Apparently people playing the new Nintendo Wii games system have been injuring themselves, each other an their property whilst flailing their arms about playing with the new hand held Wii-mote.

http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/

I bet you Nintendo don't have a problem, they must be loving all the free publicity

I finally got round to seeing the new James 'Omega, Sony Ericsson, Aston Martin DB5, Martini, Bond film, Casino Royale last night. And I really enjoyed it.

It has all the characteristics of a good Bond film. Firstly, a good Bond. Looked good in an evening suit, even though five minutes earlier he could be found fighting in a stairwell with a man swinging a machete. This time round Bond has traded in his slick, irreverent one liners, for a much tougher, ruthless approach. He is now, hard as f*ck.

Secondly, villian number 1, Dimitrio. As always with Bond villians, he's rich and greedy for more. He has the obligatory, super-good looking wife, whom he doesn't show much love for (naturally), and so she consequently weakens to Bond's advances. After she reveals relevant information about her husband to Bond she inevitable gets bumped off.

Thirdly villian number 2, the real villian of the film, Le Chiffre. Always defined by some quirky defect, in this case blood escapes through the tear duct of his left eye when under pressure (brilliant!). And power/money/world domination obssessed.

Finally, super-good looking girl, Treasury official, Vesper Lynd, who Bond actually quite likes but turns out that she's not all she appears at first...

All this added up to make a pretty thrilling, action packed film. There's loads of great near miss stunts, some of which were a bit hard to believe, but who cares, it's Bond and that's what it' all about.

The only thing I didn't like about the film was the shameless product placement. Bond initially arrives at the casino, in a rented Ford... hmm ok,... and the sequence looks like a 30 second TV commercial. See the Ford effortlessly take the road, hug the tight bends, all the while sunlight dancing across the shimering body work. And finally, pull up meancingly at the casino entrance... sorry don't think so.

Even better was a reference to Bond's watch the Omega. In the first conversations with Vepre, Bond engages in some flirtatious banter whereby they both offer up a quick psycholigical profile of each other. Vespre speculates that Bond, is Oxbridge educated, does not come from money and therefore has a chip on his shoulder, wears a tailored suit and a Rolex. James replies, that his watch is not Rolex but Omega. To which Vespre purrs, 'beauuuutiful'.

I couldn't help but laugh out loud.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/casinoroyale/trailer1a/

Having just seen the new National Lottery ads on TV this weekend, I was reminded of this movie on houseblingers.com...

http://www.houseblinger.com/bling-rock.php

Xmas surely is a strange time of year!

Just been looking at this camapign for (RED)alert on the Dazed site and have submitted this. Check out the link to be involved, although you'll have to be quick as the deadline is for 1st Dec.

http://www.dazeddigital.com/projects/redalert.aspx?a=175

Set up by Ji Lee, an Art Director in New York, The Bubble Project, is a subversive comment on our current culture and over advertised world. User Generated Content for the streets.

http://www.thebubbleproject.com/

Creating anything engaging for FMCG brands online has always been a pretty tricky affair. Most of the time I'm left thinking - 'yeah, but so what...' to some recipe sugestions and a free sample offer. However this time Tribal DDB has created something for Marmite that is genuinely fun and interesting.

In our culture of 'user generated content' sites, 'Marmart' is really cool and puts the brand right up there.

http://www.marmart.co.uk/

I thought www.axefeather.com was pretty much unbeatable, but those at Dare have done it again, with their latest offering...

http://www.lynxblow.com/

This is hilarious... Second Life gone mad


http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=69736

I'm never going into work again.

I've just seen this 3D Holographic advertising display on the MIT blog... I'm going to project myself at my desk and stay at home.

http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2006/11/holographic-advertising-3d-displays-by.html

http://www.armyoneverest.co.uk/

This site is brilliant - follows the Army on an expedition up Mount Everest... I especially like the way that it makes use of google earth to plot the progress....

The Power of Art - Friday 9.00pm BBC2


Last Friday evening I caught The Power of Art on TV. This was the first episode of 8 week series covering a whole range of artists - the first being the story of Michelangelo Merisi di Caravaggio.

Starting in his home town, moving to Milan and then on to Rome, Carravagio bagan to really attract attention and win some great commissions from the church. Working straight onto the canvas wthout first taking time to make preliminary drawings Carravagio's passionate, immediate and more importantly brutally real stlye really caught the imagination of the church. Traditionally a painter's job was to romanticise and glorify religeous stories, however Caravaggio thought otherwise. Many of the gospels, depict pain and suffering resulting in some kind of enlightenment. Caravaggio painted the precise moments of suffering and enlightenment in everyday settings, featuring everyday people. This served to maximise the impact and severity of each teaching.

Consequently, Caravaggio's work hits you between the eyes. He painted the exact moment when gruesome events took place - he captured the essence or horror of each moment, depicting the facial expressions and body contortions that communicated the intensity of the situation. He ingnored formalised composition and injected passion and life into his work.

Caravaggio also attracted attention as a personality. He was often found drinking, carousing, and brawling in the streets of Rome - his antics landing him in real trouble when he killed Ranuccio Tomassoni, local hard man and play boy. So he fled Rome with a price on his head and arrived in Naples. Here he actually settled a bit and produced some more great work under the patronage of the Colonna family. However this was short lived, and he headed off to Malta in an attempt to become a knight. This was so that he might be granted a pardon by the Roman authorities for the death of Tomassoni.

