Joel and Ethan Coen’s stylish and underrated fable about the seductive dangers of empty success stars Tim Robbins as Norville, a naïve mailroom clerk who is catapulted to the head of the mysterious Hudsucker Corporation after its president jumps to his death from a boardroom meeting window in an effort by the conniving board president to devalue the company’s stock. When he stumbles upon success, despite his inexperience, with the invention of the hula hoop, Norville falls prey to the same existential crisis that befell his predecessor. On New Year’s Eve, Norville is saved by a couple of the Coens’ divine interventions. Jennifer Jason Leigh is fantastic as a wisecracking dame reporter assigned to write his profile, but this isn’t a romantic film; it’s a rebirth story about a comeback from the ledge of obsession and vanity. “I have let my success become my identity, I have foolishly played the great man, and watched my life become more and more empty as a result” is the film’s mid-air word of warning. Career lesson: Always be nice to the maintenance staff.
Kristy Shen (@Kristyshen; “Little Miss Evil”)
Karen Shepard (@karenlshepard; “The Celestials”; “Don’t I Know You?”; and others)Cadillac, “Poolside” and Chrysler, “America’s Import”
Both Cadillac and Chrysler chose live television events to deliver bizarre, vague spots about not cars but America, as presented by famous white guys. The former is actor Neal McDonough strolling around his gorgeous bungalow talking about how America’s crappy labor rights means we don’t get August off but we do get slightly nicer cars; the latter is Bob Dylan intoning the tautological phrase “What’s more American than America?” as shots of Detroit and American icons like Marilyn Monroe take up the foreground. Neither makes much sense; oddly, neither makes you feel good about being American, either. The former makes you feel like you can only be a happy American if you’re very rich and white and male and dressed in that particular suit; the latter convinces you that the best days of America are in the past. Neither convinces anyone to buy cars.
Samsung, “Kristen & Dax” series
Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard are a truly adorable real-life couple. Samsung nabbed both of them for this year’s ad campaign, where the two of them bounce around their house using various on-brand products while being cute with each other. It works, except that they almost never leave the house—meaning that the story has a kind of creepy dark side. At the end of this one, they spend hours getting ready for an event and then never make it out of their incredibly gorgeous bungalow. I think the excuse is that Kristen is pregnant in both spots, but like, do you really need to use your numerous Samsung devices to call your partner when they are in the same building? Anyway, props to Dax for venturing out to get provisions every now and again; props to Kristen for rocking pregnancy pajamas hard; and props to them both for having literally the coolest house ever, even if they seem to have no friends or family (or “framily”).
Honda, “Happy Honda Days” 2014
This year, for the holidays, Honda’s trying to convince you to buy a car by shaking out some toys from the attic: Skeletor, He-Man, Jem, Strawberry Shortcake, G.I. Joe, and Stretch Armstrong. There’s a lot going on. Some of the online videos are about raising $50,000 for charity, but that’s not totally obvious in the spots, which are instead about selling Hondas, presumably. Anyway, talking toys, it’s a little cute, a little bizarre. Or as staff writer Erin Keane put it, “seven layers of weird.”
Kashmira Sheth (“Blue Jasmine”; “Keeping Corner”; and others)
Suleikha Snyder (@suleikhasnyder; “Opening Act”; “Bollywood Confidential” series; and others)
Marivi Soliven (“The Mango Bride”)“Ghostbusters II”
While it lacks the cohesion and the energy of the original, the “Ghostbusters” sequel does revolve around a supernatural plot to end the world on New Year’s Eve courtesy of a 16th-century sorcerer and genocidal madman named Vigo the Carpathian who’s been trapped inside a painting at the fictional Manhattan Museum of Art until he possesses a nebbishy art historian and runs amok through New York. And it’s a comeback story. The Ghostbusters, broke and disgraced at the beginning of the film, not only save the world, they do it by striding through Manhattan inside the Statue of Liberty’s crown, harnessing an inexplicable amount of New Yorker goodwill, and dispensing with a ton of regulatory roadblocks and government interference on the way. There is a minor romance subplot between Sigourney Weaver’s Dana, who went with her fallback career as an art restorer after her symphony gig went belly-up, and Ghostbuster Peter Venkman, but it’s Bill Murray, so you get the sense that they’re headed for a gently melancholy, alienating breakup anyway. Career lesson: Carpathian megalomaniacs make terrible bosses.
Dao Strom (“Grass Roof, Tin Roof”; “The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys”)The runner-up for worst ad of the year is, naturally, the other GOP ad featuring Scott—“Paycheck.”
DirecTV, “Marionettes: Pretty”
This one should have died at the drawing board. Instead, DirecTV has expanded the line to include more and more ads. The joke is apparently about how puppets will feel bad about going “wireless,” but in this spot, it looks like the joke is, I dunno, patriarchy?
Woodford Reserve, “Bookshelf”
“When I see a man drinking bourbon, I expect him to be the kind who could build me a bookshelf. But not in the way that one builds a ready-made bookshelf. He will already know where the lumberyard is,” intones the female narrator of this bourbon ad. Is it nostalgia for traditional gender roles—or life pre-Ikea—or just bad writing? Either way, this spot’s gender roles are so perplexing that the New Yorker felt compelled to write about it: “The core message is one of stern-faced seriousness: Bourbon defines a man’s world, and women are welcome only if they play by the men’s rules. It’s enough to make you want to reach for a stiff drink.”
