store window displays, this display does a good job of grabbing the passerby's attention.
The Fiat virus, much akin to the "face hugger" in Alien, having attached itself to the host billboard, is now slowly taking over the host billboard.
Much like that mosquito that lays its larva inside of a living spider, the Mexico billboard will soon be taken over by Fiat and eaten by its tiny Fiat children.
There is this awesome billboard just north of Madison Square Garden on 8th avenue that is still hand painted.
It's cold in New York today so, so I guess the billboard painters got started but all their brushes froze solid inside of their paint buckets so they abandoned the project and got back to Serwin-Williams to defrost their paintcicles.
The result is the ad you see here that is 90 percent for vacationing in Mexico, but with a Fiat logo.
Or maybe between the drug cartel violence in Mexico and Fiat's notorious tendency for their cars to break down and/or catch fire, this ad is just an ad for items you could purchase that would result in your likely grizzly death.
Here is the intricate Yuletide display that I put on my door at my apartment, so no, this isn't really an ad, and yes it is a me related entry which i promised not to do when i started this whole blog thing.
For the sake of justifying this entry, I guess this could be seen as an ad directed at the rest of my building, advertising my laziness and ineptitude in matters of decorating and home decor.
So I guess this is a good a time as any to wish anyone reading this a Merry Xmas and Hannakuh and Kwanzaa and, just to get a jump on things, Arbor Day too.
Here is a promotional video the Belfast Giants hockey team did where they lip sync to the Mariah Carey song, "All I Want for Christmas is You", which might possibly just be called "All I Want for Christmas," but I'm not searching for it on google out of fear it might cause me to have to listen to more Mariah Carey .
In fact this ad might be the only circumstance I can think of where I would actually willingly listen to Ms. Carey.
I think stuff like this is always a good way to build up a fan base and get people interested in going to a hockey game who wouldn't normally think about it. So cheers to the clever folks at the Belfast Giants, the sight of a bunch of tough hockey players dancing and carrying on is awesome. Maybe next month they can get the word out about their games by dancing to Lady GaGa.
Last year when the virgin mega store in times square closed, in was replaced during the christmas season by a store that had nothing by clean restrooms stocked with charmin toliet paper. I regretably never got a chance to use these facilities, but thought it was a pretty genius promotion.
This holiday season we are still in a recession, with several large store fronts in times square out of bussiness. But your wallets loss is your butt's gain, because charmin took over another vacant store and made the whole thin into toliets.
I a plan on partaking in their deluxe toliet experience and writing up what the store is like at some point this week.
Here are two ads for manhattan mini storage. They are pretty funny. That's the extent of my thoughts on them. I held off posting this for two weeks in hopes that I would think of something to say about them. But, alas it looks like this is all you are getting.
Footnotes:
Nah, I couldn't even think of any random trivia about tea or anything to suppliment this entry with.
This ad is another one that I'm putting up more for the work of the actor than for the genius of the ad copy. But since the actor is Kevin Bacon, and the character he plays in this is the world's biggest Kevin Bacon fan, the ad copy could have just consisted of a cocktail napkin with the words "Kevin bacon talks" scribbed on it and Mr. Bacon still would have found a way to make it awesome.* Actually, watching the commercial again, I think that actually may have been all the guidance they gave Mr. Bacon. Unrelatedly, if you haven't seen Kevin Bacon's film The Woodsman, for my money its tied with In the Bedroom for best drama film of the aughts.
Footnotes
*For the record, and I know this was like a decade ago and no one cares, but piss off its my site, I thought out of the actors in Mystic River, Kevin Bacon most deserved an Oscar. Tim Robbins did a great job but had a really showy role to work with (though Robbins is an awesome actor). I really can't explain how Sean Penn won for Mystic River even though he played the exact same damn role he has for the last 15 years. If they really wanted to give Penn an Oscar that year, they should have given him a retroactive one for his work in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
I like to think of the title of this piece of art (seen here at the newark airport), as being titled:
" pictures of thing you could be doing that are more fun than waiting in line for an hour for security.
According to this handy diagram they include:
-playing with fireworks!
-being exposed to radioactive material and turning into the hulk!
-huffing paint thinner!
-huffing semi-gloss house paint
-actually painting your house ( in a semi-glossy way)
-Using one of those horseshoe magnets that no one who is not name Wiley Coyote has ever actually used!
-driving a Hyundai accent continuously for 60 months with this convenient "60 month battery" which is inexplicably labeled as such! Right here on the sign!
-killing weeds!
-filling your zippo with brand new fluid!
-possessing pastel colored girlie shooter drinks! (The vials on the left. Why else are they pink and yellow?)
-cleaning your tub and/or sink with bleach!
