AdAge.com lists 10 Ads America Won't See.
I don't think they're missing much by not seeing Mr Kipling's Virgin Birth, but it would be a real shame for them to miss out on Honda's Cog. Which is where the wonders of the internet come in.
As for the ads we haven't seen either, I don't think I'd want to see the Anti-Drug Mutilation ad from Care New Zealand.
[Via GromBlog]
I do believe I've just seen the world's least desirable action figure: Mr Creosote from Monty Python's Meaning of Life.
Yes, he does vomit if you squeeze him. Lovely…
[Via Hava Cuppa Tea]
Reading a New York Times article about the pre-Christmas screenings of Peter Jackson's trilogy, I came across this comment from one of the fans in the queue:
Mike Schneider, a 17-year-old who, along with a friend, had taken the bus in from Westchester, recalled being 11 when he first read Tolkien. "I've read the trilogy five times," he said, "but never the last 50 pages so I still have something to look forward to."
I don't know whether to admire his self-control at having held back from finding out how the story ends until he could see it on the big screen, or to be aghast that he's made his way through three longish novels five times but never quite finished the job.
[Via rec.arts.sf.written]
John Connolly tells us that Love Hurts, or, to put it another way:
Ten Great Myths about Dating for the Lonely and Brokenhearted
[...]
4. Men are afraid of commitment
Men are afraid of everything. They are afraid of commitment, of rejection, of acceptance, of their girlfriends, of their girlfriends' parents, of their girlfriends' friends. In relationship terms, men exist in a state of barely-controlled terror. Anyway, men wouldn't be so afraid of commitment if women didn't keep bringing it up all the time. I mean, what's wrong with the way things are going now? We're happy aren't we?
Oh, I see. My mistake.
[...]
[Via Blog of a Bookslut]
Hilarious eBay auctions #345,675:
Item number: 2975483845 – I will break up with your boyfriend
Are you in a relationship going nowhere? Does your boyfriend punch you?
Well, maybe it's time to move on. Hi, my name is Tommy.
For the special winning bidder, I will call your boyfriend from a payphone just outside the Taco Bell in North Hollywood and tell the punk-bitch it's over.
For an additional fee, I will write him a three page letter outlining the steps he took to screw up everything.
He will know that it's over, and it will save you years of heartach and thousands in therapy. 100% money-back guarantee. If he stays, you not pays.
High bidder is responsible for telephone charges.
Why break up alone when I'll do it over the phone?
Service also available for girlfriends, gay men, gay women, multiple-partner relationships(additional fee applies), and small farm animals…
[Via Neil Gaiman]
If you've ever used the Wikipedia then you might be interested to hear that they're in desperate need of some extra hardware as the service becomes more popular.
Since they're entirely dependent upon donated time and hardware, they've put out an appeal for donations to raise the US$20,000 they need. At the time of writing they need another US$2,500.
If the trailer is anything to go by, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is destined to be jolly good fun. The big production gimmick is that the entire film is shot on bluescreen sets, which might well be hellish for the actors but looks to have produced a handsome end result. The whole trailer looks like a really well-drawn comic book; for no particular reason I can put my finger on, it reminds me of John Cassaday's work on Planetary. Which is definitely a good thing.
Besides, no film featuring airships going up in flames, dashing fighter pilots (Jude Law), spunky journalists (Gwyneth Paltrow), sexy naval officers (Angelina Jolie) and a fleet of flying giant robots can possibly be a complete waste of time. Can it?
[Via The Copydesk]
I learned something new this morning. From a thread in rec.arts.sf.written about Redheaded Heroines, which morphed into a discussion of the various design flaws in the human body:
[...]
Female's worse.
They're more likely to get bladder infections, and can get random infections of the lower torso since bacteria have a direct path from the outside. There's also a chance of the lining of the uterus migrating up and out through the fallopian tubes and implanting itself darn near anywhere it wants. (I heard of a woman having it migrate all the way up to under her eyes.) It's not particularly dangerous, but I'm told that it's pretty painful when a woman gets her period. The treatment, assuming that it hasn't spread too far, is to inflate the belly with CO2, and BURN IT OFF WITH A LASER. They have to stop when the smoke gets too thick.
I believe I speak for every male reading that last paragraph when I say "Whoah!"
Talking of extended editions of filmed drama, this New York Times article reports that a fan has produced a home-made 2-DVD commentary to accompany the official DVD release of Joss Whedon's prematurely-cancelled science fiction series Firefly.
