Chrysler “It’s Halftime, America”

OK, I have to start with Clint. I mean, he is Clint after all. First off, he is walking around in some really dark places in Detroit, or was he at the game? Looked kind of like Detroit. I know he could probably go all Dirty Harry on any trouble, but still I worried about him in that tunnel. Equating Detroit with the rest of America makes sense since the rest of America bailed out Detroit. And I do believe it is halftime in America. One of the most TRUE things Clint says is, “All that matters now is what’s ahead.” And that is very TRUE at halftime. One of the weirdest things he says is, “This country can’t be knocked out with one punch.” One punch? One punch really puts a false spin on years of greed; mismanagement by those very car companies; and the very real budget, unemployment and housing issues this country still faces. But I guess America is a lot like Clint – faced with adversity, we always seem to have one last bullet. “So you’ve got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”

VW “The Dog Strikes Back”

As soon as I saw this fat dog, I was in. Come on. Everyone has a fat dog. I have a fat dog and I love him. And America is fat. And it’s halftime, America. Get off your asses and get in shape. Then chase a VW into the future where there’s a Star Wars’ bar and Darth Vader. OK, that’s where I got a little lost. So I went right back to thinking about the fat dog trying to get through the dog door and I laughed.

Camry “Reinvented”

This is the kind of concept spot I have always liked. They don’t show a thing that has been reinvented for the Camry, but you get the feeling that they’re always looking for innovation. And innovation is full of lofty dreams like poop-less babies and rain that makes you thin. Hopefully, Toyota will back it up with some cool stuff like heated cup holders or cars that run on baby poop.

Chevy “Mayan Apocalypse”

This ad looks fantastic. If you’re going to do the end of the world, you should spend the coin to do it right. And the song is great. But poor Dave. He drove a Ford. You always take a chance when you go straight at a competitor. Especially a competitor that has the money to come back at you like Ford, but I think in this case it was worth it. And even if Ford does retaliate with Dave ruling the Tunnel People in his Ford X-150 or whatever, a Twinkie will make it all better.

Honda “Matthew’s Day Off”

There was a lot of chatter among ad folks that this ad sucked. I liked it. One of the main things ads do is to capture an emotion that can be attributed to your product. Revisiting Ferris Bueller brings back a host of emotions if you’re a fan of the film. Even though the ad didn’t live up to the movie, I still felt like taking the day off and finding some crazy stuff to do instead. If an ad can infuse a sense of whimsy and freedom to your product – you win even if it is a mini-SUV with a somewhat stunted personality.

Doritos “Man’s Best Friend”

I thought the ad was fun but not really great. However, I did enjoy the edge of it. Dogs whacking cats works for me and obviously for America. And it seems it is worth $1 million from Doritos. So that makes it good. Doritos has found a great identity for their Super Bowl spots and has really grabbed the attention away from BEERS.

Seinfeld “Acura Transactions”

Seinfeld is funny, but it’s very inside funny. If you love the show, you probably loved the ad. But I don’t love Leno and I’m not really digging the premise of the spot. So others worked better for me. Still, the ad got a ton of play before the Super Bowl so it probably worked.

THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD

Samsung’s “Thing Called Love” seems like a phone with a pen. At least they are trying and the ad was kind of fun.

Bridgestone’s “Performance Ads” were interesting, but I feel like they have done better. I want one of those tire footballs though.

“Happy Grad” for Chevy was a funny performance, but I have to agree with a friend of mine who said, “The client could have directed that. They love it when someone in the ad is screaming for their product.” It looks like crowd sourcing is really helping clients get the ads that appeal to them that they may not be getting from agencies.

KIA “Dream Car” was a pretty good ad. It was fun to watch and I will remember the girl waving the flag. But sometimes, ads are just missing something. I felt this last year with KIA. But this year was better.

M&M’s “Naked” was a big fan favorite. It was good, but I wasn’t thinking of it as much of a Super Bowl spot. It just lacked import. It was funny, but just a good ad.

Bud’s “Wego” was a fun dog-gets-us-beer spot again. I feel like I have seen a lot of dog-getting-us-beers spots. But the dog was fantastic.

Pepsi and Elton. It just didn’t live up to my expectations for Elton.

THE LOSERS

Century 21. I am biased here but I think they really blew it. I see the point they are trying to make with their agents, but they did it in a way that couldn’t be more phony. People are still in a tough spot with their homes in America. Sure, they are looking for superheroes to help them. But instead of looking like superheroes, the agents tended to look like cartoons, especially when helping Trump and Sanders. Also, the way the ads are shot is just way too slick. There isn’t a home in America that can live up to the color alone in those ads much less anything else. The tone of the ads is all wrong. It’s matter of fact and carefree when consumers are still anything but. They don’t take the Century 21 brand seriously, so why should we.

E*TRADE has been a winner for years in the Super Bowl. They have a rich history of bringing home the bacon in the big game. This year was their worst performance ever in my opinion. It would have been better if they had skipped the competition. They lost face.

Bud’s “Prohibition” was a nice idea but it was so boring. History lessons are not good commercials unless someone gets killed Boardwalk Empire style. They should have whacked the Coors guy trying to move in on their territory from Denver.

COMMERCIALS WITH SEXY WOMEN AND MEN

Go Daddy. Wow, they just get more and more idiotic as time passes. But it seems to work in the big game. The ads are not good though. It’s hard to tell what they’re even communicating other than – please come to the website. I love beautiful women but have never been to the website – ever.

Teleflora’s “Give and Receive.” I hate to tell them this, but she is going to need far more than flowers. She looks really high-maintenance. Flowers and a car may do it. Flowers and a summer home. Flowers and a 20-carat diamond. You get the picture. Still, the ad was memorable for obvious reasons.

