The Lint Screen

Author: PD Scullin

  • Super Bowl (Roman Numeral Something) Commercial Reviews Pt. 1

    Would you buy a car from this man? Lincoln thinks so.
    Would you buy a car from this man?

    Not going to review every damn spot. Too much work. Actually want to see this game, so The Lint Screen is going to spotlight most of them, but not all.

    Another caveat: haven’t seen any of these spots beforehand, with the exception of the Doritos “Goat” spot (oops!). Didn’t want to get caught up in the hype. Want to see the spots with virgin eyes, in the context of commercial clutter.

    Before we get started, Alicia Keys nailed “The Star Spangled Banner”–– amazing. That girl is on fire.

    Budweiser introduces some new beer called Black Crown with a spot that has a bunch of hipsters dressed in black and they cheer a new beer for them. Kiss that $4 million goodbye. Pitiful.

    Audi has an interesting tale of a guy who goes stag to the prom in his old man’s Audi. It gives him ballsy bravery to park in the principal’s spot and kiss the beautiful prom queen. He drives home with a black eye, and hollers happily. Nice.

    Hyundai Sante Fe has a cool spot with a kid getting bullied and rounding up a team of brave compadres to challenge the punks. Engaging and good.

    Go Daddy braves new territory by not showing exclusive T&A. No, now they have a fat geek French kissing a beauty. I believe there was supposed to be a strategic reason for this. Something about beauty and brains. Huh?

    Pepsi Next has a spot that is awful. Next.

    Best Buy gets Amy Poehler and makes her recite an unfunny script. Not a great buy of talent.

    Budweiser Black Crown has an obnoxious spot showing the type of obnoxious creeps who’ll drink this stuff. Goth hipsters? No thanks.

    Oreos has a terrific spot using the time honored strategy of people arguing on favorite attribute of product. “Cookie” or “Cream”– but this thing is ph-resh with the debate taking place in a library, getting hyper violent but always arguing in whispers. Oh, Weiden & Kennedy, you guys kick super ass. Great spot.

    Toyota Rav 4 gives us a genie who misunderstands wishes and a whacky family asking for all sorts of things. It’s a wild ride that tries awfully hard with lots of special effects and overshadows the product. One can almost smell the flop sweat the creatives had trying to score on this.

    Doritos has a spot with guys dressing like princesses because the daughter of one of them has a bag od Doritos. Ah, the “Goat” spot is better than this. To repeat, Goat trumps princess. Onward.

    Calvin Klein delivers more packages than UPS in a spot showing super fit dudes sporting their guchies. I feel so fat.

    Go Daddy has another spot with some strategy and it’s a mess.

    Milk has a nice spot with The Rock as he pursues a gallon of moo-juice before saving the world. Hardly a classic in the “Got Milk” campaign, but not bad.

    Hyundai has a great spot for Turbo Sonata as it follows all sorts of awful vehicle– everything from nuclear weapons to dripping chemicals to drooling dogs–– then zips past them because “It’s better to be in front.” Very nice.

    VW hits the long ball with its Minnesotan businessman who has a happy Jamaican accent and spreads his good cheer. O.K., the fit with VW Beetle is forced, would have been better for Red Stripe, but it’s a memorable spot. Also, best Super Bowl use of a Partridge Family song.

    Taco Bell has a hateful spot with old people escaping their retirement home to party and get tatted and raise holy hell. But, the old coots obviously have a death wish– ending their night eating Taco Bell food.

    Lincoln has stove pipe hatted 16th prez pimping its sheet metal. Illegal use of political icons.

  • 9 Little Known Facts About Apple’s “1984” Commercial

    The legendary commercial was originally intended to be very different.
    Mean Joe Green couldn’t handle the hammer.

    As the media blitz rages for upcoming Super Bowl commercials, The Lint Screen looks back at history’s most famous and loved big game commercial, Apple’s legendary “1984” spot that announced the introduction of the MacIntosh computer.

