Levi’s Curve ID Jeans Print Ad

There’s a Levi’s Curve ID Jeans print ad that’s generating something other than sales. It seems that the ad is for some plus-sized jeans, or at least trying to attract that market. The only problem is, while the headline pays lip service to the idea of hotness coming in all shapes and sizes, the three models in the ad all look slim and about the same body type. There are some minor differences, but they’re all models, and they’re all about the same size. This has been perceived as insulting to some women, and perhaps also damaging to women’s body image perceptions.

Perhaps the ad should simply have added another line of copy underneath the picture of the models. The ad’s headline, written above a photo of three models looking very similar in shape and size, says: “Hotness comes in all shapes and sizes.” Maybe they should have simply written under the picture: “Unfortunately, our jeans only come in one size: slender. So buy someone else’s jeans, you plus-sized hotties!” That’s what the ad looks like it’s implying anyway, so why not just come out and say it? Then nobody could excoriate them for subliminal messaging about body image. (Of course, they could berate them about explicitly stated body image messaging, but that’s a different issue.) But if this is not what Levi's intended to say in the ad, they really ought to correct it with some differently-sized and -shaped models. They're selling the jeans to women, so I think it might be a better idea not to make women mad at Levi's with their advertising. But it's just a suggestion.

Ads are usually meant to attract, not repel, the prospective clients, or at least I think it works better that way. But maybe you could use reverse-psychology to make people want your stuff, like by saying: “Hotness comes in all shapes and sizes, except for yours. You're ugly, so you're not allowed to buy our jeans.” Then, maybe people would want them even more, because people always seem to be attracted to whatever is forbidden. Also, everyone wants to have something exclusive, so maybe if their ad said you can't have any, everyone would demand them. I guess you never know. Arrogant Bastard Ale uses this approach on its label, and it's fun. But I think it should have gone even further, saying at the end (it basically says you're probably not sophisticated enough to appreciate the ale): “In fact, upon further consideration, you can't have any, so just put the bottle down right now!”

But about this Levi's size issue: Maybe Helmut Lang has taken over Levi’s? (He used to make those ridiculously unforgiving jeans for men that would normally not fit on most people. When I was younger, I fit into them perfectly, but I was pretty slim and in good shape back then. But people would try on his jeans and come out of the dressing room fuming, saying stuff like: “That’s not a 32!” So maybe he’s doing the new women’s Levi’s?) That might explain it.

Here’s an article about this ad which shows what the ad looks like:

http://shine.yahoo.com/fashion/jeans-ad-sparks-controversy-levis-models-come-other-202400157.html

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

I’ve read a lot about this movie and its TV movie precursor, so I bought the DVD(-R) of the TV movie, and I watched it with my sister and her 9-year-old daughter. (I sometimes make the mistake of believing people’s rave reviews on Amazon.com.) Well, the verdict was that it’s not scary, but it’s fun and kind of cool. (This kid {my niece} isn’t scared by anything, though, so that’s not the best indicator! {I would have been scared silly by this TV movie had I seen it as a child!} But it seems like kids today have a sort of “seen it all” jaded mentality, where it’s almost un-cool to be scared by a movie. But that’s perfect, because most of these days’ horror films aren’t scary at all anyway! They’re just gross and chock full of too much CGI and sound effects, as well as too much heart-string-tugging and jolt-you-out-of-your-seat music.) So then I wanted to see the new remake, to see if they had done it justice, so I got it from NetFlix. Uh, yeah.

So first things first: I was very excited when I saw a period pre-credits sequence, because I thought it would show how the original guy had gotten the house infested with little demons by making a pact with the devil for unlimited power or something. No such luck, however, as we’re instead shown a sequence that doesn’t explain anything other than that the little monsters like to eat teeth. Guillermo del Toro had the “tooth fairies” in Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, so this must be a tip of the hat to that reference by a grateful director because del Toro is producing the movie. (del Toro also co-wrote the script, so maybe he imposed it.) Unfortunately for those who know, that just makes a little trivial connection to another movie, and hence destroys the atmosphere of the current film. But whatever. I don’t know what’s so hard about just trying to make it work well on its own terms, but I guess that’s outdated now, so we all have to have hipster references that connect everything nowadays. Lame.

Oh, and also, they have to have the CGI “camera” fly through everything in the early part of the movie, just to remind everyone that everything is fake. Lame again. But at least there is the part in the beginning after the credits where they get to the house, and Guy Pearce answers the phone and grovels for someone named “Mr. Jacoby” (!). So he works for Jacoby and Meyers, huh? No wonder he’s being tormented by demons after working for an ambulance-chasing lawsuit firm! This is his just punishment! But why did he have to subject his family to it? (Maybe so he can sue the little demons later?)

