Super Bowl Commercials
 

Well, today's the day. The Patriots and the Panthers square off for what some say is the ultimate American football event of the year. But more importantly, it's the airing of the 2004 commercials designed to catch the attention of millions of consumers (if not earn millions from consumers). Will Budwiser make a come-back after a ho-hum showing in 2003? Will the dog diving into a glass of water (part of the Mountain Mist ad) steal the show? Hits and misses. Which commercial will get your vote? It's only a few hours away until show time!

I heard that Apple will have a commercial in the same spirit as the one 20 or so years ago, you know, the one were that female runner smashes the big screen. :-))

So far I'm not really impressed with any of them. I hope they're saving the best for Halftime...

I was disappointed that there wasn't a blow-out 2-minute music video commerical like one of the beverage companies usually does.

No commerical for Apple, but IBM's Linux ad had Muhammed Ali, who bequested the ironic advice "Shake it up."

My favorite ad was for Shards O' Glass Freeze Pops.

I saw a bunch of Monster.com ads, but I still have no idea what Monster.com is all about and I refuse to go to the site to find out. I assume it is another search engine. Just shows how well advertisings sell their products. My favorite ad was a Coors Lite commercial where the two guys run into eachother and the first guy makes his dog fetch him a Coors Lite. He thinks he is a bad ass and then asks "What can your dog do?" The 2nd guy tells his dog "Coors Lite" and the dog jumps up and bites the first guy in the balls and he flings his Coors Lite to the 2nd guy. Makes me want to buy Coors Lite now!

Also, did anyone noticed how Janet Jackson was "accidentally" exposed at the end of the "music" number? I guarantee you that was 100% intentional and a publicity stunt, ala the Britney/Madonna kiss.

(Monster.com is the most well-known resume/job listing service.)

Well it's funny about these stupid ads. And I think Ted proves why. That ad with the crotch biting was for Bud Light, not Coors Light. Shows you how much branding and marketshare these ads really bring to the table.

As for JJ's breast, suffice it to say she is looking for publicity. When did she last have an album out? Was she not singing a song from 2000, or whenever her last album was out, for the halftime show?

Just my two cents.

mg

Well, no Apple ad, as I was told to look out for---should have known better than to listen to ****. I enjoyed one or to funny ones, though the Lays and JJ ad were in poor taste (in my opinion).

What a disappointment ! The commercials were lame with perhaps one or two standouts (The Coors Lite one with the dogs was O.K.). There were more commercials for CBS programs than for other companies products (could it be CBS couldn't sell that commercial time?). And the half-time show stunk big time. A marching band lead by a duck would have been better. The only thing I have to say about the breast exposure is what do you expect from someone in that family.

The only good thing about the Super Bowl was the game, and that was how it should be to begin with (congrads to the Pats, with a little better strategy the Panthers may have pulled off a win). Oh yes, there is one other good thing about the Super Bowl .... it's over and the Super Bowl aristocracy will now leave Houston.

Once again, it was Bud Lite not Coors.

I liked the horse flame farting.

Half time was like watching something from Jupiter.

The game was great... what I saw of it.

I did like the Willie Nelson H&R Block ad. But the joke may be too old for many to understand it now.

And I agree... what makes a commercial great is that it entertains AND you know who the advertiser is after the ad. :)

The best one ever for me was from a few years ago. FedEx had an add that was just color bars. The text on it said that the commerical never made it because the ad was not sent FedEx. So millions of dollars were wasted!

Oh and to the person who posted about CBS advertising all their shows. I noticed that too. They denied PETA and moveon.org commercial time because it was against their rules about lobbying, etc. But they had anti-tobacco ads... go figure. So they HAD commercials from others, but to advertise all of the CBS shows was a good attempt to get people to watch their station, but a little overdone.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Clydesdale/Donkey ad.

I remember hearing a bit about it before the ad aired, but I thought the whole ad was well done and was by far one of the most memorable ones. Hair extensions! Heheh.

The Cadillac ads with the "water" wake effect and also the commercial where the sound had to "catch up" with how fast the car was going were also memorable.

I didn't get that with the sound catching up. Pretty good idea but I didn't take it as that at the time.

Rob,

Yeah, it took us awhile to figure it out also.

At first we thought that someone had screwed up...REALLY badly. : )

But towards the end, when the sound started to kick in we knew they had a good concept for the commercial. It doesn't make me want to go buy a Cadillac, but it did get the "Hey, that was pretty damn cool" reaction.

