https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy1rumvo9xc#t=68
Not particularly interesting animation.
Or plot.
Or idea.
I watched the whole thing just so that I could say the above with some semblance of ‘authority’.
If I didn’t write this blog I’d have stopped it after about 38.4 seconds.
And is Tim Howard really the best goalie Nike sponsor? (Or is his inclusion a nod to the US market?)
I’ve just finished reading an interesting article on the economics of online film reviewing.
If you can’t be arsed to read it (which would be ironic considering its content), the gist of it is that because people are no longer interested in reading full-length film reviews (or anything over 1000 words) there’s no point in paying to generate them. That ‘no point’ refers to the fact that these things cost money and putting them up online is simply an exercise in losing that money.
But shouldn’t we live in a world where in-depth film reviewing is a valid, valuable pursuit?
This is where the world ‘should’ reveals its true colours as being essentially meaningless unless it’s attached to a logical context (eg: ‘if you want to be clean you should have a bath’; not ‘I’ve been out of work so long I should have a job by now’). But whatever world we think we ‘should’ live in, we don’t (yet); we live in the world our actions have created, so unless we all suddenly start preferring 1000 carefully chosen words analysing the themes of education vs instinct in Blue Is The Warmest Colour to 25 things I saw in Grown-Ups 2 that I can’t unsee, we’ll be getting a lot more of the latter and the former will wither and die.
Of course, this all comes down the financial imperative that seems to drive most things today. If those sites are the sole source of income for somebody then the need to make money out of them is inextricably linked to their very existence, and who are we to say what should or shouldn’t be on them? There are colossal reviews of all films that come out in the UK in Sight and Sound, so it’s not as if the needs of the devoted movie buff lie unserved, but they exist only as a result of sufficient interest to make them economically viable.
Or, as with this blog, you can write for the pure pleasure of it and the response it generates. In case anyone thinks I make money from this, let me now officially disabuse you of that notion, but I believe it has brought me indirect financial benefits that were not planned or courted. So I continue to do it because I think it makes me a better writer and CD, allowing me to discuss all sorts of issues that would otherwise remain inside my brain. But lucky me and my day job.
So what this really comes down to is the need to patronise the things you’d like to continue. Illegal downloads may not kill the movie industry right now, but they have compromised its financial benefits and by extension its ability to take risks that might have delighted us. The ‘disappearing middle‘ is where the good movies emanate from, but studios are no longer willing to back those horses. Do the meagre royalties of Spotify screw the ability of a new band to get a recording contract, or compromise the inclination of an established artist to do something more experimental? Does it matter? Were musicians on too much money in the old days of three decent tracks and seven shit ones on one £13.99 CD, the current situation being a rebalancing to where things ‘ought’ to be?
As I’m fond of saying, there’s no right or wrong here; just the workability of financing the things you love so that there are more of them. If you don’t want to subsidise the creation of something don’t be surprised when it disappears, or ends up flashing its knickers on Kickstarter.
Here’s Beats by Dre’s World Cup ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_i3Lcjli84
I’ve already gone into my reasons for disliking Nike’s effort, but in a year when it was really their turn to knock it out of the park again, it’s interesting to see them get shown up by a high-end tech company.
Like Write The Future, it feels like they’ve thrown everything including the kitchen sink at it, sparing no expense until we’ve mouthed the name of the hundredth world-class star preparing for his game inside a pair of those ubiquitous headphones.
No, it’s not as good as Write the Future, but that’s because Nike has a natural connection to the World Cup, giving it a massive advantage. Connecting headphones to sport is more of a stretch, but they’ve got a good, solid idea represented by a great line (The Game Before The Game).
The other thing that gives this an edge over 2014 Nike is the fact that it doesn’t feel like it’s trying so hard. It’s quite a trick to film a gazillion dollars of talent and have it feel lo-fi and somewhat real.
If I were the kind of person who idolised footballers who don’t play for Arsenal, or wore Beats By Dre headphones (I’ve had a few pairs over the years but now I’m on Team Parrot Zik) I’d contribute to this ad’s social media footprint by tweeting to my mates and maybe putting it on my Facebook status.
But I’m not, so I retweeted it from someone else then wrote a blog post about it (#TGBTG).
Properly funny translation fails (thanks, J).
GTA V on the Commodore 64 (thanks, T):
GoT characters updated to the 90s (thanks, A).