Oh, and then we get the broken family brat who won’t accept the new parent: I think this is the new movie cliché, huh? Except that it’s not new anymore, either. This just adds another layer of stuff that distracts from the demons/goblins angle. So is this supposed to be horrifying for those kids from broken homes who aren’t scared of the little monsters? I don’t know why they put this plot point in so many movies nowadays, as it simply muddies things further. When I was a kid, and we didn’t want to eat something, our parents would say: “There are starving children in (wherever they were starving at the time), you should appreciate it!” And then we’d say: “Then send it to them!” So I was hoping Guy Pearce would say to Sally when she rejected Katie Holmes: “There are children in (wherever) who don’t have any stepmothers! You should appreciate her!” And Sally could say: “Then send her to be their stepmother!”

At this point in the movie, it struck me that if these goblins like to eat children’s teeth, they ought to just set up a free children’s dental clinic or an orphanage: then they’d get lots of kids’ teeth, since children lose teeth all the time! (I mean that their baby teeth fall out, not that they get their teeth knocked out.) Plus, they wouldn’t even have to be mean to get them; but then I guess it’s not a horror movie anymore. Or, they could drive around and burgle houses for the kids’ baby teeth when families are out of town on spring break or whatever holiday; but then it’s a heist movie with little demons, and that’s not going to be a big draw, I’ll bet. (Maybe they could make a remake of Home Alone with these little monsters trying to steal the Macaulay Culkin kid’s teeth! No? But they could call it Home Alone 4 Tooth Protection! And it could be sponsored by Crest or Colgate toothpaste, and Listerine mouthwash. Still no?) Oh, whoops: did I ruin the conceit of the movie? Sorry!

Okay, so then we get to the part where Sally finds the basement, and Guy Pearce smashes through the wall, and then Sally sets the monsters free. I was hoping they would play that Police song: “Set Them Free” (“Free, free, set them free! Set them free! Free, free, set them free!”), but no dice. I wondered where Sally got the strength to remove those huge bolts from such a thick piece of metal after years and years of rust and stuff, but then I realized the writers had simply given her super-strength to make it even less believable.

So then these fake-looking CGI thingies start terrorizing Sally, but the movie still wants to dwell on the broken marriage thing, so we get more of that: Yay! It seems that Sally’s not happy in the new house and its demon infestation, but her mother doesn’t care, and naturally Guy Pearce couldn’t care less. So I don’t care either. Except that it does seem kinda odd to me that this Sally looks a lot like her step-mom (she has the same pouty lips and saggy cheeks, and she has the same hair color), and nothing like her father. No wonder Guy Pearce doesn’t feel connected to her: it’s not his daughter anyway! Maybe that’s going to be the twist ending: She’s really Suri, and Tom Cruise is really her father, and Katie Holmes is really her mother, and they did this whole elaborate ruse to trick the Paparazzi into chasing someone else’s brat every day for years. (Cheaters! It’s no wonder the kid is being hounded: these “demons/goblins” are secretly Paparazzi! And when they say they want her teeth, they just mean they want her to smile for the camera! Or maybe they want to sell her baby teeth on eBay? And maybe it's called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark because it's really the flashbulbs of Paparazzi cameras she should be afraid of! See? That gives it away right there!)

Okay, so now Katie Holmes is starting to believe the kid just because she cut up all her dresses with scissors or whatever, and she goes to the library to check up on the original house owner/designer’s documents there. It’s truly amazing that her husband, who is shown to be completely fanatical about the original house builder guy and his house and restoring it, etc., hasn’t already done this, but I guess the script writer was out to lunch for this part of the movie (!?). I mean, I could believe it if she had found something hidden, and she had to go to some obscure college professor, who only knows little bits and pieces about this one specific thing; but to have all this stuff just available at the local public library? And Guy Pearce didn’t find it before, when he’s been researching this guy and restoring the house for months? Get real! This just makes me tear my hair out at how incompetent the writing is! And I’m supposed to be focused on this story? Yeah, right!

