Great low budget ad

though my favorite low budget local ads are still the ones made buy these guys:




via filmdrunk. again

Kiefer Sutherland's interior decorating service.

from the music documentary  I Trust You to Kill Me

Great ad for Jack White's New S&M service.

I assume if you buy enough shit with your American Express Card, they will pay to have jack white come to your house and wrestle you.

Then you have to pay AmEx even more to have Gary Oldman come to your house and stop Mr. White.

"I've been in resturants all night. All I got served was lead"

This trailer is not quite as full of badass moments as the trailer for Guy Pierce's Lockout, but what it lacks in quip-y dialogue it makes up for in Jason Statham-ness.

 I firmly believe Statham proved he is an genuinely talented actor with his performances in the Crank films, though obviously he is mostly cast in movies that show off his physique rather that his acting chops.



This trailer overall is very strong. Though I'm biased since I think most of Statham's movies, even the ones that are totally by the numbers like War, are still a good time. I plan on seeing this so look for a review in an upcoming Hour of Thunder Podcast. 

So, as you may have guessed Statham is the Bad Ass of the Week for this week.


Trailer via Safe's official website.
Photo is of Jason Statham on the British National dive team before he became an actor via this Ottawa Sun Article, which is awesomely titled "Jockstrap Thespians"

Podcast episode 56

Thor 56: Hunger (Games) Hunger (Games) Hippos

Hey folks, Thor here, sorry for the month delay between episodes, Loki used magic to cause myself and Chris Hemsworth to trade bodies and I spend the entire month I was in his body staring at myself in the mirror. Damn that man has fine abs.

Podcast NEWS: I've decided to start uploading old episodes which we had to take down, due to the space limitations of podomatic, onto a new podomatic account. Episode ten is already up there with more to come. Which "lost" episodes do you want to hear first? let us know at hourofthunder (at) gmail.
Access "Thor's Hour of Thunder CLASSIC" here:
http://hourofthunder2.podomatic.com/

Official Website for the new episodes is still
http://hourofthunder.podomatic.com/

Listen to our old college scripted comedy parody "The Shadow" here:
feed://www72.homepage.villanova.edu/tyler.cunnion/shadow/index.xml

This episode we talk about:
Hunger Games, Ender's Game, Battle Royal, Influences of the book "Hunger Games". Thor's review of the book Hunger Games, Bladr and Loki's review of the movie Hunger Games, Loki's review of the book Enders Game,

saoirse ronan, hit girl, chloe moretz, bieng a teenage girl, Ru, Katniss, Jennifer Lawrence, dark shadows, adam west, wheat thins, johnny depp, tim burton, hunger games, evil dead II, evil dead 2, Shakey cam, Book versus movie, Ender's Game, Producers of show have causing deaths, bait, series 7: the contenders.

Cover Photo this week via Deviant Art
http://woodwose.deviantart.com/art/Freyja-s-chariot-126114709?q=gallery%3Aavaloncommunity%2F26566262&qo=6

End song provided by friend of the show Alan. It is him covering Mark Hamill's cover of "Only You" at the character "The Joker" from the end credits of the video game "Arkham City"

PS I Really want the adaptation of the Hunger Games book "Mocking Jay" to have the end credits music be Carly Simon and James Taylor re-recording their ridiculous cover of the nursery rhyme "Mocking Bird". Just picture it: mock YEAH ing YEAH bird YEAH!. YEAH! (Yeah!)

This is how you market a movie

Someone awesome at Lionsgate Films* found out that the ridiculous beard actor Wes Bentley sports in The Hungar Games has become a viral sensation, and even has its own facebook page. So they wisely had Wes film a short promo calling out his beard:   

Just wanted to take a moment to put out the Wes Bentley was awesome in American Beauty, and I am excited to see back in major motion pictures.

footnote:

*If I was running Lionsgate Films my first act would be to fix grammar in the name by making it two words and added an apostrophe after the s.

Source: Uproxx.com

The Strictly Commercial Award winner for best ad of 1963

Before Jim Henson was able to tell stories with his muppets on "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show" he paid the bills by making advertisements and industrial videos. His ads for Wilkins Coffee are relatively well known, and mostly feature a muppet who doesn't like Wilkins Coffee getting injured by a Kermit-esque muppet Really:


However I had never seen any of Henson's video he had made for major companies. Sometimes these were produced for internal marketing, sometimes he was making instructional videos.

This one below is surprisingly hip considering it was for a meeting of Bell Telelphone owners:



I love the design of the robot and my favorite line is "Correction. (blows up a butterfly) The Machine. Does not have a soul. It has no bothersome emotions."