-cleaning your sink and or tube with "drain away" which is the only fake product in this pictogram that has a slogan. How much time and how much money did The Department of Transportation spend on this sign that the graphic designer had time to label both the voltage and usage on the battery and come up with a slogan for "Drain away"?
Maybe all this detail was actually in response to direct input from the Department of Transportation.
Maybe they rejected the first crack at this diagram because no one would understand what Drain Away was without the slogan "unclogs stubborn drains", or what type of gas burners were prohibited without the word "camp stove" written in huge goddamned letters on the side.
I've always wanted to carry a bunsen burner in with me and point out that the sign clearly allows it since it is meant for a lab and not a camp site.
Even before GM went bankrupt, I was never a big fan of any of their brands. Except for Pontiac, so I was none too happy when they kept the boring and pedestrian Buick brand but killed off the most badass of American auto brands.
But This new GM ad is phenomenal.
Going into it I didn't know what it was an ad for, and between the clips of Animal House and Popeye and Truman's reelection, I was pretty sold regardless of what product it was for.
The fact that they actually thank the American public for helping them get back on top is a genius P.R. decision.
In conclusion: GM! Stop playing with my emotions. It was so much easier when you were the bad guy. Making boring cars and killing off storied brands like Pontiac and Oldsmobile.
Now when I drive by a GM dealer all I'm gonna be able to think of is John Belushi and eating spinach.
I read in Advertising age recently that this Johnie Walker Scotch ad is widely regarded as "The Best Ad of 2010 which does not star Isaiah Mustafa."
I hadn't seen it before because its a 6 minute long short film which I assume you would watch if you went to Johnny Walker's website. And despite enjoying a wide array of hooch, I don't really end up on websites for alcoholic beverages unless I go there to find material for this site (see the Miller High Life redesign post).
This ad/shortfilm/35 second bagpipe concert stars Robert Carlyle, who is still most famous for his awesome turn as total asshat and psychopath Franco Begbie in Trainspotting (Despite his having appeared in 37 projects and counting since then).
I think Carlyle is a really underrated actor, I've never seen him in a film and not thought he was awesome in it, even if the movie around him wasn't good.* He does a great job in this ad, but I'm only so interested in this history of this product, I think the ad appeals more to people who already enjoy Johnnie Walker than to someone like me who has never tried it.
I first started trying to write this post back in September but kept getting just past the two minute mark of the ad and remembering this ad is 1/3 the length of an episode of Family Guy and its for a brand of Scotch I've never tried because I consider it overpriced, and already have my favorite brand of Scotch.
Though now that I see the productions values on this ad I see why Johnnie Walker costs way more than I think it is worth. Think about how much money per bottle must go into Walker's advertising, especially when you consider they somehow found six minutes in a row in Scotland during which it was not raining, which means they must have had the whole crew for this ad camped out in the highlands for the better part of a year, trying to do this one long take and being constantly interrupted halfway through by rain, or snow, or lightening, or sheep falling from the sky.
Compare this to Glenfiddich's entire ad budget of the year 2010, which consists solely of 2 items:
1. Print labels with the word "Glenfiddich" on them, adhere to bottle so customer knows which bottle to buy.
2. Taste amazing so customers choose to buy bottle.
I'm biased toward Glenfiddich because the awesome Korean War vet who lives next door to my parents drinks Glenfiddich, and only Glenfiddich, and he is the coolest man ever.
So I guess you can add a third item to that list:
3. Convince Bill Tucker to drink Glenfiddich. Have him be awesome and spend most of the 1950's jumping out of airplanes. Repeat.
You may be thinking to yourself right now, "He drinks Glenfiddich because a paratrooper he knows does? That's not a very good reason."
To which I respond: You clearly have not met Bill Tucker.
Footnote(s)
*I guess he is sort of the Scottish Chirstopher Walken in that respect. Though I think Chris Walken himself is somehow the Scottish equivalent of Christopher Walken, though mostly only in the movie "Scotland, PA" where he plays MacDuff as William Shakespeare originally intended him.
I mostly added this footnote so I could state for the record an idea i've had for a while (with additional material provided by C. Kevin Mauer):
There needs to be a buddy cop movie starring Christopher Walken and Williem Defoe. And in this film Christopher Walken needs to do a Williem Defoe impression the entire film, and Williem Defoe needs to do a Walken impression the entire film.** I don't know what the crime they would be solving would be and I don't really care, you could remake Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! for all I care, and as long as it has those two guys doing impressions of eachother while solving a crime and shooting stuff it would be the best movie ever.
**This screen story copyright 2010 Strictly Commercials
Based on the first three episodes, Conan's new show does a pretty good job of bringing back the weird wonderful and sometimes excessively stupid humor that made me love conan so much back in middle school and high school, as opposed to the more stayed safe humor he evolved into into in late 2000s that made me switch to watching Crab Ferguson*.
