DVD Review: Appaloosa

I really, really like Appaloosa and even began, shortly after watching it, that it might be my second favorite modern Western, behind only Unforgiven.

Appaloosa is the story of two lawmen-for-hire, played by Ed Harris (who also directed) and Viggo Mortenson. The pair come to the small town of Appaloosa to help the locals with the problems they’re having with a local powerful rancher, played by the fantastic Jeremy Irons. One complication after another comes into the story (including a few that involve a woman who moves to town shortly after them and who’s played by Renee Zellweger) but the two come through as partners despite being the only morally clear people in the entire story.

What I dug about Appaloosa was the stoic attitudes displayed by the two stars. While everyone is getting all emotional around them these two lawmen just shrug and move along, never betraying any emotion they don’t need to and meeting every challenge with a quiet certainty. The performances by these two are simply pitch-perfect without being showy or anything like that. Even Irons doesn’t go over the edge in his role as the “villain” of the film, a role that he easily could have hammed up.

The single-disc edition of the movie comes with a handful of bonus features, including a batch of deleted scenes that you can view with or without commentary by director and star Ed Harris and screenwriter/producer Robert Knott. Both Knott and Harris also provide commentary on the feature film itself. The disc also has a few featurettes that dive into the production of the film and the recreation of the titular town.

Movie Marketing Madness: Monsters Vs. Aliens

Dreamworks Animation must feel like it finally has a position of power in the family entertainment game. Despite being the home of bona fide blockbusters like Shrek, Shrek II and Shrek the Third, most all non-Shrek animated features have had either minimal success or not done very well at all. But last year that started to turn around with Kung-Fu Panda, a delightfully refreshing tale of a panda with delusions of grandeur but a massive destiny to fulfill. Unlike other Dreamworks features, this one wasn’t filled with pop-culture references that were out of date as soon as they were put to film. Nor was it just one crotch joke after another, though there were a couple of them, but no more than you’d find in your average episode of “Zack and Cody.”

Looking to build on that momentum, Dreamworks this year is releasing Monsters Vs. Aliens, which serves nicely as not just a title but also a plot description. The movie, then, is about an alien invasion, one that’s countered by the U.S. government through the deployment of a team of, well, monsters. The team includes an ooze monster, a gigantic girl and a couple other misfits and creatures.

As we dive into the movie’s marketing campaign keep one thing firmly in mind. As much as the push seeks to sell the movie itself it’s also about selling the idea of 3-D exhibition to the general public. While 3-D has had a good amount of success so far with releases like The Dark Knight and Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana, the format is still looking for a breakout smash. More accurately, it’s looking for a release where a significant portion of the box-office has come from 3-D, something where the movie’s success is largely attributed to its appearance on 3-D screens. But the public needs a strong case to be presented to it that the format provides an added value to their viewing experience. So that’s been Dreamworks’ case, having included 3-D mentions in a significant amount of the campaign.

Let’s take a look.

The Posters

The first teaser poster released played up the idea that this was a fun and funny movie with a loose sort of attitude. It featured B.O.B., the blue blob voiced in the movie by Seth Rogen, flashing a peace sign with the copy “Ooze gonna save us?” above him. You would think, since this is essentially an ensemble comedy and there’s no one titular character (as was the case with Kung Fu Panda) that there would be more like this but there weren’t.

There were, though, a whole series that featured every (or just about every) character from the film released later on. These were all created in a style the evokes memories of the Red-scare monster movies from the 1950s and 60s and they’re all pretty good, certainly selling the audience on what the look and feel of the movie will be. The designs are bright and colorful and contain some adjectives about the creature featured on that poster. There were versions showing off Ginormica, B.O.B., The Missing Link, Dr. Cockroach, Gallaxhar and Instectosaurus.

Finally, the theatrical poster brought the whole team together, showing the good guys standing between the city – in this case San Francisco – and the bad guys, whose ships are shown flying in the background. It’s actually a pretty standard sort of action movie poster and while I think it’s pretty effective at selling the flick to the target audience of kids and their moms, it’s not all that exciting in and of itself.