So then we get the back story on these demon/fairy monsters, and it’s worse than I thought it would be. Without the beasties eating kids’ teeth angle, this would have been great: just say the original guy sold his soul to the devil for power, and instead he got infested with these demonic entities: great! That works really well! But no, we had to reference Hellboy 2, so it’s just dumb. Oh well. Plus, by the end of the movie, there are like 100 of these little tooth fairy monsters running around attacking everyone, so how is one child’s teeth supposed to sustain them all for another hundred years or however long it will be before someone else lives in this house? Are they going to share? Maybe one tooth for every four goblins or something? Are children’s teeth like Everlasting Gobstoppers for these creatures? This really doesn’t work at all, sorry.

I read recently that Guillermo del Toro likes the dark conception of fairies, so fine: let them be fairies rather than demons (although this does not make as much sense). But having them want children’s teeth does not work at all and it sinks the whole movie. I’m sorry, but it’s true. If you’re going to remake a previously well-loved movie, then do it right! Create your own dark tooth-eating fairy movie on your own, don’t ruin an already good story! Really, they had it all right there in the original story: demonic entities infesting the house, but only three of them. Just show the guy selling his soul for some power or something, but instead he summons these nasty little demons, and they want to trap souls, not eat teeth. (Then it would be like a Chick Publications religious propaganda comic book!) This is not really all that hard, guys! If you want a challenge, write something new! And if you can’t write something new, then don’t ruin something that’s already good. Ruin something that sucks: that way, nobody will notice you ruined it.

Hey, the original was cheap and quick, and it had lame monster costumes, but it was really great: the woman’s grandfather made some evil deal or something, and the house got infested with three little munchkin demons: no other explanations, and we didn’t need any, either. (I may even be inventing that evil deal part, I don’t know. {Yes: No evil deal; the grandparents just bought the house, unbricked the fireplace, and voilà: goblins!} The house might have just gotten infested with goblins with the first owners, and without a local supernatural exterminator, they were just screwed. {BTW: It just occurs to me now why there are three of the goblin/demon monsters in the original TV movie version: They make the person who releases them "one of them", so then there's the original one, which would work perfectly as a soul-stealing demon created by some Satanic pact gone wrong, there's the original home owner, and then there's Kim Darby's grandfather: that makes three.}) Plus, the musical score was great and creepy! (Billy Goldenberg was a master at this type of horror score!) But this one overdoes everything: it overdoes the story, and overdoes the monsters, and it’s just a bit tedious. Now, I’m glad they made the movie, but I was really hoping for a better movie. It’s acted fine, and the camera stuff looks good too, mostly, so it’s really a writing issue. There’s too much CGI, but it would probably make everyone else mad if there weren’t too much CGI these days, so I grudgingly accept that, although movies would be way better without too much CGI. (The Woman in Black didn’t have too much CGI, and maybe that’s why it’s a hit: who knows. It also didn’t ruin a great TV movie, so that may be why it’s a hit, too.) The problem is when remakes decide they want to make the source movie “better”: They usually just end up gumming up the works with their extra crap and ruining what could have been a great movie. Such is the case here. Oh well…

I was really expecting a lot more from Guillermo del Toro. But you know, his movies are all chock full o’ way too much CGI these days, so I guess I should have realized what to expect. If only he could get back to that spooky realism he got with The Devil’s Backbone. Now that’s one of the all time great ghost movies right there! The CGI is perfect, and everything is so believable, you cringe in the bullying sequences. I never feared for anyone in this remake of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, because the monsters were so phony, and the whole production screamed: “Designed for a movie!” But it was really the writing that ate the teeth out of this one. But maybe that’s somehow appropriate after all.

In the original, the main characters inherit this house from the woman’s grandmother. They don’t get much warning except not to mess with the fireplace in the basement by some old handyman who was also the handyman for the woman’s grandparents, so he knows something is wrong here, but he can’t just come out and tell them, because it’s so unbelievable (and also for another reason). And the house was built by some unknown guy in the 1800s. But in this new version, the family buys this house after it has been unoccupied since the guy who built it died over 100 years earlier. So how does this handyman know about the goblin monsters? It would have been far better to have had this house inherited from grandparents who bought it years before, and that it had a bricked up fireplace back then, too. That way the handyman knowing about the goblin monsters makes more sense, provided he’s old enough, and everything else flows better too. Then, everyone could find out about the house together, so Katie Holmes beating Guy Pearce to the library files doesn’t look so ridiculously improbable; and they could be working on the house, so things falling or moving around would be more expected, so it would make sense when the parents don’t believe Sally, and then they could have jettisoned the whole broken family plot point which is such an unnecessary distraction.

