running: ur doing it wrong

For people who don't do it, running is an abstract concept. That's why the realm of TV running ads is often mired by missed-mark attempts at running humour, non-sensical visual metaphors and just totally weird what-were-they-going-for? stuff that looks like a bunch of arty geeky creative-types used the 'running is psychological' excuse to employ some cool new trendy film or SFX technique.

I'm a running fool, so I notice.

Example: wtf, Asics? What the hell is going on here? Is that shoe exploding in reverse? Why is there a creepy deer? And why is this guy running across the set from I know What You Did Last Summer so late at night? Ok high-speed photography addicts, this isn't even that awesome looking, it's just weird.


And here's New Balance with a head-scratch of a visual gaff about getting your feet off your mind and into the right shoes or something, but come on, really? It's silly and requires an awful lot of brain cells to make the logistical leap.



Not missing out on the confusion-action, here's Nike with a brand new spot out of Italy that I can't understand and I'm legitimately trying. Is he leaving imprints of himself everywhere he runs? And what is with this running after midnight through unnervingly deserted urban ghettos thing? The tagline is something like 'Run Without Brakes'. I don't get it.



And here are a couple of ads that hit the sweet spot - they have relate-ability, emotion, and they know their audience. I feel understood when I watch these.

For the record, I run in Asics, but not because of their marketing department, obvs.

Sports Authority



Love/Hate

bubblegummed

I don't know much about this vid, except that a Columbian 'audiovisual collective' called Copete made some poor unsuspecting folks chew a terrible-tasting tear-eliciting piece of gum while filming, quite beautifully, with a Canon 7D. And that Columbians are really pretty.

i heart jason schwartzman

Maybe it's his cottagey facial hair or maybe it's his patented dead-pan awkwardness, who cares, I love Jason Schwartzman.

Here he is hocking the New Yorker app for the iPad.

Roman Coppola Directed.

vimeo rips off... itself

Vimeo took inspiration [*actual recipe?] from one of the vids it hosts to make a promo for its upcoming Festival+Awards show in NYC.

Damn, Vimeo, that must cut like a big kitchen knife through sticks of soft butter, and you thought nobody would notice.

I thought about flying down for the event, but tickets to get in are only $20, which made me think there wouldn't be free hors d'Ĺ“uvres or anything - and I love H.D.s.  They're the only reason I go to anything.  Actually, I love making H.D.s for dinner parties... I love making anything and everything for dinner for that matter.

Which reminds me, I'm making a cinnamon macintosh apple pie - crust from scratch - this Thanksgiving for some stellar Toronto folks as well as potatoes three ways, a honeyed ham, and mulled cider.

You're invited (not you).

Vimeo's making-of pie vid is not nearly as lovely or delicious or warm-feeling-all-over feeling as the making-of an Oslo-ian strawberry rhubard pie, sorry to say, if you're going to lift [*twice bake?] an idea, at least make it pay off.

Watch 'em both! What do you think?

Kitchen Simplicity: Strawberry + Rhubarb LOVE

Vimeo: Warm From the Oven

fur for thought

All-female street artists collective, Neozoon are firmly anti-fur.

But instead of spouting rhetoric about that, they're making stop-and-think pieces of guerilla fur art out of old furry textiles in Paris and Berlin - starting with silhouettes on walls, and blowing out the idea to mechanically animated fur creatures made from pelts and old coats.

Gee I guess I can't comment, except to say the work is both beautiful and mark-hitting - I flagrantly wear vintage furs I pick up in thrift shops - but I'd really prefer to hear any protesting you'd like to do expressed cleverly in art form only, mmmkay?









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kick trip

Photographer, Robert Alegria's shots of skaters tackling industrial & desolated landscapes remind me of cruising around in highschool, parking wherever there was a crowd and a suitable set of stairs, popping the trunk so we could hear the stereo, and trying to look adorable as we watched the show from the hood.






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robyn playing sound academy in TO on November 12

"Your car's a dump and you're broke, but that's a'ight, I don't like'em *fancy* guys."



daily dose of design hotness

These handmade silkscreen movie posters by Artist, David O'Daniel are just gorgeous. And he sells prints!






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a simple sting

I like these clever, cute and uncluttered Film North promos.

2010 will actually be the first Film North Fest on record - it'll be held from the 23rd to the 25th in the Muskokas (Huntsville to be exact).

I once dated this fellow whose parents were nouveau Canadian white-trash wealthy. They fiercely, shamelessly, guarded their toys and itemized their riches to the point that we couldn't even light a fire in the fireplace of their 3.5 million dollar Muskoka 'cottage' without incurring their wrath that we'd somehow ruin it, or make a mess on their gorgeous bearskins.

We did make a mess.

Moral of the story: their shittiness could not by one iota take away from the stunning gorgeousness of the Muskoka great outdoors, pristine, clarifying, deep-breath-taking, stunning Canadian Shield awesomesauceness.

I remember waking up at 4AM - we'd dragged the mattress into the front room with the five story windows - and looking up at an unadulterated view of the night sky, glittering goodness, shooting stars like it was nothing, and thinking: this is what it must be like spinning slowly into space.

Oh boo, too bad we broke up.

Anyway, my point is Film North may succeed on a great program or just on setting alone - either way, fun promos.

diy transformers better than original

Alex Semenov's Transformers short is more badass and has a more understandable plot than any of the Michael Bay films, which may not be that difficult to pull off.

digital cameras are so confusing!

