http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ArFy91n1FR0

I think it’s the sense of irreverence.

There was none in the plane ad, but this one shows Facebook laughing at itself, and that’s never a bad thing.

It also shows a truth (we flick through our phones when our bosses are telling us something boring) that’s been realistically expressed.

Nice (r).

Two things happened to me recently. I am now going to attempt to combine them in a single post. Brace yourselves…

A couple of weeks ago I was watching Se7en. I love that film and have probably seen it 20-30 times. It’s such a brilliant reworking of crime thriller clichés that you almost forget the context of its appearance in 1995 (yes – it’s nearly 20 years old). The mid-nineties was jam-packed with fucking awful films (probably more so than now, and that’s saying something), so I just thought I’d check if Se7en was nominated for any Oscars, and if not,  what was voted in ahead of it.

Even if we consider that Best Picture might have been a stretch given the subject matter, I think it’s fair to say that the photography, screenplay, art direction and direction were all faultless. So let’s just see what won:

Best Picture was Braveheart, the kind of film (ageing actor directing an epic – see Dances with Wolves, Unforgiven etc.) the Academy loved back then. But Se7en wasn’t even among the nominees, one of which was Babe – yes, the film about the talking pig.

A similar list for Best Director: no nomination for Se7en‘s David Fincher, but good old racist Mel Gibson won and the Babe director was nominated.

Screenplay was actually quite a good category that year. The Usual Suspects won, but other nominees included Toy Story, Nixon and Mighty Aphrodite. No Se7en.

Art Direction: again nothing for Se7en, but another nod for Babe and one for a film called A Little Princess.

Cinematography? Surely, surely this would break Se7en‘s duck. Nope, and one of the nominees was Batman Forever – yes, the really shit one with Jim Carrey as The Riddler.

Se7en did manage an editing nomination but lost out to Apollo 13.

So what I’m trying to say is that certain brilliant things may not be appreciated as such when people first experience them. The context might be wrong, the shock of the new might be too great or it might have needed time to marinade, revealing its depths and secrets with each passing view. Babe might as well be a pork pie for all the resonance it achieved, whereas Se7en lives on, making Gluttony eat several of the Babe pies over a protracted period of insane torture.

Which brings me to the second thing.

After last week’s post about Surfer vs NoitulovE I thought about the other Guinness ads that were mentioned in the comments. Then I thought about them some more. But it wasn’t till a few days later that I remembered one that was never even mentioned, and it’s a belter:

So why did no one mentioned the much-lauded Snails? It’s really good, everyone loved it at the time and it won a load of awards. I can only think that there must be a flipside to the Se7en phenomenon of appreciation after the fact, and that is the complete disappearance of something of real quality. For me this can take many forms: Radiohead’s Hail To The Thief album fell off my radar for several years;  The Lives Of Others is a masterpiece that floated away like smoke, and I sometimes forget all about liquorice catherine wheels for months.

The memory’s a funny old thing, but if it could be a bit more reliable I’d feel less like shoving a screwdriver into my ear.

I was just reading this interesting article on male vs female stand up comedians.

It suggests that women aren’t as good at standing up and making people laugh because they don’t grow up in the competitive environment that men do. Apparently, those of us without fallopian tubes live a life of one-upmanship all day, every day from the moment we are born. This hones our verbal gladiatorial skillz and turns the funnier of us into sharper comedians.

Is that the case? My first instinct is to dismiss it as sexist bullshit, but then I think a little more and perhaps see something in it. In addition, I wonder if it’s sexist after all.

I have two kids, a boy and a girl, and my seven-year-old son is roughly 1,000,000,000,000 times more competitive than my three-year-old daughter. She is strong-willed, smart and always stands her ground, but unlike my son, she doesn’t seek to create a contest out of every single thing from Subway Surfers and Thumb War to getting dressed and brushing teeth. I know it’s merely anecdotal, but I can see where the guy who wrote the article is coming from. My son and his friends are painfully, constantly, ridiculously competitive, while my daughter can’t see why all that guff is so important.

Which brings me to the sexism point. There’s nothing to say that being competitive is a good thing. It can certainly lead you to strive to greater efforts and achieve more than you would otherwise, but it also turns life into a somewhat pointless series of meaningless contests. Even if you compete in some of the more lucrative areas, such as sport, you’ll only compete against other men, who have the same competitive advantage as you. And has this competitive edge helped men in other areas? Women currently dominate the music charts and have no trouble winning Booker prizes (both massive competitions), while comediennes such as Tina Fey and Miranda (yes, I know she’s shit, but she’s very successful) also manage to dominate their field. So perhaps their lack of overall competitiveness allows them to concentrate on making their work good for its own sake, creating higher quality stuff that wins in the end.

So men might be more competitive, but it might not matter.

