Anticipation: Our Day Will Come

It has undoubtedly been noted before how different to his father Romain Gavras is as a director. Costa-Gavras is best known for his political thrillers; the likes of the brilliant State of Siege, Missing and Z, all leftwing, politically engaged yet engrossing narratives with thriller elements. It says much about the contemporary global film industry that Romain's earliest notable work has been on music videos instead of low budget or independent films. After establishing a reputation in that area for boldness, stylistic fluency and an originality of vision, he has graduated to big time advertisements and his first feature.

That Feature, Notre Jour Viendra (Our Day Will Come) takes the central premise from his most famous work, the video for MIA's "Born Free" and takes it off in another direction. The setting is a world like our own, except in this world, redheads are subject to discrimination and abuse. In the "Born Free" video, we see a team of shock troops take a Ginger young man from his home by force, herd him onto a bus with a bunch of other Ginger men, drive them all out into the desert, and then force them at gunpoint to race across a minefield.
The money shot is the evisceration of a teenager into chunks of blood and bone in loving slow motion.
If that all sounds ridiculous, well it does serve as a sort of primitive satire, and is redeemed by Gavras' direction. He combines the slickness of a modern Hollywood director with a great eye, ruthlessly rhythmic editing to the song his images serve and a subtly European humorous artsiness (some might call it pretension) which you will either find amusing or infuriating. It combines to make a unique and unforgettable video:

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

For me his other great music video is for Justice's "Stress", a gritty, ultraviolet yet strangely haunting collision between La Haine and Gaspar Noe:

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Just from those two promos a couple of his quirks are evident: he has a slightly adolescent awe of violence, a nice way of incorporating homage into his work ("Born Free" plays to me like a big tip of the hat to Peter Watkins' great Punishment Park), exemplary technical control, and a well-balanced mix of European and American sensibilities. All of this then suggests that Our Day Will Come should be worth waiting for. It stars Vincent Cassel, and is set in a Ginger-prejudiced world, evolving into a road movie as Cassel and a young red-haired friend journey across France towards Ireland, reputedly safe haven for all Gingers. It looks bizarre, in an interesting way, and even from the trailer you can tell it was made by a real Director:

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It was released in France last year and already available on DVD there. Since then, Gavras' most high-profile work is the new Adidas spot, "Adidas Is In All" which showcases the new Justice track, "Civilisation", and is a pretty storming piece of brand iconography, filled with beautiful imagery. I love this longer version, much though I resent Lionel Messi having to share the screen with mere basketball players and skateboarders, and worse, Katy Perry:

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Gavras founded the collective Kourtrajme with Kim Chapiron in 1994 and they worked on shorts and around the outskirts of the Parisian music industry for years before finding success (Chapiron was the first to direct Cassel in Sheitan) . This background explains his longstanding relationship with Justice. As well as the Adidas spot and the "Stress" video, he directed their tour documentary, A Cross The Universe, which he edited into a great little trailer-cum-video for their song "Phantom II":

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A couple of his other more interesting Videos follow (for Simian Mobile Disco and DJ Medhi) together with an advert for Yves St Laurent which is quite different from the majority of his work in tone:

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Our Day Will Come is presently without a distributor in the UK. It would be a shame not to see the debut feature work of such a visually muscular director on the big screen here, but it's not too late...

"Things Got Broken"

I like John Hillcoat's feature work very much. The Road is one of the most impressive films released over the last twelve months, but his filmography is strikingly consistent - both The Proposition and Ghosts...Of the Civil Dead are violent, dark and muscular with a streak of black humour laced through them. He seems an individual, distinctive filmmaker with his own voice, visual style and thematic preoccupations. Which is why his work for Levis on a new advertising campaign is somewhat disappointing. Not that the spot is anything less than fantastic; its not. Its beautiful, finely edited, evocative and even moving in an understated way. But there is little of Hillcoat in it, as far as I can see. Instead, it feels like a blatant attempt to co-opt the spirit and style of Terrence Malick to a Levis commercial. So we have a young girls soft narration over wispy, langorous, stunning footage, some of it near-abstract (Days of Heaven, The New World). Her narration is epic, a little philosophical, questioning and almost biblical in its seriousness and mythic weight (The New World, The Thin Red Line). Wagner's Das Rheingold rises inexorably to a rapturous peak as the spot advances (The New World). Some of the images recall classic Americana (Badlands).