H&M’s “David Beckham.” Women watch the game too. And this would be the part they actually watched. So good job David Peckham, I mean Beckham.

USA TODAY’S AD METER WINNER

“Baby Sling” was shown to me by the director in a sound-editing suite along with some other ads he was entering. There was another ad I thought was much better called “Dog Heist.” I still like it better although it looks like “Baby Sling” has a great chance to win the USA TODAY AD METER and a prize of 1 million bucks. I don’t know why though. I could see that baby coming from a mile away. He would never get my Doritos.

PARTING THOUGHT

There are those who didn’t like the fact that Super Bowl ads were put out early on YouTube and corporate Web pages. The companies that do this are smart. The ads need time to get press and social momentum. With the price of a Super Bowl spot and the money it takes to produce one, buy rights to songs, pay celebrities and put together any other parts of a program that may be needed, it’s important to get as much play as you possibly can. The day of the game and the three days after are not near enough.

After attending ad:tech and seeing a series on innovation, I was inspired to think outside the proverbial box.  Many of the examples that were shown were interesting, but the ones I found most impactful were the ones that paired medias that you wouldn’t traditionally think would work together.  The following are just a few examples of how advertisers who have produced innovative campaigns and tactics that were attention grabbing and buzz worthy.

Showtime’s “The Franchise” & Foursquare

To promote the July 15 premiere of reality series “The Franchise: A Season With the San Francisco Giants,” Showtime partnered with the Major League Baseball to create a billboard display that dispensed baseballs, some signed by Giants, when people checked in on Foursquare at the MLB Fan Cave storefront in Manhattan. For those who automatically shared their Foursquare posts to either Twitter or Facebook or both — roughly a quarter of people on Foursquare — a “Franchise” ad and tune-in message was automatically sent to those social-media accounts.  I liked this execution for its simplicity – traditional OOH paired with Foursquare’s check-in.

Coca-Cola’s “Chok”

In Hong Kong, Coke was trying to target teens, which they learned were spending more time on their phones than watching TV.  They created an app that allowed teens to play a game called “Chok” when a specific Coke commercial aired.  Just 15 hours after the campaign launched, the “Chok” app had become the number 1 free app at the Apple store. It remained number 1 for another week and by the end of the third week, there were more than 300,000 unique downloads.

:15 Promo Spot:

:30 Interactive TV Spot:

Converse Domaination

Converse used a fairly common paid media, SEM, but in a very unique way allowing them to engage with their teenage audience in a manner that was personal to them.

 Technology had helped win the war, including radio communication, RADAR, and rocket & jet powered technologies. Anything was possible, and by golly, with a bit more tech who knew what Big Brother would be able to do. The Marlboro Man did not approve.

Then 1953 rolled around and brought a film version of H. G. Wells’ book to the masses. Many remembered the terrifying radio broadcast from pre-war ’38. As much as technology was finding its way into our post-war suburban living rooms, the collective American conscience loved how tech could help us live our lives as much as we feared what might come of it.

Above all, we feared our loss of privacy and individuality. The panopticon was no longer a prison to send people TO – it was a prison we ourselves lived in EVERYWHERE. Wiretaps, video surveillance equipment at work and on our streets, credit card transactions… Big Brother could find you, track you, watch you, control you.
“Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Orson Wells used that premise for 1984. Luckily, a few decades later, a fearless tech impresario by the name of Steve Jobs, with his crack team of marketers including Chiat/Day and Ridley Scott, were ready to save us all. Big Brother got his pixilated teeth knocked out courtesy of a track & field-inspired savior wielding Thor’s hammer:

Upstart Apple brought us the graphical user interface and a mouse. People loved it. And perhaps more than any other piece of technology, it inspired people to love and have a personal relationship (para-social relationship) with technology. Making the products in China hasn’t changed the love affair too much.

Bring on the World Wide Web, and today, many American’s are comfortable making purchases online, sharing intimate personal details and photos, and their most deeply held personal convictions.

Caveat emptor. You might have bought that Apple iPad, but you don’t own it. Same for PS3. And in the near future, maybe not even personal correspondence you have sent in assumed privacy.

In the past you might have bought a book and received the material object made of atoms, bought some software and got the disk with documentation… Pay in cash and the publisher was none the wiser. Now your every more can be tracked – and not just maliciously – as you pay for and receive goods & services electronically in 1’s and 0’s. We’ willingly check-in to Foursquare, post our upcoming vacation to Facebook, and freely share our Social Security number when we’re not being scammed by Nigerian phishermen. And all we get is a stinking electron – we don’t even get the whole atom anymore!

So I rant about privacy and control, but what does it mean for us as marketers? As much as we promoted products with perfect lighting and tightly edited television spots to put our clients’ best foot forward. In the digital age, we must acknowledge that Big Brother is here to stay and strive mold him into a generous and protecting image. Participate in the conversation, empower our consumers, and offer clearly understandable language that explicitly states what and how we use information and allow consumers to decide what we learn about them. Violate that trust and the rapidly swirling 1’s and 0’s will punish you. Ask dictators the world over how that’s working out.

The pen is mightier than the sword – and the online world is one giant pen. With teeth.

The critics lay the blame squarely on James Franco.  Here’s a sample from no less than industry booster, Hollywood Reporter, which titles its review, “127 Hours of Boredom.”  And it got worse.  A lot worse:

“Franco seemed distant, uninterested and content to keep his Cheshire-cat-meets-smug smile on display throughout.

“What was the point, Academy? What did Franco bring to the table? His appearance played more like one of his performance art pieces than an actual attempt to be host. At least Hathaway can sing and dance and be funny.”

Other than us pseudo-Hollywood types, why do we care?  The answer might be in what Franco did off-camera:

“…Franco seemed a lot livelier backstage, tweeting videos and photos seemingly every time he was off camera and as engaged in his iPhone as he was totally uninterested in the audience a few feet away.”

