London Sun may discontinue topless Page 3 Lovelies
There’s been a campaign to bring the tradition of the Page 3 pinup in the popular London tabloid newspaper to a close. BTW, the Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the same people who own Fox News. (Please note that the link to Page 3 pinup is to a BBC story, not actually to Page 3.)
I’ve been planning for several days to write a blog entry today about three movies from 1968 that I’ve watched over the last couple of weeks – 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ice Station Zebra, and The Shoes of the Fisherman.
Why these movies?
When I was eight years old and growing up in Iowa, my parents took the whole family to the River Hills Theater in Des Moines to see 2001. River Hills was a spectacular theater designed for Cinerama and 70mm films, featuring a 90-foot wide curved screen. Sort of the commercial IMAX of the time. In addition to being blown away by 2001, I was also impressed by the two trailers we saw – Ice Station Zebra and The Shoes of the Fisherman. Even more than 45 years later, I still remember seeing both the movie and the trailers. In fact, that evening helped set in motion my lifetime love of seeing bigger than life movies in big theaters.
A couple of weeks ago, I found Ice Station Zebra showing on Turner Classic movies, and that prompted me to go ahead a watch those three 1968 blockbusters. I had, of course, seen 2001. And I suspect, though I’m not certain, that I’ve seen all or most of Cold War submarine thriller Ice Station Zebra at one time or another. But this was definitely my first time to see Shoes of the Fisherman. The movie tells the story of a Ukrainian bishop who has been imprisoned in a Soviet gulag for 20 years. He’s released in a deal with the Vatican to help prevent the outbreak of WW III between the Soviets and the Chinese. In a strange turn of events, the Ukrainian bishop is quickly elevated from being a political prisoner to being the first non-Italian pope in centuries.
The movie holds up surprising well over the years, with a beautiful look at the papal election process and the role that our religious leaders can play in world events.
So I’ve been planning to blog about this 45-year-delay from seeing the trailer to seeing the movie, and then the news catches up with me with surprise announcement this morning that Pope Benedict XVI is resigning because of old age. And in a strange coincidence, Turner Classic Movies already had two screenings of Shoes of the Fisherman scheduled over the next month. Though it wouldn’t surprise me now if they move up and expand their showing of it.
At any rate, I highly recommend both 2001 and Shoes of the Fisherman. Ice Station Zebra was fun, but largely dated. If you decide to watch Shoes, try to catch it on TCM. The print available on DVD is pretty bad. Here are the trailers for these three movies:
A round up of unexpected things I’ve read recently. None of these are from The Onion!
NPR Station Urges Listeners to Have Sex and Make More Listeners
“Chicago’s NPR station, WBEZ, is making a more intimate appeal than usual during its current membership drive. Rather than simply asking you for a few bucks, the station is asking you to “Go make babies” with other “interesting people”—who may be likely to become “interesting people” and future WBEZ listeners themselves.”(AdWeek, HT @ojezap)
Why Red State’s Erick Erickson is an interesting addition to Fox News “We no longer have to transport ourselves to a magical alternate reality to ponder what a love child between Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney would look like. Given a Justice Department memo obtained by NBC News, we can conclude that child would look like none other than President Barack Obama.” Erick Erickson of RedState.com and Fox News.
When social media PR goes bad – Applebee’s edition
“One would think that in 2013 anyone who does social media professionally has the social Web figured out, particularly when one works for a big brand that has hundreds of thousands of customers who know how to use Facebook and Twitter.”But I guess we know what happens when one assumes.
Let’s take Applebee’s as case in point.” (Ragan.com)
We’re really living in a mobile media world
“By 2017, there will be an estimated 5.2 billion people using mobile phones, up from 4.3 billion in 2012. There will also be about 1.7 billion connected machines — anything from a home appliance to a car — in five years.” (Cecilia Kang, Washington Post)
“John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood” about what went wrong with the Disney/Andrew Stanton adaptation of John Carter of Mars is free on Kindle through Thursday, February 7th.
It pains me to say this, but I’m bored with Super Bowl advertising. Instead of being innovative, exciting, new and different, they mostly have a predictable sameness to them. This supercut of Super Bowl ads posted over at Deadspin highlights the problem of “How many boobs and nut shots were there in the Super Bowl commercials?” As they say:
Another year, another 70-plus multimillion-dollar round of hyper-produced spots for the Super Bowl featuring silent women in bikinis, abused consumers, and CrAzY CoLLiSiOns. May we never forget the two magic words—sex and violence—and may we never evolve.
To be sure, there were memorable, heart touching ads out there. Dodge had the 2-minute-long “So God made a farmer” Paul Harvey-voiced ad for their trucks which attracted mixed response, depending, I suppose, on what part of the country you’re from. (I live in Nebraska and liked it, though I don’t think it was as good as the Eminem “Imported From Detroit” ad from a couple of years ago):
Another ad that attracted a lot of positive attention (and romanticized farming) was the Budweiser ad featuring a newborn clydesdale. It was USA Today’s highest rated commercial of the evening, and the clydesdales have long history as part of the Budweiser brand image. (The version I’ve linked to is an extended web-cut of the ad.)
(Ok, after rewatching this one, I have to admit it’s a heartwarming ad that does a lot to build good feelings about the brand.)
But overall, I can’t say that any of the ads this year stood out as giving a strong message positive message about the product as well as being enjoyable to watch. Yes, I liked the Paul Harvey-based Dodge ad. But I would have been hard pressed to know that it was an ad for Dodge trucks. Instead, I’m going to remember the great short film about farmers.
Argue as much as you want about the Eminem Imported From Detroit playing fast and loose with labor history, it made me proud of Chrysler, even if I shouldn’t have been.
And that’s what I think makes for a great commercial.
When the lights went out on the Super Bowl Sunday, Raven’s coach John Harbaugh looked a bit upset about his team losing its momentum. And the big advertisers like Coke and and Pepsi didn’t like having their carefully planned series of ads disrupted.
As Ad Age reports, other advertisers also jumped in, but few did it as well as Oreo did. They note that Oreo’s agency put together the creative (the image) and got it approved within minutes. And once it was out there, people retweeted the message more than 10,000 times within an hour. Ad Age was arguing on Monday that Oreo got a bigger bang out of this simple message that the cookie company did out of its elaborate (and expensive) TV commercial.
To me, this commercial represents everything that’s wrong with Super Bowl commercials these days. They work so hard at giving us something exciting and fun to watch that they forget to tell us anything about the brand. The TV ad is funny, but the lights out quickie ad made me want cookies and milk.
During the 2004 Super Bowl, singer Janet Jackson exposed her nipple for 9/16ths of a second, resulting in 8 years of litigation over whether CBS would have to pay a $500,000 fine for the “fleeting nudity.” In the end, courts ruled that the proposed fine was “arbitrary and capricious.”
Want to make up your own mind? Here’s the section of the halftime show in question:
Then this year immediately following the Super Bowl, Ravens player Joe Flacco drops the F-bomb, calling the game ” F&$%ing awesome” in front of a live microphone. Again, a fleeting offensive moment that could potentially lead to substantial fines.
This morning, I asked the students in my Global Media Literacy class how they felt about both Jackson and Flacco. The question was: Are you more bothered by Jackson’s 9/16ths of a second exposure, Flacco’s F-bomb, or are you unable to get upset about either. Here’s the results:
“In its low-rent production values and matter-of-fact delivery, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood got at something simple, yet surprisingly profound: People just want to be loved.” – Todd VanDerWerff
Couldn’t agree more! Mr. Rogers always had the joy of simple things in everything he did.
and find out. (He’s not keen on them.) 