In fact, what much of the (admittedly sublime) imagery reminds me of is David Gordon Green's George Washington, a film produced by Malick and very much in the Malick style. It makes me wonder why Hillcoat couldn't have transformed his recent Red Dead Redemption short film into a Malick tribute. I\d watch that..Somebody should sue...



The rest of the "Go Forth" Levis adverts are similarly high in quality and visual beauty. They both utilise Walt Whitman's poetry to great effect, and push their brand in a relatively low-key fashion. The first is directed by Cary Fukunaga:



And the second by M Blash:

The Empire Nikes Back

Nike's new World Cup advert makes its TV debut during tomorrow night's Champions League final, and its as big and beautiful as all Nike's expensive flagship adverts tend to be. They hired a real proper Director - Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose Biutiful has been a divisive entrant at Cannes this week and whose last two films I loathed - and as such, this spot is vibrant and energetic and cinematic. Iñárritu, for all the trite pomposity of his work, is technically adept and capable of real style, and both those qualities are showcased here. He is also Mexican, and he seems to get football, a Mexican national obsession, and understand some of the beauty of a man dribbling past an opponent, at least.
The Wayne Rooney passage is hilarious, too.

"Not - Guilty."

Guinness makes the best adverts.
Or, ok: Guinness commissions the best adverts. As big brands go, and I mean Worldwide brands, identifiable by most of the population of the planet by a trademark or logo, Guinness is untouchable in its genius for promotion. There are only a few dozen such brands in existence, and they all have the money and massive marketing departments which mean they can spend the time and resources required to create truly distinctive, memorable marketing campaigns. Some do, time and again - Adidas and Nike, Levis, Mercedes, Volkswagen, a handful of others. But Guinness always seems ahead of the game, hiring the best Directors and having the courage and vision to go for the craziest, most original concepts. Those concepts are then executed as well as you can imagine them being in the strict confines of the commercial format, because Guinness doesn't stint on Budgets. All their ads looks like mini-movies, which is their true glory. They have texture and atmosphere and beauty. They are sensual experiences, which is what you want from an advert promoting a sensual experience.

Does a short film featuring horses amidst crashing breakers make people want to drink stout? Probably not. But it does mean that if somebody is going to drink stout, yours is the one they will have heard of, the one they will regard, on some primitive, easily-manipulated level, as "the best". And thats advertising. Thats why other brands make Guinness-style adverts which feel and look like Guinness ads until the final moment when the brand is revealed.

The newest Guinness spot was directed by Johnny Green, whose exciting, distinctive work I've written about here before, and whose muscular visual sense and eye for a beautiful composition is as obvious here as it has been in all his work. Hes aided by an impressive team including cinematographer Wally Pfister, who shot Christoher Nolan's The Dark Knight, and Grant Major, who was a set designer on The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
No surprise it looks so beautiful, then:



A few of Guinness' highlights from over the years, starting with Rutger Hauer's original outing in a 1992 spot for the Company, through some that you may find irritating, beautiful and/or mildly amusing, much of it full of stage Oirishness and assorted paddywhackery wherein the Old country is absurdly romanticised (but dammit, it works):



A young Joseph Mawle as a hurler:



Tom Crean, legendary Irish explorer and probable Guinness-retailer:



"Anticipation", a small cultural phenomenon with Perez Prado's "Guaglione" as its theme:



This one was banned, and you can sort of see why, funny though it is:



Two by Jonathan Glazer, the first possibly the greatest advert ever made:




African Football:



Lee Scratch Perry:



And finally:

Say, Just...

- As the decade's end approaches and lists begin to spring up all over, literary site The Millions posts its list, voted for by a collection of bloggers, critics and writers, of The Best fiction of the Millennium So Far. And a fine list it is, too. at the time of writing they've only done 20 - 6, but I'm betting Roberto Bolano makes an appearance in that last five alongside Michael Chabon, though of course i could be very wrong...Anyway, it serves, as most lists of books or films or records do, as a syllabus of sorts. Each of these I've read has been great. Which is what really matters.


