Al Pacino has broken down and filmed the first commercial of his career, an ad for Australia’s Vittorio Coffee for director Barry Levinson, who directed Pacino in the Kevorkian biopic You Don’t Know Jack. It’s not quite as embarrassing as Marisa Tomei doing a Bertolli commercial with Dan Cortese, or as pathetic as Orson Welles mumbling about wine, but there’s still something kind of… icky about it.  Assorted dialog:

In the morning when you’re making a movie, you get up real early.  So you need all the help you can get.  When I’m reading the script, when I’m rehearsing — coffee goes with my line of work.

Most of my scripts have coffee stains on them.  That’s how you know it’s a Pacino script.

…This is good coffee.

Yuck, misdirected gravitas. Gives me gas.  And Levinson is a hack.  This is how the commercial should’ve gone:

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the 70s, Orson Welles used to do commercials for Paul Masson wine.  In this clip of out takes from one such commercial, he shows us what it might be like if a scientist created a hybrid life form from David Hasselhoff in that burger video and Alfred Hitchcock.  I think I’ve watched this 12 times in a row now.  I can’t get enough of the director shouting “ACTION!” and Orson Welles just sitting there trying to lift his 70-pound eyelids (roughly a tenth of his total body weight). *Director pokes Orson with a stick*    AHHHH!  The Freeesssh shhaaampaaaagnes.  ‘as alwayssh been celebraded forashexshellenshe…. *mumble mumble eyes roll around independently of each other zzzzzz*

Paul Masson Wines: They make grandpa wax nostalgic and fall asleep.

[Pursuitist via NYMag]

As if it wasn’t enough to charge you more for 3D movie tickets, you’ll now be subjected to 3D commercials prior to your 3D movies.  The accompanying Hollywood Reporter article is a veritable Nazi orgy of awful marketing douche-speak.

A father at an aquarium reaches into the tank, carves out a block of water full of manta rays and fish and brings it home, placing it into a Samsung television set in his living room. When he and his family don 3D glasses and settle onto the sofa, the sea life swims out of the TV toward them. “Ever wonder how amazing it would be to experience life in another dimension?” asks the voice-over.

I have wondered that.  Then one time I actually turned my eyes away from the screen, and when I saw the world present itself to me in three dimensions, I sh*t my pants in fear.  My game had been changed.  And two or three days later, so had my underwear.

“3D is a new dimension, literally and figuratively,” says Peggy Ang, vp marketing communications for the consumer electronics division of Samsung Electronics America.

…and the sound of a million people groaning simultaneously echoed throughout the city.

“In the past three months, we’ve seen more interest from advertisers than you can humanly imagine,” says Cliff Marks, president of sales and marketing at NCM Media Networks, the digital in-theater network that includes AMC Entertainment, Cinemark Holdings and Regal Entertainment Group.

More interest than I can imagine humanly?  What if I pretend to be a sea otter, then will I be able to imagine it?  Please, I just want to know more about this exciting business opportunity.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Kids Choice Awards happened over the weekend, and in addition to a bunch of celebrities getting “slimed”, a new spot for Iron Man 2 premiered.  It’s mostly footage you’ve already scene, and of the new stuff, I suppose the most eventful thing to happen is ScarJo as Black Widow speaking for the first time.  It’s, uh… pretty much what you’d expect, assuming you’ve heard Scarlett Johansson speak before (isn’t she supposed to sound… Russian?). In any case, I kind of prefer it when she doesn’t speak. I also don’t like the idea of important stuff happening during the Kids Choice Awards.  When I have kids, they’re only getting one choice, and that’s shutting the hell up.

[pictures via]

Remember that clip I posted a while back from Hausu, the Japanese film about a killer cat painting that vomits (how could you forget)?  Turns out the director, Nobuhiko Obayashi, also directed a bunch of commercials, including this one, part of a series of Japanese Charles Bronson ads for the cologne, “Mandom.”  They harken back to a simpler time, when a man could look like crinkled nutsack with a mustache and still be considered a sex symbol (oddly enough, squintiness is still in fashion — see Josh Hartnett, James Franco, Channing Tatum, etc.).

My favorite part is when he’s just hangin ‘ out, smokin’ his pipe and decides to take off his shirt and pour cologne all over himself.  Jesus, man, the guy must’ve used half the bottle.  No wonder old people smell like sh-t.

Read the rest of this entry »