Perhaps in a couple of years we'll see The Ultimate Lord of the Rings DVD Collection: 8 DVDs of the three films, 6 DVDs of extras, behind the scenes documentaries, footage of the Nerd Riots of 2004 and so on, plus another 6 DVDs containing a selection of fannish commentaries.
Myself, I'd prefer the commentaries to be in textual format, organised like a series of Usenet posts so that you can follow the discussion threads you're interested in. For that matter, when it comes to The Lord of the Rings they could do a lot worse than seek permission from some of the more prolific Usenet posters to republish their comments from the most relevant newsgroup threads. I know that's not actually very likely to be feasible, given the number of posters to the average LOTR thread and the prospect that some of them would have moved on from that address. But it'd give well-deserved exposure to a great deal of passionate, informed debate about what Peter Jackson & Co did and didn't get right.
According to this report, Peter Jackson has confirmed that the Extended Edition of The Return of the King will be "longer than 4 hours and 50 min." You have to bear in mind that this is taken from an interview published in Danish from which the DVD Town site has translated Jackson's quoted remark back into English – it's entirely possible that there could be a translation error or two in there.
Having said that, the quoted running length would jibe nicely with a post at Ain't It Cool News claiming that the following scenes are to be included in the Extended Edition:
- Gandalf and his Power Rangers confronting Saruman after the Helm's Deep battle. [...]
- Merry will pledge his allegiance to Theoden in a scene similar to the Pippin/Denethor bit. [...]
- Following his acceptance of Anduril from Elrond, Aragorn uses the Palantir to reveal himself to Sauron. Sauron shows him a vision of Arwen's sickness. [...]
- From the horse's mouth: "Remember the scene in which the Witch King is asked what he's going to do with Gandalf, and he says I will break him? This pays off big time in a battle between the Witch King and Gandalf as Gandalf and Pippin ride to save Faramir from the pyre." [...]
- We see Gamling die on the Pelennor Fields – there's a quick shot of Eomer bawling in the ROTK trailer.
- In the Houses of Healing, Aragorn heals Faramir, who then meets Eowyn and they fall in love. [...]
- A disguised Frodo and Sam join a column of marching orcs on the way to Mt Doom. [...]
- The Mouth of Sauron scene changes the emphasis of the entire final battle between men and orcs at the Black Gates. In the theatrical cut, Aragorn and Co. ride up to the gates, they open, and orcs come out to fight. In the extended version, they are greeted by the Mouth of Sauron. [...]
I very much hope these rumours are accurate; fun as the theatrical version was, I think it'll work even better with these scenes. I'm particularly looking forward to seeing the Mouth of Sauron, the Houses of Healing and Gandalf's encounter with Saruman, which I assume will still take place at Isengard. It'd be nicer still if Grima played his part as per the book…
[Via Plastic]
The CIA Museum Online displays some of their niftier gadgets. One which doesn't seem to appear on the museum's web site is 'Charlie' the robot catfish, whose mission the CIA is still keeping mum about. I can think of three possibilities:
Or perhaps I've watched one too many James Bond film…
[CIA Museum Online link via MetaFilter]
Donald G McNeil has written a fine article (NB: New York Times link – free registration required) on the ever-intriguing topic of how companies come up with product names. In this case, the focus is on the pharmaceutical industry:
WHEN British drug regulators told doctors recently to stop writing prescriptions for six antidepressants for children under 18, the drugs in question sounded like a "Star Wars" cast list: Paxil, Effexor, Celexa, Lexapro, Luvox and Zoloft. (A seventh, Prozac, was approved.)
[...]
In fairness to the drug companies, they do have an additional constraint that perhaps doesn't apply to, say, the car industry:
In the neon wilderness of branding, where almost everyone thinks Nike began life as a sneaker instead of a goddess and almost nobody knows that Altria is a tobacco company, a drug is probably the hardest thing to name.
Executives want something that will entice billions of dollars in sales. Customers want a hint of what it does. The Food and Drug Administration doesn't want implied medical claims. And if it sounds too much like another drug, a pharmacist might accidentally kill the customer.
That last one is a doozy.
Read the article right to the end, not least for the summary of some of the names used for the Viagra-type drugs around the world. Especially the less than subtle brand name used in the Middle East.
[Via Amygdala]
Can I just say that Galaxy Quest is a tremendous little film. I've just been watching it on BBC1 and now I seem to have this huge grin on my face that just won't go away…
Has poor Ebeneezer Scrooge been unfairly maligned over the last century and a half? Robert MacDonald certainly thinks so:
[...]