There was also a slightly – but only slightly – different version of the theatrical one-sheet that played up a bit more the film’s distribution to 3-D screens.

The Trailers

The first trailer starts off by showing us Ginormica’s origin and using that as a way to introduce us to the U.S. government’s team of monsters. Eventually we get to the plot of the alien invasion and how this team of outcasts and misfits eventually comes together to fight it off. It’s funny but goes by really, really quick and doesn’t give anything, either the visuals or the story, much time to breath.

The second trailer starts off with the invasion force being discovered by a couple of amateur space-watchers. Then it gets to showing us the monsters and how they’re Earth’s best hope for survival. The last two-thirds contains a lot of the same stuff from the first trailer so there’s not a lot new to comment on.

There’s also another trailer that, again, doesn’t reveal much that’s new but arranges it in a slightly different manner so it’s worth checking out if you want to make sure you’ve seen everything.

Online

The movie’s official website opens with a TV-spot type video that plays automatically up on the page loading. There’s also the opportunity there to Grab the Widget, Create a Monster (more on this later) and put B.O.B. on your iPhone, with that link opening up iTunes so you can grab the app.

Once you enter the site you’re greeted with, essentially, the poster art with buttons to play brief little character-setting video snippets from the film. You can view even more of these by using the arrows on the right and the left of the screens to change environments, of which there are eight to choose from.

The first section of content is “Videos,” which is something that struck me as interesting. Usually the first section is “About” or something that gives some background on the making of the movie and its story. But this movie, which is all about the visuals – and which is targeted at children – puts video at the forefront instead. Just something worth noting.

Anyway, “Video” contains a featurette titled “Story of 3D,” which is all about how Dreamworks Animation has embraced the 3D format for this movie and how the technology has enabled for a whole new level of story-telling. Both trailers are also there, as well as a montage of footage from the movie titled “Director’s First Look,” which actually serves the same purpose as an “About” section, only without all that text to read.

Also tipping us off as to who the target audience is is the fact that the next section is “Games and Activities.” In the former category you have Gallaxhar Invades, which is a movie-themed variation on Space Invaders, Monster Creator, which allows you to design and download your own monster and finally information on both the Mobile- and Console-based tie-in video games. In the latter category there are an absolute bucket-load of downloadable material, from stickers to cards to party items to anything else you could think of to occupy the time of a seven year-old.

“Downloads” contains a number of the usual types of items, including Wallpapers, Buddy Icons, Signatures for your email, Web Skins and a PC Screensaver. “Dossiers” gives you some background information on the main characters on the Monsters team. “Partners” I’ll cover below.

The last section, “Behind the Scenes,” is where we finally get some information on The Cast and The Crew. There’s also what are in essence production notes within The Film and some similarly-themed videos under “Video Featurettes.” Lastly there’s some Production Art in a gallery that you can check out.

There’s also a separate site at http://www.topsecretconspiracy.com/ that seeks to appear like an effort to expose the government’s cover-up of the monsters that are among us in the world. It’s mildly funny and certainly takes advantage of online media, with a Twitter feed and some RSS feeds that you can subscribe to, as well as the ability to upload your own stories of where you’ve found the truth.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

The movie has not lacked for advertising support by any stretch of the imagination. The movie’s ads have been blanketing the internet and the TV airwaves for months now, all of them making sure to note that you’re especially encouraged to see it in 3D.

But no advertising move by Dreamworks in support of the film was bigger than their decision to advertise within the 2009 Super Bowl broadcast. Not only that, but the ad was shown in 3D . The ad was for the movie but it was also sponsored by Sobe Life Water, a drink being promoted by maker PepsiCo, thereby deferring a bit of the cost of the spot’s production and airing. In order to watch it you had to go to one of the partnering retailers to get special 3D glasses in order to fully enjoy the spot.