But the one change I really liked was having Sally be a little kid instead of a grown woman. That was an inspired choice. But the broken home stuff makes it too convenient that nobody believes her about the monsters. Less aloof parents would have made the story way more gripping, because little kids make stuff up all the time, and have imaginary friends, etc.: they don’t need to be from broken homes! That just gums up the works with extraneous fiddle faddle. (Applesauce?) Stick to the story and its shock-machine potential! Then we’ll never be bored, like I was for far too much of this movie.

I have watched a bunch of made for TV horror movies lately. You can find a lot of them on YouTube at the moment. They’re fun, but mostly, they’re disposable entertainment. They were simply intended to scare kids and keep them occupied so their parents could get a break. They were never intended to stand up to the kind of scrutiny people can give them now with DVD transfers, etc. They were made to be shown one time only, on a crappy early ‘70s television set, and that was it! So it’s sad when the TV movie is better than a new theatrical movie. That shouldn’t happen. And it didn’t have to happen, either. This original TV movie provided a minimal story background to serve as the basis for a pure shock machine. And this remake should have done the same thing. But maybe because they made Sally a little kid, they felt they couldn’t subject her to the same amount of horror throughout as Kim Darby had in the TV movie. And if you’re doing that in a theatrical horror movie, you should really rethink your victim choices. I like that they had a kid this time, but if they were going to pull their punches, they should have stuck with the wife and have them have no kids at all.

Also, with this kid being from a broken home, with uncaring parents and an unwanted step-mom, this makes her endangerment seem less gripping, since it looks like nobody would care that much if she were killed: see what I mean? It's far more horrifying if the family is a strong unit, and it's just a misunderstanding that makes the parents think she's kidding or imagining it about the goblins. Kids also go through phases, and it could be her acting out about moving away from her old friends at school, etc., so the parents think it's something else. And if the parents really care and love her, then when they find out the threat is real, they will be extra panicked and feel extremely guilty: this would have ratcheted up the tension immensely! And if they really love and care about this little girl, we do too; if she's an outcast loner without caring parents, we might feel there's an undercurrent there of this kid maybe having earned people's not caring about her somehow. And she already comes across as a moping little brat, so she's much less sympathetic than she should be for being our identification figure. So if they're going to switch the victim character to a little girl from the wife, then they should make sure it's going to work as well, if not better. And really, that should be the case with every change they make to a previously good story.

Recently there has been one movie that remade a great film and outdid the original, in my opinion. That original movie coincidentally also starred Kim Darby as the female lead. (What are the chances of that?) The movie I’m referring to is True Grit: It was great, but the new version is even better. But it didn’t get that way by changing large chunks of the plot or characters. They just really rethought the locations, and decided night scenes would work better than day scenes, etc. And I’m not big on Westerns, either (unless they’re Spaghetti Westerns from the ‘60s and ‘70s). But that was the Coen Brothers, so perhaps that sets the bar too high. But seriously, if you can’t make a made-for-TV movie-of-the-week better in a remake, then you’ve got a problem.

The thing I find most disappointing is that I was really looking forward to this movie, and I really wanted to like it! And it’s just a case of over-tinkering with the story that does it all in. (Well, that, and too much CGI.) Reworking a story is fine, but it really ought to make it better, not ruin it. But this could have been a great movie: one for the ages! Unfortunately, they screwed the pooch here, at least in my opinion. And that’s such a shame, because everything they needed for success had already been done for them. Oh, well.

Want to find out what happens to Sally…? Rent the movie. But you still won’t save her… (Mwa Ha Ha!) Actually, I’m joking: Katie Holmes gets abducted by the little guys: just like in real life! (I heard Tom Cruise is short.) Oh, sorry: spoilers. But really, I mean it when I say you should really see this movie if it sounds at all interesting to you. Always support movies you might like, or else you might not get others in the future! (These guys deserve credit for making it in the first place!) And if you haven’t seen the original made-for-TV movie, you might love this! And even for all its problems, it's way better than a lot of other movies out there, and I'd choose it over 95% of everything else these days in a New York minute! So while I can't help being disappointed in it, it's not all bad. And if I wasn't really interested, I wouldn't have written anything about it. (And this is the longest post on this whole blog!) My college art professor said once to his best student, after he finished eviscerating her work, and she complained about the harsh criticism: "If I didn't think it had real potential, and if the intent weren't excellent, I wouldn't have said anything, because I don't waste my time on things that don't deserve it." Such is the case with this movie and me: I expect so much from it because it's exactly what interests me. They didn't nail it, but then again, I'm pretty exacting about my favorite things, so there you are. But you might love it, and I might be wrong about everything I've said, too. I don't think so, but you might: who knows.

