Thursday, June 28, 2012

Monday, June 11, 2012

How to correctly pander to dudes

This Clear Men dandruff shampoo ad features hot women wearing little clothing, which I often find too on the nose and insulting to be effective in ads such as those for Ax body spray and last summer's Miller Ads with Bikini clad life guards. It features a suave dude looking cool in a suit, which often comes across like Kettle One's TV ads were the message is so obviously, "You will be cool as this mother fucker if you use our product". Ketel One's print ads from the 90's however, were genius in there minimalism.




The point of all this is, it is really hard to sell the image of classy and sexy effectively to men without it seeming forced and phoney. The two examples of "products" I can think of they do this best are  James Bond Films and Dos Equis's "Most Interesting Man in the World" Ads. 


The Clean Men shampoo ad isn't in the same league as Bond or Jonathan Goldsmith* but they did a go much better job at making there product seem cool and classy than any other ad I see aimed at the Males age 25 to 36 demographic. This ad isn't the best I've seen this year but is clever and fun.
















Footnotes:

*
Goldsmith, the may who plays the Dos Equis guy is an America actor best know before those ads for being on pretty much every show on TV in the 70's His actually speaking voice is really cool but sounds nothing like the voice he uses for the Most Interesting Man character. According to wiki the voice of the character is based on his long time friend, deceased actor Fernando Álvaro Lamas (father of Lorenzo Lamas.)

Here is a video of Goldsmith using his normal speaking voice in an interview where he promotes a charity that helps tigers. (Yes even in real life he apparently pales around with live man eating tigers).


Podcast Episode 60


Thor's 60: Aliens Vs. Engineers Vs. Noomi Rapace Vs. what looks like a small version of the stupid squid thing form the end of Watchmen


 We saw the new Ridley Scott film Prometheus and discuss the fuck out of it. Along with these other things:

 Iceland "only in Scandinavia" Iceland Air ads, "Stay over in iceland for no additional airfare" Hot Tub, Conan, Hot Tub Time Machine, Connecticut ads, Tourism ads, Ridley Scott, Alien, Aliens, 1979, sequel. prequal, chest buster xenomorph. The most prostitutes per square foot! Watermelon! The Beach. Locust Abortion Agent, Haggard, Bruce Willis, Shirt, Die Hard, Die Hard: with a vengeance, Magic Mike, Steven Soderbergh, FilmDrunk.com, Gender Swapped "Show Girls", the script for "Show GIrls" matthew mcconaughey. Ripped Guys with boobs.







Photo of Ridley scott and Rutger Hauer on the set of Blade Runner http://www.extrahype.com/its-official-ridley-scott-will-direct-the-blade-runner-sequel

Sunday, June 10, 2012

B-movie-riffic



I've said before that Colbert was right, a lot of movies this days are perfect in their 3 minute short film trailer form, and can't live up to the promises of awesome provided by the trailer.

I am pretty sure the upcoming film Savages will be one of those. The trailer features:

-Pretty much the plot of Commando, except its it is two dudes rescuing the girl they both sleep with, instead of Arnold rescuing his daughter and saying awesomely corny lines like"Boy George, more like GIRL George"

-Selma Hayek acting like the crazy fascist chick  from Turkey Shoot.


-The heros getting their revenge on while wearing rad as hell looking masks painted in the style of Dead of the Dead Sugar Skulls

-Narration by Blake Lively that is so overwrought and on the nose you could insert it over the trailer of any Jean-Claude Van Damme movie and it would not seem out of place.

-the always awesome Benico Del Toro as some kinda mafia heavy/ assassin who says no lines in the trailer but just lears at people and blows a bunch of weed into Blake Lively's mouth in a shot that seems to go on for half the trailer's length for no apparently reason.


Savages Trailer From Trailerpulse

Since this is directed by Oliver Stone who wrote Scarface but seems to think of himself as some kind of social commenting auteur, I fear this won't be the all action and melodrama roller coaster ride I'm promised from the trailer. I think Stone, despite all his pretension, would have been a much more successful director if he had realized that he is at his best when he takes B movie elements and films them with ten times the budget and everything cracked up to 11. He could have been a great (though still a racist dick)  Renny Harlin/Michael Bay type of filmmaker if stopped spending the majority of the runtime of his films trying to show how clever he was by making ham fisted observations about society.

Hopefully this will actually be fun, and match the movie I've already imagined based on the trailer where Benico Del Toro's character doesn't talk at all and comes across as the most hardcore and menacing baddie since Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men.

If not, hopefully it will bring about some B-movies involving hardcore looking dudes running around shooting stuff while wearing cool looking custom painted masks.


Saturday, June 9, 2012

Angry sign!


I like this restaurant a lot more because of how exasperated this sign is.
(sent via cellular)