The ape woman needs a label
Welcome to Idealog Weekly, the free email newsletter for New Zealand commercial creatives, entrepreneurs and anyone rich with ideas.
In this week’s issue: the television will be revolutionised, the ape woman needs a label, old and spicy, true cred, justice is waiting, drunkard dressmaker policeman preacher, dripping sincerity, a salute for the sceptics, an odyssey indeed, joyful Joy Division, pushing the boundaries, tell a tall story and quote of the week.
The television will be revolutionised
I enjoyed researching my cover story in the current Idealog. ‘New tube’ looks at the rapid changes coming in television—on-demand broadcasting, hi-definition, television over the Internet, mobile TV and user-generated video content—and the opportunities that arise for creative Kiwis. What I found was an industry that isn’t necessarily sure just what formats will work and how we’ll deal with licensing, regional programming and actually getting paid for work, but nobody is waiting to get with the programme. New Zealanders are trying new programming models like the Gibson Group’s new two-minute My Story series for televisions and mobile phones, TVNZ’s Ondemand online webcasting and new types of new-media broadcasting.
What else did I find? Lots of YouTube vids. Here’s a smattering of the interesting clips I found as part of my, um, research. Enjoy—and tune in next week, when we’ll have news on the next issue of Idealog—our biggest yet.
The ape woman needs a label
Jack Black—the cleverest man on the planet? That’s about the least-weird aspect of Heat Vision and Jack, the pilot episode of a doomed TV series directed by Ben Stiller and starring a then-unknown Black and Owen Wilson (who plays a talking motorcycle). Think of it as Knight Rider meets The Twilight Zone.
This is surely the greatest television that a US network never made. It’s about … deep breath here … it’s about an astronaut (Black) who flies too close to the sun where the radiation expands his brain (“like cookie dough”) making him superintelligent but when he gets back to Earth the evil NASA tries to kill him with a laser ray but his flatmate (Wilson) is hit instead and is trapped inside his motorcycle and so they hit the road to avoid NASA’s henchman (Ron Silver, playing himself) and keep running into aliens. And have adventures and stuff.
It’s even better than it, uh, sounds. Watch the full 30-minute pilot episode and then read the backstory as told by co-writer Rob Schrab.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHvjcsELcjA
Old and spicy
How do you compete with the Lynx girls? It’s doubly difficult when your product is called Old Spice—hardly a brand to appeal to today’s pimply youth. The answer: hire a b-movie actor, put him in a smoking jacket, return to the days of the heady 70s and tell it like it is: experience is everything. Bruce Campbell plays to Old Spice’s strengths in this US commercial (there’s also a version for fans of those lurid paintings of maritime scenes—you know who you are).
True cred
Most song writers would think having Johnny Cash cover their song would be the ultimate vote of authenticity. So when Cash covered the Nine Inch Nails anthem ‘Hurt’, you’d expect that to be the end of the matter. But here’s a track by someone with enough down-home cred to stand up even to the Man In Black: witness Kermit the Frog’s descent into drugs, depression, puppet sex and the demon drink.
Justice is waiting
Taika Waititi’s new film, Eagle vs Shark, is getting some great reviews offshore, and it’s also bringing a new audience to Wellington’s awesome Phoenix Foundation, which supplies the soundtrack. We’ll get to see it next month when it screens in the NZ International Film Festival (it will be on general release later), but you can get an early glimpse on YouTube or a higher-quality version at Apple’s Quicktime site. Check out the quiz on the film’s website, too. I’m an Eagle. That’s slightly better.
Drunkard, dressmaker, policeman, preacher
I doubt Dylan Thomas imagined ‘Under Milk Wood’ would one day be used in commercials on that fancy new televisual appliance, and I feel confident that Richard Burton didn’t read it thinking that his sonorous tones would make money for a German automobile manufacturer. But unlike some grave-robbing ads, this VW spot is both beautifully-produced and respectful of the material. Bravo.
Dripping sincerity
If you want someone to play the sincere drip, Ricky Gervais is yer man. To a point, anyway.
A salute for the sceptics
I’ve been fascinated by Colonel Joseph Kittinger ever since I saw some blurry TV footage of his 1960 leap from a balloon over 30 kilometres above the Earth. Not a timid man, the Colonel. In a previous jump he’d lost consciousness during the fall and in his record-setting jump his pressured suit sprung a leak, but small details like those didn’t stop Kittinger recording the longest, fastest and freakiest freefall ever attempted—he reached speeds of over 1,000 kilometres per hour on his way back to the ground.
There’s a great story about an unusual, raised-finger gesture his parachute designer gave him on his return (see it in this longer, more rock‘n’roll clip). Tim O’Reilly asked Kittinger what it meant: “The one-finger salute was for all the people who said we couldn’t do it,” Kittinger told him. “There are always going to be people around telling you you can’t do stuff. Just give them that one-finger salute and keep going.”
An odyssey, indeed
Sci-fi doesn’t usually age well, but 2001: A Space Odyssey seems to get better with age. Titanic director James Cameron says 2001 proves that great moviemaking isn’t about the spectacle, but about the idea (and he’d know). Cameron presented an hour-long doco about 2001 on Britain’s Channel 4 a few years ago; I haven’t seen it here but maybe one of our broadcasters will bring it to our airwaves. In the meantime, you can check out a nine-minute segment of the doco where Cameron and some of the people behind 2001 talk about a truly unique moment in the film: the three-million-year jump cut.
Joyful Joy Division
Funny how your mind plays tricks on you. I don’t remember Joy Division being quite as glam as they appear in this video, but it’s on YouTube so it must be true.
Pushing the boundaries
Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot play superheroes in this black-and-white music video from the days before MTV. I have no idea what Gainsbourg is muttering about in the verses, but Bardot’s chorus is truly universal.
Tell a tall story
It’s a couple of pages in already, but you can still catch a Storylines Festival seminar in Christchurch tomorrow or the free family day in Wellington and New Plymouth on Saturday, or Auckland on Sunday. Or, if your kids’ scribblings are looking promising, send them along to the Children’s Writing and Illustration Workshops in Auckland on Saturday and you could be retiring in no time. If you don’t have kids to provide for your dotage, there’s a workshop for adults in Wellington tomorrow too.
Dig out the gumboots, Fieldays are back. The Southern Hemisphere’s largest event of its type attracts more than 1,000 exhibitors a year. Head along to catch the latest in tractors or a fashion show featuring up-to-the-minute wet wear.
Check out Idealog’s events guide, Agenda, online and in print. Anyone can add an event to Agenda—just fill out the form on our website.
Quote of the week
“I’ve been in the business for 30 years and everyone is always talking about change as just around the corner. But it’s just suddenly arrived … it’s an amazing time. It’s game on.”
—Dave Gibson on the reinvention of TV
More at Idealog online
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Matt Cooney
Editor
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