There WAS however have one charitable cause to which Mr Scrooge was a tireless subscriber, and one for which he sought no public acknowledgement. This anonymous act of charity for its own sake is one the various "telethon" ego-hounds would all be well to emulate:
He continued to employ a certain worthless, incompetent clerk named Robert Crachitt.
We know that Crachitt was incompetent for several reasons:
Unemployment in the early 1840s was virtually zero, in the middle of the greatest economic boom the world has ever seen. Anyone who could work, did work. Skilled labour was a highly-prized commodity with demand far exceeding supply, and therefore if Crachitt was competent he would have found a better-paid job elsewhere.
Furthermore, if as we surmise Ebenezer Scrooge was of the Scottish Diaspora who were setting the world of commerce and industry on its ear, any clerk of his who had paid the least attention to his employer/mentor's business methods would have been able to write his own ticket. Perhaps that's why all of the other clerks' desks in the office are vacant.
[...]
Sad to say, I don't think Mr MacDonald is joking.
[Via MetaFilter]
I wish I could find a larger copy of this spectacular photo of lightning over Las Vegas. It'd make a terrific desktop image.
You know, it's people like this who make it so difficult for the other 99.999995% of the male species:
Viggo Mortensen is about to storm the cinema screen again in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. And, from past experience, female hearts will be beating just that bit faster at the thought of a bloodied Aragorn charging into battle on his steed.
Most actors would be pleased enough – no, absolutely thrilled – to be cast as a heart-throb in one of the biggest trilogies in cinema history. But apparently not Viggo.
Adoration is not enough. He has to spoil it for the rest of the male population by having an exhibition of his own landscape photographs to coincide with the world premiere in New Zealand. His photographs were called arty things such as Lost 1, 2, 3 and 4. These ones were taken while he was lost in the wilderness.
And Viggo appeared at a poetry reading for charity, possibly the only sold-out poetry reading in human history. He was well down the bill, but shrugged that off by saying there were some very good poets reading their work that night.
When composer Howard Shore conducted the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in a Lord of the Rings concert with four choirs, Viggo joined in. Singing in Elvish.
[...]
Not that I'm jealous. Oh no…
[Via alt.showbiz.gossip]
Charles Taylor has posted a very favourable review (NB: Salon article – non-subscribers will be required to watch a brief advert before gaining access to the review) of Robert Altman's The Company, aka "Neve Campbell's dance movie."
Between this review and the one by Bryant Frazer I linked to a couple of weeks ago, it looks as if I'll definitely have to keep an eye out for The Company when it opens in the UK next May.
Their Circular Life is a fascinating site which takes a pretty commonplace notion – a time lapse sequence showing an urban location over a 24 hour period – and uses an elegant Flash interface to give the viewer control over how they view the results. Whether you choose to skim a day, to stop and replay one sequence repeatedly, or just jump around seeking highlights is up to you, the results are strangely captivating; furthermore, the addition of a limited set of samples of the sounds of the locations as the day progresses adds a great deal to the experience.
It's a shame there are only two locations on display. Still, even with only a couple of Italian cities to see Their Circular Life is well worth a look.
One last seasonal link, stolen wholesale from Making Light:
Buffy, Season 5, Episode 16
DAWN: My nog tastes funny. I think I got one with rum in it.
WILLOW: That's bad.
XANDER: Yeah, now Santa's gonna pass you right by, naughty booze hound.
WILLOW: Santa always passes me by. Something puts him off. Could be the big honkin' menorah.
TARA: (to Dawn) Oh, did you write him a letter?
XANDER: What'd you ask for?
DAWN: Um, guys, hello, puberty? Sorta figured out the whole no Santa thing.
ANYA: That's a myth.
DAWN: Yeah.
ANYA: No, I mean, it's a myth that it's a myth. There is a Santa Claus.
XANDER: The advantage of having a thousand-year-old girlfriend. Inside scoop.
TARA: There's a Santa Claus?
ANYA: Mm-hmm. Been around since, like, the 1500s. He wasn't always called Santa, but you know, Christmas night, flying reindeer, coming down the chimney – all true.
DAWN: (smiles hopefully) All true?
ANYA: Well, he doesn't traditionally bring presents so much as, you know, disembowel children, but otherwise…
TARA: The reindeer part was nice.
I miss Anyanka…