James Franco did several live tweets and videos during the Oscars.

Not to make too much of it, but we just might have seen an inflection point, where digital/virtual is more engaging and compelling for some folks than human and live.  It’s not the first time I’ve noticed it, only the first time it’s been so clearly revealed in a spectacularly public setting. 

Franco is a “digital native,” part of a generation that has never known a time prior to the Web, fast computers and texting.  And if you’ve had the sometimes strange experience interviewing some digital natives for a job, for example, you can find them aloof, seemingly inattentive, even lazy.  That’s because when your point of contact is a keyboard and not another’s eyes, you tend miss that body language thing.  Given that 70% of human communications is non-verbal, it’s easy for both sides to misread exactly what’s going on.

I’d argue that’s what happened with Franco.  Unless, of course, he was totally baked.  Billy Crystal dodged flying beer cans on his way up, so did Bob Hope, Eddie Murphy and the “old guys.”  But they learned to connect, live.  Franco is a wunderkind, but increasingly, his life is literally in the Cloud.  Just like the emerging wave of Millennial consumers.  They’re changing how we think about strategy and communications, big time.  Nuance, metaphor, and art give way to the blunt force trauma of 140 characters, smack ya upside the head YouTube snippets and a subterranean Facebook culture that moves so fast, no one can keep up with it.

From a traditional advertising perspective, the world is backwards.  It used to be that we’d develop the campaign, then see how it played out in the “other” channels.  Now it probably makes sense to start with the virtual and see if out of the morass of feedback, a campaign is necessary or even feasible. 

Which is what makes our Build the Brand, Protect the Brand approach so compelling.  Dialogue is going to shape the experience no matter how cool our creative is or how much money our clients throw at the problem.  Just ask Pepsi and the Gap.  We know how to manage consumer dialogue, using our insights and creativity to set things in motion and our judgment to keep things on track.  It’s a key skill–especially for consumers who’d rather Tweet about an experience than actually live it.

The latest development is AEG’s (Anschutz Entertainment Group) proposed 64,000-seat, retractable-roof football stadium to join Staples Center, Nokia Theatre and the L.A. Convention Center at L.A. LIVE in Downtown Los Angeles.  On February 1^st it was announced that, although there is no team or approved stadium plan, naming rights have already been sold to Farmers Insurance for $700 million.  The proposed $1 billion stadium (to be funded by AEG) would be called Farmers Field.  The $700 million (starting at $20 million in year one and increasing annually over 30 years) naming rights agreement would be the largest long-term naming rights agreement in history.  Farmers’ partnership would provide an enormous branding opportunity for the company along with exclusive naming exposure and signage inside and outside Farmers Field including electronic and video messaging during events, hospitality access inside and outside the stadium, promotional and experiential activation areas throughout the concourses and other public areas and a variety of branded clubs and other interactive areas to be used by Farmers Insurance agents and customers.  Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa states, “Farmers Field will be a catalyst for new development, creating nearly 20,000 jobs and $3 billion worth of new development in the downtown area alone.”

Local sports hero Magic Johnson has said he hopes to become a part owner in Los Angeles’ NFL team saying, “We’re getting closer and closer to bringing football back to Los Angeles.  This is exciting for me and the whole city. I don’t know what happened in the past but I [think] the community now is really excited about football returning to Los Angeles.”

AEG is talking with NFL and team officials and believes the stadium will have at least one NFL team and possibly two by the time Farmer’s Field opens (projected for 2015 if approved) providing the opportunity to host Super Bowl L in 2016. The first Super Bowl was held in Los Angeles in 1967.  Speculation about which NFL franchise, or two franchises, could move to Los Angeles recently has focused on the San Diego Chargers and Minnesota Vikings.

 The iPad has caused the rest of the world to make pads. Big pads, small pads, cheap copycat pads, pads with keyboards, pads that are also laptops, pads that work with other stuff and pads that defy description. From what I can tell, none of them are any better than the iPad, but a lot of them are just plain bad pads. This Dell spins the pad part around to become a laptop. That would be fine if it didn’t make it so fat. There were two Italian gentlemen looking at this Dell and I’m pretty sure they kept saying whatever “fat” is in Italian. 

And the Galaxy tablet from Samsung is only slightly bigger than the iPhone. It’s amazing how many people say to me, “Isn’t the iPad just a bigger version of the iPhone?” And I guess I would answer back, “At least it’s bigger.” My advice to anyone looking to buy a tablet is to buy an iPad. And to anyone looking to get a keyboard for their iPad, buy a 15-inch Mac Air. Getting a keyboard for your iPad just makes you look like you can’t afford a real computer. 

The Good – Televisions with Apps

Everything should have apps. They’re smaller than applications. They have cool icons. They’re cheap. And they’re useful. I think they used to be called widgets, but don’t worry about that. Apps are in and widgets are out. This LG television has all kinds of apps. Doesn’t it look fun? If the cable goes down, I can play with whatever these apps are. Most likely one of them will be Angry Birds.

It will be hard to drive my car and play Angry Birds at the same time, but at least I’ll get to try it someday once my computer, television, fridge, robot and car all have apps. And that is good.

The Ugly – The Rydis

This thing rolls around your home puffing out aromatherapy, playing mood music, has a screen that connects to the Internet and monitors your vital signs via a bracelet. For one thing, if you need your vitals monitored by this poor-man’s R2D2, it’s going to be very hard for you to chase it around trying to see the screen with the Internet even if it’s fairly slow. But should you have a heart attack while doing so, it will alert the authorities and puff out a soothing smell and mood music while you go toward the light.