I saw the Conan using the masturbating bear in one of the first bits in the first episode as demonstrating to their audience they ain't be playing it safe this time. Especially since they were afraid to use the bear** until his final weeks of the tonight show.
I am glad conan is back on the air, but I will miss covering his awesome ads here, if only because it gives me am excuse to post awesome clips from the late 1990s.
(Some of which I will post below later. I promise. I mean unless I forget to.)
Footnotes:
*as much as i love conan amd grew up watching him, i have to say i think Craig is easily the best late nigh host i have seen and his show just keeps getting funnier.
**or banned from using the bear by nbc. I never could find out if conan was told by nbc to make his show less weird.
These commercials are okay but not great, but the concept and script is made oh so much better due to them starring Dean Winters. Dean, who Liz's half wit Irish-American boyfriend on 30 rock, was always my favorite reoccurring character on that show.
As a half wit Irish-American, I always liked the character. And Winters portrayal of him made him as endearing and earnest as he was obnoxious.*
Beyond Winters seeming like a supercool guy the thing that inspired me to cover this beyond the 30 rock connection was that it is in all sincerity pretty amazing he is alive to do these ads.
I'm the last person who should try and type anything sincere, but let me just point you toward this New York post Article on Winters and say that I'm very glad he recovered in order to play Mr. Mayhem.
As I said, the ads are good but not great, I'm just posting it to support a dude who played an Irish-American hockey fan on T.V. There are several in the series, but AllState fortunately made one of them that uses clips from all of them so you can just watch this and get the gist: (sort of a trailer for a series of commercials if you will. I did not realize one could have a preview for commercials until just now.)
Footnote(s)
*Actually the character would probably be my favorite anyway just because one of the plot points is that he is die hard hockey fan.And a fan of a shitty team to boot. I can't find the clip of my scene with winters on the show so I will paraphrase:
Liz: I was so mad I was ready to storm in here and murder you!
Dean Winters: I wish you had. I wish I was dead. The Islanders lost tonight.
Liz: But doesn't that, you know, happen a lot?
I haven't been following any of the Illinois Mid Term Election races despite having a bunch of relatives near Chicago, so I have no idea about the actual politics of some guy named Quinn who is running for Governor in land of Lincoln. (which is also the land of Rod Blagojevich, but I'm sure the State Government would prefer we focus on Lincoln.)
But politics is about perception not reality, and whoever did this ad for Quinn make the Quinn campaign out to be the coolest cats in town.
A lot of people say they are disheartened because political TV ads these days are way too negative. I say that's poppy cock, attack ads are only annoying if that are badly done, the probably is that all political ads normally seem to be written with six year olds as the target audience. Attack ads can be awesome if done well, as this is this ad proves it.
Oh and if you are reading this on November 2nd be sure to vote. If all the candidates in your district suck, just write in Woodrow Wilson. CBS cares.
(Pictured from left to right: Thomas Lennon, Awesome short-shorts, Nick Swardson, Awesome green belly shirt, Banana, Sexy green stripey socks.)
I remember loving Nick Swardson's Comedy Central special back in High School. He has done some supporting roles and writing for Adam Sandler productions over the years, but I was excited to find out via subway ads that he has a show this season on Comedy Central. I have no idea how good the show will be, but the trailer for it is pretty awesome:
Maybe its just because I like the orginal Dos Equis commercials so much, but this parody, and the Steve Nash parody I had on here a few months back are both equally awesome. I'm also glad to see that Mr. Swardson finally got to build his own gay robot*. I remember a short skit he did on an album years ago** about a Gay Robot, and I'm sure when you write a two minute skit about a robot who is gay, you never expect that 7 years later Comedy Central will let you actually build your own damn gay robot.
I think going from being an unknown comedian writing jokes about gay robots to actually being able to build a finely crafted Gay Robot on Viacom's dime is the best possible realization of the american dream.
Footnote(s)
*Quick disclaimer for the sake of Political Correctness: I understand why making jokes about someone's sexuality is still a taboo topic (see the recent controversy over Vince Vaughn's character using the word gay in a movie trailer as an example.) So I figured I should take a second to point out that the humor of Nick's Gay Robot, at least in the original sketch, was not that it was bad that the robot was gay, but that it was funny because the Robot was really horny because he was the only Gay Robot ever built.
**According to Wikipedia*** this originated on a sketch Nick wrote and preformed on an Adam Sandler CD. Also apparently because of this there is somehow a wiki article simply titled "Gay Robot." I'm glad we live in a world that has an online encyclopedia with an entry title "Gay Robot"
***Which has never been wrong ever as this video evidence shows:
Really. Trying going to it. Conan said it on air as an ad lib and NBC bought it to make sure they weren't retroactively advertising something obscene.
So Conan may have been fired and NBC took down all videos ever of him, but he will live on anytime anyone accesses the NBC main site by typing in Hornymanatee.com
Conan. I salute you.
