Disturbing Ad

Continuing with my posts about commercials (wow, YouTube is awesome):

Some commercials are random to the point of being disturbing. Ikea has a whole lot of these ads, like the following one. I wonder, though, if this worked very well for them; all the current Ikea ads I see on TV are significantly, uh, happier.

Ikea Commercial

Is there plagarism in art?

In academic writing, you have to make sure you credit your sources, even when you're doing it with permission. So I'm always confused when I see a remake that doesn't flag the fact that it's not actually an original.

Case in point? No Reservations, with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart, is coming out this summer, but nowhere on their website or trailer is the fact that it is simply a remake of the excellent German film Bella Martha. From the trailer, the new movie looks like it's going to be practically a scene-by-scene remake, too: just different actors and a different language.

I hope that at least they don't screw it up -- the original was delicate, precise, and nuanced (like Martha, in a way). I can see the Americanization pushing too hard and being too corny, too sugary, too-- well, overseasoned. Sorry, I couldn't resist using food metaphors.

Kids and Ads

Continuing a series in advertising, here are my two favorite ads involving kids, although they're basically opposite in effect.

Stratos (Norwegian commercial)


Zazoo (Belgian commerical)

Another Ad

OK, this one isn't a strange commercial, but I like it because I'm a movie geek. I count 9 movie references (and I've seen them all). Not bad for a 60 second ad. See comment for the list of the movies.

JC Penney Ad

Random Ads

Some ads are hilarious just because they're totally strange. As a tribute to the late-night brainstorming of ad executives, here are some of my new favorites:

Starburst Commercial


Shout Commercial


Folger Commercial

Le dîner de cons

About half-way through watching Le Dîner de Cons (translated to The Dinner Game) last week, I realized it really should be a play. And, after a little research, I found it was originally written for the stage in 1993. I'm glad I found this out, and I wish I had seen it on the stage rather than as a film. The story is definitely better suited to the stage - not much happens, and it's mostly an exercise in self-reflection. It's a nice little movie, but it is just that: little. It never grows out of its self-imposed four walls.

The international title of the movie doesn’t do the title justice. A literal translation reveals much more: The Idiot Dinner. The entire plot revolves around a French intellectual and the “idiot” he has picked up to take with him as a sort of trophy to a weekly dinner where the man who brings the biggest idiot wins a prize. This competition is done with exactly the malice and superiority the previous sentence suggests (as opposed, for example, to the scatterbrained but charming Carole Lombard bringing a homeless man to a dinner as a scavenger hunt item in My Man Godfrey). But, instead of going to the dinner, the intellectual pulls his back and is confined to his apartment when his guest comes to be taken to dinner. As the movie progresses, the “idiot” Francois becomes the intellectual Pierre’s only line of defense against a litany of troubles in his apartment: his wife leaving him, an overeager girlfriend wanting to come over as soon as she hears the news, a tax auditor coming to Pierre’s too-well-furnished apartment. Through it all, Francois tries to help and constantly makes things worse. It’s funny in a painful way to see it all unfold – I found it to be much the same humor as watching I Love Lucy episodes, but without the goodheartedness or assurance that in the end Ricky’s going to come home and make it all better.

Jacques Villeret, as the prize idiot Francois, possesses a perfect combination of pathos and grating characteristics. Francois is a civil servant (working for the French IRS, basically), and in is free time makes models or architectural and engineering feats out of matchsticks. His hobby consumes him, which is why the intellectual Pierre, played by Thierry Lhermitte, decides to take him to the dinner. But always lurking underneath Villeret’s Francois is a man you know actually cares about people and desperately wants to fit in, even though he is clearly incapable of it. As I watched the film, I found myself torn between hating Pierre for taking advantage of such a helpless and hapless guy and hating Francois for being so darn dense.

In true French film style, the end doesn’t leave the audience comfortable and satisfied. Is it OK to think people are stupid? What makes someone an idiot – is it being nice, or self-important? Is being a jerk or an idiot part of a coping mechanism? The movie never takes a definitive stance, preferring instead to leave no moral and no way of knowing if any of the characters have learned anything from the events of the evening. Much more like real life, perhaps, but in a story involving an Idiot Dinner, I’m hoping we’re not striving for life-like realism.

2 out of 4 stars