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Now that you know where I’ll be Saturday night, November 14, it’s time you found out what it’s going to take to be watching the fight as well. If you’re a boxing fan, I don’t need to convince you in the least; if you’re not a fan yet, there is no better way into the sport than with this fight. See you there!

Got this spam mail the other day. The subject was “Happy Teachers Day”. Apparently on Teachers Day, I can get Viagra and Cialis for cheap, which is great to know. And I guess it’s customary to also recite strange, abstract poetry on Teacher’s Day as well, though I’m only theorizing.

For some reason this email didn’t make it into my Junk folder. Personally, I think it was because of how awesome it was. I almost went online to buy some Cialis just to support the makers of this spam.

This is probably one of the best breakdowns of VFX in a film or TV show I’ve seen yet. Now I need to see a breakdown of the breakdown, which is quite a production unto itself.

Seriously, it says it right on the tag! And is the logo suposed to resemble the PRADA logo? I can’t tell any more.

Comedy Central clip (legacy)

“The Mayolution Will Not Be Televised” – Colbert Report.
Apologies for the Advertisement.

The train was packed, but this woman (who was not transient in the least) seemed to have little regard for the other passengers. You’ll notice a man standing in the corner of frame.

Some people are just too nice to say anything, myself included. Still, it was worth snapping the shot, if for no other reason than to share this little piece of humanity with you.

You never know what you’ll find on a bathroom train. Both of these signs were in the same bathroom, in fact. The two signs in the first image seem at odds with one another, while in the second image, I felt like that sign ought to practice what it’s preaching.

Saw this parked out in front of my workplace today. WTF? Was hoping to get a George Jetson autograph, but there were only a few teamsters loitering the vicinity.

For those of you unfamiliar with the movie business, “background” refers to extras on a shoot. And yes, that is a dark hallway leading seemingly nowhere.

Some people call this the drunkest guy ever captured on video, but I wonder if there’s something mystical at play here. The way I see it, this man is completely sober, but someone has hexed him with having an eternal hill to climb, no matter where he goes, no matter how flat the ground beneath his feet.

You be the judge, and thanks for the reco Elz!

P.S. The surveillance video freezes a couple times, no need to adjust your screens, just wait it out.

Drunkest Guy Goes Back For More Beer

In a surprising twist of fate (long-time readers/haters will know what I mean), Digital Kitchen have been ripped off.

I will show you a series of images (how Freudian of me), and they will alternate between original still-frames from Digital Kitchen’s Dexter title sequence, and a series by the Getty Images photographer A. Carmichael.

It is worth noting that the Dexter title sequence was completed in the middle of 2006, while A. Carmichael (according to a correspondence with Getty directly) had uploaded their series only a few months ago. It is also worth nothing that I was able to get the director of the Dexter title sequence to pinky swear that he indeed does not own a time machine and therefore could not have travelled to the future to glean the images you will find on Getty.

As always, this is my opinion of course (see the tagline of my blog!), but I will be very interested to see what you viewers think.

Enjoy!

Here are two of my favorite commercials this year. I think more clients need to be bold and brave with their advertising. Take a risk and push a concept instead of letting consensus and focus groups rule your ideation.

Kudos to Mark Fitzloff, Susan Hoffman, Danielle Flagg, Tyler Whisnand, Julia Oh, Rudy Adler and Jeff Selis of Wieden + Kennedy for being one of the few teams at an ad agency willing to eschew safety for chance and make something brand-defining.

Cary Fukunaga, who directed Sin Nombre, filmed these two ads. Both of them take an eerie collection of Americana moments enshrouded mostly in shadow and silhouette, and put them against sparse music and two well-read Walt Whitman poems.

Enjoy!

Levi’s – “America”

Levi’s – “Pioneers!”

The Los Angeles Times just published an article entitled, “Fur flies on Mr. Fox,” which details some of the experiences and process of the filming of Wes Anderson’s The Adventures of Mr. Fox. The film appears to be a hipster’s answer to The Nightmare Before Christmas, and reminds me quite a lot of The Wind in the Willows, so much so that one has to wonder if the BBC series from yesteryear wasn’t as much an inspiration as Roald Dahl’s original story.

All of that said, one of the points of controversy was how the film was shot. The film was created using stop-motion photography, a technique where you move objects in front of the camera incrementally, and take still photos of each position, thus creating stop-action movement. The process takes ages, especially once you introduce animated characters, lip sync, and secondary animation in the form of swaying branches or passing cars.

Shot on a stage in London, Wes Anderson (who penned the adaptation after several weeks at Roald Dahl’s estate, researching what made the author “tick”) spent much of the production time nowhere near the set, but from his apartment in Paris instead. His opinion was that he would set the tone, and let the animators do their thing. Whenever there was a sequence finished, the animators would submit them as digital movies, and Anderson would fire back detailed emails with his notes, even filming his own digital movies where he would act out a certain gesture to explain what he was going for.

As a director of stop-motion myself, I can tell you that this is an understandable process. While I don’t agree with an entirely absentee director, it is a bit like watching grass grow to sit on set as the animators work on a given sequence.

Read the article for more insight on the Email Auteur himself.

Step 1: Fill a chamber with hydrogen gas

Step 2: Ionize that gas until it becomes plasma

Step 3: Heat that plasma up to one million degrees fahrenheit

Step 4: Use a powerful magnet to direct that plasma out of the engine

Step 5: Get from Earth to Mars in 39 days

Yes friends, this is real! There is a company (Ad Astra Rocket Company) developing a rocket which will be able to reach Mars in less than 40 days of travel time. By this math, astronauts might be able to reach the end of our solar system, to the Keiper belt beyond the planet formally known as Pluto, in under one year. The trick is to run the engine on hydrogen, which is a common material in the universe, making refueling possible en route. This enables the viability of deep space missions, making it possible and very probable with in the next couple of decades.

The rocket uses plasma and magnetism to create immense amounts of thrust; plasma is what happens when you charge up a gas and break apart its atoms.

And while there are only nine planets to choose from at present, scientists have discovered hundreds if not thousands of Earth-like planets sitting at the edges of our solar system, just out of sun’s gravitational pull. Once we learn how to move planets into the sun’s orbit, we may have a dozen or more Earth-like planets to choose from for first time home buyers.

The FHA is going to make a killing!