Also this week in Conan advertising news: Team Coco had two really clever forms of non-traditional promotion this week that I thought I should address:
1. A god damned actual blimp that is flying around the country. with a website you can track it on here. (My favorite part of the site, is that at night when the blimp is docked at the airport the status updates to "The Blimp is sleeping." This makes me visualize a bunch of little blimps covered in blankets snoring side by side like the baby elephants in dumbo.
2. A live feed of the production offices for 24 hours straight which included puppets announcing the guest lineup for Conan's first week of shows, along with a contest to vote for who his first guest should be (below)
The 24 hour live feed's final minutes were what appears to be footage from the hotel lobby at 2:00 Am during a Furries convention:
(I didn't post the actual video because it's minutes of everyone dancing while the guy dressed as a taco yells "Go Taco!" which gets old exactly as quickly as you would imagine.)
You can read the official hour by hour recap here.
Speaking of Advertising and Conan, I have been trying to find one of my favorite ever fake ads. Its an old Conan from back when the used to get preempted by the NBA on NBC and end up being on at 3am or some such nonsense.
Since they tape the same day and knew when this was going to happen, they started a segment called, "No one's watching," which made fun of the fact that they could do anything they wanted. These included appearances by the always controversial masturbating bear and jokes about how so few people where watching the show they couldn't even get anyone to buy advertising timeslots.
Below is one of the fake ads that Conan said was from the biggest sponser they could get for that evening. Unfortunately whoever loaded it chopped off the punchline so i will have to describe it to you after the video.
After the guy falls down the title card for the name and address of the store comes up and is read by the announcer. It read as follows:
Shoes!
Down by the street next to the big building.
But what really sells the gag is the voice of the Conan staffers they had read it. It uses the same two unlike voices reading a small amount of text gag employed by Conan's Secrets* videos. The guy who says "Down by the street next to the big building" mumbles it to the point of incoherence. Conan, It will be good when you are back. Glad I have Craig and Colbert and Stewart to keep me warm at night till then.**
For a while now, I've been meaning to do a post on the worst of MTA subway station ads (Dr. Z, the weird ad for foot surgery, etc) but haven't figured out a way to take pictures in a subway car without looking like a stalker.
I have also been wanting to do posts on clever vandalism of subway station ads, but hadn't seen any clever ones since I decided to take pictures of them. While I normally find graffitti juvinille and destructive, switching the heads of the lead actors on a Katherine Heigl billboard is more of a public service than vandalism.*
I will still try to take pictures of those when I see ones worth noting. But since it looks like High School being back in session has stemmed off the clever subway vandalism for now, Here is an awesome rundown of 40 billboards improved through graffiti on Buzzfeed .
Some of them are woefully stupid, but enough are really funny that I would recommend looking at all 40.
My four favorites were these three below and the one at the top of this page (That guy just looks so happy to have found sluts at the Santa Fe Station Casino).
Footnote(s)
*The Heigl She-Beast is now officially the "you guessed it, Frank Stallone" style go to punchline on this blog. But to be fair, my friend Ben** mentioned he saw that done with the heads on that terrible poster for The Killers starring the Heigrendal which I complained about in the spring.
**(Oh and Ben I put up the Slayer one with you in mind.)
I haven't seen the Social Network, yet despite the rave reviews from every human being ever. Partly because I have no interest in the story, and partly because the trailer was overwrought and melodramatic and just made it look like it was gonna be two hours of hipsters bitching at each other.*
The fact that they trailer was so bleeding from the nose with unearned gravitas makes this parody video by the comedy group "Prussian Sunsets" titled, "The Video Site", all the more funny and awesome: (Thanks to Kerry for showing me this video.)
Footnote(s)
*Actually I from all accounts it was accurate in the hipsters bitching at eachother aspect, my friends who have seen it are just trying to convince me it is somehow interesting to watch this happen.
I really truly make an honest effort not to get all condescending when I think about or discuss reality T.V.. I try to look at programs like "Rock of Love" through the same lens I think about WWE wrestling through. Its something I'm not into, but I think its silly to try and judge someone's escapism. If something exists purely for entertainment that how is watching the Situation on "Dancing with the Stars" any more worthy of judgment that me watching just the opening The Living Daylights for the third time in a row.
That said, the ads for HGTV's "Property Virgins" are idiotic, and if this show is half as badly written as these ads, I severely judge everyone who watches it.
Actually. It wouldn't be possible for this show to be anywhere near as bad as these ads. The problem with these ads, in addition to the obviously problem of them being brain meltingly idiotic, is that they are so obviously scripted and the punchline is o telegraphed that they act as some kind of anti-advertising, causing everyone who sees them to not only not want to watch this show, but to give them a strong desire to avoid Home & Garden Television as a whole, just to prevent themselves from possibly having the misfortune of seeing one of these ads during a commercial break on the channel.
