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Danny the Champion of the Film Festival....early review of Slumdog Millionaire

Last night was the premiere of Danny Boyle's new film. I (Lol) knew nothing about the story in advance, but I'm pleased to report that it was one of his best yet. Shocking, funny, romantic, gut-wrenchingly sad, but incredibly uplifting. I'm a big 'Boyle' fan but this is definitely one of my favourites. Beautiful cinematography, and as usual the music is a huge part of the experience. It's always the soundtracks which stand out in Boyle's films, more than any other British director, and this is no exception. Oh, and I won't spoil it but there's a wonderful moment early on in the film which has distinct echoes of 'that' toilet moment in Trainspotting.

As it was the closing night of the London Film Festival, Danny was there to introduce it and said one thing which was really interesting. He said until recently, the big movie distributers had basically disregarded the film, to the point where it was going to sink without a trace. But then the Toronto Film Festival happened, it went down a storm there, and everything's all changed now... it's all, according to Danny, down to the power of film festivals. Which makes the film even more compelling as the story of an Underdog, or Slumdog, shining through.

Go and see it as soon as you can.

Go Jack Yourself

We're massive fans of Fonejacker and we're very pleased to see the series return to our TVs. So when I (Nat) saw an online game called 'Go Jack Yourself' I thought I would investigate.

The game is in a very similar vein to 'Elf Yourself' . What you do is upload your photo, fit it into a template and then choose the fonejacker sketch in which you want to appear.

You can choose to be the unsuspecting victim of either the 'internet service providings provider of providings' call centre man, the wheeler dealer Terry Tibbs with the gift of the gab, or Mr Miggins, the rather confused gentleman who is still getting to grips with modern technology and truly can't believe he's actually got hold of a human being at the end of his phone (sounds familiar). 

Give it a go. It's an age old format, but it's still fun.

Our own magic eye? No it's just an i-nigmatic new-fangled mobile telephony 3-D barcode gadget for our website

Right so we're not entirely sure how this works, but it's all part of a brand new, edge-cutting, (we're told) new way of enticing people onto websites via their mobiles. In case you didn't already know, t's called a 3D barcode. If you'd like to know more about how it works and download the software (without it you're scuppered), it's all explained here.

The Sun have been getting involved with it and using it in some print ads I think, but other than that, most people we've talked to about it haven't heard of it yet. The IT man here at BMB says that although it's been going for 3 years in Japan, it's not really taken off here yet.

Anyway, in theory, what happens is that you download this software to your phone. Then you should be able to take a picture of this barcode on your cameraphone, and it will take you automatically to our website. If it works let us know, we'll be amazed.

DIY Eat Natural ads...innovative or lazy?

Ages ago we found this in a newspaper, and wanted to say something about it.



The Doritos ‘make your own TV ad’ thing seemed to work really well as a way of engaging with its target audience, but this just feels a little bit transparent and/or charmless… ‘We couldn’t think of what to say. You do it.’ The body copy is also punctuated a bit oddly (she says with her pedant hat on) – e.g. ‘Give us a taste of the kind of stuff, you think, we should be telling people about Eat Natural bars.’

Maybe we’re wrong, but surely the average consumer would just look at this and say ‘why should I?’. There’s no incentive. Not even a life supply of Eat Natural (is that an incentive?). It's a good move asking your consumers what they think, but didn't their mums ever ask them to say 'please' and 'thank you'? Either way we wonder how it went down - have they got lots of free market research out of it, and have they got their next ad campaign ready made?


 

Occupational Hazards 1: Pun Tourettes

In the first in a series exploring an advertising creative’s occupational hazards, Lol fesses up to a recent plunder (is that a pun within a pun?)...

So, as we know, punning is universally outlawed when writing copy. However, my problem is that, because I've taught myself to repress even the slightest whiff of a pun when thinking of ideas, the side effect is that now, as soon as I'm out the door my pun-reflexes go into overdrive. I'm suddenly propelled into thinking of the most awful pun-jokes all the time; in bars, restaurants, parties, wherever. Like a more sinister kind of tourettes, they just pop into my head and I feel compelled to release them. Even though friends are accommodating and do laugh at some of them, it’s still a terrible affliction and one I’m forever apologizing for. It’s half due to my Romanian father and his uniquely cheesy (and often inappropriate) sense of humour. But it's mainly to do with how my brain feels the need to do a kind of 'pun-run', to get them out my system before Monday morning comes around again.

There are many examples I could confess to but the most recent occurred when Nat and I were at last month’s Hospital Club Creative Awards, (we were there for the 'Breakthrough creatives’ award or something - unsurprisingly we were pipped to the post by Duncan Jones). Anyway, my victim was an unsuspecting Alex James of Blur, stood next to me at the bar. As he was one of my childhood heroes, I decided to brave a hello, after which a friendly conversation ensued.

Everything was going fine until, ten minutes into the chat, the catastrophic nerve-induced pun reared its ugly head.

Lol: So, are you doing much music these days?

Alex James: No, just cheese.

Lol: So, you're doing cheesy music?

  
Awful. just awful. He was very nice about it although I'm still shuddering at the memory now. To make matters worse, I then tried to account for my pun, by blaming it on the fact I worked in advertising and that punning was outlawed. But he didn't believe me. You see that's the thing; as much as we all try and maintain that advertising ought not to be polluted with puns, the reality is that the general public (like some clients) still think a good ad must involve a nice juicy pun.

He put the paintbrush up his Warhol

Recently we went to the Hayward's Warhol retrospective. At first we found the layout a bit overwhelmingly scatty; but as the curator will tell you, that's the point.

There's also a dizzying amount of stuff to watch - literally there are over 100 screens - but if you take your time there's some really amazing stuff in there, even if you do end up with square eyes.

So here are 5 fun Wednesday Warhol facts you may not already know:


1) His real name was Andy Warhola

2) He was so desperately unhappy with his appearance that in 1952 he had a nose job (rare for the time), and took to wearing wigs.

3) As a way of getting a more interesting interview Warhol once fed someone some drugs and gave them a knife and filmed what happened.

4) He used to have 'Colouring in parties' with his friends (there's a nice theme for a party)

5) Now for the best bit....Neke Carson once did a portrait of Warhol. But not just any portrait - He used his bumhole to hold the brushes, then stood backwards against the canvas.... seriously, there is video evidence.