Unfortunately for everyone the reactions to the spot weren’t all that positive. Many folks called it “lame” or chalked it up to a publicity stunt that had no value or even criticized the effects. It’s true that for a movie that’s claiming to up the ante in 3D, especially in the use of special polarized glasses, probably was never going to benefit greatly from TV 3D (which never turns out well) and the use of old-school red/blue cardboard glasses. I get what the studio was going for by doing this but it was probably a bit of an over-reaching moment in trying to reach the audience and actually reminded me of the poor reactions to the 2003 Super Bowl spot for Ang Lee’s Hulk in the backlash.

The movie got some print advertising support from a variety of Time Inc publications after Dreamworks’ Jeffrey Katzenberg personally called Time’s editor in chief John Huey. The deal worked out in a way that would have five Time titles each creating a 3D section of its own that would be supported by McDonald’s, a promotional partner with the film, as well as Real D, HP and Intel.

Moving on to the cross-promotions and partners, let’s dive back to the “Partners” page on the movie’s official website.

• Energizer is including one of three toys in four-packs of every parent’s best friend, the AA battery, as well as offering a contest to win a family vacation.
• Wrigley is selling Hubba Bubba bubble gum in MVA packaging that lets you enter to win one of a number of prizes.
• Frozen meal maker Kid Cuisine also put movie images on select packages and offered the chance to win a year’s worth of movie tickets as well as some cash.
• LandOFrost, a lunchmeat brand, included collectible cards in their products and let you enter to win the movie’s video game.
• McDonald’s, a regular partner of Dreamworks, picked MVA as their latest Happy Meal theme, including toys with the food and even bringing Gallaxhar, the villain, into the Happy Meal virtual world.
• Since this is National Frozen Food Month, the National Frozen and Refrigerated Foods Association got its members involved to offer a $10,000 sweepstakes. If you’ve looked at grocery store flyers for the last month you’re likely to have seen mention of this.
• Visa is offering Signature cardholders the chance to see a complimentary screening of the movie as well as get free popcorn and soda while doing so.

Media and Publicity

While there’s been plenty of the usual publicity for the movie around and about in the media in the form of cast interviews and such, much of what I’ve read about the movie has been contained within stories about the penetration of 3D into the mass audience, showing I think just how closely the two things are closely entwined. Unfortunately many of those stories have been about the slowed roll-out schedule of 3D projectors and systems due to the recession or other reasons.

Overall

I think I like this campaign. In fact I’m just about certain that I like this campaign. But there are two problems that I keep getting hung up on.

First, there’s the emphasis on promoting 3D as part of the movie-going experience. It gets in the way sometimes of the actual movie campaign and actually, it occurs to me, runs the risk of creating a feeling in the audience that if they can’t see it in 3D they’ll just pass on it altogether. I don’t think that’s a big risk, but I keep coming back to it.

Second, the campaign reaches a bit farther than it needs to on more than one occassion. A lot of that is in support of the 3D push but even aside from that it comes off, at least to me, as sometimes being a bit more hard-nosed than it needs to be or tries to generate too much publicity for its marketing than it really needs to.

Other than those issues, though, it’s a decent campaign that Dreamworks has put together, with a good site that is certainly geared toward its target audience and some good trailers and posters. Be interesting to see how this turns out at the box-office.

PICKING UP THE SPARE

• 4/3/09: I forgot about this, but RealD offered a UStream-powered video feed widget from the movie’s premiere red carpet event. You can still view footage from the event on that page.
• 4/3/09: Robert Marich talks about the costs of the worldwide marketing for the movie and also about how the success of the film will be closely watched by Wall Street investors. That’s because the studio’s financing deals and that fact that it only releases a small number of films, each one has to be a success or the studio’s stock price could take a major hit.
• 4/3/09: There are a few more “viral” sites that I hadn’t heard about but which add some backstory to the movie’s characters and locations. There’s one for W.R. Monger, one for Pacific Monster Island and one for Old Man Carl’s snack food company.
• 4/24/09: I didn’t see this promoted anywhere so I can’t say definitively whether it’s official or not (it certainly seems to be) but there’s a MVAMovie Twitter account that has published updates on the movie’s release. This would have completely passed me by if I hadn’t noticed a referral to MMM from it in my traffic stats.