The Good – Mobile 3-D

Although there doesn’t seem to be that many folks with 3-D TV, there are already small devices where you can shoot in 3-D. They were everywhere at CES. But more fascinating were all of the things they created to show off this technology at CES. Like a 3-D town; giant sand sculpture; this woman in a yellow dress who keeps twirling the umbrella toward you for 3-D effect; and a number of cars, including the car from the Green Hornet, in 3-D. I have to say, these 3-D cameras worked well and I loved all the weird stuff to demonstrate the effect.

The Bad – Weird Stuff

This is a paper shredder. It’s not ugly, but why is it good that a paper shredder looks like a megaphone? Is it because federal agents won’t know it’s a paper shredder? So you can stand right next to it and shred sensitive documents while they search for said documents? Anyway, it looks like a megaphone. Maybe if it was both and you could announce you were shredding documents and then shred them with the same device – that would be interesting.

There were so many different flash drives at CES. These are little miniature penguin flash drives. There were also Swiss Army flash drives, little wooden tree flash drives, flash drives that look like cassette tapes, flash drives that look like keys. There’s a whole world of crazy flash drives out there. It will come full circle to where there is a flash drive disguised as a flash drive. Then we will be done.

The Good – Simple Stuff

Simple things like this cheap plastic cover so you can take your iPhone under water. You don’t need to take your iPhone under water. You shouldn’t take your iPhone under water. But if you are on a boat with your iPhone, this might be a good idea.

The Ugly – Well, Bill Walton Was Never Very Attractive Even for a Basketball Player

I don’t know if it is ugly or just plain weird to have Bill Walton trying to sell Haier televisions at CES. I have never seen a Haier television in the store. It’s not at Costco. It’s not at Best Buy. It’s at Target, but I don’t remember ever seeing one there. So unless Bill Walton is going to drive me to the secret part of Target that has a Haier TV, I don’t know how he can help. I know they are using him to get the attention of distributors. I get that. I’m just hoping for their sake that the people who run Best Buy really like basketball.

The Gaga – Enough Said

Lady Gaga has now become all the rage of CES. She is the creative director of Polaroid. No one thought this was a good idea. But she commands so much attention it might be a good idea just for that. The throng at CES was huddled around the Polaroid area waiting to get a glimpse of the Gaga. They all kept trying to get as close as possible. I think so that some Gaga magic might rub off on them. I had to watch her on a big screen because I couldn’t get close enough. So nothing rubbed off on me. She announced the usual array of Polaroid mini picture printers and cameras with mini picture printers. She calls the new ones the Grey Line. The biggest idea from Gaga is these camera glasses that take a picture and then display the picture to everyone on the front of the lenses. It is a fun literal translation of Polaroid done in a cool way. That’s what people do with Polaroid pictures. They take them then show them. I have to say, this is one of those things that is either genius or not genius. As a creative director myself, I understand that great risk often brings great reward. So I will be rooting for her. Here’s looking at you Gaga and taking a picture at the same time and subsequently showing you that same picture.

There is no barier to the iPad. It's a game-changer.

2. The iPad – I have an iPad. My friend Mike has a Galaxy Pad. I feel bad for him, but I’m sure he’ll survive. When the iPad first came out, everyone viewed it as a big iPhone. Big mistake. I realized the iPad was much more when the owner of my company was carrying one around. He is not a tech person. But he is living on his iPad. That alone makes it a game changer. It’s something a computer couldn’t do. It couldn’t even level the playing field for someone like him. The iPad does. There’s no barrier to iPad. The iPad is for everyone. It’s just simple great. And simple great will take over the world.

3. Real-Time Interactive – It’s one thing to offer a website that allows you interaction. But how does that interaction change the real world? This will become more and more important as individuals start to look for a world outside the computer. They won’t let go of the computer, but they will want more real-world connections because of it. They will want to control or affect things that live in real time. They will want to be a part of more things that live in real time. Putting the Web world and real-time world together will be an even bigger deal than it was in 2010.

4. The Consolidation Battle – Facebook wants you to spend the majority of your time on Facebook, including your e-mail time. Foursquare wants you to check in on Foursquare and talk about things on Foursquare. Google wants you to turn into some sort of Google creature that can’t function without Google. Meanwhile, there are multitudes of other check-in sites including Foodspotting, Get Glue, Philo, etc. Many of these sites/apps are linked and many are not. The battle for the majority of your time is ongoing and well, pretty insane. Who will win? Will anyone? I don’t know but I know it will be a fight to the death.

5. Crowdsourcing – Using the Cloud to do all the work is in vogue. Although it’s not necessarily new, the execution of it has gotten far more sophisticated. Agencies like Victors and Spoils have taken it to a new level.  They have legitimized it to big advertisers like Harley-Davidson, WD-40 and others. Doritos and Converse have been doing it with their TV and Web films for years now. The trend will continue until it isn’t fascinating to advertisers anymore. That could happen soon or keep on indefinitely as more and more advertisers try it. It’s such a cost-effective way to go, that the trend is very appetizing and could remain so.

Foursquare checks in at No. 6 on our list -- as rewards and discounts for people who use it become more a prevalent business practice.

6. Coupon Gaming – Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp and a host of others are or will be rewarding people for checking in at their establishments with discounts and freebies. When I was at my coffee place (Sambalatte in Vegas), the Foursquare mayor was asking the owner why he wasn’t giving him a discount for being the mayor of Sambalatte. When the early adopters start demanding it, the regular folks will follow. It will be fun to watch the developments once everyone is in the game. And you thought seniors got all the discounts.

7. The Power of the Disenfranchised – Yes, they have power. And they are the multitudes. I’m not including myself because I have a job and can pay my bills. But I probably should add myself to the list. Why? Because I think there are a great many Americans who are figuring out that they are one bad Friday away from being disenfranchised. And that’s a frightening prospect that’s motivating people like never before. It’s also one of the reasons a Palin could become the Republican nominee for president. I didn’t say the disenfranchised made wise decisions. But they do have power. And that power will manifest itself outside the world of politics as they realize just how much they can effect. When roving mobs with pitchforks and torches come back, I will tweet about it.