Really dumb obvious dirty jokes can be funny, and some of my favorite movies prove that they can be get even funnier was stretched out for way to long. The problem with this ad, is that there is no frame of reference for the viewer. Its and ad for the Home & Garden Channel, so we know the couples talking to the camera aren't talking about sex. And the script for what they are saying is only witty in terms of it being phrases which could vaguely describe both sex and buying a house.
Since we know they are not talking about sex, and the dialog itself is boring and not at all compelling, all the viewer can be expected to do is to wait, bored, until the big reveal 25 seconds into the ad.
To determine which ad is best in the Super Bowl, USA Today does a yearly poll where they use devices to measure the second by second reaction to an ad by the subjects of the test.* I think picturing a viewers second by second response is a great way to explain way this ad is terrible. The viewer might click positive once on this ad, early on when it becomes clear the couples are all saying things that sound dirty but must not be.
Not only is this ad stupid but its not even vaguely original. I'm sure there are numerous other ads it is ripping off, not to mention the countless jokes enjoyed by middle schoolers it outright plagiarizes from, but what first jumped out at me was that is was almost exactly the same format and set up as a 1998 overstock.com ad.
I was gonna post that ad here, but I can't find it. Which is okay, since my whole point was going to be that it is just as bad as this HGTV ad, and also pretty much the same ad. The ad consisted of cuts between different women bed, all with their romantic partner screaming and raving and carrying on about how "its getting smaller!" "I've never seen it go this low before" and then the big reveal was that it wasn't all footage of women yelling about their man's tiny dick, but actually women in bet looking a computer under the covers where they were excited about the contantly lowering prices at overstock.com. I was 13 when this ad came out and even at that age thought it was stupid and juvinille. So who was this ad aimed at? People younger than I was wouldn't have been buying shit off the internet and people older than me who found something that dumb funny would be to dumb to understand who to purchase something off the internet in 1998. (To which you might reply: But danny every idiot uses the internet. But bear in mind this was back in 1998 when you would still regularly Television News reports speaking with hushed tones about a recent crime that was carried out using the internet, and how the internet was going to murder your childern.**)
Then there was some feeble joke about the O in Overstock.com being a "Big O." Which or course begs the question: Does anyone outside of a TV sitcom say Big O to describe an orgasm. To whom are you describing your intimate moments to that you are simultaneously worried will be afraid of your potty mouth if you say the word "Orgasm."
As someone who loves dick jokes and dumb humor, it pained me to see them treated so poorly. To make up for making you have to think about these two dumber-than-a-bag-of-hammers commercials. I will end this post with something that is stupid and sophomoric which goes on way to long also funny as hell. By which of course I mean. I clip from Jackass. I was trying to find the Urban Kayaking clip, but I couldn't find in an embeddable video, but instead I have a clip that even better demonstrates dumb jokes down awesomely. I leave you with, the Robot mime fight from Eurotrip.***
Footnote(s):
*This system is obviously flawed because: 1, it uses way to small a sample size to reveal anything, and 2 the system used ends up giving higher scores mediocre 60 second ads over good 30 seconds ads, but I'll save that rant for January.
**Obviously these types of TV News reports still exist, but at this point they are only reported on by Glenn Beck and only believed by your Grandma's bridge club.
***Voted the finest film of 2004 by the National Society of Film Critics Who are Me.
So to preemptively answer your question: No, I will never get over the awesomeness of the Isaiah Mustafa Old Spice ads. All things related to those ads will be covered on this blog without question.
This, as you my have garnered from my subtle title to this post, is the best ad related to those Old Spice ads, and also the best ad I will ever cover on this blog. Its a promo for Seasame Street starring Grover as the Monster Your Man Could Smell like.
Grover was always my favorite muppet as a kid so this ad was pretty much written for me. (Thanks to John Nappi and Charlotte for sending this to me. You are both my heros.)
I love everything about this ad. I love that the sweater falls from the sky over grover's shoulders but just lands on his head. i love that Grover's bathroom has monogrammed towels. I love that the cow at the end of the ad says "Moo" in a human's voice instead of the sound a cow would make.
The only regret I have is that I will never get the opportunity to feature an ad as awesome as this again on this site. Since this ad marks the highpoint for advertising and creative output from humanity in general. 1000 years from now, future generations will have a calender where the eras of time are represented by B.G.O.S.A and A.G.O.S.A, to demarcate for humanity which events occurred before this Grover Old Spice Ad was gifted onto society by the folks at Childern's Television Workshop.