Old people can't do SHIT, they can't use a blanket properly, they need xtra zoom crazy eyeball magnifying glasses to read anything and crazy shady full head-wrapping droid sun shades to put over those glasses, and now, they're finally piping up about how much they hate trying to work your newfangled digital cameras. Seriously, your Grandpa wants some film. Be nice to Grandpa, he's going to die soon.

typography win

These typographical movie posters are simply lovely, I especially love the Pulp piece. I remember doing this with Bob Dylan covers in Art class.





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ilike

This list of common grammar and usage errors from J-Source.ca for the rest of us, which doesn't include 'your vs you're' because it's for literate people.
Couple of

The word “of” is integral to this phrase. You need to have it there. Always. It’s never “a couple dollars” or “a couple kittens.”

Dilemma

A dilemma is a situation in which a person is forced to choose between two alternatives, both of which are very bad. It is not to be used to refer to a choice between more than two alternatives or a choice between a good and a bad alternative.

Momentarily

This word means, “for a moment,” and not, “in a moment.” So, it would be correct to say that Bryan paused momentarily as he passed the candy store, but incorrect to say that Laurel’s parents would arrive momentarily to pick her up from ballet practice.

it's hackers' 15th anniversary!

But contrary to popular belief, the movie did not feature the first glimpse of Angie's sideboob, that honour goes to 1993's Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow, basically a remake of the original Cyborg, neither of which anybody actually saw, except me, when I was thirteen.
I vaguely remember the interlacing being so bad the dark spots turned to black snow on my TV, and the rest of it looking sort of like it was filmed with a navy blue gel over the lens.
Now, that could've been the VHS copy we rented from Video Tech, or maybe it was supposed to look that way.
Anyway in that film, Angelina looks like she's way too underage to be baring her breasts, so she must have already been fighting with daddy, because there are plenty of gratuitous breast shots, but I imagine they'd sort of make the average adult male feel creepy/dirty like he's been gawking at his little sister though a blue peep hole.
At thirteen, I was just fascinated because Angelina Jolie's rack is PERFECT, and I wanted a pair.
I ended up getting a pair, actually - pretty damn good, but hers are still A-One!

Happy Anniversary, Hackers! Thanks for making me wet for a crotch rocket and a pixie cut since '95.

holy racial profiling, batman

oktrends - the dating research blog from okcupid - just posted some socio/anthropological research more enlightening than a lot of garbage you get from those poor overworked and undersexed ivy league grad students' thesis papers.

"...black people are 20 times more likely than everyone else to mention soul food, whereas no foods are distinct for white people, unless you count diet coke."

Also, erm, weird, just going by which ethnic group's tastes and interests I identify most with in general - I'm Asian.

Read The REAL 'Stuff White People Like'.


ilike

Video experiments by UK Directing duo, Tell No One. This one's called 'Seaweed'.


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calligraphy is badass

If I had this skill, I'd never let go of the pen, I'd wander around all day writing everyone's names.

Legacy of Letters from Luca Barcellona.

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dwarf your life

'Dark Side of the Lens' is jaw dropping larger-than-life wave riding motion from surf photographer, Mickey Smith.

Aaannnnnnd, I'll be moving to Ireland. Tomorrow.

things I liked in '99

Sticking with the highschool theme - Artist, Justin Van Genderen, whose cool Zissou/Adidas mashup I came across a few weeks ago, just posted these awesome wall scroll homages to Ghost in the Shell and Princess Mononoke, numbered one and two on my all-time-favourites list of anime films (I had a Mononoke patch sewn onto my purse in senior year, that's geek devotion).


song to go back to school to

This has been out for a while, but it's the perfect day for it - Summer Camp's music vid for 'Round the Moon' is made almost entirely of footage from an obscure Euro new wave 70s movie called 'A Swedish Love Story' where the two leads spend pretty much the entire film lusting after one another through silent hormonal teen sign language [a shot of the band actually performing this tune was intercut in the 'club' scene].

You couldn't PAY me to go back to highschool. But the new love part had its moments.

long in the tooth weekend

Happy Labour Day!
I'll be lacing up the running kicks and hitting the road all weekend long.
I think this'll need to be in playlist.
Remember the shit you did when you were seventeen and you felt so stupidly invincible you thought you'd live forever?
So does Underworld, except they asked themselves what would happen if those adolescent feelings never went away.
Answer = grandpa hijinks in Always Loved a Film



See you next week.

ballerina vs breaker

I wonder if Groove Armada stole their idea for Dance it Up from this lovely 2007 Nike spot by LA Director, Shearer?

They made it more 'ha ha', less 'how pretty'.



boom go the curves

Thank you, Matthew Weiner, from the bottom of my not-a-size-zero behind for making normally sized women everywhere feel like bodacious sex bombs again.

Christina Hendricks is a weapon.



More from behind the screens on the set of Mad Men in Rolling Stone.

ilike

Alex Roulette's near photoreal paintings, eerily evocative of growing up in nowheresville, Canada like I did.





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drop dead drama

AMC ready to bat another drama series out of the park [blow another hole in one's undead skull?] with The Walking Dead.

The trailer makes it look.... freakily awesome akshully.

cee lo versus cee lo

A couple weeks back I posted Cee Lo Green's 'Fuck You' done to hilarious effect with awesome simplicity in an all-typography vid.

Apparently that wasn't the official version - it dropped this week and here it is in all its live action [and some type] glory - which one do you like better?

look at this cute cyclops turtle!

Just look at it.
It's from Taiwan, where all the cute things in the world are made.

your parlour needs a crystal stallion

What would your one completely superficial, refuckulous, over-the-top purchase be if you could purchase anything?

Behold mine.

It's called 'Lucky Spot' from designer, Stella McCartney of all people, and it's returned by popular demand to Northumberland, UK's Belsay Castle after hanging there in an exhibit back in '04.

Is it for sale as a matter of fact? Layaway anybody?





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