The car was so fast that the sound had to catch up. "Wow". : )

I liked the preview for Van Helsing. Of course, lately I'll watch practically anything with Kate Beckinsale in it (Underworld was a greaty low budget horror flick).

Joe,

Thought you might be interested in this, then:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/van_helsing/superbowl/

That's the spot in Quicktime. Definitely a cool character, one that I think was mentioned in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I believe his "wife" was one of that league.


I'm also interested in seeing Hidalgo.

I saw that trailer at the movies. I'm not into that genre but it made me want to go see it. Yeah, looked pretty cool!

Van Helsing looks every bit as spectacular as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And that was crap. In fact, it almost seems like the exact same movie to me. Just another movie not to give my money to. Special effects do NOT make a movie! And that one looks way overblown in the SFX department. I'm sure Vin Deisel is in it somewhere as well.

I wish Cadallac (or however it's spelled.... never been interested in one) would stop using Led Zepplin in their commercials. I can't listen to LZ anymore without thinking that I am listening to a TV commercial. Same goes for many older classic tunes. You hear that, advertisers? Quit raping!

Gee Ted...

You said everything that came up as conversations at work today. We were all remarking about:

a) How the LOEG trailer looked good but the movie wasn't so great.

b) Van Helsing looked way too effects heavy

and

c) How all these old tunes appear in new commercials


Were you listening in again? ; )

Here's a link for the Apple Itunes/Pespsi Commercial

http://www.apple.com/itunes/pepsi/ads/


And I'm not too impressed by the footage I've seen for Van Helsing. I think Hugh Jackman is an awesome actor (has anyone seen Kate and Leopold?) but director Stephen Sommers has only made one good movie in his career The Mummy. (one of my favorite popcorn films)

But his previous films include, Deep Rising, and The Mummy Returns; a vastly inferior, soulless sequel. And now that I've seen the commericlas for his latest big budget spectacle, I'm starting to really despise this guy. He's yet another filmmaker with an adolescent mentality fueled by the bags of money studios keep handing him.

Yeah the Pepsi/iTunes add was cute...heh...

Van Helsing is not a bad story, it's a hell of a character in fact. It's just that some things will always 'look' better if they're in a book. In our imaginations, the CG is PERFECT. That's why imagery like what appears in Van Helsing is hard to pull off on the screen.

Sure, we know it's all CG monsters and effects, but that's the problem. It's too reliant on CG and as such, that ruins the story for me, because I'm sitting there picking apart what's real and what's not instead of watching the movie.

Ridley Scott's got it together with Black Hawk Down and Gladiator - take a good story, good actors, and instead of splashing CG all over the place, composite it so that it's virtually unseen and unrecognizable and doesn't take the viewer out of the movie.

Agree. I forgot that the trailer I saw on TV showed more than what was in the movies and the characters were almost cartoonish. CG is best when you don't know it's CG. It might still turn out good but it would be hard to get past that.

is that 'Eddie' Van Helsing a distant european cousin?

Van Helsing isn't a new character, he has always been in the Dracula story as Dr. Abraham Van Helsing who helped fight the vampir. In regards to LXG, the female vampire was the wife of Van Helsing's assistant.

It is suprising (or maybe not) that Van Helsing is mentioned in LXG, and then this movie comes out, and yes, the two look very similar, wouldn't surprise me at all if it was the same SFX company doing the work in both films.

While I will probably go see this movie, I am very disappointed that they are remaking so many 80s films again - Walking Tall... gimme a break, why remake that movie?

Cheers

Hey Stephen,

ILM shared effects work with Illusion Arts on Van Helsing. ILM also had their hand in LXG, but LXG had over 20 SFX studios working on it. Asylum, Double Negative, Tippett, Riot, Cinesite, etc.


ILM probably did most of the character animation.


As far as Walking Tall...the reason they probably "remade" it is for those people who didn't know there was a movie called Walking Tall made in the 80s. : )

For those that didn't see the game (like myself) you can check out all the commercials at iFilm.

Cheers,
Brian

Rob,

Yeah, I figured that, but why remake THAT movie? Or for that matter, why did they remake "Can't Buy Me Love"? Or for that matter, why did they remake Planet of the Apes, and Psycho?

Sad sad sad when we have to resort to remaking the classics when we could go see them in an art house theatre or on DVD.

On the other hand, the remake of Dawn of the Dead looks pretty cool :)

Cheers :)

Ocean's 11 remake was good. : )

Ocean's 12 should be interesting.

Uh-oh...I feel a new thread coming along. "Your FAVORITE Hollywood Remakes".