In conclusion:
(Above Photo also brought to my attention by Charlotte.via: here)
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I have been finding I enjoy a lot of big summer tent-pole movies more in trailer form than I enjoy them in actual movie form. Partly I'm sure this is because big action movies are on average getting lazier and worse. But this will happen to me even with movies I like. Where I see it and like it but liked it better as a two minute short film of explosions and catch chases. I guess the problem is that for big budget action movies, you often times are only seeing them for the cool set pieces, and maybe a few snappy lines of dialogue. Since a really well cut trailer can provide you with a perfect distillation of little bits of every action sequence, the rest of the movie kind of seems extraneous by comparison.
I realize this kinda goes against everything cinema as an art from stands for, but since most summer movie explode-athons contain very little artistic or cinematic in them anyway, I stand by my opinion.
Though its always a bad sign of I have the same opinion as a satirical segment from Stephen Colbert from the Daily Show in 2002.
Actually, after watching that again. I agree with most of those jokes as valid opinions.
Footnote(s)
I just wanted to use this space to thank comedy central for having every single second of the John Stewart and Colbert accessible online. I was trying to find a great clip of Ian McShane on Conan to use in my previous post, only to have what was supposed to be the video, instead be an error message from NBC's portion of Hulu stating, "This video is not longer available we suggest you enjoy these related clips instead." All four of the related clips, where, I kid you not clips from Leno's 2010 version of The Tonight Show. This selection was probably determined by a computer program, but I kinda think NBC is just trying to convince people that Conan never had a TV show. I assume if they could, NBC would send the T-1000 back in time to 1962 to kill Ruth Reardon before Conan is born.
If you haven't seen the movie Paranormal Activity, don't watch the trailer for the sequel since it begins with the ending of the first movie.
I have not seen the Blair Witch Project, so which obviously more or less created this "Captured footage" horror sub-genre, because the marketing for Blair at the time it came out made it look pretty boring. I had no incentive to see a 90 minutes of some 20something yearolds lost in the woods.
I was once lost in the fake woods of central park for 20 minutes at sunrise on July morning while i tried to find where the line was to wait for free tickets for Shakespeare in the Park. So I can attest from that experience that being lost in the woods is pretty damn boring. Its Just boils down to lot trees and birds chirping. I did however run into two 20something year old guys and asked them for directions. They were polite but awkward and as I left it dawned on me that they had clearly just exited from the deep foliage after most likely having sex there, so I felt bad for interrupting. Based on the trailers for Blaire Witch Project I pictured it as being exactly like that experience, except even more boring since no one had sex in the woods in Blair Witch.
But the promos for Paranormal Activity made it look awesome and minimalist and suspense filled. This new promo is just as effective. It gives you a tease of the new plot developments (lots of surveillance cameras, a baby) without giving too much away.
Total Film magazine says the baby is sometime only visible in the mirror but not in the crib, which is a cool creepy effect, which I didn't notice until they pointed it out. I just re-watched the trailer that is indeed true. Though it took me 2 tries to spot it, even knowing its there.
Compare the subtle marketing of both Paranormal Activities movies, with clever use of actual audience footage in the first one, and the feeling of hype created by the second, with the trailer for Case 39. What is Case 39 you may ask? as I did when a promo for it started to play on top of an already playing video I was watching at metacafe.com, which would have been a strange thing for a video site to do except for the fact the metacafe's main goal with their layout seems to be to convince you to leave their site immediately and watch stuff on vimeo or youtube.
Let me wrangle my prose back in and get to the point: Case 39, based on this ad is apparently a generically titled supernatural thriller from Rene "Does Everyone find my squinting as annoying as Danny does?" Zellweger. It also somehow has in it both Bradley Cooper and Ian McShane and the awesome british guy who was the lead in Deadwood, despite the fact that those actors are neither annoying or terrible, which based on the trailer, appear to be the sole qualities possessed by these movie, and which are known to be the qualities exuded by Ms. Zellweger in movie she has been in since 2002.
And if you are thinking, "Danny this movie may have a terrible trailer, but you are being pretty hard on Zellweger, she's not really that squinty and annoying right? that's just a family guy punchline?" To this I respond thusly:
Wow. That is much much scarier than anything in this trailer. Anyway, I'm sure Ms Zelleweger is a nice person, but no one's face does that without some one concentrating really hard on holding the muscles around their eyes as tight as possible. So Ms Zelleweger obviously has to put effort into doing this, so at some point she decided or was told the best look for her was to look like a chipmunk. Look this shot of her from Jerry McGuire. This is the same person.
Anyway enough about Zelweger's devolution into acting solely using her eye muscles. The 30 second trailer that is being used for her new film (Case 39, incase you forgot after my long detour), is pretty terrible in every possible way.
I would embed it hear so you could see for yourself but the website doesn't have anyway to embed the trailer. They do have a button to send the link url for the trailer to your twitter account as a tweet. If you clink that link it helpfully provides you will the text "Just watched the creepy trailer for Case 39" I would mock the marketing folks behind this for including this text since presumably the twitterer (twittian? twittite?) should be able to explain themselves why they thought this trailer was worth posting. However, given the actual context of this trailer, the marketing people presumably correctly assumed that anyone who actually thought this snooze inducing trailer was worth sharing with their twitter followers probably wouldn't have had the guile to put together a sentence as descriptive as that totally bland one the marketing guys came up with.
(I just reread the previous sentence in an effort to edit it to make it shorter and easier to understand, and I ended up making it longer and worse, so I'm gonna quit editing that sentence before it gets so long that it becomes it's own post.)
The 30 second trailer, (which you can yawn through here) Starts out with the comically written line, "People Die around her. Not by her own hand. THEY. JUST. DIE." This line both starts and ends with an ominous "bong" sound, which doesn't do its presumed job of adding intensity and making this line not sound absurd.
Rene Zellweger at least keeps her squinting to a minimum in the 30 seconds they chose to show of this movie. In the next scene of the trailer we see Zellweger talking to a priest played by Ian McShane, who based on the trailer is criminally underused. I know that's a bold statement to make, but if i was directing this movie and realized how bland and generic it was, I would have had McShane play both the starring role Zellweger currently occupies, as well as the role of the little girl Zellweger is protecting. Watch the trailer, then picture the version where Ian McShane plays everyrole. In this version you should imagine McShane doing the Zellweger role in his Al Swearengen grizzled American accent from Deadwood, and playing the little girl by doing his equally grizzled actual British Accent. Don't try to tell me you would not be 100 times more likely to see that movie I just described for you.
The remainder of the trailer degenerates into a series of jumps to clips of what one is sadly forced to assume are the scariest images in the movie. This includes CG bugs coming out of someone's mouth, which would be vaguely clever if Stephen King hadn't used the exact same action in the Green Mile, shot pretty much the same way. The "bong" sound happens in between each of these cuts, again failing to generate any sort of suspense, though it did kind of make me want to got to a music store and play with their gong. I bet hitting a gong is fun. I bet hitting one for 90 minutes would be a lot more suspenseful and fulfilling that seeing the movie Case 39.
(If you are a manufacturer of gongs who stumbled upon this site feel free to post this quote from me on the box for your products: "This gong is way more fun than watching the movie Case 39!!!!!!" -Strictly Commercials)
My favorite shot in these quick cuts at the end is the one of the little girl sinking into the bed. I guess the rest of the scene would be someone having to save her from the bed suffocating her*, but in the short glimpse we see in the trailer of this scene, it just looks like she is lying down onto a really fluffy and comfy memory foam mattress. I want a bed like that. This movie makes me want a giant fluffy bed and it makes me want to somehow get Ian McShane to side on the corner of my bed and read me "Goodnight Moon" until I fall asleep.
After typing that my new main goal in life is to somehow convince Ian McShane to do an audio book of "Goodnight Moon." This replaces my previous goal of getting Ian Mckellen to read aloud the entire Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
Footnote(s)
*Maybe the bed is supposed to be eating her. First they rip off Green Mile, now they go after another classic suspense film Patton Oswald's favorite movie Death Bed: The Bed That Eats People (If you for some reason haven't heard Oswald talk about that actual movie, you should listen to it (Warning: He says naughty words.)
I try to keep the profanity to a minimum on this blog because I figure I should challenge myself to think of better descriptions of what I dislike about ads instead of just swearing at them. That said, there was no other title one could give this post. I mean its about the awesome Kenny Powers' amazing new K-Swiss shoe ads which bring joy to all who are blessed enough to gaze upon them. (Unfortunately there is not one in my subway stop. Instead I have an other Katherine Hiegl ad. It just went up, in that same spot right by my the entrance I use that I previously ranted about the terrible poster for her movie "The Killers" was in. I really hope this trend of her terrible movies being advertised in that same exact ad space doesn't continue.
I've been trying to ignore it, but I assume at some point in the next month it will annoy me so much that I will have a short angry post about it. so look forward to that. Or actually don't. I'm not looking forward to thinking about it any more than I have to. Maybe I'll just post a photo of it and instead of commentary I'll just post a video that can serve as a metaphor for my feelings. The guy in the movie Scanners sweating until his head explodes would be apt.)
This rapidly turned into angry rant so lets bring it on back home and get right down to topic at hand. The man, the myth, Kenny Fucking Powers. Here is the K-Swiss MTA ad and an awesome 4 minute K-Swiss ad were Kenny tells the K-Swiss executives his ideas for commercials starring him.
How great are those ads? To quote my cousin Shawn, "Who wouldn't buy those stupidly ugly shoes with Kenny Fucking Powers as their spokenman?"
This actually brings up an important point. K-Swiss may be best known for making shitty over priced shoes for members of Yacht Clubs to play Jai alai in, but please everyone buy two pairs of these shoes in hopes that their success causes more companies to hire Kenny Powers as their spokesman.