Sabaa Tahir (@sabaatahir; “An Ember in the Ashes”)
Joel and Ethan Coen’s stylish and underrated fable about the seductive dangers of empty success stars Tim Robbins as Norville, a naïve mailroom clerk who is catapulted to the head of the mysterious Hudsucker Corporation after its president jumps to his death from a boardroom meeting window in an effort by the conniving board president to devalue the company’s stock. When he stumbles upon success, despite his inexperience, with the invention of the hula hoop, Norville falls prey to the same existential crisis that befell his predecessor. On New Year’s Eve, Norville is saved by a couple of the Coens’ divine interventions. Jennifer Jason Leigh is fantastic as a wisecracking dame reporter assigned to write his profile, but this isn’t a romantic film; it’s a rebirth story about a comeback from the ledge of obsession and vanity. “I have let my success become my identity, I have foolishly played the great man, and watched my life become more and more empty as a result” is the film’s mid-air word of warning. Career lesson: Always be nice to the maintenance staff.
Kristy Shen (@Kristyshen; “Little Miss Evil”)
Karen Shepard (@karenlshepard; “The Celestials”; “Don’t I Know You?”; and others)Cadillac, “Poolside” and Chrysler, “America’s Import”
Both Cadillac and Chrysler chose live television events to deliver bizarre, vague spots about not cars but America, as presented by famous white guys. The former is actor Neal McDonough strolling around his gorgeous bungalow talking about how America’s crappy labor rights means we don’t get August off but we do get slightly nicer cars; the latter is Bob Dylan intoning the tautological phrase “What’s more American than America?” as shots of Detroit and American icons like Marilyn Monroe take up the foreground. Neither makes much sense; oddly, neither makes you feel good about being American, either. The former makes you feel like you can only be a happy American if you’re very rich and white and male and dressed in that particular suit; the latter convinces you that the best days of America are in the past. Neither convinces anyone to buy cars.
Samsung, “Kristen & Dax” series
Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard are a truly adorable real-life couple. Samsung nabbed both of them for this year’s ad campaign, where the two of them bounce around their house using various on-brand products while being cute with each other. It works, except that they almost never leave the house—meaning that the story has a kind of creepy dark side. At the end of this one, they spend hours getting ready for an event and then never make it out of their incredibly gorgeous bungalow. I think the excuse is that Kristen is pregnant in both spots, but like, do you really need to use your numerous Samsung devices to call your partner when they are in the same building? Anyway, props to Dax for venturing out to get provisions every now and again; props to Kristen for rocking pregnancy pajamas hard; and props to them both for having literally the coolest house ever, even if they seem to have no friends or family (or “framily”).
Honda, “Happy Honda Days” 2014
This year, for the holidays, Honda’s trying to convince you to buy a car by shaking out some toys from the attic: Skeletor, He-Man, Jem, Strawberry Shortcake, G.I. Joe, and Stretch Armstrong. There’s a lot going on. Some of the online videos are about raising $50,000 for charity, but that’s not totally obvious in the spots, which are instead about selling Hondas, presumably. Anyway, talking toys, it’s a little cute, a little bizarre. Or as staff writer Erin Keane put it, “seven layers of weird.”
Kashmira Sheth (“Blue Jasmine”; “Keeping Corner”; and others)
Suleikha Snyder (@suleikhasnyder; “Opening Act”; “Bollywood Confidential” series; and others)
Marivi Soliven (“The Mango Bride”)“Ghostbusters II”
While it lacks the cohesion and the energy of the original, the “Ghostbusters” sequel does revolve around a supernatural plot to end the world on New Year’s Eve courtesy of a 16th-century sorcerer and genocidal madman named Vigo the Carpathian who’s been trapped inside a painting at the fictional Manhattan Museum of Art until he possesses a nebbishy art historian and runs amok through New York. And it’s a comeback story. The Ghostbusters, broke and disgraced at the beginning of the film, not only save the world, they do it by striding through Manhattan inside the Statue of Liberty’s crown, harnessing an inexplicable amount of New Yorker goodwill, and dispensing with a ton of regulatory roadblocks and government interference on the way. There is a minor romance subplot between Sigourney Weaver’s Dana, who went with her fallback career as an art restorer after her symphony gig went belly-up, and Ghostbuster Peter Venkman, but it’s Bill Murray, so you get the sense that they’re headed for a gently melancholy, alienating breakup anyway. Career lesson: Carpathian megalomaniacs make terrible bosses.
Dao Strom (“Grass Roof, Tin Roof”; “The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys”)The runner-up for worst ad of the year is, naturally, the other GOP ad featuring Scott—“Paycheck.”
DirecTV, “Marionettes: Pretty”
This one should have died at the drawing board. Instead, DirecTV has expanded the line to include more and more ads. The joke is apparently about how puppets will feel bad about going “wireless,” but in this spot, it looks like the joke is, I dunno, patriarchy?
Woodford Reserve, “Bookshelf”
“When I see a man drinking bourbon, I expect him to be the kind who could build me a bookshelf. But not in the way that one builds a ready-made bookshelf. He will already know where the lumberyard is,” intones the female narrator of this bourbon ad. Is it nostalgia for traditional gender roles—or life pre-Ikea—or just bad writing? Either way, this spot’s gender roles are so perplexing that the New Yorker felt compelled to write about it: “The core message is one of stern-faced seriousness: Bourbon defines a man’s world, and women are welcome only if they play by the men’s rules. It’s enough to make you want to reach for a stiff drink.”
Sabaa Tahir (@sabaatahir; “An Ember in the Ashes”)
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