He managed to get his knighthood by winning over the senior officials with his painting skills but after a short time hi temper revealed itself once more and was again involved in more fighting. It was reported that he had threatened and been abusive to the other knights in the order. Eventually this led to him being kicked out and labelled as a "foul and rotten member." He then went to Scicily and then back to Naples, but died suddenly from a fever. Although there seems to be much specualtion around his final days.

Overall - what a legend the bloke was a total madman yet produced some of the most moving pictures of his time!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this weeks episode on Bernini. My final thought being - what a really inconvenient time to put such a great program on...

More on second life...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6054352.stm

I think I might start an army and force a military coup, that'll be much more like real life... it'll also give Reuters something to report on.

This may be a bit old news now, however I've been following the Lonelygirl15 drama for some time now and it seems that it's finally coming to some kind of conclusion...

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-lonelygirl8sep08,0,5310001.story

Although not before the UN have got in there and asked her to speak about the 'stand up against world poverty' campaign...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ETsRObMQI

I think this is hillarious... what a dude!

http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/

Watch the movie, and then read the about section.

I suppose it's nothing new that brands should try and attach themselves to unique people or stories however what I do find interesting is the way that Matt's story has come into the public domain and the way in which it continues. User generated websites, like Youtube.com are shaping our culture really dramatically. No longer are the idiosyncrasies of people and their quirky pursuits being confined to bedrooms or damp community centres, but now they have global exposure! Consequently, heroes are born, ha ha... not superheroes mind you just regular people doing, slightly different stuff.

Seems like second life is really taking off at the moment, largely due to some big brands like Adidas, Amazon, Radio1, (even Duran Duran!), getting in on the action and attracting some big press.

Now Leo Burnett/Arcww have created their own brainstorm area allowing 1600 creatives to come together. I don't know what they're going to do with the space - I don't think they do either, but that's not the point is it!

http://www.brandrepublic.com/bulletins/br/article/595241/leo-burnett-opens-virtual-agency-second-life/

http://www.secondlife.com

This Guinness ad has been flying around some of the ad blogs of late... I really like it's simplicity...

I caught the tail end of the Modigliani exhibition at the Royal Academy on Sunday. I've always been a bit of Modigliani fan anyway, so it was great to see so much of his work all in one place.

The show opens on a large head carved from limestone. Modigliani was introduced to Brancusi who persuaded him to get into sculpture to explore form as expression. The combination of this exploration, and Modigliani's existing knowledge of Afican and Asian sculpture informed the style he developed in his painting - the elongated features, the almond shaped eyes filled in with flat colour etc.

Even though Modigliani was not into Cubism, it is possible to see it's influence in some of the backgrounds of his portraits. His figures are usually seated in front of and framed by large panels of colours that seem to lock the subject in place.

Something you do get from seeing the paintings 'live' is a greater understanding of Modigliani's use of colour and also of how he used brush marks to differentiate foreground from background. Anyway take a look for your self...

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/

A great campaign by Greenpeace, parodying the Apple site. I love my Mac, but I understand that Apple are one of the worst companies for recycling their PCs and what's more it seems that they are full of some pretty nasty stuff...

http://www.greenpeace.org/apple/

If you go to http://www.greenpeace.org there's a movie on the home page also worth watching

Latest from Lynx.... You know the one where the guy gets out of the shower, goes to a bar, towel flicks the big bloke chatting up the great looking girl... The guy ends up with girl and as a final gesture when leaving the bar he gives her his towel to keep warm, leaving him naked...

Well they've developed this further with a character profile on myspace

http://myspace.com/towelboy

I think that using myspace to continue dialogue with consumers, is really interesting and is a really great way to put a brand right in the middle of a really active community.

However, I do wonder how long this will all last. My big question is - will the advertising cynical generation become tired of brands trampling all over their self generated world of views and content. Or will they see as a bit of fun, where brands are talking to them on their terms in an engaging and interatcive way?

In the news

shame on you, NIKE...
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1869924,00.html

times are changing....
http://news.com.com/Fosters+beer+shifts+ad+spending+to+Web/2100-1024_3-6102028.html

This is just incredible...

'At the core of We Feel Fine is a data collection engine that automatically
scours the Internet every ten minutes, harvesting human feelings from a
large number of blogs. Blog data comes from a variety of online sources,
including LiveJournal, MSN Spaces, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, Technorati,
Feedster, Ice Rocket, and Google.'

Click on: 'Open We Feel Fine'

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

'.... This ain't for nonces.'

I was sent this on Friday - It's the site for the new game, Gangs of London. Not only is the execution brilliant but the promotional mechanic is really interesting too. I must say, I haven't quite cracked all the clues. I have snapped all of the banners but haven't quite worked out the 'Bill' and the phone number clues... click below and all will become clear...

http://www.nickthediamond.com

Once again IKEA have produced another great microsite... brilliantly executed using video sequences, this really is an engaging experience

http://www.kominigarderoben.se/

This is fantastic... they should allow residents to post their own comments up...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1871854,00.html

Just seen this site for the redevelopment of Arsenal's old ground at Highbury. They're turning the whole site into a complex containing luxury apartments. The front of the stadium is an amazing Art Deco style building and has consequently been preserved as it's Grade II listed. Better still, they have converted the pitch area into some kind of huge landscaped garden area. All looks pretty amazing... Although as a United fan you wouldn't catch me going anywhere near the place.

http://www.thestadium-highbury.com