8. New-Fangled Television Advertising – This is going to sound crazy, but I’ll say it. Television advertising is still important. The drive to spend more money online is hurting television advertising budgets and leveling out the mix but not making television obsolete. With Hulu, Netflix, Hi-Def DVRs, 3-D television, Google TV and about a zillion Web videos, you will need a good mix to have a chance at reaching anyone. Right now most digital shops don’t get the magic of television. They don’t understand what Web videos can be. They treat them more like content and not the branding vehicles they should be. When it’s done right, what you see on the computer is a perfect complement to what you see on television. I sit and watch television with my computer on my lap. I have learned to watch whichever one has the best stuff on it that particular minute. Try it.

9. Things That Have Nothing to Do with Technology – The wired world has already hit a kind of critical mass. Hipsters are looking for ways to let go of technology. That same need will get past the cool hunters and become a need for the rest of us this year. Like I mentioned above – computers are too entrenched for us to lose them completely. But we will start to look for things that can give us a well-needed break. But not exercise. That’s where I draw the line.

10. More and More Ways to Make You Part of the Entertainment You Watch Every Night – If you watch The Colbert Report, you know that he had an art episode with Steve Martin where he had Shepard Fairey and others work on a picture of him to make it collectable. Then he continued that online where you could participate and change the picture as well. Then those pictures that you created end up on the show. Conan has taken to involving the audience in making films for his show that live on the Web and on air. This is what the smarter shows will do – make you feel like a part of them.

Most critics do it, so why shouldn’t I?  For the past six or seven years, I have taken it upon myself to create my list of the 10 best films of the year.  It’s not a critic’s list.  I’m not a critic.  I’m a film fan.  This is a fan’s list.  Yes, many of the films you’ll see on the critics’ lists will show up on mine as well.  Good films are good films (and bad ones are bad), no matter who’s watching them. The reasons I will give for their inclusion will be from a fan’s, not a critic’s, perspective.

Before we begin, a few things to keep in mind.  In 2010, I saw approximately 80 films. That’s quite a few, but still a fraction of the hundreds that were released.  The point being, I’m sure there were many outstanding films that I didn’t see.  They won’t be on the list.  If one of them is a favorite of yours, you have my apologies.  Can’t judge a film I didn’t see. 

One last thing before we move on.  The list is not in any specific order.  I’m not ranking them 1 through ten.  In truth, I find it difficult to compare a film like Toy Story 3 to one like Winter’s Bone.  They are both great for completely different reasons.  Let’s just leave it at that. These are the ten best.  Put them in any order you like. 

Winter’s Bone

This film contains my favorite character of 2010.  She is Ree Dolly, the resilient 17-year old girl at the center of the story.  She’s the toughest, bravest character I’ve seen in years. She lives in the abject poverty of the rural Ozark Mountains, taking care of her younger brother and sister, as well as her nearly catatonic mother.  Her father, a meth cooker, has jumped bail and is nowhere to be found.  Amazingly, that scenario gets worse when the sheriff informs her that dad has put up their ramshackle farm to make bail and if he doesn’t appear soon, they’ll lose their home.  Perfect. But Ree is undeterred.  The film follows her on her quest through the frightening modern meth underground of the Ozarks to find her dad, dead or alive.  She is threatened, lied to, physically abused and told at every corner that she’s best off leaving things be.  She’ll have none of it.  The kid is tough.  The film is tough too.  I found it hard to believe that people are actually living this way in America in the 21^st century, but I have no reason to believe it’s not accurate.  It’s clear that many of the smaller characters are actually played by real live locals.  If you see the film, they’re easy to spot.  I won’t divulge how Ree’s search ends.  I’ll just say that many films are promoted as “a triumph of the human spirit,” which usually causes me to cringe.  Winter’s Bone, on the other hand, is all about the triumph of the indomitable spirit of a 17-year old girl who simply refuses to give up.  It’s a revelation how such a dark and depressing story can ultimately be so uplifting. 

Inside Job

How’s your anger management? Inside Job will test it.  2010 was a good year for documentaries, and this one got my blood flowing more than any other.  In short, it’s the story of the recent global financial meltdown and the financial manipulators – criminals- who made it happen.  Sound boring and complicated? It is neither, and it’s an important film to see if you desire any understanding at all of how we landed in the mess we’re in today.  The film does a great job of making the exotic financial instruments like consolidated debt obligations (cdo’s) and credit default swaps understandable to people like me.  With that understanding, it’s easy to see how the whole house of cards came crashing down.  But the film’s main point is not how the house crashed, but who built it in the first place.  You’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know about Countrywide Financial, AIG, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, the Federal Reserve, Columbia University, Harvard and most of all, Goldman Sachs.  And you will shake your head in wonder at the arrogance, the stupidity, the greed, the duplicity and the unadulterated evil exhibited by the players in those and other institutions.  Watch in speechless wonder as a group of Goldman executives admit to a Congressional Committee that yes, they bet against financial products they were selling to their own customers, essentially stealing their clients’ money.  Not only do they admit it, they do so in such an arrogant way that they seemingly dare Congress to do something about it.  I wanted to throw something at the screen.  The film was directed by Charles Ferguson, who created an equally maddening doc about the Bush Administration’s follies in Iraq called No End in Sight.  Many people I’ve talked to say they don’t want to see Inside Job because they’re tired of all the financial meltdown analysis floating around today.  I get that. Recession fatigue, I guess.  But this is an important story.  And if we don’t learn from it, it will happen again and again.  Count on it.