BTW: There is one way in which this movie could be very satisfying: If you are a step-mother or a step-father to an ungrateful brat who is a jerk to you no matter what you do, then this movie could be very cathartic for you. Just don’t tell anyone that’s why you’re watching it, or else they’ll think you’re a child-abuser. But the ending reveals that the step-parent always loses in the end, so you’ll be resigned to your fate. Maybe that’s the “moral” of this movie: Don’t marry into a broken home, or else all your clothes will be cut to ribbons, you’ll be rejected and dumped on by your step-children, and you’ll just be eaten by goblins in the end, so run, run, run away before that wedding day!

The Woman in Black

I’m a big horror movie fan, but what I really like the best are the old classic horror movies, and then the ones from the 1960s. But my favorite movies of all are supernatural horror movies, especially ghost stories and black magic movies; but they have to be well done: so often they are either overdone claptrap, or they’re too dull and obtuse (Shades of Darkness, anyone?). To give you an idea of ghost movies I think are done right, there’s The Uninvited from 1944, and The Innocents from 1961. Then there’s also fun stuff like The Legend of Hell House, but it’s not quite as good as the earlier ones. There are a lot of other ghost movies that have potential, but many of them end up having the hauntings be faked to try to drive someone insane: That’s a lame copout, and ghost story fans will always be mad at that sort of thing. There are also a couple of movies from Mexico in the 1960s by a guy named Carlos Enrique Toboada, and they’re terrific! (No, really!) There are also some other good ones from the ‘70s and ‘80s, like The Changeling, The Haunting of Julia, and Ghost Story. And then there’s The Woman in Black.

Really, there are two Women in Black: there’s the BBC version, and then there’s this new movie version. The BBC version is really a great ghost story. It has no big budget or flashy special effects (actually, I think ghosts don’t require a lot of special effects, so much as a translucent ghost, an out-of-focus apparition, etc.), but it’s a wonderfully realized slow-burn ghost story, and it’s really one of the real champs! And then there’s this new version, from the renewed Hammer Films: it’s up there as well. I believe this version sacrificed story detail for jolts, but it’s also very well done. I was afraid they would ruin it with too many/too much flashy CGI effects ruining the reality of the scenario, but such is not the case. They really get the balance right with the visuals, I think. I actually prefer the sparser look of the BBC version, but it might have been too dull for the horror movie circuit. In any case, they didn’t ruin the story, they didn’t gore it up, and they didn’t throw in too many flashy special effects to ruin the story and fake it all up, like Poltergeist did. (Poltergeist is just a crappy special effects movie to me. It’s a great popcorn movie, but if it’s a ghost movie, I want it spooky! Plus, anything with Craig T. Nelson gets my “thumbs down”!)

If you look at viewer reviews of The Woman in Black, you’ll see it’s another one of those “love it or hate it” movies. That’s usually a good thing: if everyone loves it, it’s usually crap. (Like with music: Just look at the Grammys. I’ll admit Adele is talented, and the Foo Fighters are rockin’, but the rest of that stuff? Yeesh!) People who didn’t like it wanted more gore or torture porn (more of what they’re used to, that is), or they thought it was too slow and depressing (ghost stories usually are). I thought it was a bit too loud in the music, and too much dependent on the jump scare, rather than the icy cold chills, but it delivers both. It also doesn’t over-explain its story. I still don’t understand some things, and guess what that means? It means I’m still thinking about the movie! This means it has me in its grip even after it’s over: You can’t ask for much more than that from a movie. Some people say that if you get a song stuck humming in your head, it means it’s a great song. That’s not always true: it could also mean it’s really annoying. But when you’re still thinking about a movie, in a good way, for days after you’ve seen it, then that’s usually a good sign.

I grew up on Hammer movies, and this movie, for me, is the perfect Hammer comeback vehicle. (They made a few recent movies before this, but this is the best yet.) I love their classic horror movies, but they never really made a ghost movie, I don’t think. Well, if you’re going to make a ghost movie, you couldn’t pick a better one to do than The Woman in Black. It’s a great ghost story, tugging at so many human emotions, and making you think about human relationships: like, does mother love trump them all, etc.? And an interesting point not touched upon by either rendition is this: (Spoilers ahead!) The dead boy for whom the woman in black is taking her revenge out on everyone was her son, but when she tried to take him away with her he didn’t know that she was his mother! He had never known another mother than her sister, so it’s no wonder she can’t connect with him in the afterlife: He doesn’t know her as anything other than a kidnapper! And perhaps this is what makes her not be able to forgive: He died fighting her and fearing her, and it may even have been what killed him. (They died in a carriage accident, sinking into the mire. But we never find out why. I think it’s because he tried to escape, it fouled the horses, and they all went down into the morass. But I don’t know that. Actually, in the BBC production, the woman in black dies with her son, but in the new movie, she survives but hangs herself, and that’s even worse: but it's even better for a horror story!) Yet this issue is not really discussed in either production of this story. But do you know what? I thought of it, and I still think of it. And maybe everyone else does, too. And maybe we're meant to.