DVD Review: Quantum of Solace

For some reason Quantum of Solace, the most-recent outing of super-spy James Bond, got lukewarm reviews when it came out in theaters. I’m not sure why that was since I actually quite enjoyed it and even thought it was an improvement over 2006′s Casino Royale.

Picking up right, more or less, where that previous movie left off, Daniel Craig once again stars as the new stripped-down and highly intense version of Bond the first movie introduced us to. He’s on a mission to not only uncover some shadowy, nebulous organization that specializes is toppling governments and exploiting natural resources but also to – although he doesn’t admit as much – to avenge the death of Vesper, the girlfriend he lost in the previous installment.

The nature of the plot doesn’t really matter though. Quantum of Solace needs to be viewed as the second half of a single film, one who’s primary purpose is to introduce this version of James Bond and give him a mythos of his own as someone who is emotionally damaged and brutal in pursuit of his goals, which often seem personal but which also have the advantage of meshing nicely with those of Queen and country.

Watching Craig as Bond is even more enjoyable this time than it was in Casino Royale. We know better who this guy is now and can read more into his aggressively passive expressions. It’s also more interesting to see him in the movie’s series of chases and action sequences. I found myself thinking over the course of the movie that he reminded me of Indiana Jones in how he escapes not because of some master plan he’s worked out, but instead because he just happened to survive from one moment to the next, not thinking about anything beyond the next ledge he’s going to leap to and he’ll figure out the next move once he’s there.

There’s never really a moment that doesn’t work in Quantum of Solace. Not only are the action scenes great to watch but the quieter moments (if you can call them that) – especially the ones with Dame Judy Dench as M – are pretty good as well. Dench is basically given the same two things to do over and over again – scold Bond and remind him of his duties or look up information based on Bond’s latest discovery – but she sells them with her usual class and talent.

Quantum of Solace comes with a host of bonus features on the two-disc special edition DVD, including:

• Bond on Location: All about the exotic locales and how they play into the story of the movie.
• Start of Shooting: Very brief featurette about the shooting of the movie.
• On Location: More about the settings. Not sure why this wasn’t just rolled into the 20+ minute first bit.
• Olga Kurylenko and the Boat Chase: Covering one of the key action sequences in the film.
• Director Marc Forster: How the man behind the camera did on his first time out.
• The Music: Self-explanitory
• Crew Files: Likewise.

As I said, Quantum of Solace needs to be viewed as the second half of a single story and it works as just that. Well worth checking out.

DVD Review: Being There

Have you ever watched an acrobat and marveled at the control they have over their bodies? Just sat there and been amazed at how they can move their limbs in ways that you just can’t considering you count every time you don’t trip while walking up the stairs as a massive, massive success?

That’s kind of what it’s like watching Peter Sellers in Being There.

If you’re unfamiliar with Being There here’s a quick synopsis: A simple man named Chance serves as the gardener for an old man in Washington, DC. Chance has never left the house and has the intellect of a child, as well as being able to neither read nor write. One day the old man dies and Chance is cast out, only to find himself taken in by another rich old man who thinks Chance is some sort of nuts-and-bolts genius who’s able to take the most complex situation and reduce it down to its core elements. As part of that Chance winds up meeting the President, being quoted in newspapers he can’t read and making lots of influential friends who don’t realize he’s that slow.

The movie, in all honesty, kind of hits that same joke over and over again. With anyone else playing the role of Chance it likely wouldn’t work nearly as well as it does with Sellers there. He brings it an incredible amount of genuine emotion that other actors simply couldn’t. It turns the character from someone to be pitied into someone you come to respect and root for.

Being There received a bare-bones DVD release back in the early days of the format but now it’s gotten a Deluxe Edition release as well as appearing on Blu-ray. Even so, the only new addition to the disc is a “Memories of Being There” featurette that has interviews with the cast and crew. It’s worth watching but it might not be up to a “Deluxe” labeling.