The Kids Are All Right

It’s your standard teenage-kids-of-a-lesbian-couple- find-their-sperm-donor-and –forge-a-relationship-with-him story.  People who haven’t seen the film usually refer to it as “the lesbian movie” or something similar.  They’d be wrong.  It’s not a film about being gay.  It’s a film about being human and how we humans deal with the foibles and quirks of the other humans we love and live with. Actually, the fact that the central characters are lesbians becomes almost incidental to the story.  Yes, it adds tension and impetus to the plot, but in no way is it a “lesbian movie.” Julianne Moore and Annette Bening play the, well, the lesbians. Moore plays the freer spirit of the two – a fledging landscape gardener.  Bening is more ordered, more structured, much more uptight.  Not surprisingly, she’s a doctor.  She’s also clearly the adult in the relationship.  Bening gives a performance that, if Jennifer Lawrence doesn’t win it (she’s Ree Dolly in Winter’s Bone) should bring her an Academy Award.  She’s that good. The joy in watching a couple who have obviously been together for the better part of two decades, is that they aren’t that different from a lot of  “old married couples” we all know.  The same arguments, the same taking-each-other-for-granted, the same little moments of knowing each other’s thoughts without a word being spoken – all the stuff straight couples are famous for. Of course, it’s all thrown for a loop when their sperm donor from 18 years earlier enters their family’s collective life. He’s a prototypical Southern California free spirit, played by Mark Ruffalo, as only Mark Ruffalo can play a character like that.  I mean that as a compliment. Anyway, there are laughs, tears, anger and reconciliation.  Just like real life.  Only better acted.  It’s a film that’s involving, smart and funny from the first moment to the last.  See it before the Oscars, so you’ll know what all the fuss is about.

Toy Story 3

There are some films that feel like they are just the right length.  There are many more that I find myself wishing were shorter.  There are very, very few that I wished had been longer.  Toy Story 3 was one of them. I was actually sorry when it ended. That’s how good it is.  It has more laughs than any other comedy I saw, more tears than any other “serious” film and better action than any live “action” movie I saw all year.  The team at Pixar is well and truly incredible.  They are seemingly incapable of making a bad film.  I’ve never had a ten best list that didn’t include that year’s Pixar release.  Today, they’re surely not the only people doing incredible animation. The Pixar difference is that the animation is always in service to a great story, never the other way around. I think that’s why adults are as entranced by their work as kids.  The story in this one revolves one simple, undeniable fact: toys stay the same, but the kids who own them grown up. As a result, Woody, Buzz and the rest are sent on an adventure to what amounts to a toy work camp.  Inside the camp a teddy bear, of all things, reigns as one of film’s all time great villains.  After a series of fast thinking, well-planned escapes, tests of friendship and loyalty, all building to an action-filled ending that has you on the edge of your seat rooting hard for a bunch of computer-animated toys, the whole thing comes to a happy and entirely satisfying conclusion.  With the only downside being it ended much too quickly for my taste.

Let Me In

Let Me In is a remake of a Swedish film called Let the Right One In. It’s a vampire movie. The original is a beautiful, lyrical film unlike any vampire movie I’d ever seen.  Much to my surprise, Let Me In came very close to capturing its beauty and mystery.  It also bombed completely in the American market.  I think I know why.  If a vampire film isn’t a berserk blood-and-guts fest or doesn’t feature Bella and Edward, American audiences want no part of it.  Let Me In is the story of an awkward, lonely, bullied adolescent named Owen who lives with his mother in a depressing apartment complex in Roswell, New Mexico.  He befriends his new neighbor, a 12-year-old named Abby who has just moved into the complex with an older man. Owen assumes he is her father. By now you’ve probably guessed that Abby is not 12 years old and the old guy is not her dad.  She’s a vampire, who has been alive for hundreds of years, and he is her Guardian, whose main duties include keeping Abby safe from the disastrous effects of daylight and hunting the human victims who will provide her with the fresh blood she needs to survive.  Don’t fret, the film is packed with vampire stuff: Abby can only go out at night, creates no reflections in mirrors and can only enter a room if invited (hence the film’s title).  She can also be a stone cold supernatural killer when she needs to be.  And so she is in more than one well-done – and brutally violent- sequence. But at its core, the film is about the friendship and, finally, the love between two lonely outsiders – the socially awkward kid and the vampire who has spent centuries living in the shadows.  They ultimately forge a bond that will literally last until one of them dies.  The film benefits from some of the best child acting I’ve seen in a long time. Chloe Grace Moretz (Hit Girl from the underrated Kick Ass) kills as Abby and Kodi Smit-McPhee makes us believe in the frailty and loneliness of Owen.  And the always-great Richard Jenkins shows us the pain and the obsession of the Guardian. Let Me In probably won’t fulfill your expectations of a vampire film.  That’s what makes it so good.  Give it a chance.

The Social Network

I know, I know.  The Social Network is already on everyone else’s Best Of list and I’m just jumping on the bandwagon.  So sue me.  Sorry, but the film is good.  I enjoyed it from the first minute until the last.  In fact, the first five minutes were as good as any in the movie.  For those of who didn’t see the film because you “don’t care about a movie about Facebook,” it isn’t about Facebook.. really.  It’s about greed and obsession and motivation and genius and ambition and envy and jealousy and revenge and retribution and one guy’s driving need to be recognized as smarter than anyone else and meet girls.  Is that what drove Mark Zuckerberg in real life?  I don’t know.  I’ve never met him.  It is, however, what drives Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.  That’s good enough for me. It’s good because those are the emotions and motivations that make for great conflict and a good film.  Add in the direction of David Fincher and the otherworldly writing of Aaron Sorkin and you have a couple of hours of first class entertainment about a bunch of young, rich, smart guys who actually exist.  Is everything in the film true? Sorkin and Fincher say yes, mostly.  Zuckerberg says no.  Who cares? It’s been a long time since I’ve been so entertained watching people talk (in truth, not much else happens. This ain’t The Expendables.) Who knew a deposition could be so much fun?  It is when Aaron Sorkin is writing the dialogue.  I actually criticized the film right after I saw it, saying the dialogue was too good.  Real people just aren’t that fast, witty, articulate and erudite.  But I’ve backed off of that.  I still don’t believe real people are that fast, witty, articulate and erudite.  But if the film had been an accurate depiction of how real people really talk – even smart Harvard people – The Social Network would have been unwatchable. Jesse Eisenberg is awesome as Zuckerberg – much more interesting than the real guy (watch the 60 Minutes interview).  And Justin Timberlake makes Napster founder Sean Parker into a slick huckster/dreamer who easily draws cyber geek Zuckerberg into the dreamy world of west coast internet debauchery.  Was that true?  Again, who cares?  It’s good cinema.  So is the rest of The Social Network.

Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky makes films about obsession, addiction and, ultimately, madness.  Think about Sarah Goldfarb in Requiem for a Dream or Randy “The Ram” Robinson in The Wrestler.  Both are typical of the obsessive/addictive personalities who populate his films.  Now move forward to Nina Sayers, the prima ballerina at the center of Black Swan.  To call her obsessive doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of her madness.  In fact, I am now convinced that in the small world of  neurotic/paranoid/obsessive professions, ballet dancers stand alone at the top.  The film is a two-hour journey into the fragile mind of Nina as she deals with the mounting pressures of winning and preparing for the dual roles of the White Swan and Black Swan in the New York Ballet Company’s season-opening production of Swan Lake. We learn early that although she is a near technically perfect dancer, there is some question whether Nina can channel the necessary raw emotion into the dual role, particularly the sensuous and devious Black Swan. No need to get into the particulars of the story except to say that Nina’s world gets more unhinged the closer we get to the performance.  It doesn’t help that she’s surrounded by a collection of people whose eccentricities only make things worse.  She lives in a small apartment with a loony, controlling mother who reminded me of Piper Laurie’s character in the original Carrie. The ballet’s artistic director is an obnoxious egomaniac that alternately berates and hits on her. The one other dancer in the company she associates with is a tattooed free spirit who parties, smokes, drinks and just might be trying to steal the role from her. And then there’s the ghostly, ghastly former diva that used to be the star and is now just so much psychological wreckage. No wonder poor Nina loses touch with reality.  And we lose it right along with her as the line between what is really happening and what is in her mind is increasingly blurred. The film concludes with the performance itself and what I felt was the inevitable final result.  After the film, the audience left the theater undoubtedly thinking, “so that’s what it’s like to go insane.”  Black Swan is riveting, powerful stuff.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

I’ll call it a documentary, but I’m not sure it really is. Exit Through The Gift Shop may be an elaborate hoax… or a subversive work of art… or all of the above. In the end, it doesn’t really matter.  And it certainly doesn’t change the fact that it was one of the most fascinating and entertaining films I saw all year. On the surface, it’s a film by a guy named Thierry Guetta who claims to have filmed just about everything he ever did or saw.  We see that he has amassed literally thousands of tapes through the years, many of them chronicling his favorite subject – street artists.  What are street artists?  Many of us call then graffiti artists, but the people we meet in this film are certainly more than that.  Many have become international celebrities.  We see Space Invader, whom Guetta  claims is his cousin.  Then there’s Shepard Fairey, who has created two of the most famous pieces of street art ever – his Andre the Giant “Obey” image and the ubiquitous Barack Obama “Hope” poster.  But the star of the show is the man who stands atop the world of international street art – the British provocateur called Banksy. We hear from Banksy throughout the film, though his voice is altered and his face is always in shadow protecting the identity he has obscured from the world throughout his career.  He is the one street artist who has broken through into the world of international collectible art.  His installations and other works sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The movie takes us to an actual Banksy exhibit attended by droves of severe, pretentious art types.  We see that he has become a huge celebrity whose work is coveted by collectors.  Okay, so far, so good. Then, about halfway through the film, we learn that Banksy has taken over production of the film we are watching because Guetta really had no idea how to distill all that footage into a comprehensible documentary.  Suddenly we’re not watching a film about Banksy, but a film by Banksy.  Which then begs the question, is Thierry Guetta just another Banksy creation? The last half hour of the film deals with Guetta’s transformation into street artist –Mr. Brainwash. He creates a ton of utterly banal, derivative work that is assembled for an over-hyped show that becomes the event of the year in the minds of the Los Angeles art cognoscenti.  Was the whole thing just Banksy’s statement about the cynical, phony hype machine the world of contemporary art has become?  Is he creating Mr. Brainwash and all of his incredibly bad art simply to prove that today’s art crowd can be sold literally anything with the right promotion?  Is he taking a shot at the assembly-line style of art that has made practitioners like Damien Hirst rich beyond their wildest dreams (Hirst is even mentioned in the film – no coincidence I’m sure)?  Is this “documentary” really Banksy’s most recent work of art?  See it and judge for yourself.