- Alan Moore interviews Brian Eno! On Radio 4. Odd, but interesting if you like Eno, or Moore.

- The Masters of Cinema catalogue becomes more and more beautiful with each release. Great films in good quality prints in lovely packaging with awesome extras. If you live in the UK, buy DVDs with any regularity, love film and you have none, shame on you. Pick one at random and chances are its incredible. This catalogue is just further loveliness, and reveals a few future releases I was unaware of (Pedro Costa!)

- British airways always gave good advert, but for the last two years they have shunned TV advertising. The massive new campaign they've just launched is some return, focusing as it does on a series of exotic events in far-flung destinations, each given their own spot, from a wildebeest migration to, well, the Buenos aires Superclassico, in this extended version. Great stuff:



- Who buys Simpsons comics? I don't know. I've never bought one or even read one. But Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror 15, out this week, changes all that. edited by Sammy Harkham, cartoonist behind the brilliant Poor Sailor and editor of Kramers Ergot, it features work from a slew of Kramers Ergot regulars including Kevin Huizenga and Jeffrey Brown. Basically an indie Simpsons comic, then, which sounds like a good thing to me, especially since Huizenga is one of my favourite working cartoonists...




- I love Big Star. Probably my second favourite band of all time (after the Beatles, obviously), the exhaustive new boxset has made me a happy boy. Amongst the many alternate mixes, demos and live readings there is a single mp4, setting some vintage footage shot by band members Chris Bell and Andy Hummel against the classic "Thirteen". That same footage has been on YouTube for an age, only here its set to the far jauntier "Thank You Friends". Either way, its fantastic

Olivia De Havilland.

On your Nike

Every year, Nike gives a Big Name Director a Big budget and presumably a Big salary to make an Epic, overblown advert for them. They really take their branding seriously. Nike is life or death in Nike adverts. Anyway, Michael Mann did it in grand style a couple of years ago, as did David Fincher last year. Well, they've stuck with Fincher again for this year, and whatever you think of him taking corporate green, or whatever your opinion of what Americans call "football", or even if you think he sucks as a director, this is a beautiful piece of film-making from start to finish.

The Spark

Another year, another Champions League Final, another big advertising campaign launched. Only this year it was Adidas, with "The Spark", featuring Zinedine Zidane and Lionel Messi. Not as good as Nike's "Take It to the Next Level" campaign from last year, perhaps, but an exciting, visually stylish piece of film with a nicely epic, mythic sense of the beautiful game most adverts utterly miss:



It was directed by an Englishman named Rupert Sanders, a onetime protege of Tony Kaye and advertising director of great repute. There is a definite Kaye influence in the lushness of the visuals and the almost aggressive cutting. Sanders is clearly a talented director. Check out his brilliant spot for the "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" video game, which in its wit and visceral impact, is about a million times better than anything in the film itself:




If you remain unconvinced, these two clips provide evidence of a diverse talent with a great sense of tone and nuance. The "Halo 3" spot, in particular, won tons of advertising awards, and its originality in a world of "Actual In Game Footage" is genuinely startling:




Sanders' website features more advertising work as well as some short films. Sanders himself seems to be moving on in the vague direction of cinema. Some years ago he was linked with a remake of "The Wild Geese", which seems to have broken down. But I wager he will soon be at the helm of a feature film. Hopefully it'll be as good as his advertising work...

The Ecstasy of Nike

Directed by David Fincher, photographed by the Emmanuel Luzbeki, with a soundtrack from "The Good, the Bad & the Ugly" by Morricone. Nike give great advert. This one is called "Fate" apparently :

All work and no play...

Yet another 1st Person POV-based advert, but this one is near-perfect: it gets the tone, the look and the atmosphere just right. Uncannily right, I think. The early 80s are a tricky period to pull off convincingly, but this does it very well. Its partly the visuals - the lighting, the grain of the film. And partly the hairstyles, the clothing, even the casting. It must have been a long process to make a piece that lasts just over a minute.

It uses a 25mm Cooke lens - a Kubrick favourite - and that serene steadicam glide evokes "The Shining" just as well as the immortal carpet of that hotel corridor. You get the feeling Stanley himself may actually have approved. Further viewing: Vivian Kubrick's great documentary about the making of that film, which is great stuff too. Especially the scenes of Kubrick screaming at Shelley Duvall.