When mysteries are explained away, they lose their interest; that’s why a mystery movie is never quite as much fun the second time around: you already know what everything is building towards. But with a mystery that’s never quite all solved, it keeps you thinking about it, and it keeps it interesting. That’s why so much has been written over the years about what is perhaps one of Charles Dickens’s lamer stories: The Mystery of Edwin Drood; and that’s because since it was never finished, and the culprit never unmasked, it leaves everyone still wondering what the hell was supposed to happen. Never mind that it’s a sub-par Dickens tale: that doesn’t seem to matter much. The fact is, everyone is still wondering how it was intended to end, and that’s a lesson many others could learn from. But it helps to have a good foundation on which to build (like, for example, a writing reputation like Dickens’s, or a great ghost story like The Woman in Black.): if your story is lame, or your movie sucks, nobody will care about the open-ended quality, they’ll just be mad. But if it’s good, they’ll want more, and they’ll think about it in a tantalizing way. That’s why good mysteries shouldn’t always explain everything completely away: because then we won’t think about it; we’ll just be spoon-fed information, like in a Matlock episode.

But with this, this new movie version of The Woman in Black: we’ll have older people say it’s not as good as the BBC version, and we’ll have younger viewers say it’s better. But for me, they’re both great! And as they are pretty different, I’d say this new version is the perfect companion piece to the BBC production. I was lucky enough to get a DVD of the BBC version back before they disappeared. I read about it, and the reviewers said it’s one of the best ghost stories ever on film. I agree completely, and that’s why I really hope that this new movie, when it’s released on BluRay, will have this BBC production as a special feature on the disc, just so everyone can see them both. This is not an instance where they have to make sure the original remains obscure, since it’s better. It’s different, and it adds extra information for those who want to know more. But the new movie is great also, and all I’d say about it is that it contains some elements that are more contemporary than the TV version (like a loud musical score, and some very good special visual effects). And they are both very good, but they are both very different too. You’ll recognize the similarities immediately if you have seen the BBC one, but that just makes it more interesting; for rather than mucking it up, they simply have produced a version with a different intent: as a horror movie for theaters, rather than an understated TV movie for Masterpiece Theater. And as this BBC version is long out-of-print, and its quality almost legendary, making a remake for theaters seems to me the most intelligent thing imaginable for Hammer to have done. You see, it has a great reputation, and it’s very elusive, so it should pique a lot of curiosity for those who know about the story. And the kicker is, they hit it out of the park!

So Hammer Productions is back: great! I can’t wait for more from them, and I want them to succeed like no other company. The only problem is, and I’ve seen a few of their new movies now, that they are not sufficiently playing up the Hammer name! It’s just listed equally with a bunch of other production/distribution company names. Lame! It should be big and front and center: “A HAMMER FILM”! For those who know, the Hammer name is a big lure; and now, after they failed to ruin this great classic ghost story when most everyone else would have spoiled it, the Hammer name should win more and more converts. But not if they don’t see the name prominently displayed! I watched Wake Wood, and I didn’t even see the Hammer name in the credits at all! WTF? If they fail to put this name up in lights, so to speak, they are squandering one of the greatest names in horror ever! (Actually, one of the greatest names in movies: period.) Surely the other production companies can understand that, can’t they? It’s like putting the goose that laid the golden egg with a bunch of regular geese: nobody will know which one is magical! So show us it’s “A HAMMER FILM”: please! It could only help the bottom line! Because Hammer is horror Royalty! So play it up! Otherwise, it’s like Polo selling a shirt without a Polo logo on it: Where’s the selling point for the brand? (Or more to the point, it’s like making a Brad Pitt movie, but crediting him way at the back of the credits, and leaving his name out of the advertising, so nobody knows he’s even in it.) And when it comes to horror, there’s no bigger brand than Hammer! It should be prominently displayed with pride, like a Lacoste crocodile!

