I was just musing over how incredibly annoying ads are these days… and then Heineken’s ‘The Date’ concept burst onto the scene. (Well, OK… ‘my awareness’. It’s been on ‘the scene’ for a good while already).
It’s AWESOME.
It takes some kind of bollywood-meets-bond, meets circus, meets date-movie memeplex and manages to create something immersive and engaging from it all. The joins between the borrowed ideas are seamless, and the cross-cultural slant is just a breath of fresh air. The two characters at the center of the action move the world’s tiniest story forward, from one moment to the next, and the miniature plot unfolds within the tight temporal constraints yet nothing feels squeezed at all (in fact, the shorter edits of the ad work even better). So we accept this gorgeous epic, compactified as it is in every possible dimension and yet remaining as engaging as any well-made marathon flick… Continue reading
So, when trundling along between the movator lanes at the airport (San Francisco), what do you expect to see? OK, what do you totally not expect to see? A totally awesome exhibit on the history of television, that’s what… right smack dab in the middle of the thoroughfare between the security-heads and the gate you’re supposed to wait patiently at.
I am not anywhere near as widely-read as a person should be, but here are the writers who are on my bookshelf and whose writing I hold dear. There is something about how these authors reconstruct the realities of their own making in the heads of other people, through the use of language alone. I don’t know how they do it; the mechanics of the process is lost on me but I DO understand a key quality of the process: These writers refuse to communicate their ideas, knowing full well that something is bound to be lost in translation. They wish to impart their ideas the way a buddha supposedly does… by imprinting it upon your mind directly. A mindseal.
It’s that time of year again.
Unfounded statement: Cop shows are not good for anyone.
Afromedia, my pet name for all types of media that claim to have an afro-centric slant, has been a growing phenomenon. It’s been a bit of a slow cooker though; some instances of afromedia just leave you cringeing… because it’s usually over the top, overdone, too self-conscious or worse: reinforces the same unhelpful stereotypes that it seeks to dismantle.
Imagine my surprise when I logged in to my admin console to today, only to find a pingback from 
I don’t know why I’m writing this now, having seen this movie yonks ago… but I was recently thinking about it so I might as well post my thoughts.