127 Hours

Yes, he cuts his arm off.  Yes, you see him do it.  Yes, it’s hard to watch.  Don’t let that dissuade you from seeing 127 Hours.  When I went to the film, I was asking myself,  “How can a film set almost entirely inside tight little crevice, with a seminal moment I know is coming and an outcome I am already fully aware of keep my interest for almost two hours?”  Just hire Danny Boyle to direct and James Franco to play Aron Ralston (the young outdoor enthusiast who wrote the book and – yeah -cut off his arm) and – no problem.  Great movie.  The man who brought us to the world of heroin addiction in Trainspotters and into the slums of India in Slumdog Millionaire takes us on an incredible trip into the canyons of Utah and the mind of Aron Ralston in 127 Hours.  And it’s not slow, or boring or predictable for a single minute.  In case you’re concerned, the whole film does NOT take place inside the crevice.  There is considerable screen time before he is trapped and a certain amount after he frees himself.  There is also a lot of time spent inside the memories and imagination of Ralston.  Combine that with a great AR Rahman score, some amazing cinematography and Boyle’s frenetic shooting and editing style and you have a film that won’t let you go until it’s done with you. By now, we all know the basics of the story.  Over-confident outdoors guy tells no one where he’s going, falls down a crevice where his right arm is trapped between the canyon wall and a huge, unmovable rock and spends the better part of five days (or, 127 hours) down there figuring a way out.  The irony of the film is that because Ralston is so experienced, he knows full well the mistakes he made and how completely screwed he is.  The one shot in the film that will stay with me occurs shortly after he is trapped.  It starts tight on Ralston’s arm and tracks upward, up and up out of the crevice and high into the sky, showing us that our hero was so deep and so hidden that he probably would never have been found. Such was the depth of his predicament. Franco’s portrayal of a guy who knows he’s in huge trouble yet refuses to give up or give in is amazing. Especially when you consider the fact that he never has anyone but himself, or his video camera, to talk to.  And talk he does, showing us determination, exasperation, sadness, humor, sarcasm – everything but hopelessness.  The sequence when he interviews himself in his own self-produced talk show sequence is sad, funny and exceptional – all at once.  If he wins the Oscar – and he’s a legit contender – that will be the scene that seals the deal.  In the end, 127 Hours is not a film about a guy stuck in a canyon.  It’s about a refusal to give up and a willingness to do whatever it takes to survive. Yes, it ‘s another one of those “triumph of the human spirit” deals.   And even though you’ll go into the film knowing he’ll make it out, I promise you’ll give a little private fist pump when he does.  That’s good film making.

Catfish

Earlier I said that The Social Network wasn’t really a film about Facebook.  However, in 2010, there was a film about Facebook.  It’s called Catfish. Was it one of the ten best films of the year from a directing or acting or cinematic standpoint?  Not even close.  So why is what is essentially a homemade documentary on my top ten? Because no other film I saw during the year affected me in quite the same way.  No other film made me think about today’s digital/virtual/socially-networked world in the way this one did.  No film, not even many better ones, stuck with me the way this one did.  It was fascinating, bizarre and in the end, an odd mixture of incredibly sad and strangely optimistic.  It also had one of the strangest marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen.  If you saw any of the trailers, the film was presented as some kind of quasi-documentary shock-horror Blair Witch knock-off with “a final 40 minutes you’ll never forget!” I don’t know what movie that is, but it’s not Catfish. The film is a documentary, I suppose.  It was created by two New York City-based independent filmmakers – Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost – and tells the story of Schulman’s 24-year old brother Nev.  Nev is a freelance photographer whose work contains many shots of New York’s professional dancers.  Of course, many of his photos are posted on Facebook.  He soon begins receiving intricately done paintings of his photos created by a precocious 12-year-old from Michigan named Abby.  Eventually, a Facebook relationship with Abby develops, and not long after that grows into a deeper connection with Abby’s beautiful older sister, Megan.  A digital romance develops and flourishes until Nev begins to notice that a few things about Megan, Abby and their whole Michigan existence seem just a bit…off.  It’s time for a road trip to Michigan and, ultimately, the discovery of the “secret” of Catfish.  I won’t divulge the whole thing, but if you’ve heard or read anything about the film you already know that Abby is a normal 12-year –old kid… who can’t paint at all.  Megan, well, Megan doesn’t exist at all outside the digital universe of Facebook.  The explanation, and the person, behind the whole mystery, isn’t scary or even that shocking (and yes, to answer the question I have been asked many times, the meaning of the film’s title is explained).  But, as I said, there is a certain amount of sadness mixed with odd optimism as the mystery reveals itself.  What got to me was the realization that there are probably thousands, if not millions, of “Megans” out there on Facebook and other social sites – people who exist only in the vivid imaginations of their anonymous creators.  People who we are totally willing to accept as real as long as they have a photo, a profile and respond to our posts.  For me, it’s nothing less than a new definition of what we consider “real.”  I don’t know if it’s scary or harmless – or both.  At any rate, I maintain it’s something to think about, especially as we log on to check on our friends’ updates, comments and check-ins. I didn’t really think much about it until I saw Catfish.  I do now.

Honorable Mention

As with any list of this type, there is a process of elimination.  It’s a top ten, but that doesn’t mean I only saw ten good films in the course of the year.  A certain number were very good and just missed.  I didn’t want to leave them out entirely, so I gave myself the time-honored cop out of an Honorable Mention list.

Inception – Totally new setting for a fairly standard “brilliant thief and crew of eclectic experts” caper movie structure.  Looked and sounded awesome.  Still confused by the ending.

Animal Kingdom – Australian crime family, unlike any I’ve ever seen in a film.  No American studio would ever make this movie.

The Tillman Story – Another documentary that will make you angry. It’s about football player/fallen hero Pat Tillman and the military’s whitewashing of his death.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Lisbeth Salander should NOT be messed with.

Jackass 3D – Sorry, but Jackass movies will always make my list.

Four Lions  – An absurdly funny movie about suicide bombers.  Really.

The Ghost Writer – Came and went quietly.  It’s a really good Roman Polanski film.

True Grit – The Coen Brothers are money.

The Gap's new logo lasted a week before social media backlash led the company to scrapping it in favor of its predecessor.

My favorite T-shirt is from the Gap and I’ve been wearing it proudly for about 15 years. It’s pretty ratty now, but the logo is in excellent shape and is as much a part of the fabric of our community.

For a company that wants to be cool and sexy, you’d think the executives at Gap would know enough to engage their customers in a thoughtful social media discussion about the evolution of the brand. Well, looks like that social media discussion occurred a week too late.