Real Business lessons from Motley Crue (thanks, J).
Ed Ruscha’s Hollywood Blvd 1973 and 2002:
Peter Sellers does his Michael Caine impression (thanks, V):
Every fucking word in Star Wars alphabetised (thanks, S):
Birds with human arms (thanks, G).
The New York music scene in the 90s:
Here’s a project to get us to change the make up of the overprivileged G8.
They’ve just kicked Russia out so they need a new nation.
Watch this and see if a different angle might help the planet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC9rsxTyx8M
In this information age we’ve been warned of what might happen with all the little personal tidbits we give Facebook and Google by allowing them access to what we discuss with our friends. Apparently they know our buying habits, including when and where we like to purchase everything from groceries to cars, and that knowledge is like gold dust to your average corporation.
Well, I’ve been on Gmail and Facebook for six or seven years now, so they should know me inside out. Their mystical algorithms must have seeped inside my cerebral cortex like smoke, silently extracting every one of my desires, no matter how mundane. Here in 2014 they ought to be sending me emails about things I didn’t even know I wanted until Mark Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin decided to let me know in ads targeted with such ninja-like stealth that I found myself clicking my way to Amazon Prime like an epileptic woodpecker.
You might not be entirely surprised to learn that this has yet to happen. Here are some of the ads on the side of my Facebook page on Saturday evening:
Not sure what the smile one’s about. I’m pretty happy with my teeth (top tip from my dentist: floss every day) and can’t recall a time when I’ve expressed any kind of an interest in getting them whitened. I might have looked up Hungry House or something like it a few years ago, but never took that vague interest any further. And a smart watch? Maybe they’ve seen me occasionally mention Apple stuff, put two and two together and made fourteen. Yes, I’m somewhat interested in getting whatever wearable technology Apple might come up with in future, but unfortunately I’m pretty sure they don’t advertise on Facebook’s small space section, so my Apple devotion will never lead to more accurate FB advertising messages.
One time I went part of the way to ordering a shirt on Matches or Coggles, but for reasons I can’t recall I backed out before final purchase. I was then stalked by the shirt all over the internet, as if the shopkeeper had not been convinced by my final decision and decided to chase me down the street, follow me home and haunt me for several weeks on the off-chance I might change my mind. I don’t want the fucking shirt. All attempts to remind me of its existence irritate me. They make me dislike the company that won’t take no for an answer, and this is what a decade of building up knowledge about my innermost desires has resulted in?
Since yesterday my attempts to play Wordscraper (a Scrabble-like game on Facebook) have been interrupted by an infuriatingly intrusive ad for some Spider-man cartoon on the Disney XD channel. First it shoots a web across the entire screen, then Spider-man swings across the web, then a huge ad complete with shitty cartoons settles above the game board until I click it off. Now, I’m not even vaguely interested in this thing. I have a Spider-man game app on my phone that my son plays, but I bought it several years ago and that was that, and I haven’t even bothered with the new movie. So they seem to have got it wrong. Very wrong. And I repeat: this is with the inside scoop all that juicy personal info has given them, along the super-genius brains that will use that info to get us to buy things we didn’t even know we wanted.
Yes, I’m aware that the stuff we willingly give to Google, Facebook et al might result in us being hauled before a Magistrus of the third sector of the North Eastern Quadrant of the Chinese Empire for thought crimes at some point in the 2030s, but y’know, if they want to know I don’t like racism but do like Arsenal then so be it.
I just wonder if a) these people are much stupider than we give them credit for, or b) knowing what I like on a day-to-day basis doesn’t actually help corporations that much at all, at least not in a way that will allow them to divert me from whatever course I was going to take anyway.
Cosmo’s worst sex tips (thanks, T).
The world’s greatest record collectors (thanks, M).
Quentin Tarantino’s 2014 Cannes press conference (thanks, J):
Why Edgar Wright is a good comedy director (apparently) (thanks, M):
Spielberg’s long takes:
The colour palettes of movies (thanks, B).
Stereotypes of the world, beautifully mapped (thanks, A).
How to swear like Malcolm Tucker (thanks, J).
Misconceptions of the universe explained.
Charles Bukowski’s tips for a kick-ass life (thanks, S).
Alex Trebek has gone mad:
Utterly amazing photos (thanks, D).