Still, Being There is a classic film that deserved a better release on disc and I’m glad Warner Bros. has provided just that. Definitely recommended.

Movie Journal: The Manhattan Project

I don’t know about you but I always think of The Manhattan Project in the same vein as Wargames. You know, two movies about some kid in the mid-80s who’s smarter than adults around him and who uses those smarts to blow up the world, or at least Ithaca, New York and the surrounding states.

The movie doesn’t hold up nearly as well as some others from that era, unfortunately. It’s still fun to watch, though mostly at this point simply for the memories it evokes of watching it on VHS countless times while spending summer days at my grandparents’ house. It’s especially bad when you realize that John Lithgow’s character basically causes his own problems when he gives the kid a tour of his lab – where he’s making highly unstable weapon’s grade plutonium – because he wants to sleep with the kid’s mother. Good job on that, big guy.

Movie Journal: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

For whatever reason I had never actually seen A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum before coming across it on Hulu a little while ago. I certainly knew of it but had just missed it time and time again.

Forum, though, is not to be missed, especially if you’re a fan of old-school comedy. Between Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Buster Keaton and a variety of other faces and names you’re likely to recognize if you know your comedic history, it’s a light little piece of entertainment that is funny and fresh and entirely enjoyable. There isn’t much physical comedy, at least not as much as I was expecting. Instead, as truly befits the talents of those involved, it’s mostly about the word play, about mistaken identities and about pulling one over on your neighbor because he’s probably about to pull one over on you.

If there’s one thing that comes through on watching this, it’s that Mostel truly was a force of nature. He blows through every scene like a whirlwind, leaving half-thought through schemes, confused servants and frustrated masters in his wake. It is, quite frankly, impossible to take your eyes off of him while he’s on screen, even more so than in The Producers, a role he’s well known for in most people’s minds. Maybe because ancient Rome is a bigger canvas for him to wreak havoc on than modern New York City. He’s extraordinary.

The movie is on Hulu for anther week or so so by all means carve out a couple hours or so and watch it while it’s there. If you don’t have the time then add it immediately to your Netflix queue and check it out.

Returning to the agency world

I’m back in the world of agencies, clients and all that good stuff:

We’re pleased to announce that Chris Thilk is now part of the Voce Nation. He’ll be working with our dedicated social media team, which now numbers eight full-time staff. Chris will continue to be based in the Chicago area, but will make trips to the mothership in Sunnyvale, CA as needed.

Officially, Chris started in early March and has already re-found the joys of agency life . He’ll be working on a variety of projects for Intel and Comcast to name a few.

So yeah. It’s all good and lots of fun so far. Lots of exciting stuff coming down the road.

Not a problem

One of the responsibilities I and my brethren have as members of the Board of Elders at Bethany Lutheran Church, Naperville IL is to keep tabs on the preaching of the pastors and make sure they’re bringing both Law and Gospel to the congregation in their purity. This bottom-up system of checks and balances is supposed to work in concert with the top-down oversight from the synod (in this case the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) but they seem more interested in blue-ribbon panels on reorganization than assuring the teaching of pure doctrine. But that’s a post for another time.

This part of our job is easy, though, with the pair of pastors we have at Bethany. This past Sunday’s service was a wonderful example of Lutheran church done right. The entire service, from the Old Testmament reading to the Epistle to the Gospel to the hymns to the sermon all focused around “Justification,” or how we are brought closer to God.

Old Testament Reading (Numbers 21, 4-9):

4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” 6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

Gospel (John 3, 14 – 21):

14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

Epistle (Ephesians 2, 1-10):

2:1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body [1] and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But [2] God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Top all that off with a sermon that tied all three together and also featured a visual tool more powerful than any Nerf guns, water balloons or clown noses any “church growth” preacher has ever brought to the pulpit – namely the image of Christ crucified as the ultimate price paid for our sins – and you have a wonderful, wonderful Service of the Word.

