Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 106

PT's studio team FTW

I don't normally post here videos we at PT do for clients, but I'm making an exception with the following one about tablets.



The reason is that tonight AdFed, the Triangle Advertising Foundation, honored PT's studio team at the annual American Advertising Awards with a Gold award for this video.  As you can see in this program book image

Click the image to see a larger version.

our award happened to fall right after the title page for the section; very nice.

I have long said and always meant that I am exceptionally proud and lucky to be able to work with the best team in the world.  This is just one more proof of that statement. 

The top 5 snow and ice driving tips Raleigh motorists can't learn

I was able to get out of my driveway and neighborhood today and finally reach the office.  In the course of driving there and heading home, I recalled why I wish I could spend every snow and ice day hiding in my house, as far from local motorists as I can get.  From these trips, I have discovered that people here simply cannot learn these basic lessons:

5.  The fact that you drive an SUV does not mean that the dealer downloaded into your brain Matrix-style the skills for handling snow and ice.

4.  Tailgating someone is never a good idea, but it's a particularly bad one on an icy stretch of road. 

3.  What those yellow signs with the squiggly lines on them mean. 

2.  Those signs that tell you certain sections of road will freeze first are not lying. 

and the lesson they most seem unable to grasp is

1.  That shiny black stuff that looks like water but doesn't ripple is, no fooling, ice. 

Watch Bill talk about his cool blog!

Learn ways to reduce operating expenses!

Study up on Chromebooks!

Yes, you can do all of this--and more--by watching the latest episode of Now with PT.



Enjoy!

My favorite romantic weather movie scene

The crappy weather outside--I'm basically iced in--made me think about weather, which led me to weather-related movies, which took me to movie scenes involving weather, which finally landed me on my favorite romantic weather scene:  the bit near the end of L.A. Story in which Steve Martin's weatherman character watches as the magic he wished for happens and Victoria Tennant returns to him.

I couldn't find the scene itself on YouTube, but this Enya music video includes most of it.



"A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true."

Finally, a movie that's all fun: Kingsman: The Secret Service

I've bashed a couple of movies recently, and I gave faint praise to one I found to be at least visually entertaining, so I'm particularly happy to be able to say that if you want two hours and nine minutes of cinema fun, you should go see Kingsman. 

The trailer tells the two plots that ultimately converge:  our hero, a British secret agent (Colin Firth), gives a young man (Taron Egerton) a chance to join the service, even as a clearly deranged bad guy (Samuel L. Jackson) plots to kill off much of humanity.  Firth plays the cooler-than-Bond hero with chill British perfection, while Jackson chews the scenery with abandon.  Egerton turns in a serviceable performance.  Michael Caine, Mark Strong, Sofia Boutella, and Sophie Cookson all deliver strong, memorable characters.  The acting is perfect for this romp. 

The plots are, of course, pretty much the standard spy fare that you'd expect, to the point that at times Jackson mocks the plot as being from a cliched movie.  That said, there are a few surprises, including one big one, that I didn't see coming.  (I refuse to spoil it for you.)

I could pick a lot of holes in the movie, but they end up not mattering, because most of all it's clear that everyone and everything in this movie is about having fun.  I could watch it again today.

If you want to have a good time with an over-the-top spy film, don't miss Kingsman. 

Jupiter Ascending

While I'm on a bad movie roll, I might as well talk about one that I actually quite enjoyed, Jupiter Ascending.  Though it is definitely a hot mess of a film, this big silly space opera worked for me, so it's an interesting contrast to the other two bad flicks (Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight) that I've discussed recently. 

The structure of Jupiter Ascending is a silly plot with so many flaws you'll either have to ignore them or spend all your time pointing them out.  The heroine has power over bees because, hey, why not?  She uses the power only once, of course, because it happens to be convenient.  The daughter of the local sheriff appears, runs out for groceries, and never appears again.  Whatever.  I could go on and on.  You don't go to this one for story.

The acting is also not the reason to see it.  The two leads, Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis, are cardboard stand-ups, generic inserts in the hunky male and lips-and-eyes young actress categories respectively.  The villains are more amusing, if only because they go so far over the top as to almost take flight.  Particularly memorable is Eddie Redmayne, who manages in one twelve month period to deliver both an Oscar-nominated performance (The Theory of Everything) and this appalling exercise in awfulness, in which he lisps and staggers and swishes his way to the most excessive performance of the young 2015.

The reason to see this movie--and what elevates it above its bad-movie kin--is its look, the unusual vision of the Wachowskis.  Spaceships with the strange grandeur of Victorian clockworks, floating cities of similar construction, space docks with giant chandeliers--the look of the movie will carry you through it and keep you interested--well, it kept me interested.

As long as you understand that you're in this one for the visuals, I recommend Jupiter Ascending.  If you want a genuinely good movie, however, give it a pass.

Which is worse: Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey?

In a comment to
That's clearly not good enough.  If I'm going to besmirch not just one but two movies based on books that millions and millions of people love, I ought to be willing to face the tough questions.  The only fair way to do this is to compare key points of the movies. 