The whisper is louder than the shout

This beautiful advert cast just the right actor at the perfect point in his career. Josh Brolin, even though here he's all slicked-up and smoothed down, still trails some of the dust on his boots from running those deserts in "No Country for Old Men", and a few wisps of it even rise up and enrich this spot. Not that it needs all that much enriching. Johnny Green has been one of the hottest young directors in advertising for a couple of years now, and he seems to have a natural eye for haunting, sublimely composed imagery and a great sense of timing in the edit. This page showcases just about all of his work, including a trailer for "Nyemka's Dream", a documentary (with accompanying book) he made about a Mongolian wolf hunter/ice speedway racer which looks amazing, though I haven't been able to find it anywhere. His other adverts are all impressive too, and more importantly they retain a certain personality and distinctive visual sense, suggesting its only a matter of time before he steps up to the plate and attempts a feature film, which should be worth a look. If only to see if he's really got game. This certainly suggests he does:




The music, by the way, is by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, "Martha's Dream", from their excellent soundtrack to The Proposition.

Theres something happening but don't be scared

Before tonight's absorbing Champions League Semi-Final match (Man Utd 1- 0 Barcelona, Hurrah!) on ITV, the final ad break was taken up entirely by one single commercial. An awesome commercial. If you like football, you'll probably like the advert - its thrilling, brilliantly shot and even quite funny, especially in the appearance of Marco Materazzi.

I instantly wondered who had directed it. Somebody young and hip, at the cutting edge of cinema, perhaps? Well, no actually, it was Guy Ritchie. I hate his films, but that is based mostly on his inability to write a single believable line of dialogue or create an interesting, convincing character. Visually, he has always been assured behind a camera. His films are all slickly put together with a control and feel for the surface of things - for colour and visual tone and atmosphere - which seems perfectly suited to advertising.

For this advert, he seems to have tapped into a style which has been conspicuous in Pop culture over the last year or so - the first person POV. "Cloverfield" and "[Rec]" have both used this device with a degree of success in the context of horror stories over the last few months, and "The Diving Bell & the Butterfly" used it to heartwrenchingly emotional effect. But what Ritchie's advert (entitled "Take It to the Next Level") is really reminiscent of, especially in its non-football scenes and its vomiting shot, is the briefly infamous video for the Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up". It also recalls, to an extent, the Michael Mann Gridiron advert I posted here last year, in its relentless motion and the procession of superstars it parades fleetingly before our eyes. The song is "Don't Speak" by the Eagles of Death Metal. It becomes instantly the best thing Ritchie's ever done:

Screengrab - "Is Mr Reincarnation enjoying his cake?"

Jonathan Glazer was always a great film Director waiting to happen. His work on music videos and adverts was so distinctive and so consistently, staggeringly great that once I became aware of him and his growing body of work, I awaited that first film with genuine excitement. What body of work? Well, he directed some of the most memorable and iconic adverts of the past decade, including three classics for Guinness ("Swimblack", "Dreamer" and "The Surfer"), "Last Orders" and "Whip Round" for Stella Artois, plus "Odyssey" (featuring a guy & girl running through walls) and "Kung Fu" for Levis. He also made a fistful of fantastic music videos (collected together on a Directors Series DVD) including "Karma Police" and "Street Spirit" for Radiohead, "The Universal" for Blur, the awesome, chilling "Rabbit In Your Headlights" for Unkle, and "Karmacoma" for Massive Attack.

His first film was brilliant. "Sexy Beast" (2000) was easily the best of the Guy Richie-spawned wave of British Gangster films, and alongside an excellent script and powerful performances, a major part of that brilliance was due to Glazer's imaginitive direction. He staged scenes in unconventional, surprising ways - the love scene set with an expressionist flourish amidst celestial bodies, scored by Henry Mancini's suavely lovely "Lujon" suggested that here was a director who had learned from his work in the music industry, but was not in thrall to it. Glazer was smart enough to know when to give the showing off a rest, when to just point the camera at the actors and let them do their thing, and the film is both thrilling and dependably satisfying as a result. He seemed like a sort of visionary. He seemed like a director going places. But then his second film was delayed, mainly because he wanted to hire the venerable, elderly Jean-Claude Carriere (who has written a bewildering array of films, from "Belle du Jour" to "Valmont") to work on the script with him. He got his wish, and two years and another writer - Milo Addica - later, "Birth" came out in 2004 to a muted critical and commercial response.

