Davis ThinkingAshleyMadison, of "Life is short. Have an affair." fame, trotted out this Avatar-themed spot for broadcast during Sunday's Academy Awards. Then, in a move as predictable as an over-the-top Sharon Stone reaction shot, ABC banned it from the telecast. Funny that the nation's leading adultery enabler ends up flaccid on Oscar night. Why did those frigid execs give Ashley's aliens the cock block?
You Californians sure seem obsessed with this “Oscar” thing. As I write these words, every one of my friends with a 9x zip code is dressed to the nines, snarking their way through one of the forty three billion Academy Awards parties taking place across the state. I am not amongst them: partly because I am unforgivably late with this column, partly because I haven’t seen any of the movies nominated for the major categories, and partly because watching Anne Hathaway and James Franco (pictured left) being funny is like watching a Chuck Lorre remake of Joanie Loves Chachi.
This Sunday, the film industry's good and great will adorn the red carpet with their Gucci gowns and Cartier jewelry for Hollywood's biggest night, as the 82nd Annual Academy Awards celebrate the best in the business. But who would win our Oscar for "Best Use of Media to Promote a Film"? We nominated "The Blind Side" from Alcon Entertainment and Warner Bros. and Paramount's "Up in the Air."
Some of the biggest, well-know brands in the video game world announced new titles at last week's E3 trade show in Los Angeles. Maybe you've heard of Halo, Mario Bros., or BioShock but, unless you're a gamer, you probably know little else about them. Countless hours are spend enraptured by this varied, multi-billion-dollar industry, yet it still operates like a niche community. An acquired taste. I think that video games need their Oscars.
The Oscar winners, known for their sardonic style, directed the spot for an environmental coalition as a media battle warms up over the role carbon fuels should play in America's energy future.
After presenting his third of four Oscars, Will Smith looked into the camera and the audience and said something to the effect of "yes, I'm still here." That essentially sums up this year's Oscar telecast, a bloated and overdone spectacle that left us bewildered, unenthusiastic and exhausted to the point where only "Randy The Ram" could have saved the show by laying the smackdown on the all-schmaltz affair. Sadly, he never entered the ring.
They gave out Oscars during previous recessions. They even gave out Oscars during each year of the Great Depression. But the way Madison Avenue is behaving toward the 81st annual Academy Awards, to be broadcast by ABC on Sunday, one could be excused for believing that the ceremony was actually for the Razzie Awards, which mock the worst Hollywood movies. Several Oscar sponsors from last year — among them General Motors, L’Oréal and the Bertolli food line sold by Unilever — are forgoing the program.
Marjora Carter had a simple plan to “green the Bronx.” She worked to plant trees around the community, thus creating “green collar” jobs. Her story and others will be the focus of Frito-Lay TrueNorth’s upcoming ad campaign breaking during the Oscars. TrueNorth nut snacks joins a growing field of brands placing the community at the forefront of their marketing messages.
What do Oscar winners think when they lay down to sleep? In a world that's fickle and filled with critics, they might well think: "They can never take this away from me." Well, that turns out to be wrong.
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