And do you know what? Hammer made this a success by the same formula that made them a success back in the day: They picked a previously produced story that was done well, and they put a new spin on it, making it more shocking and gruesome for the theatrical market. And, and this might be the most important part, they did it with a big name actor in the lead. Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe was great here, and I hope he does more for Hammer in the future! If they stick with this formula, they should have hit after hit after hit! How about remaking Ghost Story, or The Uninvited (the 1944 ghost movie), next? This team could really pull it off! I hope they do it! But whatever you do, if you like ghost stories, or spooky horror movies, rather than empty-headed slasher fare, then go see this movie!

Bud Light Rescue Dog Ad

“Here Weego!”

This is the cute, high concept ad that proves you can teach a dog to fetch, but you can’t teach it taste in beer. Light beer tastes like crap, but people still drink it in the hopes that they won’t get fat. It seems to me that light beer is just regular beer with some water added to it to make it less calories, and so it tastes watered-down. I hope I didn’t just reveal any trade secrets there. But we’re Americans: we’re supposed to be fat! So drink a real beer like a man, even though there’s a whole Lite campaign based upon manhood, equating it to drinking their piss-water beer. (And by all means drink a real beer like a woman too: I’m not trying to be sexist, I’m merely trying to bash that stupid Miller Lite “Man Up” campaign. {Am I being too hard on this Miller Lite “Man Up” campaign? Maybe they’re just trying to distract us from the fact that light beer tastes bad, and it’s just a case of misdirection and peer pressure to help sales. Well, if that’s the case, then it’s understandable. But it’s still lame.})

But this “Here Weego” commercial is very cute, and it also serves as a way to advertise for encouraging people to adopt rescue dogs. I hope they’re not going to be adopted by drunk frat boys expecting them all to be able to fetch beers for them all the time. I also hope these dogs don’t end up being previously abused by drunks, because that may continue if this ad is any indication. (They’re not quite abusing him yet here {although PeTA might disagree!}, but they’ve just started drinking. Give them some time, and it might happen: you never know.) Also, the dog in this commercial would have to go back to the pound if this owner ever decided he was an alcoholic and needed to quit drinking: Every time he called the dog, it would bring him a beer, and he’d fall off the wagon again and again and again! So back to the pound for the dog, and only for obeying commands! Oh, the irony! (Life is so unfair!)

But it’s a cute ad with an adorable dog, and it’s fun and all that. But would you really want dog saliva all over your beer bottle? And isn’t this violating dog labor laws? I’m just saying…

Here’s the doggie bartender spot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyFWSys3TJU&feature=related

And here’s an example of that ad campaign for Miller Lite that equates drinking their lame beer with manliness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75fp_0LPcD8

Hiding A Dagger Behind A Smile

China, in its explanation for its support of Assad’s blatant murdering of thousands of unarmed civilians in Syria, said that the United States and Europe were “hiding a dagger behind a smile” in the attempts to end the bloodshed. This is embarrassing, because it sounds like it might be true. You see, here in America, we all have gleaming, glittering, shiny white teeth that are their absolute whitest, unlike those in Arab nations or in China. This is because we all use Crest White Strips. We all say it’s so we can get our teeth their absolute whitest so we can look all sexy and stuff, but it’s possible that we’re also doing it to blind everyone with our bright white teeth so they won’t be able to see the shiny dagger behind our smile. (I hope I’m not accidentally giving away any vital spy secrets or anything!)

I know you’re probably thinking: “Well, why go to all that trouble? Couldn’t you just paint the dagger’s blade black or something, rather than bleach your teeth white like that?” Well, you could, if it were legal. But the United Nations has strict laws on how you’re allowed to hide daggers in your mouths, and painting them is cheating. Don’t blame me, I don’t make the rules here. But the laws are obviously behind the times, and they never could have predicted we would develop tooth whiteners that would outshine even the shiniest daggers. And that’s why the U.N. is so ineffective: They never even update their regulations and laws to keep up with the cosmetics and dental industries! (And that’s just lazy!)

But you know, and maybe no-one has thought of this yet, if China suspects us of hiding a dagger behind our smile, then why don’t we just hide it somewhere else? They’d never be expecting that! We could put it in our back pockets, hide it up our sleeves, or even put it up our own butts: they’d never think of looking there! So while they’re busy inspecting our mouths, we could crap out the dagger and stab them (or whoever else we're trying to stab)! See? It’s foolproof!

(I feel like there must be an ad for Crest White Strips in there somewhere, don’t you?)

But do you suppose if we sent diplomats without any teeth, China might trust us then?