Its premise is arresting - a little boy turns up on the doorstep of Clara, a widow, claiming to be the reincarnation of her husband Sean. He seems to know things he couldn't know, things only Sean would know. As she and her family try to deal with the upset caused by his appearance, her emotional and mental health begin to suffer, as does her relationship with her fiance. Its a fine film, beautifully directed and absorbingly atmospheric throughout. Glazer has always filled his work with allusions to Stanley Kubrick*, and "Birth" feels like Kubrick-karaoke, to an extent. The stately compositional sense is pure Kubrick, as are the slow camera crawls through the hallways of massive Upper East Side Apartments. Glazer hired Harris Savides, one of the most exciting cinematographers in modern cinema, to shoot the film, and it is correspondingly beautiful, full of chilly shades of green and steely winter greys, which are matched by Alexandre Desplat's pulsing, disturbing score. Glazer intended this muted palette to suggest that the film was set in the "anteroom" of the afterlife, and the look and sound design do evoke something womblike, a strange caul over the senses. As a display of directorial control, it is undoubtedly impressive. Glazer also has his fun. The film's opening scene is a long tracking shot following a hooded jogger on a run through a snow-covered Central park with Desplat's theme gently ushering us into the world of the film. The shot ends with the jogger collapsing slowly to the ground in the darkened underpass beneath a bridge. He is Sean, and we have just witnessed his death.

The film's true glory, however, is Nicole Kidman. Always at her best when she portrays the first cracks of emotion appearing in the beautiful facade of her screen persona, here she is relentlessly battered by contrasting emotions. First she doesn't believe the boy, then she is hurt and angry at the intrusion. And then she starts to wonder, and her life begins to fall apart. The greatest scene in the film is the moment where it all seems to hit her, where she concedes something of herself to the possibility that Sean may be telling the truth, and finds herself lost. Glazer, in a seeming reference to Dreyer, does it in one shot - a view of the audience at a Wagner Opera, Kidman and her fiance (Danny Huston) arriving late and taking their seats, the camera slowly moving over the heads towards them. They sit and the camera hones in on Kidman. She looks shaken, frightened, almost in shock, right from the off. Her eyes are wet, her blinks elongated, her mouth a little open, suggesting that she is finding it hard to breathe. She listens distractedly to what Huston tells her. Other feelings begin to show in the little barely perceptible tremors and moods shadowing her face, a tightening of her eyes, a twitch of her lips. You can almost see her struggle with the memories, most of it there in her eyes, her features tight with tension. Eventually she begins to smile and jumps, startled, when he leans in to speak to her again. Finally she closes her eyes, as if to block it all out.



On a big screen in a cinema, this scene had a shattering impact, the long focus upon Kidman's features in tight close-up in such an intense film giving it a massive emotional weight. Thats necessarily reduced on Youtube, obviously, but Glazer's ambition and determination to make this film a singular experience are not. "Birth" is a unique film, elliptical, ambiguous and eerie in an utterly original way. Its also a film that I imagine will be better appreciated in the future, when Glazer's career in cinema has more shape and history. He is capable of truly great things, I think. When we will get to see them is another matter entirely. His next film was supposed to be an adaptation of Michael Faber's "Under the Skin", due originally to shoot in 2006. That never happened, and I can't find any news of it anywhere on the net, or indeed of anything else Glazer might be involved in at the moment. He's still making adverts, and as the appearance of the Sony Bravia "Paint" advert proved a couple of years ago, still excelling at it. I just hope that in terms of cinema, he doesn't go all Malick on us and disappear for a couple of decades....

Here's an advert he made for Motorola in 2006 which they decided not to use, the fools:





*Most obviously, Blur's "The Universal" is a long "A Clockwork Orange" reference, and "Karmacoma" suggests "The Shining"...