    Here are some little known facts about this classic spot.

    1. Steve Jobs invented television enabling the airing of the commercial.

    2. Originally, the rebel in red shorts running with a sledgehammer was cast to be Mean Joe Green, an effort to milk his famous Coca-Cola “Towel” commercial that aired in the 1980 Super Bowl. The deal fell through when Apple officials would not give in to Green’s demands that the sledgehammer be replaced with a ball-peen hammer “because that big old sledgehammer is way too heavy.”

    3. The actor playing the Big Brother-like character on the large screen was George Lindsey, better known for his portrayal of “Goober” in “The Andy Griffith Show.”

    4. The rough cut of the commercial used the original name for the MacIntosh computer–– “Revolutionary-Magic-Box-For-Computation-Tasks.”

    5. Ridley Scott, the director of the commercial, shot it in one take on location at an Elks Lodge in Paramus, New Jersey.

    6. Believe it or not, there were no M&M’s on the craft services table during production.

    7. The original script had the following announcer copy: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh… and you’ll see why we don’t think George Orwell was such a great author after all.”

    8. The crowd of people seated watching the projection of Big Brother thought they going to see a preview episode of “Family Ties.” Their dour expressions reflect their disappointment.

    9. The spot was originally finished with a soundtrack of a barbershop quartet singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from the Broadway musical “Gypsy.” It was edited out at the last minute.

  • NRA’s LaPierre And Nugent Outline Public Safety Measures

    People dressed like John Wayne will protect us, says Mr. N.R.A.
    People dressed like John Wayne will protect us, says the N.R.A.’s Wayne LaPierre

    Following the tragic slayings at an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut, National Rifle Association president Wayne LaPierre assembled a tactical think tank that included rocker Ted Nugent. Today, LaPierre and Nugent met with reporters to outline their plans to ensure safety. LaPierre read the following prepared statement:

    “First, make it mandatory that every U.S. citizen of any age be armed with one loaded Glock with ten additional full clips and a Bushmaster ACR modified to accept high capacity magazines. In addition, six hand grenades and four small nuclear missiles and a launcher. Also, an iPod, loaded with Ted Nugent’s superb albums Cat Scratch Fever, Free-For-All and Love Grenade. If citizens bear these arms, that will eliminate the potential for trouble.

    Second, all public places should have at least one very heavily armed guard dressed like John Wayne in Rio Bravo, with a white cowboy hat. It’s very important that the hat be white. Good guys always wear white hats. Good guys can protect us, they need white hats. And guns–– lots and lots of guns!

    Lastly, we need to enhance all rights associated with ‘stand your ground’ laws. If you even think that maybe your ground could be, possibly perhaps even thought to be a potential victim of being stepped upon, fire first and fire heavily. Find out the answers later.

    We believe these measures are the only sensible way to ensure safety for all Americans. It is a rational response. These proposals are also in the spirit of what our forefathers wanted when they gave us the right to bear semi automatic high powered weapons and gonzo capacity clips,” said Mr. LaPierre as he folded his prepared statement and picked up a Bushmaster BA50. He gave reporters in the front row ‘the stink-eye.’

    “Damn straight, whoa yeah, babe!” shouted a shirtless Ted Nugent standing by LaPierre’s side wearing strings of bullets crisscrossing his bare chest with a .50 Browning Machine Gun in one hand and a Bowtech Invasion CPX bow in the other.

  • Oops! The Lint Screen Corrections

    Reporters at The Lint Screen work hard to get the scoop. Sometimes we goof.
    Reporters at The Lint Screen work hard to get the scoop. Sometimes we goof–– oopsie daisies!

    Enterprises are made by people and people make mistakes, so every enterprise is mistaken. The Lint Screen is no different.

    We’ve had our share of boners over the years, and we’d like to correct some of them today. We humbly beg you your forgiveness–– for as ‘The Situation’ of “Jersey Shores” famously said, “To err is human; to forgive, divine.”

