You may need to click this little poster to see the big one, but this showed up on my computer the other day, and I just had to comment on one aspect of Hollywood that drives me nuts... The names along the top are "Cage, Cusack, Malkovich" plastered across the foreheads of John Malkovich, Nicholas Cage, and John Cusack. Huh? Why make it look as if you're telling us who these shadowy faces belong to, then mix them up? I know the reason... the biggest star has to be in the middle, but we read left to right, so their name has to be first on the left, and there are Hollywood rules for this kind of thing, but they BUG me. And that so does NOT look like John Cusack... I think they beefed up his jawline or something. But this "filmed deal" (aka movie) is 10 or 15 years old now, so it doesn't matter, but they still do this stuff now. Just a little Hollywood rant while I'm in the vicinity. Pay attention, Hollywood!
Speaking of old, irrelevant movies, "Jurassic Park" was on tv last night, so I half watched it on while I was doing other stuff. Funny to see Samual L. Jackson in one of his first big roles and NOT dropping the MF bomb every other line. Also, forgot that the guy who played Newman on Seinfeld plays the bad guy, the low-bidding contractor. (Halliburton?) And one of the last shots of the film is a slow, loving pan across the park's never-to-be-visited gift shop, that works on an ironic level because of the events of the film, but also on a marketing level to the kids and parents in the audience. "Look at all this Jurassic Crap that'll be waiting for you in stores after you leave the theatre." Sort of like the merchandising scene in "Spaceballs" except not played for laughs.
One musical note... having seen the Apple iTunes ad featuring the new Coldplay single "Viva La Vida" I picked up the CD on impulse when I was in Target the other night. Had a chance to listen to the CD on the way back from Lancaster, and once again, the edit/mix on the TV ad is substantially better than the actual track on the CD. Not sure how they do it, but it seems pretty consistent... the U2, Lenny Kravitz and Bob Dylan ads were also like that. Maybe the record labels should get Apple's ad agency to produce their records in the first place.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...
Monday, June 23, 2008
Hollywood Minute
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2 comments:
They used the Daft Punk song "Technologic" for one of the Ipod ads a few years back. I heard it on tv less than a week after buying their new cd.
It was exactly how it was on the cd. (Guess they couldn't improve on perfection)
oh a lot of that has to do with the utter crappines of cd's these days.. They make em to played loud, not with range and quality. Analyze the wave form of a brand new pop cd and compare it to an off-off brand indie release or simply a cd from about 5-10 years ago. You'll notice the change in tonal range from then till now.
...right so yeah that's one of my beefs with buying music, you don't even get what you pay for.
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