am I an advertising critic?

"I want these (pineapples) juiced and on my desk by three."..."I'm trying to run a highly professional business here"
-John Cook

Unfortunately I think it might be true. By the time I have finished here I will have written two (whole) blogs, both solely devoted to the issue of advertising. In fact I may well be a critic of health-industry-related advertising by the look of things. My beloved readers, along with the rest of you (if indeed any of you exist), will be happy to know that this entry will not be an absolute angry-rant-session. Quite to the contrary, I will be telling you about the few ads that I genuinely like. (I'm kind-of going for the canceling out effect after the severe cynicism of the last post).


First off we have a pleasant little trailer for a film called Sunshine. The trailer is about the most dramatic thing that I have ever seen, we're talking more than Neighbours here. The music, which is probably a significant contributing factor to the heart-stopping intensity of this short, was originally written for the second Lord of the Rings film but was not used in the end. Since then everyone and their dogs and their dogs' favourite chew toys have been using it for trailers. It didn't actually make it into the film. In some ways the film was not a let down. It was just as intense as the trailer made it out to be with a grand total of __ creative ways to die covered. My personal favourites were: incinerated by the sun, frozen in space and then incinerated by the sun, stabbed to death by an over sunburnt religious wackjob and leg crushed in ships computer and then frozen to death in coolant. Oh yeah, and who could forget (except me, just then) the main character being blown up in slow motion (resulting from the time dilation caused by the sun's intense gravity) by a nuclear bomb the size of RHODE ISLAND! (Or somewhere like that). Actually, now that I think about it the film wasn't actually that good, I came out a bit disturbed. But that just adds to the brilliance of the trailer in convincing me to go see it. Anywho, here it is in all its tense forcefulness:



That ad was OK, but this one absolutely blew me away. This is the ONLY advertisement that I have ever looked up on the internet simply because I thought it was nice. The cinematography is stunning and yet heartbreaking, kind of reminiscent of the Eric Bana film Romulus my Father, but it's the music that really gets me. When I was on my second year country nursing placement I did a number of late shifts on which there wasn't much to be done. One of the enrolled nurses would often sit in the patient's sun room and watch television and every time this ad came on I would lean against the disabled hand rail and think of home so far away. What can I say, I'm a sap and a sucker for mournful beauty, but I earnestly believe that the maker of this ad should win some sort of award. Anyway, turn up the volume and prepare to look off into the distance and think of better days, here it is:


Well, that should do it for now. I know that I promised to make this post more general and helpful than the last but I think we all knew better didn't we?

Until next time you wayward travelers of this internet, Cheerio,

John

("signs")

P.S. If anyone knows what the song in that ad is, I will be very grateful to know and will probably spend the next week trying to find the CD.

P.P.S. There was also this ad. It's amazing, hilarious to the extreme. I think the producers were sitting around the office discussing the ad and it went something like this:
Jim: "Hi Tim. Hey, you know that advert we are supposed to be making?"
Tim: "Yes Jim?"
Jim: "Well I was thinking, we couldn't decide which stunt to use, right?"
Tim: (with some uncertainty) "I suppose..."
Jim: "Well, why don;t we just use all of the stunts!"
(long, long pause)
Tim: "well..."
Jim: "Great! It's decided then"
so on and so forth

Anyway, here it is.