Pithy truths expressed mathematically. Very clever (I particularly like this one).
Via my erudite colleagues.
March 2009 Archives
The Dutch agency Kessels Kramer created one of my all-time favourite campaigns for the Hans Brinker Hotel, a notoriously bad hostel in Amsterdam. Rather than play down how dreadful it was, Kessels Kramer chose to celebrate it, appealing directly to its target market: backpackers.
They’ve released a compendium of their communications over the years, appropriately named “The Worst Hotel in the World”. Have a look over at the Creative Review blog.
Dude your ad is soooo fake. Mini Clubman on YouTube.
Via the inimitable Jon Vall.
It looks beautiful, although the trailer manages to be schmaltzy (“inside all of us is … hope”). The film’s pedigree is beyond reproach: the screenplay is by Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, and it’s directed by the former.
Where The Wild Things Are trailer.
Via Daring Fireball.
A happy bag, spotted by Karin in our office.
Great article by Armando Iannucci in The Observer about his experience on his debut film, “In The Loop”:
Now Steve [Coogan], who’s in the middle of filming something else, spots a Friday he’s got off, and comes to shoot with us. Within seconds, I realise how much I’d forgotten how spontaneously hilarious he is. It’s like we were only working yesterday. The words and actions and improvised asides flood out. His character berates the minister for “flying all over the world drinking … what is it? What d’you call that wine?” There’s a pause. “I don’t know,” says Tom Hollander, who then improvises a scene with a clothes peg bag that he mistakes for a little girl’s dress. The scene goes on for half an hour, then, as the minister leaves to get in his car, Steve shouts across his mother’s back garden at the top of his voice: “Chateaux Neff du Pap! I knew I’d remember.”
The Big Picture is hosting a bunch of terrific photos of Holi, an Indian festival involving a lot of coloured powder, enthusiastically and liberally rubbed into everyone’s face. And I do mean rubbed. Into everyone’s face. We were there a couple of years ago for this particular festival, and while it was exciting and fun – a bona fide Lonely Planet experience – it got a little frightening, too. The locals (particularly the teenaged, male locals) went berserk when they saw me and Liv, smearing coloured powder on our precious, precious faces with such gusto that I had to physically intervene (an event that is precisely as threatening as it sounds).
The aftermath of the event is an event in itself. For days – weeks – afterwards, entire communities are literally stained with coloured powder. The clothes, the streets, and the goats (seriously) are tinged with the hue of Holi. I still occasionally cough up some blue powder. Here’s a photo of me ‘n’ Liv after our Holi experience – that’s us on the left, looking at the wrong camera (as the Holi festival tradition dictates).
The Thick Of It is one of the best British comedies in recent memory. Created by the genius behind “I’m Alan Partridge” – Armando Iannucci – it parodies the behind-the-scenes events of the British government. It’s extremely sharp, witty, and fast paced. The main characters are delightful – especially Malcolm Tucker, an aggressive, obscene Scottish press co-ordinator, and Hugh Abbot, the bumbling minister around whom events unfold.
My erudite and well-informed friend Simon points me towards the trailer for the film “In The Loop”, which appears to be an extension of The Thick Of It. It stars many of the same characters, is also penned by Iannucci, and as a bit of a bonus features none other than Tony Soprano himself: James Gandolfini.
Here’s the trailer. If it’s even half as good as The Thick Of It, it’ll be very good indeed.
I can’t recommend this programme enough. Fresh Air is a public radio show broadcast in the US, hosted by Terry Gross. She interviews all sorts of luminaries: journalists, comedians, musicians, bureaucrats. The last few shows I’ve listened to included a journalist that has been in the home of a Pakistani warlord, a former evangelical Christian turned agnostic bible historian, and a Harvard law professor with a lucid, compelling explanation of where the US bailout money is going (short answer: no-one knows).
Compulsory listening: Fresh Air (podcast available on iTunes).
Over the weekend I found time to watch the widely-reported battle between Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and Jim Cramer of Mad Money. Stewart took issue – primarily with CNBC – over the way the networks were reporting the financial crisis. The series of clips escalate the “feud”, culminating in Cramer himself appearing as a guest on The Daily Show. The final clip makes for excruciating viewing as Cramer prostrates himself entirely, promising to try harder in the future.
Cramer vs Non-Cramer. Uncomfortable television at its finest.
Here’s a thought-provoking article by Paul Graham on the decline and fall of the TV networks. This point particularly resonates:
Copyright owners tend to focus on the aspect they see of piracy, which is the lost revenue. They therefore think what drives users to do it is the desire to get something for free. But iTunes shows that people will pay for stuff online, if you make it easy. A significant component of piracy is simply that it offers a better user experience.
Via ShaunInman.com.
… after ten days in my home country, New Zealand. Two weddings and many kilometres spent hurtling around the North Island. Managed to sustain a massive gash in the rear bumper pf the rental car from backing out and not seeing the adjacent car’s trailer. Oops.
Highlights included:
- Macadamias in the muesli. Food, in general. Krispa Chicken Corn Chips.
- Amazingly good, amazingly inexpensive wine and beer.
- Friendliness (almost) everywhere.
- My accent not sounding unusual.
- Napier! Who knew? … and last, but not least:
- The give way rules! In NZ, when two cars travelling in opposite directions are both turning into the same street, the one that is crossing the median strip has right-of-way. It sounds crazy – crazy – to most people, but actually results in more efficient traffic flow. Here they are, explained.
Disappointments:
- Cobb & Co. It’s a restaurant I used to love when I was a kid. Now it’s just … awful. (In my defence, it was pouring with rain, we had a baby, and the restaurant was attached to the hotel. Still: mea culpa.)
- Poppa Jacks. Another misguided, confectionery-based attempt at reliving my youth.
- The weather. Why is is that every time I take my Canadian wife to NZ, the weather is abominable? Astoundingly, astonishingly, Old Testament-ly awful?
We took in Cambridge, Napier, Te Aroha, Hamilton, Taupo, and the Coromandel (hot tip if you’re ever in Whitianga: a café called Velocity). All-in-all, a really enjoyable jaunt around parts of the country I’m not too familiar with. Kapai.