How the internet will eat itself

Rex Sorgatz lays out just how disjointed our online communications are.

Movie Marketing Madness: I Love You, Man

Earlier this week I dismissed the word “mumblecore” as being in any way useful as a title/description of a certain genre of films.

Today I’m here to bury right off the bat the word “bromance” as both a general societal term as well as, again, being a heading for movies about the friendship between two guys. The term has emerged, I guess, because we needed a word for entertainment writers to use that didn’t include “buddy.” I’m not sure why but, like mumblecore, it’s a stupid word that implies that the two guys who are friends in the story are actually “in love” but in a purely hetero way that isn’t sexual at all. The problem is that, again, it’s a stupid word and is more than a little insulting, cheapening the idea of heterosexual romance as well as adding an unneeded layer of insinuation to a friendship. So you won’t be hearing me use that again.

I Love You, Man, is the story of a guy played by Paul Rudd who’s on the verge of marriage but finds himself without any close male friends who he can ask to be his best man at the wedding. Encouraged by his fiance to find one, he embarks on a Frodo-esque journey to make friends. He comes across (I’m not sure how this happens) a brash, live-for-the-moment kind of guy played by Jason Segel who helps him embrace his inner man-child and male bonding ensues.

It’s being sold, as we’ll see, as being very much in the same vein as the movies directed and produced by Judd Apatow, who has pioneered the resurgence of comedic movies that explore relationships in sometimes crude (but often very true) fashion. That’s helped along by the fact that both Rudd and Segel are Apatow production alumni, so the campaign – and the movie – come with the baggage of all those expectations. Let’s look at how it matches up to those expectations.

The Posters

Since the movie is hinged upon the characters played by Segel and Rudd it makes sense that the first series of teaser posters featured each of them. The teasers had either one or the other against a simple white background with some sort of slang phrase floating above their heads. In addition to never having heard these phrases before in my life, the teasers come off as a little awkward simply because it’s kind of weird with the guys just standing there. They look like they’re posing for a public service ad. Rudd, in the one that says “Totes Magotes,” looks like he could be appearing on a subway ad warning that you too could be at risk for syphilis.

The theatrical poster is much better, though. Like the one-sheet for Wedding Crashers (the unofficial launch, I think, of this particular type of movie) it feels the strongest case to be made for seeing the movie is the pairing of the two male stars and the designers aren’t wrong. While the pose isn’t as action-focused as the Crashers poster, it does simply put the two leads front and center below the title treatment. At the bottom is the copy “Are you man enough to say it,” again playing up the notion that you need to be a mature man to tell another that you love them. Which you don’t, and which is rooted in all sorts of post-modern psychology that I have a problem with. But those issues aside this is a good poster that hits the main point of the movie and makes it very attractive to the crowd that has made Knocked Up, Superbad and other movies like that a success in recent years.

The Trailers

Two trailers have been created for I Love You, Man, one all-ages and one red-band restricted version.

Looking at the all-ages version first, it starts off with the movies basic setup, that Paul Rudd’s character doesn’t have a best friend who’s a guy and never really has. Instead he’s established as a “girlfriend” guy, which I at first took to mean someone whose friends were primarily girls but which later seems to mean he’s just always had girlfriends.

From there we see just how awkward making new friends is going to be, including what winds up being a horrific encounter with Thomas Lennon, and then eventually meeting up with Segel’s man-child character. That works out much better, though, and we see that much of the comedy of the movie is going to be derived from the very free-spirited Segel teaching Rudd how to have fun and live life without worrying about responsibilities, which seems like an…odd definition of being a “man.” There’s also a joke in there about how Rudd’s character likes The Devil Wears Prada just to make him seem a bit effeminiate which is necessary for I’m not sure why.

The restricted trailer follows the same basic format, at least for the first two thirds of the length of the trailer. The main difference up until that point is that the scenes shown features coarser language than the other one. There’s also a bit of new footage that offers similarly crass humor at that the end, but the two are fundamentally the same with the language being the big difference.