No Logo

I love this advert, a nice little piece of urban visual poetry. The irony of making an advert which celebrates a lack of adverts by cutting together images of a city without adverts doesn't really deserve a mention, so I'll say no more about it.
The City is the Brazilian Megapolis of Sao Paolo (population: 11 Million). Last June the Mayor of Sao Paolo introduced new legislation which tightened up the laws on just what advertisements and billboards could go just where in the City. Then he implemented the laws and lots of the billboards came down, leaving skeletal frames and empty white canvases all over the city. Which the advert cuts together, quite beautifully, in my opinion. Here is a flicker page detailing the city in its de-billboarded state.

Making it work even better is the song choice, "Pure Imagination" written by Anthony Newley for "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and sung by Gene Wilder. Newley is a strange phantom presence in poular culture - he played the Artful Dodger in the David Lean version of "Oliver Twist", was married to Joan Collins, had a few top 10 hits as a singer, was more or less the prototype for the vocal style favoured by David Bowie and was responsible for writing a couple of the great songs of the last few decades of the 20th Century including "Feeling Good" and "Aint it Funny". This is a lovely song, especially when divorced from the context of the film, and it goes unexpectedly well with the visual imagery:

Hitchcockery

Since I've posted quite a few adverts shot by Directors I like, heres another that just appeared online. But for whats basically an advertisement for Wine, this one has a tremendously classy pedigree. Directed by Martin Scorsese and shot by the great Harris Savides, "The Key to Reserva" is a fun tribute to Alfred Hitchcock in the style of Hitchcock. In a way, it feels like it really should have been directed by Brian DePalma, but Scorsese - whose only film in any way resembling this up to now was "Cape Fear" - does a fine job. The use of Bernard Herrmann's "North By Northwest" score is obviously crucial to maintaining the mood, but Scorsese and Savides uncannily emulate his distinctive visual style too. The lighting techniques are perfect, the velvet richness to the reds feels just right, and the shot choice is brilliant. It even uncovers a hitherto unnoticed certain old-fashioned square-jawed stiffness to Simon Baker. And Scorsese, interviewed by "Oceans 11" Screenwriter Ted Griffin, is always good at parodying himself onscreen:

One More Chance to Get it All Wrong

Too many YouTube videos of late, I think. But I just can't resist this one. Because its an advert, and I've run a few adverts here before, when I think they're good enough. And because its directed by Michael Mann. Anybody who knows me knows how much I love Michael Mann. American Football I can take or leave, but of its two most dependably compelling recurring instants - the ball spinning in the sky having left the hand of a Quarterback, and men barrelling heads down into one another at top speed like stags - this advert focuses entirely on one, and shows it over and over and over. The soundtrack, full of impact sounds and fevered breathing and fingers scrabbling on padding and warcries and noises of pain - is fantastic. The music? From the Last of the Mohicans, and somehow, it works.

"Thats the last time you put a blade in me, y'hear?"

Wes Anderson releases a new film, "The Darjeeling Limited", this Autumn, and before I've even seen the trailer, I know exactly what it'll be like. Partly because he possesses perhaps the most distinctive tone of any current American filmaker, his interests were apparent after two films, and I can't imagine him ever doing anything different. But the synopsis and the poster just make me feel even more certain. This is a good thing, if you're a fan of his work and the strange little world he's created in each film, which I am.

"Rushmore" remains his best film, for me, finely balancing the deadpan absurdism of his comedy with a weighty emotional impact that neither "The Royal Tenenbaums" or "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" can match, despite their many pleasures. Indeed, I worry about his development as a director based on that last film. It was beautifully directed, of course, with Anderson's deliberate framing and lovely use of colour evident in every shot. It used actors as well as he always does, giving even the smallest characters quirks and interesting elements. Bill Murray obviously likes working with Anderson because Anderson understands how Murray's persona is best put to use, and nobody else has ever gotten work from Owen Wilson as well as Anderson has. But it was another step deep into Anderson's insular world of quirky characters and pulpy plot devices given comedic twists, of accumulated detail instead of depth. The new film is co-written by Roman Coppola and Jason Schwarzman, and it will be interesting to see just how much they effect the Anderson worldview.