Here’s the stabtacular, smiling story:

http://news.yahoo.com/china-accuses-us-europe-having-hegemonistic-ambitions-syria-113706191.html

belVita Breakfast Police Ad

Here we have a couple of incompetent police officers shilling for some new breakfast cookie things. They say it gives them the energy they need to perform their duties. But they perform their duties so incompetently, does this really end up showing the product in a good light? After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, giving you the energy to perform or denying you energy so you under-perform, right? Well, then is it that much of a stretch to assume that these guys are so bad at their jobs because their breakfast is not sufficient to fuel them appropriately for their demanding work? It just seems like you could easily read that into this commercial.

Also, if their judgment is bad enough for them to assault a beehive like they do here, then isn’t their judgment about breakfast foods equally suspect? They like this belVita stuff, so couldn’t we assume it’s a bad choice, just like the other demonstrably questionable choices we see them make in this spot? It kind of seems that way to me. I mean, this ad is cute, but it makes them look like they suffer from a lack of judgment, energy and competence, and as such, it looks to me like it could be that their breakfast food is not up to the task of fueling them for the day. They’re the ones making the argument about being fueled up by the breakfast food, and then we see them being sluggish, slow-witted, and incompetent. Is this really the message they’re trying to send?

I like the spot: it’s cute and funny. But it does seem to me that the argument they’re making at the beginning is proven to be false by what they are showing us in the ad. And after all, actions speak louder than words, do they not? So cute or not, this is sending the wrong message, at least in my opinion.

To fix this would be easy. They could have them say that before they found belVita, they didn’t have the energy they needed for their active profession; then they could have shown them doing dumb stuff like crashing through the fence, whacking the beehive, etc. Then they could say that since they’ve found belVita, they’re more on the ball than they used to be; and they could show them doing something effectively. And they could start with the radar gun on the baseball, to match the “on the ball” statement (this would be the transition piece), and then show them doing things very energetically and effectively. It would be a “before and after” type of ad, and that way they could keep the comedy, but it would still make the food they’re advertising look good, rather than like Keystone Kops Cookies. See what I mean?

Here’s the commercial for a breakfast that protects and serves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4DnRxVxKFE

Chevy Sonic Stunts Ad

This is the Chevy Sonic spot from the Super Bowl where they kickflip the car, drop the car out of an airplane with a parachute, bungee jump the car, etc. This is a fun spot, but the odd thing is, it didn’t make me think much about the kind of car it was, and even if it did, it’s not like you could do this in it if you bought one: they even beg you not to do these stunts, so why do them in the ad? This spot is more entertainment than anything else, and it doesn’t really work very well as an ad for the car, in my opinion (although I guess it doesn’t hurt). The thing is, it doesn’t really do anything to sell me on this car. I’m not busting on the ad: maybe I’m wrong about this, and it will get people to remember the car, and to go check it out if they’re in the market to buy one. But it seems to me that by showing the car doing things we can’t do in it, and that it’s not designed to do, it’s really just a spectacular example of false advertising. (It is fun and super slick, though, and I like it a lot: I just don’t think it sells the car, so much as it entertains us.)

But this ad could work really well as a commercial for two things: car insurance, and some gasoline additive like STP Gas Treatment (or maybe some high-octane brand of gas). The insurance angle would be for obvious reasons: these stunts could be disastrous. Then they could say: “We hope you wouldn’t drive like this, but you still might have an accident anyway. And if you do, with us, you’ve got no worries. So get the enjoyment and thrill out of driving you deserve. And even if you do these stunts, we can cover you for that, too. (Just please tell us first so we can write a new policy.)”

Then, there is the gas treatment angle. (I like this one better.) The reason I think this would be a great ad for either a gas additive or a high-octane brand of gasoline is this: This ad reminds me of the Mountain Dew ads where they show people doing extreme sports activities, like snowboarding, skiing, skateboarding, etc., and it strikes me that this car is doing the automotive version of those very same activities. So just like showing people doing this stuff makes for a great commercial for Mountain Dew or Red Bull, showing a car doing this stuff makes for a great ad for whatever a car drinks to fuel up for these types of activities: Get it? So it’s basically a take off on the Mountain Dew ad campaign concept, but for cars. And I’ll bet it would work really well to entertain people as well as build brand identity, basically on the back of another great ad campaign, and in so doing, it would probably work to sell more Mountain Dew (or Red Bull) as well (because it would remind people of that campaign).

Here’s the daredevil stunt driving spot (There’s a little intro at the beginning of the ad for some local dealership; sorry, I couldn’t find a cleaner one.):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzffyE4-QhA