This ad is much funnier if you don't know what product it is gonna be for when you start watching it. So I put it into tube chop since Youtube lists the title of videos at the top when you embed them. This is probably a little excessive but I figured if I'm gonna post this I might spend the extra minute so you can get the full effect.
As I am inclined to do when I want to discuss an ad without spoiling it. Here is a Bruma Shave ad to act as a buffer:
Join
Our happy
Brushless throng
Six million users
Can't be wrong
This is a cute promo, but obviously the reason it works so well if because the string dance has this element of recent history nostalgia attached to it. Conan went off the air on January 22nd, and with today being September 22nd, this means that sometime next week conan will have been off the air longer than he was host of the Tonight Show. Admittedly 7 months isn't that long a time, but Conan after getting fired cause of dick moves by NBC and Leno, I really don't think its an exaggeration to say he has become a folk hero for folks under 30. Here is another ad that uses the same song and concept to promote Conan (the proletariat's late night host).
I don't have much to add in terms of Analyzing the above ad, its a clever concept and I like the angles they chose for the shots. Instead I'm gonna talk about the awesome beard conan has been rocking in the print ads and viral videos for the new show, because, well, beards are cool. (My concept of the criterion of cool is the original Brawny Paper Towel man.)
I hope he keeps the beard, or at least has it for the first episode and has Tom Selleck come and shave it down to a mustache for him on camera. I wrote that previous sentence hoping that I could follow it with a great old clip of Tom Selleck shaving off half of his mustache on "Late Night" but apparently that clip does not exist on the internet. I did find a random news article about it though so I proof I didn't dream this event.
So instead I with some Late Night clips, because I ended my last post with one and that post didn't even have anything to do with Conan.
I Can't find this one with the intro for some reason but here is a clip from when Conan used do a bit where they would pretend to use the NBC satellite dish to watch obscure TV channels. This clip is what was on the "Men Without Hats conversation Channel"
I probably could and should just stop after posting two reasonable length clips here, but instead I'm going to post the funniest 20 minutes ever to be on television. Here is Norm MacDonald on Conan from back in the 90's. (a 20 minute clip of Late Night with Conan O'Brien is the kind of cutting edge entertainment you won't find on other blogs about advertisements.)
So everyone on earth saw that double rainbow viral video back in July, except for me. I only became aware of the awesomeness that is a stoned (sounding) guy describing for the camera a rainbow with another rainbow on top if it a few weeks back when my co-worker Zena showed me both flavors of it. The original recipe, and the extra krispy the GregoryBrother'sautotuned song version of it of it. I've been unable to get either out of my head since then.
They guy is awesome. He is so excited about that rainbow, and I'm so happy for him.
Apparently I wasn't the only one who didn't see this video until August, because someone at Microsoft apparently saw it a few weeks ago too, and then that person immediate filmed two commercials starring the famed Double Rainbow photographer and narrator, who is apparently name "Bear."
These commercials are okay, but not amazing, the first is him pretty much Bear reenacting himself getting excited:
Its just what you would expect, but still cute.
The second is a pretty boring 1 minute and sixteen second long interview were bear talks about trees and Windows software. It really needs a lot more B-roll, one can only look at a guy talking about trees for so long, and this video is 1 minute and fifteen seconds longer than that amount of time. I wouldn't really recommend watching this unless you forgot what a guy walking looks like.
These may not be the best commercials ever, but I'm writing about them because I'm genuinely happy for Bear. I bet doing these commercials is a lot more lucrative for than his previous careers of: guy who does drugs in the woods,** andlooking like the "If they mated" answer for Willie Nelson and Horatio Sans.
BONUS ROUND!
This video is only tangentially related but I thought that the opportunity to post one of those classic Conan "If they mated" videos should not be passed by.
(I'm with Coco. and so is slash***)
footnote(s)
*I shouldn't be too hard on the guy. He made me so happy by being so excited for that rainbow, and he appears to be a nice person, even if the second video proves he is a terribly boring interview subject. (at least when not high)
**For legal reasons I should point out that I have no evidence that bear does drugs I just assume it. Look at or listening any single second of Bear in any of the posted videos to discover why I hypothesized this theory.
*** If you haven't seen this about slash preforming on Jay Leno wearing an I'm with Coco Pin and the show's director almost never showing slash on camera in an effort to keep the TV viewers from seeing the pin you should check it out at Gawker.
Double Rainbow Microsoft ads discovered via URLesque, which is a site that, based on their name, likes to write "esque" at the end of things as much as I do (See: Michael Cera-esque earlier this week)
P.S. I'm obviously super pissed Conan got fired from Tonight Show but I really think TBS will let him relax and be his awesome funny self, which is something NBC never let him to do on in the 11:35 time slot.