I've written before about Film Directors working in advertising, and Anderson has also taken some corporate cash in exchange for lending his talent to a brand name. But of course he did it his way. Indeed, perhaps his best work besides "Rushmore" is a commercial he made for American Express in 2006. It manages to play like a long reference to Truffaut's "Day for Night" while being as stuffed with detail and infused with Anderson's sensibility as any of his films do. Plus, its all one long shot:



Contrast that with M Night Shyamalan's cringe-inducing advert, part of the same campaign. Shyamalan is a talented director with a great visual sense and a style unlike that of any of his peers: his films are full of examples of great suspense filmaking. Those comparisons to a young Spielberg after "The Sixth Sense" may have gone to his head, but they were made with good reason. He uses long takes, few ostentatious camera movements, and like Anderson, he is extremely good with actors. But as a writer he has sabotaged his own directorial career, first with "The Village", where he stuck to his own formula when it may have made for a better film if he had not done so. Then with "Lady In the Water", a grand folly if ever there was one, worsened by the debacle of the book written about Shyamalan during its production ("the Man Who Heard Voices" by Michael Bamberger, which portrays the director as a bit of a diva). "Lady In the Water" is full of moments where Shyamalan's skill as a director is obvious, despite its terrifyingly simple-minded, egotistical script. This advert resembles it in a couple of ways. Shyamalan proves he can't act, even when he is playing himself and has no dialogue, and his hokey potrayal of the magic of the everyday - "the dream" he is searching for - works very rarely, and not in the context of a 1 minute tv spot:

"I'm just lucky."

Occasionally an advert will just come through your line of fire and stun you. The first time I saw Volkswagen's Night Driving Advert for their Golf, I got goosebumps. Everything about it was right - the look, the editing, the shot selection, the music, and the voiceover. In case you haven't seen it, check it out:



It obviously plays in Michael Mann's sandbox, even plays with Michael Mann's toys, so much so that I wondered whether Mann himself had actually directed it. The digital photography, those ochre and orange skies, the sleek mobility of the car itself, the focus on the sodium light upon LA streets - it all feels very "Collateral". Well, Mann didn't direct it, but it was shot by one of "Collateral"'s photographers, Paul Cameron. Which explains its stark, vibrant beauty very well. Director Noam Murro is an experienced advertising guy - he did that Levis "A Midsummer Nights Dream" campaign a couple of years ago, and his first feature - which I'll be looking out for, now - is out later this year. The quiet, insistent music is by Cliff Martinez, "Don't Blow It" from the Solaris soundtrack, I think. But probably the key element is the voiceover. Richard Burton could make Chris Martin lyrics sound poetic, and his reading of a passage from Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood" (from Andrew Sinclair's 1972 film version) is perfectly, wonderfully judged, and masterfully cut to the rhythm of the visuals. Its that rare creation, a beautiful advertisement, and it makes me wonder why so many bad adverts get made. Theres a great website where you can view it in pristine hi-def and edit an extended version here.



The notion of beautiful advertisements and Michael Mann made me think of "Lucky Star", a 2002 spot he directed for Mercedes, starring Benicio Deltoro and Ana Cristina Oliveira. BMW had enjoyed a great deal of publicity and success with their series of linked adverts, "The Hire", starring Clive Owen. Owen played a Driver in an eclectic series of short films directed by big guns like Wong Kar-Wai, John Woo, Joe Carnaghan, Tony Scott, John Frankenheimer, Guy Ritchie, Ang Lee and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, executive produced by David Fincher and Ridley Scott and co-starring Gary Oldman, Madonna, Don Cheadle, Forest Whitaker, Mickey Rourke and Ray Liotta. The films were available for download from the BMW website and a DVD containing all of them could be purchased. "The Hire" was even spun off into its own comic series. My favourite of the bunch is Wong Kar-Wai's, which somehow manages to work within the imposed limitations as both a generic entry in the series and as a Wong Kar-Wai art film:



Mercedes were obviously hoping to ape their rivals success when they hired Mann. Conceived in the form of a trailer for an imaginary film, "Lucky Star" is Mann doing Mann, rifling through a quick selection of his visual obsessions and stylistic tics, and seemingly enjoying it along the way. Its so convincing as a trailer that it must have confused many who saw it, especially in cinemas, when it screened in 2002. Its a short sharp shock of pure style, and the best ending to this little film festival: