In an age of $4.00/gallon gasoline, you don’t see too many vans on the road anymore. Kids are smoking joints in their parent’s Nissan Leaf on roadtrips to San Francisco, college students are stuffing their Jettas with laundry for the move back to the dorms, and kidnappers are forced to take advantage of the extra trunk space in the new Ford Fiesta. When I see an old school van on the freeway these days, I think, “Oof, they must be spending a fortune on gas,” instead of, “Damn, that van is sweet.” With the new 2012 Honda Odyssey spec piece “A Family Man is Still a Man” now screening at MinivanCampaign.com, the following is a list of the ten best and most iconic vans in film, so we can reminisce on vans and why we loved them.
Dan Trachtenberg, known on the interwebs for his mind-blowing zombie/vampire genre short “More Than You Can Chew,” brings us another short film best described as extremely relevant. Appropriately titled “Portal: No Escape”, the short film is a great homage to the wildly popular game, Portal. The real genius behind this film is that Dan targeted one the largest and most active communities on the web – gamers. The keyword “Portal” accounts for 45.5 million monthly searches on Google. To put it into perspective, “Nike” clocks in at 37 million, “Transformers” at 21 million. Gaming is no longer a vice pursued only by high school kids and college dropouts living in their mom’s basement. Over the last decade gaming has become increasingly mainstream, spanning all demographics and age groups; surely you noticed Kobe Bryant in a commercial for Call of Duty last year.
Back to the film – I liked everything other than the story. The location is perfect and the set is very well groomed to feel like a Valve property (Portal’s developers). While I am no expert on special effects, this is the best looking portal I have seen outside of the game itself.
Lets talk storyline. Parts of the film were confusing and a bit frustrating. The main character and camera constantly focus on the writing on the wall, she stares intently and suddenly has an epiphany. I would have loved to participate in some sort of epiphany, but I am given NO clues, zero, zilch, nada. At 3:53 Combine soldiers enter the cell; within seconds of discovering the portal device our main character makes a spectacular move – kicking the bed into a portal and dropping it onto the soldier’s head. Unfortunately it took viewing this scene a dozen times to decipher what happened. Trachtenberg would have served us better by showing the bed enter the portal (which is too wide for a portal, and would’ve required more special effects magic in post.) After the climatic jump, the reaction of the Combine soldiers is reminiscent of the Matrix, it adds a nice sense of relief from the suspense and a feeling of accomplishment. The jump and landing also felt quite real, another nod to great film making, especially without a big budget.
Mike Zarin does a fantastic job of replacing the void from a lack of dialogue with a beautiful score; it tip toes along as the test subject explores her new gun’s ability. The track adequately builds up suspense, kicks up tempo during the chase/action scene, then winds down quite nicely at the climax (when she jumps off the roof). The entire soundtrack is tied together by a hard-hitting deep distorted hook, reminiscent of Inception and parts of The Social Network. Rightfully so, as Mike Zarin was responsible for the soundtrack in the first Inception trailer.
For all you Portal fan’s rooting for a full feature film based on the game I still find it unlikely despite the success of this short. This is mostly due to the lack of material and depth in the game. Sure there is GLaDOS, the AI machine constantly testing you, teasing, and trying to kill you all while nurturing you at the same time – but how would such a plot translate to film and maintain its interest for 2 hours?
This week, Transformers: Dark of the Moon made 1 billion dollars at the box office worldwide. That’s a shit-load of money. The crew over at Raging Artists, in their inaugural video in their new YouTube series Raging Review, took a look at the latest film by Michael Bay to see what makes a billion dollar movie.
“Mano a Mano En El Baño” is an Internet competition between Old Spice Guy Isaiah Mustafa(the reigning Old Spice spokesman) and Fabio of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! and romance novel model fame for the Ultimate Old Spice Guy title.The dueling began at noon on July 26 with a video from Mustafa setting the ground rules: Post videos [in response to fan Tweets] and whoever accumulates the most “likes,” Tweets, and votes on YouTube, Facebook Twitter, and all other things “smart Internet people do” wins. In Fabio’s acceptance video, he records the following message for his competitor: “Hello Old Spice Guy, who is gross, I accept your rules for challenge duel and I wish you all the lucks today even though you will lose for sure and embarrass your family, horse, and luxury belonging. To old Old Spice Guy, welcome to your nightmare starring Fabio.” [...]
This is hard to say, but I can’t accept your invite. You seem really nice and everything, but I just downloaded Google Chrome and it looks like we’re getting serious. Don’t take it personally-I’m just really into tabs right now. And while I admire your sincerity in the pursuit of connectivity on the web and beyond, I already have Facebook, and that relationship is tumultuous at best. I mean, I already spend an unhealthy portion of time each day cyberstalking ex boyfriends, current boyfriends, and future boyfriends, so I don’t know how much more I can really commit to your “Circles” and “Hangouts.” [...]
I’m going to start by expressing my love for Doritos — Salsa Verde, Nacho Cheese, Baja Picante, Guacamole and my very favorite, Cooler Ranch. I can’t get enough of those Cooler Ranch Doritos and with the recent Doritos ad, “Dip Desperado” (AMV BBDO, London), I can’t help but totally fall in love with the tortilla chip brand itself — of course, it was all Esteban’s doing, but I’ll get into that later.
Nike won big at the 2011 Cannes International Festival of Creativity, picking up the distinguished Film Grand Prix prize for their new “Write the Future” campaign. The spot imagines the future for several star football players (Didier Drogba, Wayne Rooney, and Cristiano Ronaldo, among others) if they should win the World Cup, and places emphasis on the idea that we can create our own destiny, thus the “Write the Future” slogan. The spot itself runs true to trademark Nike grandeur- heart-pumping slowed down action shots of last-minute goals; close-ups of Ronaldo’s thigh muscles rippling as he tears down the field in slow motion; the players’ wrinkled and sweaty brows as their desperate eyes watch the ball zooming toward the goal.
But is “Write The Future” really so good that it deserved the Film Grand Prix at Cannes?
“The Like-A-Lot,” “The Oversharer,” “The Lurker” — these are not names Facebookers are going to want to be called, let alone rewarded for.
Sure, Altoids’ new Curiously Strong Awards campaign has a catchy tune and an appealing video to watch — with colorful scenes and oversized icons that represent Facebook’s “like” button, a camera, guitar and a cell phone — but wouldn’t you be completely offended if you were labeled as one of these people and awarded for it by your so-called “friends?” [...]
Have you seen that new Nike commercial yet? If you haven’t you probably will soon. “Chosen” has hit the web and its views are climbing quickly towards a million. The spot, for the launch of Nike’s Chosen contest inviting x-treme (no “e,” that’s how extreme it is) sports crews to submit videos to essentially win a sponsorship, features Nike team-members Paul Rodriguez, Julian Wilson, Danny Kass, and friends doing their respective things in some gorgeous night shots. It’s directed by commercial phenom Lance Acord, who blew up the Super Bowl earlier this year with “The Force,” that awesome Star Wars themed ad for Volkswagen.
But as far as Nike ads go, this is pretty overrated. [...]
BEARPAW is already known for its great giveaways on Facebook and Twitter, and it looks like all that love towards its fans is starting to pay off.
People who wear BEARPAW boots and shoes really love their BEARPAWs. That’s the impression I get when I search YouTube for the company founded ten years ago by Tom Romeo (I found them oddly enough while surfing comedy videos for another article, but more on that later). The small but growing brand has managed to cultivate a fun and loyal culture thanks to YouTube and what must be a very solid product. There are dozens of video reviews out there by owners gushing about their favorite boot. Take, for example, aspiring fashionista GuruGirliee who concludes that BEARPAW boots are a better, more comfortable value than Uggs.
