Top 10 movies of the year (and contenders) by Roger Ebert

2007 in pictures by the IHT

The most controversial ads in fashion history. I had already read somewhere that the Sisley ad they’re pointing to never ran. More Sisley here (from 99 til 06 actually). And I just found out about this site which has quite a collection of fashion ads.

If you have a Smartphone and you don’t exactly know what to do tonight, the B-list is a collection of adresses and cool places, edited by “over 100 celebrities and VIPs around the world”.

Artist of the day: Chikita Violenta

Wishing you a Merry Christmas (a bit late) and an Happy New Year! (not late).

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Vladimir Putin TIME person of the year.

Trends for 08
“Around the world, an elite band of trend-spotters spend their days providing businesses with glimpses of the future. So what do these ‘futurologists’ predict for 2008?” An elite band. hehe..

Ten best music video of 07 from Director-file. The one by RJD2 rocks. The dancer/skateboarder name’s Bill Shannon. RJD2 is in some part of the video.

Michael J Fox interviewed by Esquire.
“My whole life, meeting people is like a blind date, because I feel like they’ve already seen the video on me.”

Following my earlier WOW commercials with Mr. T, here’s an european version with Jean-Claude Van Damme. And it’s hilarious. (there’s also Verne Troyer, from Austin Powers)

artist of the day - c-mon & kypski

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The power of people + the power of the Net. Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul made history Sunday by raising $6 million in online contributions in 24 hours, breaking the record for the most money raised by a national candidate in a single day. Crazy, and congrats.

Most of the people that knows me well knows that I’m an affirm liberal when it comes to economics. And that I’m totally for tax shelters for high-income people. It is an economic reality. If you don’t, your rich population will most probably move somewhere else. Plus, they contribute way more than everybody else. Now, please stop talking about raising taxes for riches. thanks.

Seems that digg is for sale.

Carla + Sarkozy = love?

Reuters pictures of the year. I’m not a big Bush fan, but his pic, tear running down his eye, is powerful. It actually shows he might have remorses with his baseless(?) war.

Artist of the day: Pete Philly and Perquisite

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Breakthrough article by Businessweek covering the last year in advertising. “The best stories of well-marketed businesses and brands have come from companies that haven’t spent their money on conventional media but have adopted new approaches.” Wow. THAT’S different. -breakthrough- insight. Did they really need to check the whole year out to discover that?!

Interesting. “In compiling the (Google) 2007 Year-End Zeitgeist, we studied the aggregation of billions of search queries people conducted on Google.” iphone was the fastest rising search term, for global & US. HD DVD was more search than Blu ray, Wii has taken over its competitors, …

I like: this ad exposing the problems of illiteracy.

The worst brand extension of 2007. Which reminded me of Brawndo, the Thirst Mutilator (that is quite funny/nice and taken from the movie Idiocracy).

Artist of the day: k-Os

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Launched in ‘Chloe’s apartment‘ the luxury brand’s new fragrance seeks to push boundaries of expectation in order to reach out to customers with a clear product concept.
via agenda inc

For his latest movie, Walk Hard, (released on April 9th in France), the writers of Superbad, Knocked Up, etc, decided, with John Reilly and Sony Pictures to tour the U.S. as singer Dewey Cox.

A competition of english short movies went on some days ago for the launch of the Eurostar between London and Paris. Here are the nominees (or most of ‘em at least..)
I recommend This is me.

“Each of the nine duplex apartments is covered by a shimmering scrim of powder-coated steel slats — echoing the security gates on almost every New York storefront — that rolls up and out of sight at the touch of a button. Occupants can then contemplate the urban wilds through floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall glass. Of course, that’s still a barrier, so the 20-foot-tall windows pivot up and away, turning the living room into a massive terrace.” This project is awesome.

w00t is the word of the year. Which is good cause I just learned a new word… Facebook is second?!

Artist of the day: Los Campesinos

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Awesome: Morgan Stanley issues full US recession alert. (I’m being sarcastic..)

It’s the first time I’m hearing about this website (they just made buzzfeed) It rocks. Darejunkies, bringing a little of jackass into your life. Basically, people post dare, people dare to do it (and film it), and they get paid. Site is relaunching.

I think it’s funny cause every 4 years, there’s a public outrage on how media are not exactly covering news as they should. Here’s an article about news coverage in the Al Gore presidential run.

Aeros unveiled last October their Aeroscraft ML866, a kinda of a new airship. I love airships. Without the fire and all… But I mean, I would really like to have a ride in those. “Aeroscraft ML866 is a proposed new type of airborne vehicle that combines bouyancy (as in an airship) with dynamic lift (as in an aeroplane or helicoptor), [… ] the Aeroscraft promises to take off and land vertically - meaning it will not require an airport - and can hover. It will be able to travel up to 222kph and have a range of 5,000km.”
via dezeen

a new buzz advert for Berlitz, a language school. They took a song and kinda changed the lyrics. I’m still laughing.

I’m a big fan of street marketing and this is a wonderful execution. A campaign afor tolerance and understanding towards ppl infected with the HIV virus, “the person inside the balloon wore a t-shirt wich carried the campaign message: Predjudice is one of the worst side-effects.” Must see.

Artist of the day: Blu & Exile

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Another bubble by The Richter Scales (funny)

53 places to go in 2008. Happy travels!