(Photo at top is of what appears to be that same robot puppet being fixed by Jim Henson and Henson's longtime head writer Jerrry Juhl while guest on the Jack Paar's talk show.

Photo via Jim Henson Company clip via filmdrunk.)

Bad Ass of the week: Buddy Holly

Buddy Holly is the man.


Here is early footage of a concert in which the line-up included:
1. Buddy Holly
2. Johnny Cash
3. Carl Perkins
4. Jerry Lee Lewis
5. Elvis Presley





If you invent a time machine please bring with you the following list:


To Do:
1. June 3rd 1955. Lovett, Texas
notes: Best concert ever. If there is time bring along Musican Lyle Lovett, travel back to 1855 as well and get town re-named "Lyle Lovett, Texas"


2. April 20, 1985 Courthouse Square set at Universal Studio
notes: last day of filming for Back to the Future if your time machine happens to be a deloren just appear hear midday and everyone will assume it is part of the special effects.




Buddy Holly revolutionized Rock and Roll, if he hadn't died at age 23 a lot of folks who know way more about music and history than myself think he was close to making the kinds of innovations in album structure and instrumentation that instead have to wait a decade to be made by the Beatles.
(So the Marlow to the Beatles' Shakespeare)

Want more Buddy Holly, someone made the awesome decision to make a 25 minute youtube video which compiled all publicly available footage of the best thing to come out of Texas before the Alamo Cinema and Drafthouse. (the first couple minutes are that same footage of the concert in Lovett since it is the earliest known film footage of either Elvis or Buddy Holly.)

Really England?

NOTE:
 This article gets really political really fast. I didn't mean for it to, its just late and night so I'm more ornery than usual and this ad that i am talking about is really poor quality. If you don't think the BBC TV license fee is stupid and do thing that Ireland should always be two countries this might not be the article for you.

I am trying to bear in mind that this ad for "Holidays at Home" (designed to convince the people of Britain  to vacation in their own country as opposed to someplace where it isn't cold and rainy 90 percent of the year) is made by the same inept British government who still drives vans around pretending they can somehow use "secret technology" to tell if you are using the antenna attached to your TV to pick up the radio waves of the BBC without playing the stupid TV license;* But even with me looking at it from that level of marketing stupidity this ad is still so bad it makes me angry

Enjoy:



Why do I dislike this ad oh so very much? Part of the reason is because it features celebrities I actually enjoy, like the classy Stephen Fry the adorable Rupert Grint and worst of all, dead brilliant (and Spanish) Salvador Dali's lobster telephone sculpture.


Part if it is the fact the ad seems very well produced visually, but that despite all this effort, it somehow fails photograph or describe a single damn thing worth seeing the United Kingdom, despite the fact that the British Museum alone contains enough mind blowingly cool stuff to occupy a person of a fortnight.

The only sight which they photographed it a way that showed off its beauty was the Giant's Causeway. And even this was ruined by bad writing "You won't find rocks like these." Calling the Giant's Causeway "rocks" makes it seem pedestrian and stupid, who goes on vacation to hang around rocks?

Also from a personal stand point, including the Giant's Causeway while very carefully not mentioning the word Ireland, even to say "Northern Ireland" pissed me off. I don't want to get into my opinion's on Ireland's relationship with England, but I personally would have liked to have seen both Ireland and Scottland specified as such instead of them all being lumped together. 


Footnote(s):
*Just to reiterate that point, these stupid vans is BBC's primary method of convincing everyone who accesses over the air broadcast TV in England (the kind that is FREE in the US) to pay the government the BBC.  You have to pay this fee for owning a TV which picks up broadcast signals, even if you don't use it for watching broadcast signals or if you use it to watch broadcast but just watch stations like ITV who are not part of the BBC and therefore do not get any money from this license.

I don't want you to think I am against funding for the arts, and I love doctor who as much as the next guy, but I think both this licensing system and the goofy roving detector vans are antiquated and not something the government should be spending their time on when there are more pressing issues at hand. Like the fact that some members of the British military are allowed to steal military helicopters and use them to pick up their girlfriends to go on dates.


Also as long as I am complaining lest us for get that the government their still has censorship laws in place against movies and TV Shows, which are strict enough that an episode of "The Daily Show with John Stewart"  was banned outright in England last year for showing footage of parliament for use in satire. Which is apparent an actually crime (really) in the United Kingdom


via WarmingGlow, who just talked about how cute the corgi dog with Stephen Fry in the video is. This statement is accurate, though I would argue limited in its scope.