I'm looking forward to Terminator: Salvation. For one, I like Apocalyptic nightmares. For two, they cast Christian Bale as John Connor, thereby embracing the first rule of the modern action movie which is "cast Christian Bale in it." But that doesn't mean I don't have my reservations. Namely, it's being directed by McG. Did you know that's an adult? An adult picked that name. He probably just switched to DIET Mountain Dew because of his slowing metabolism, and thinks that taking out all but one of your earrings is how you age gracefully. Also of concern, earlier this fall it was made clear that James Cameron has not "given his blessing" to this new chapter in the franchise. Just kidding. That is not of any concern to anyone. Who cares about James Cameron? Some of us have managed, somehow, to get over the fact that he made Titanic 1,000 years ago.
Still, I don't know what to think about this new "motion poster" for the movie. NOTE: automatic audio after the jump. Headphones up.
A kid who created a Guitar Hero simulation on real life streets and then rode the game on his bike, or VIRAL MARKETING? Either way, it's everywhere, on every blog, website, email inbox, and IM window today:
The first tip we got about it was from a promotional company, so viral marketing is highly suspected, but over a quarter million views in less than 24 hours? Those are FRED numbers. And much less annoying, even if it is a commercial. I can't wait to see this dude, "Lars," and "the rest of the Brierwood Vandals" on Conan or something. (Via the whole entire internet, and non-promotional tipster Gideon.)
I don't really understand technology enough to know if this is possible or just a joke, but I understand Things That Look Silly very, very well. So, whether it's a real ad for an iPhone app that turns your iPhone into a flute-like instrument that you can sit around in a circle with friends blowing into to play Stairway To Heaven or not, this video is still really funny:
The official site sure does make it look real. Ocarina/Smule or whatever: will it replace drum circles on college quads? Because maybe that's okay. It seems quieter. (Thanks to Alistair for the tip!)
PS: Those people blowing on their iPhones are all your boyfriends and girlfriends.
Today the NY Times profiled a guy named Joel Moss Levinson, who makes his entire living (over 200k so far) by entering those usually-lame corporate user-generated video contests. He brilliantly figured out that since most people who are good at making advertising videos are too busy making advertising videos in their jobs to make free advertising videos in their spare time, most of the entries were going to be shit. So he made entries that weren't total and compete unwatchable crap, and so he won. Genius. Here's the video that won him the Klondike contest. (Note: I'm not saying it's not extremely dumb, I'm just saying this dude has a smart strategy):
Joel uses Facebook and Twitter to get people to vote for his videos, which makes sense, but this part of the article didn't really make sense:
He even calls 24-hour customer service lines at night, when he thinks the representatives are bored, and asks them to vote for him.
No, New York Times, he was either fooling you or he did that exactly once, because that doesn't make sense. (Thanks for the tip, Scott!)
This viral marketing EPIC FAIL comes to us from Sony Ericsson, who have teamed up with Facebook to attempt to lure users into making "scary" video free advertising for them. The failure begins with the tagline "Spook Your Friends With Our Scary YouTube Video Where Your (Sic) The Star," and just keeps on going and going and going. How could they possibly have made it more complicated to make your friends say "Heh. Stop spamming me, dude, I'm busy.":
There's this fake website (web-event? web-infiltration? webspiracy?) that's probably going to blow up the internet soon called Wonderglen.com. This is how a poster on the comedy forum A Special Thing described it:
It can be best described as fake website for a company that makes reality shows.
It covers the owners, the people who work there, all their interoffice memos, videos
and production meeting recaps.
That's a pretty good way of describing it, but it sounds closer to Dunder Mifflin Infinity than the total web experience Wonderglen now appears to be.
Hey remember White Gold And The Calcium Twins, the fake glam rock god who exists to sing about the benefits of milk in a way that causes people to forward his YouTube videos? Well, after a six month hiatus, he's back with a song about his hair:
I think the inarguable best part is when he says "It ain't the shampoo" and the Calcium Twins (Skimberly and Wholena) sing "Not the 'poo."
Last week members of the blind community announced that they would be boycotting the movie Blindness (although how you boycott a movie no one cares about, I DON'T KNOW) because they thought that it promoted negative stereotypes against people with a serious disability. Sure. Although one of our commenters made the astute observation that if the entire world went blind instantly there would definitely be panic and chaos, which isn't a negative stereotype against blind people so much as a negative stereotype against pandemic outbreaks of debilitating diseases. But FAIR ENOUGH, blind community. OK.
But where is the outrage against the Blindness viral web campaign? This thing is horrible!
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