A piece on Alex Goldberg, natural-born hustler. “He quickly learned the rules of that playground, turning his relationships with the neighborhood’s shop owners into access to free gourmet meals and designer clothes and trendy sneakers […] and leveraging those perks into even more valuable things, like connections to athletes, rappers, nightclub owners, and so on.” He’s 14.

Artist of the day: Bo - official website - myspace

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Review of 2007 by Businessweek. Trends, people and products. Plus some stuff on the mortgage crisis, the dollar, oil…

I like Christmas time. And I really like Christmas stores displays.

I need a translater! Coz the idea is quite nice. Mediafront live ads campaign.

I’m taking your time to talk to you about A.J. Jacobs. Bestselling author and Esquire magazine, he’s mostly known for his “life experiments”. He spent a year reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, outsourced his life and, his latest one, a year of living biblically where “he followed every rule of the Bible, from the Ten Commandments down to stoning adulterers.” Awesome.
Reviews on amazon are quite good.

NYTimes on “the passing year through a special lens: ideas“. Which is actually a great review of the year. Might have to get a free registration to access everything.

You wish you worked there.

Artist of the day: Broken Social Scene

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I somehow missed yesterday, I don’t exactly know where I was … anyway.. here are today’s links

The GAME OVER Project takes videogames classics (pole position, space invaders, pong and coming up; tetris) and bring them to life! Literraly. Great idea for a stop motion project. And I love the music/sound effetcs. “GAME OVER […] consists of a series of collaborative animation movies which revive some of the very first video games. The pixels are replaced by a group of real human-beings that are moving from seat to seat in a theatre.”

That’s a great idea. It creates buzz and it has a useful fonction in relation with the product. I mean, if I was in Sweden I would definitely check it out! And plus, I need a winter jacket… A cold chamber to try out a winter jacket.

Contagious magazine has a great warp-up of recent wom or innovative marketing initiative, highlighting the work of Greepeace, Freixenet Cava, Viktor & Rolf, ex-owned, Lancia, Eurobest, and more.

On my last website, I stated that “Big Ideas” was an interest of mine. Well I’m lucky coz Good Magazine just publised a list of Big Ideas. “Constantly reaching slightly beyond our grasp is what steers us to the best ideas, and leaves us ready to face the yet-unknown challenges of tomorrow.” They’ll add one idea per day from 2 days ago I guess. They are right now at…. 2 ideas.

Featured on QBN is the portfolio of sound designer home k one (and he’s french so, since I’m trying to integrate my new culture as much as possible…!). I love the sound designer job. He’s the guy that will, well, design sound of movies, tv shows, websites (the latter in this case). I met one a couple of months back and he was passionnate about his job and explained everything wonderfully. Since I can’t do it that well, I’m directing you on the wikipedia entry!

I can’t believe how much unfacebook thing have been circulating lately on the net … The last one “I think that everyone really should take the time to read them. They need to understand that anything they post on Facebook can be used by Facebook and re sold to a third party. This is very important, particularly artists who are sensitive to their copy rights.”

I missed that article from Naomie Klein (No Logo, The Shock Doctrine) called “Forget the green technology - the hot money is in guns“. I love Naomie Klein (ideas ;P). Even though I think her book No Logo was a bit of a strech, I think it’s awesomely documented and a must-read for anyone in marketing. “We can choose to fix (the environment), or we can choose to fortress. Environmental activists and scientists have been yelling for the fix. The homeland security sector, on the other hand, believes the future lies in fortresses.”
Here’s the list of articles Klein wrote for the Guardian.

Artist of the day is also the buzz of the week, Lekky Li. But hey! It’s good ;P

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I’m all against American Apparel ads (here, I made it public). Their numerous quite questionable ads (you have to keep in mind that they *say* that their models are their shop employees /at least in Canada/), I think the i’m-making-home-made-porn-advertising isn’t really both either necessary or useful for a clothing brand. I mean, it was cute at the beginning, like, 5 years ago. Now it’s just pissing me off. At least their clothes are sweatshop free. I’m glad it’s really told in their ad campaign. Oh, and AA founder once masturbated while being interviewed. But that’s ok, coz (it seems, since the source’s a blog) the interviewer said that “Dov Charney is a mad man and I like that”. It reminds me a bit of Sisley adverts. thanks for listening.

“President Nicolas Sarkozy plans to [open shops on Sunday] as he tries to spur consumer spending and fulfill a pledge to modernize France. A bill is scheduled to reach parliament early next year.” AT LAST I would say. From my north-american point of view, closing shops on sundays is placed between being crazy and stupid. I still don’t understand the logic behind it (it will encourage excessive consumerism/sunday should be for the familiy and prayer/clerks need a day off). C’mon! If I’m working 5 days a week, from 10 to 19, there’s no way I can shop on weekdays! Then I have to go and fight for a place in a dressing room with half of Paris on Saturdays cause shops are closed on Sundays. Please, please, open them.

Napkin notebook. I just love the idea. or it’s the stupiest thing I’ve seen lately. I can really decide yet…

“Canadian teens have ranked third in a global education study on science performance published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.” I know, I know, we, Canadians, are sooo brilliant.

Another article about how Facebook is going down. It’s a big trend lately.

Artist of the day: Blackalicious

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