My Favorite Commercials from Superbowl XLV (2011)

I’m not going to include any of the movie trailers, because we’ve covered them much better at /Film (my take: Super 8, Transformers, and Battle: LA were great. Thor was not). Excluding those, here are some of my favorites

CarMax – Takes a turn of phrase and expands it until its breaking point. Fun visuals.

Chevy Volt – A beautiful commercial for what I’ve heard is a legitimately revoluationary car.

Bridgestone – Hilarious take on the accidental reply-to-all phenomenon. Love the “Do Not Attempt” subtitle at the bottom.

Volkswagen – Sure it already has over 13 million views and was released prior to the game, but that doesn’t make it NOT adorable. That child(?) actor does a ton of emoting from behind a mask.

And some of my least favorites:


Chevy Cruze – For those who can’t even wait to get home to begin the stalking (side note: Why the hell is she updating her Facebook status about him when they’re Facebook friends?)

Doritos – Creepy.

Pepsi – I want to say this ad is slightly racist, but I’m afraid that that might make me slightly racist? Love the ultraviolence though.

When They’re Gone, But Not Yet Passed

Lillian B. Rubin has written a heartbreaking account of what it’s like to live with her husband who suffers from severe dementia:

[M]ourning a real death is quite different from mourning a living one. Whatever one believes about death — it’s a passage into a kinder world, it’s entry into nothingness, or anything in between — it’s still an undeniable fact. Death is finite; life, as we know it, is over. Yes, I know, people awaken with visions of visitations, but eventually we come to accept death as an end to life. But when the brain dies and leaves the body intact, there is no end.

It’s Amateur Hour Over at Flickr

Here’s one of those horrifying stories that serves as nightmare fuel for those of us who are passionate about photography:

Major, major stumble from Flickr today—a Zurich-based photoblogger says Flickr deleted his account by mistake and lost his 4,000 photos. Mirco Wilhelm has the original files saved elsewhere, but the photos from his extensive Flickr collection had been linked to from all over the web, including the official Flickr blog. Those links will now point to deadspace.

I also quite enjoy the apology e-mail that looks like it was written (very poorly) by a lowly support slave:

Unfortunately, I have mixed up the accounts and accidentally deleted yours. I am terribly sorry for this grave error and hope that this mistake can be reconciled. Here is what I can do from here:

I can restore your account, although we will not be able to retrieve your photos. I know that there is a lot of history on your account-again, please accept my apology for my negligence. Once I restore your account, I will add four years of free Pro to make up for my error.

Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do.

Again, I am deeply sorry for this mistake.

Both photographer and account deleter must have had a really, really bad day.

Update: Apparently, Flickr has restored Wilhelm’s account and given him 25 free years of Flickr Pro. Also, they’re extremely sorry about this mixup, y’know.

“Google Is The World’s Largest Information Thief”

Google recently accused Bing of cheating by stealing its search results. Bing responded by basically saying “kind of, but it’s not a big deal.” But my favorite take on the subject is by Daniel Eran Dilger, who runs down the litany of Google’s offenses:

Google is the world’s largest information thief, steamrolling partners, content creators and competitors alike under its concept of the wheels of progress, justifying its dealings as being a free remix and expression of ideas. That’s all fine and good if you don’t complain about other people also taking the information you publicly offer without a license and then remixing it themselves.

The Facebook Profile That Stole a Piece of Her Soul

Susan Arnout Smith writes compellingly on how some very, very bad people created a fake Facebook profile for her and destroyed her will:

I pressed the link. There are moments that are burned into the heart. I saw my face. It was a photo taken off one of my websites. I saw my name. The persona they had created, using my name, my face, was pornographic, trolling for sex. I pay good money. I sat stunned. There had to be a way of connecting to a real person, somebody who could help me get this removed.

But the saddest part is the moral of the story, which is that the same exact thing can happen to any one of us, and for no reason at all.

Requiem for the IFC News Podcast

One of the wonders of our modern age is that it allows for fairly intense, asymmetrical digital relationships. That is, we can all have personalities online that we follow and listen to and read, but these people may have no idea who we are. One of the means by which this takes place is through podcasting, where every week, voices and conversations and personal moments are piped through to our ears from thousands of miles away. These strangers we listen to may not know us, but in some small way, we know them. And maybe knowing them makes us feel slightly less alone.

This week, Matt Singer and Alison Willmore announced that they would no longer be recording the IFC News Podcast (Alison will be moving on to greener pastures from IFC, and I wish her the best. She’s an amazing, thoughtful writer and I can’t wait to see what she does next). I’ve previously named the IFC News Podcast as one of the podcasts I can’t live without. Back then, I wrote that “this podcast is a movie geek’s dream come true, with tons of thoughtful references to movies past and present.” I am really going to miss this show, as it has kept me company on many a car ride and through many a long walk. It was a rare episode that didn’t cause me to rethink a classic movie formula/trope, or inform me of some amazing film gem I had yet to see.

The show’s sudden departure is a reminder that, for the most part, podcasts are total labors of love, and that many of them only stay on the air through fortuitous circumstance and sheer force of will. (The IFC News podcast joins the Spout podcast, the Film.com podcast, and the Scene Unseen podcast as recent film podcasts that have permanently been downloaded to that great iPod in the sky). It sounds weird for me to say this (especially since I’ve had the privilege of meeting and speaking with Matt and Alison since I started listening to the podcast), but in many ways, losing the podcast feels like losing a dependable friend, one who would always be there to regale me with weekly stories of obscure movies and interesting observations. That their voices have left such an indelible impression on me is a testament to their skill, their intellect, and their likability.

A toast to the IFC News Podcast. You will be missed.