    The Lint Screen Corrections:

    – A guy named Alexander Pope wrote “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” Not ‘The Situation.’

    – Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of The United States of America, not “The Secretary of Beards & Cool Headwear” as previously reported.

    – The professional baseball team in Cleveland, Ohio is called “The Cleveland Indians” and not “The Buffalo Whippersnappers” as we previously reported.

    – Socrates was a Greek philosopher who lived from 469 BC – 399 BC. The Lint Screen mistakenly reported that he was the host of “Jeopardy” from 1974-79.

    – The Theory of Relativity has something to do with physics, not whether first cousins can marry as we previously published.

    – The first words spoken by Neil Armstrong when he landed on the moon July 20, 1969 were not “They put a man on the moon, you think my wife could make me a decent plate of waffles.” Apparently, The Lint Screen researchers were given bogus information.

    – The poet Robert Frost is not mentioned in a famous Christmas song as the one “nipping at your nose.” That would be a character called Jack Frost, no relation.

    – We’re pretty sure that Wikipedia is not a sexually transmitted disease.

    – President Gerald Ford did not “conduct important cabinet meetings while seated on a purple Shetland pony and handing out candy apples and comically large cowboy hats.” We’re still not sure where our reporter got that information.

    – The Bay of Pigs refers to something or other that happened in Cuba, not “a magical place where bacon flows freely and the shores are hammalicious!” as we mistakenly disclosed recently.

    We’re sorry if these little mishaps cost you money in bar bets or caused term paper grades to drop. We will do our best to get the story straight in the future, and we thank you for your forgiveness of past mistakes. We’re only hormone.

  • Le Miserable

    Won't someone please give this poor girl a decent song to sing?
    Someone please give this poor girl a decent song to sing.

    My holiday movie bender ended yesterday with a viewing of Les Miserables, a classic story by Victor Hugo published in 1862 and made into a theatrical musical in the 80’s that’s earned a bazillion bucks on stages worldwide. Amazingly, it took Hollywood until now to make the blockbuster musical into a movie.

    So, here’s the deal. Fine acting, great costumes, beautiful cinematography, art direction and pretty good singing. But unfortunately, the songs themselves aren’t terribly catchy. A musical should be about music. This production has about three songs with hooks, making the 157 minute running time feel like almost three hours of incessant warbling.

    West Side Story this ain’t.

    Yeah, yeah, some people are crazy for this show. I never saw a stage production but I imagine the attraction is to the theatrics and not the music. This score is skinny, babes. Jean Valjean would have been better served to steal some catchier tunes.

  • Holiday Movie “Mehs”

    How to make Tom look big? Cast small, shoot low camera angles.
    How to make Tom look big? Cast small, shoot low camera angles.

    Life of Pi. No, I didn’t read the book which many describe as a beautiful experience, but this film just didn’t do much for moi. Special effects tiger is cool, some great CGI work, acting is fine, but overall, this Ang Lee extravaganza just wasn’t very moving.

    Jack Reacher. Yes, I’ve read over a dozen of the Reacher books and am a huge fan of Lee Child’s heroic ex-MP-drifter-crime-solving-avenger-dispenser-of-justice.

    You’re probably thinking the problem is Tom Cruise, who is hardly the 250 lb, 6’5″ tough ass that Jack Reacher is supposed to be, but I’m willing to suspend some disbelief for a good time. Cruise sells it O.K. The real problem is the script and confused plot, and the fact that what makes a Jack Reacher book so fun to read is Lee Child describing how Reacher analyzes and reacts to his world. It’s not done in this movie, there is no interior Jack Reacher life, so it’s just like every other action hero fare–– fistfights, car chases and shootouts. Sorry, but Jack Reacher deserves better.

    Hell, we didn’t even get to see his toothbrush– the only thing Jack Reacher packs as he drifts from town to town.

    It’s a pity both these movies weren’t better.