As this is pure conjecture rather than science, what are your unfounded opinions on the matter?

Violin Nuthin’ But A G Thang (thanks, A):

The future (and past) of gaming:

Michael Bay’s profit per explosion (thanks, G).

Classic albums as novels (thanks, A).

Lionel Messi vs a Japanese robot.

Amazing pictures from below (thanks, S).

Pick your drug, choose your soundtrack (thanks, G).

Rear Window timelapse (thanks, K):

The incredible beauty of Earth from the International Space Station (thanks, A):

A wonderful new book we can all enjoy (thanks, J).

When celebrities were young (thanks, A).

Wu Tang vs The Beatles (thanks, G) and Wu Tang vs Hendrix (thanks, O).

Alec Baldwin interviews Thom Yorke (thanks, T).

When I was at AMV a few big Guinness ads were made.

I know there’s a lot of love for Swimblack, and one of my old art directors loves Dreamclub, but the two biggest are surely Surfer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zff9hVH3ptY

And Noitulove:

But which would you rather have made?

In the red corner, weighing in at about two million pounds, we have Surfer, winner of two – count ’em – two D&AD Black Pencils. I think it also won Channel 4’s contemporaneous poll to find the greatest ad of all time, the Creative Circle Platinum award and best ad at the BTAAs. However, it didn’t win the Cannes Grand Prix, nor Best Of Show at The One Show (it lost out to Independent Litany and We Know What Men Are Thinking respectively).

While in the blue corner we have Noitulove, winner (apparently by a landslide over Sony Balls) of the Cannes Grand Prix for film and Best Of Show at The One Show. It was, however, beaten to best ad at the BTAAs by Impossible Dream and won a single craft Silver Pencil for Special Effects at D&AD, so more popular abroad than at home. Overall, it won ‘more awards’ than Surfer, but that might be because it was entered in award schemes that Surfer was not.

So they seem quite even in award terms, but which would you rather have made?

For what it’s worth, I’d rather have made Surfer, but then I’d rather have made Surfer than any other ad in history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XS1dM6kmCx4

Three cheers for postmodernism.

And funny songs.

UPDATE: and another one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfiiWGWhB9g&hd=1

‘It’s a really weird commercial for soap’ must be one of the best lines of the year.

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

There are a few reasons why this isn’t my cup of Lapsang Souchong, but here’s the biggest:

The conceit of having the thing that’s on your mobile phone actually with you is sooooooooooooooooooo fucking old.

Here’s how old: I made an ad with that idea in 2000, and when I was making it we heard that a team from DDB was making a similar ad for a different mobile company.

That was thirteen years ago.

Thirteen.

Thir-fucking-teen.

It was played out before 9/11, before Lord of the Rings, before Jedward.

In all fairness, it has been done brilliantly since:

But it’s also been done really badly, as recently as last week:

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

So as far as I’m concerned, it’s time to put this thing to bed.

Or flush it down the toilet.

Or stab it through the heart with a spike made of frozen excrement.

I was speaking to a copywriter recently and he explained that he had a nickname for the regular demands for a Grrr/Cog/Balls/Gorilla.

He called it Grrrballs.

When I were a lad and all round here were fields it was Tangounexpected (doesn’t roll off the tongue quite so well, but whatevs). Every client wanted a Tango or a Dunlop Unexpected (more a Tango to be fair. It was much more famous than Unexpected) and whether you were being briefed on Sugar Puffs or Pirelli the planners and client wanted to let you know how high they were setting the bar.

Almost always that’s not what they wanted. Most of them just wanted to look as if they were after a big, famous ad, so they pointed to the most topical one. But in those instances it was like the owner of Doncaster Rovers pointing to a great Arsenal game and asking for that kind of performance. None of the necessary factors were in place, so it was never going to happen.

But should we condemn the client who wants an ad way out of his league? I suppose it’s better than the client who goes straight for the crap, and in shooting for the moon you might hit the stars they really want. Then again, creatives are never keen on bashing their heads against a brick wall, and false hope can be pretty tedious.

Then there are the ones who actually mean it. They really do want a Grrrballs.

Few and far between, but most welcome.

Clutch them to your trembling bosom and never let them go.

Orson Welles explains how to gamble (thanks, T).

I don’t know what to say about Winny Puhh (thanks, J):

Why The Walking Dead and Toy Story are basically the same (thanks, G).

Celebrities photoshopped to look like ordinary people (thanks, P).

Beautiful movie moment portraits (thanks, T).

Best burglar of all time (thanks, J):

The greatest films of all time and their 1-star IMDB reviews (thanks, J).

Thug Kitchen (thanks, J).

Great design + great TV = … (thanks, M).

Most ironic things ever (thanks, J).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o4vPyGY0SSc

The basic visuals are the same every time (really good looking food during the cooking process), but each is beautifully different.

Great campaign.