Length:  Twilight clocks in at 2:02, while Fifty Shades piles on an extra three minutes and hits 2:05.  With movies this bad, every extra minute is a lash from an incompetent dominant, so Fifty Shades is the worse on this front.

Plot:  Sure, both are stupid beginnings to inane trilogies, but because the question is about only these first movies--and those are all I've seen--we have to restrict the comparison to just what happens in these two.  In Fifty Shades, we have a boring love story that makes no sense at any turn, but few film love stories do.  In Twilight, we have sparkly vampires and werewolves who imprint on their love-mates and, well, you get the point:  Twilight carries far and away the worse plot. 

Acting:  Assume here that we must use this term for the performances in the films; don't grouse at me that no one acted at all.  I'm going to stick to the two leads in each case.  In Fifty Shades, we have Jamie Dornan doing his best impression of a sad gray sofa in a Bronx heroin den, but at least you can tell it's a sofa.  In Twilight, Robert Pattinson manages to be nearly invisible, even while sparkling, in a performance so bad I believe my memory actually contains blanks spots where he should be.  Similarly, Kristen Stewart's only acting achievement in Twilight was to piss off all sensible viewers, while I have to grant that Dakota Johnson had two whole acting moves and was frequently recognizable as human.  For worse acting, Twilight wins going away. 

Creepy factor:  Mid-twenties billionaire Grey falls for boring woman something like five years younger (no, I'm not willing to research the exact difference), and definitely out of college.  Yeah, he's supposed to be a dominant, but his few kink acts are so tame that you'd find more sexual heat in Julia Child dressing a chicken.  In Twilight, Pattinson is over a hundred years old and becomes infatuated with a high-schooler.  Twilight once again wins by a mile. 

I could go on, but I believe the answer to Kyle's question is abundantly clear:  Twilight is far and away the worse of the two movies. 

Fifty Shades of Grey

So sue me:  a group of us went to see this movie.  I was curious about what exactly was so exciting so many people, and I'm just not willing to devote the time necessary to read the three books. 

The Thursday night theater was 90% full.  About 80% of the attendees were women.  The crowd had the sort of nervous energy you'd expect before a bull fight--or in an old-fashioned porn theater.

An hour later, the sounds I'd heard most were laughter--and almost never at the movie's intentional jokes.  This film frequently was so bad it was funny.

Most of the time, though, it was dull.  Deadly dull.  Dakota Johnson, the female lead, had two moves:  look up from under the hair, and bite the lip.  Sometimes, she used them at the same time, a combination that seemed to be more than her co-star could resist.  Neither worked for me.  There was not a single second in the movie in which I found her hot, including when she was naked.

Johnson was, however, Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep combined in comparison to Jamie Dornan, who looked at all times as if he was seeking a way out of the film.  Though I never found Johnson hot, she was at least clearly human; Dornan could easily have been a CGI character, the Jar Jar Binks of kink. 

Speaking of the kink, which I gather was supposed to be a key part of the books, I can say only that if you are considering this movie for that reason, you'd be better off staying home and trolling for porn snippets.  The kink scenes had all the heat of a blast chiller.  Not since Eyes Wide Shut have I found sex scenes this dull. 

It probably sounds like I hated the movie.  I didn't.  Two hours passed relatively painlessly and with a modicum of giggles.  To hate it, I'd have to care about it, and I didn't.  Nothing in it ever made me care about either lead character or what they would do.

Because I haven't read the books, I can't tell you if liking them will make you like this movie, but perhaps it will. 

Me, I'm looking forward to the real star of this weekend's films, Kingsman. 

Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin

If these names mean nothing to you, you are not a fan of the old TV show, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. 

I am.  I have been since I was a kid.  I know it's kitschy and dumb and the very definition of camp, but I still enjoy it.

Now, Guy Ritchie is directing a reboot of this old spy show, and from the looks of this trailer he is doing a good job of balancing camp, humor, and action.



As I say so often about movies--and mean every time--I can't wait to see it.

Three years ago today,

on February 11, 2012, my mother died.  I still miss her.  I thought of her often today.  A week never goes by without me thinking of her, and most days she passes through my mind.

My mom raised me and was a single mother for most of my life.  She was a strong, fierce woman; never be fooled by a person's size--she never made it to five feet tall--into believing they are not powerful and formidable.  She made a lot of mistakes with my childhood, and some of them left scars that will never fully heal, but she also did a great deal right.

She taught me many things.  To protect with all my heart and energy those who are with me.  To work hard.  To be grateful for every blessing.  Most of all, to fight, no matter the odds, no matter the difficulty, to fight and to never ever ever give up. 

I have learned from her death that though we will all die one day, we will live on, at least for a time, in the hearts and memories of those we touched.  Mom will in that way live for at least as long as I do, for she will never leave my heart or mind.

She told me she would always love me, and I believe she kept that promise.  If there is a heaven, she is in it, and she is still loving me.

This song is about romantic love, and so in that sense it is not appropriate, but it is also about staying with those you love.  Mom will always stay with me, and in my heart I will always stay with her.



Rest in peace, Mom.