Advert: 'Virgin Media' (Dan Black's "Symphonies")

Virgin Media have a brand new advert, which you can watch above. It's pretty good, certainly more intriguing and stylish than Sky's commercials, if still very unfocused on telling people what the advantages of Virgin are over their satellite rival! And why are there no adverts for the excellent, cutting-edge TiVo box they have on the market? Crazy.

But anyway, what grabbed my attention about this advert was the beautiful music, which samples the theme from John Carpenter's 1984 sci-fi road movie Starman. It's called "Symphonies" and it's by an artist called Dan Black.

You can hear the full "Starman" theme below, together with other versions:

"Starman" by Jack Nitzsche:

Dan Black's "Symphonies":

Dan Black's "Symphonies" (featuring Kid Cudi) remix:

Dan Black's "Symphonies" (instrumental version):

Pretty great, no? But I wonder if Virgin are happy we're discussing the choice of music over their own cable offerings? Oh well, at least we're discussing the advert in some form. Time to rent Starman again, too.

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Super Bowl 2010: Adverts

Do I like the Super Bowl? No. Do I like (American) "football"? No. It's rugby for sissies, as the flame-baiting comment goes. But, what I do like is the fact so many Americans watch the Super Bowl that companies spend a lot of cash to air attention-grabbing adverts for summer movies, or use recognisable characters to sell drinks, etc. And, thanks to the marvel that is YouTube, you don't have to sit through the sporting event (or even live in America) to get to the good stuff:

The Simpsons are advertising Coca-Cola with Mr. Burns. Prepare to be disappointed.

It looks fun, like a more sophisticated Mummy movie. I have no attachment or deep knowledge of the video game source material, sorry.

I really hope this is good, because there are moments and visuals in these trailers that look superb. But Tim Burton's no longer a guarantee of quality, and I'm bored of Johnny Depp in these "ker-azy" roles. Still, this will probably be the next film I'm keen to see in 3D.

It's funny; everything I've seen of The Wolfman looks fantastic, but the film's had such a terrible gestation period (including reshoots so that Benicio Del Toro's Wolf Man character could be on all fours like a dog, because they didn't like him upright!) that I'm worried we're seeing a skewed version of the film's quality in these trailers.

It looks magnificent, as most Ridley Scott films do. But I just don't sense much of a Robin Hood vibe to anything I've seen -- it's effectively Gladiator with England as a backdrop. And I hear from test screenings that the supporting cast aren't that great, particularly the Sheriff of Nottingham.

I haven't seen the anime this is based on, but I hear good things about it. This will be interesting to see if M. Night Shyamalan can finally get a hit post-Signs with a project he didn't create. There's nothing about this trailer that puts me off, beyond Shyamalan's insistence his name be in big letters all over the credits, because his name lost significance about six years ago.

In some ways the nicest surprise of the movie trailers here, because The Crazies isn't so overexposed already. This looks good, actually, despite being a remake of the 1973 classic about a town's water supply being poisoned.

Already brought to my attention in the Lost season 6 premiere thread, here's a spoof of Lost from Bud Light, who still think we're in season 1 it seems. Love the production values, but... sigh. Pretty lame joke -- was it worth the effort?

I appreciate the awkwardness of the idea behind this, given recent events in US late-night talk show circles, but... disappointing. More interesting is the backstory to how it came about. And yes, Dave Letterman wanted Conan involved.

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Johnny Walker - The Man Who Walked Around The World

I thought I'd draw your attention to this excellent advert for Johnny Walker whisky ("The Man Who Walked Around The World"), starring Robert Caryle. It's a six-minute long piece, filmed in one continuous take using a steadicam*, as Carlye regales the audience with the true story of Scottish distiller Johnny Walker. Anyway, it's a superb piece of work from director Jamie Rafn, with superlative timing from Carlye, so I recommend you give it a look. Then check out this informative interview with the director about its making.

* It apparently took 40 takes to get it perfect.

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