Online

The movie’s official website opens with, basically, a TV spot for the film and then brings you to the main front page, which features the same artwork we’ve seen on the poster.

“About the Film” is up first in the menu of the site’s content. You’ll find a two paragraph Synopsis there as well as Production Notes that start with the conceptualization of the movie’s story and then into profiles of the cast and finally actual stories from the production. They’re pretty interesting to read, even if they don’t rise above the level of your average celeb mag feature article.

Next is “Video” which has the trailer and 10 clips from the movie, most of which are extended bits of footage that we’ve seen in the trailers. These are a great addition to the site since they let the comedy breathe a bit but then there’s no TV spots, which I wish they’d included here.

“Downloads” contains a set of Desktop wallpapers, some AIM Icons and, interestingly, a selection of Email Signatures, something I always like to see.

“Cast and Crew” is exactly what you’d expect. There are about 14 stills from the movie in “Gallery.”

Like a lot of comedies lately this site features a “Soundboard.” There’s not much to it, it’s just a little feature where you can hear some audio clips from the movie. No big deal, honestly.

To house the red-band trailer and more there is a Restricted section on the site. Enter your name and birthday here and you can view the trailer as well as a half-dozen or so clips with all the profanity still in them. You’ll recognize some, again, as being longer versions of what we’ve seen in the trailers and some are really funny. There are also a couple things you can click on in the environment on the page and make them do something but they’re not that funny.

The movie also has a presence on Facebook that’s kind of interesting to look at so you can read the comments to each new content addition and one on MySpace that features almost no content but is heavy on promoting the contests around the movie.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

Advertising for I Love You, Man has been all over both television and the internet, with ads appearing just about everywhere I’ve turned for the last two or three weeks. The TV spots more or less were just condensed versions of the trailer, showing off a funny scene or two. The online ads basically just used the poster art in the banner ads and the trailer in the motion ads.

Media and Publicity

The movie has gotten a lot of press simply by virtue of it’s being in that category that shall not be named. Beyond that in the press it’s been a lot of the usual interviews and such.

Only one cross-promotion of note has crossed my radar. Vespa is giving away one of its fuel-efficient scooters in a contest that asks people to tell the story of how far they’ve gone for a friend. You have to be a member of MySpace to enter, which isn’t the lowest of barriers to entry. AdRants is not a fan of the promotion, mostly because Angela sees it as the latest in a series of misguided campaigns from the company.

Overall

If I said “meh” would you all get what I was feeling about this campaign? I want to like it since I’m genuinely looking forward to this movie and and want to see it. But it’s kind of leaving me cold. It’s almost like the campaign isn’t trying that hard to convince me to hit the theaters. Maybe it’s just that anything less than the “OMG YOU NEED TO SEE THIS HERE AND NOW” attitude from the Watchmen campaign is making me think the push isn’t that intense, but I’m lacking a clear cut reason to see this movie from the marketing.

I guess I like the campaign overall in that I like the trailer and poster in particular. The website isn’t all it could be but that’s not a huge surprise. But coupled with the sparse MySpace page and it makes me think online wasn’t a huge priority, maybe because they didn’t see those as mass audience generators and so put the emphasis on TV. Just my thoughts.

So overall it’s good but not great. Thankfully the biggest competition it has this weekend is The Knowing, which probably is going to go for the same sort of audience (adults looking for a bit of good entertainment) so it’s probably going to do just fine.

PICKING UP THE SPARE

• 4/3/09: Brandweek dives more into the promotional partnership deal between the movie and Vespa, talking about both the contest the scooter company ran and also how the vehicle was integrated into the movie, something that coincides with co-star Jason Segel driving one in real life. Vespa is trying to position their scooters as environmentally friendly and relatively low-cost alternatives.
• 4/3/09: I also received pictures of the billboards that were actually installed around L.A. for the fictional real estate agency owned and operated by Paul Rudd’s character.