nike Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Art & Copy director Doug Pray offered during the film's Q&A at the Prospector Square theater that he didn't want to make a documentary that did nothing but re-play classic advertising, and he didn't want to make a talking-heads documentary. He achieved in both those aims, but there's also the uglier question of if he made a documentary at all. Backed by The One Club -- an organization, as the press notes observe, "dedicated to the craft of advertising" -- Art & Copy talks to some of the greatest names in the field and recounts their successes. Combining clips of ads with interviews with titans in the field like Dan Wieden (Nike's "Just do it"), Hal Riney (Ronald Reagan's "It's Morning in America") and George Lois ("I want my MTV!"), Art and Copy is meant as a celebration of creativity; it winds up being a circular tautology: Great advertising is great because it's great advertising. Art and Copy is, essentially, an ad for advertising -- all of the attractive features of the business are shown in a glorious and shining light, and any concerns or deeper questions are brought up briefly before being shoved away briskly, or, more often, simply left unasked.

It's unfortunate, really, because Pray's an inventive and quick-minded documentarian who can normally show the fullness and contradictions of a topic; Hype! chronicled the rise (and fall) of the Seattle music scene; Scratch captured the quicksilver world of turntablism and of DJ'ing; Big Rig showed the lives of America's truckers and their role in commerce. I was excited by the prospect of Art & Copy, if only because Big Rig did such a great job of showing how consumer goods get from point a to point b; I was hoping Art & Copy would examine exactly how the people at point a make the people at point b want their consumer goods. (And, yes, I was hoping for a little hint of Mad Men's bleak, chic look at the industry, as well; I'm not proud to say it, but it's still true.) Opening with the Oscar Mayer and Meow Mix jingles, Art & Copy then shows us ancient stone carvings, while one of the film's ad men notes that there's not much difference between modern advertisers and the ancients who painted "on the walls of caves." Well, actually, there is -- whoever painted the bison on the walls at Lascaux was not, in fact, attempting to sell bison at a tidy profit. Art tries to encourage you to think; advertising wants you to stop thinking and buy. (And trust me, I'm aware that as you read this, you scrolled past several ads telling you how you can lose weight fast and promoting Paul Blart: Mall Cop, so let me briefly mention that you can lose weight inexpensively and safely by eating less and exercising more, and that our own Nick Schager found Paul Blart: Mall Cop an uninspired mess of fat jokes.)

Odds and ends from a very slow Monday:

•  Yes, the following story deals with a man having sex with a horse. Yes, it was that slow of a news day. Seattle filmmaker Robinson Devor has begun shooting a documentary based on popular story from 2005 in which a man from Enumclaw died after having sex with a horse. We first reported on this story waaaaaay back in October, but now, it seems, things are gearing up. Devor, who premiered his last film Police Beat at Sundance last year, hopes to debut In the Forest There is Every Kind of Bird at Sundance in 2007.
• As I've mentioned before, with Pirates of the Caribbean 2 landing in just a few days, Johnny Depp is all over the news this week. According to Contact Music, Stephen Cannell is looking to revive his 21 Jump Street series and turn it into a feature film starring none other than Johnny Depp. You'll remember Depp played Officer Tom Hansen on the original television series, but left the show on bad terms. However, the actor recently said he's keen to bring back the character, but only he gets to play him a certain way. Depp says, "He's out of his mind. He's really old now. But he thinks that he's really young. That I would love to do."
• Awhile back, we told you how a huge sneaker fan was desperately trying to get Nike to produce those cool futuristic sneakers Marty Mcfly wears in Back to the Future 2 and sell them to the public. Only one pair has ever existed and they were worn by Michael J. Fox in the film. Well, now that the petition has gathered up over 20,000 signatures, Canadian Ron Al Cabino** has partnered up with an unnamed New York media mogul in the attempt to create a TV campaign to help his cause. Not for nothing, but the jacket Fox wore was so much cooler. Oh, and what about the hovercraft -- how about they make one of those?
  

**(Thanks, Al Cabino, for emailing to let us know your name is Al, NOT Ron. -eds.)

If you're an aspiring animator, you might want to start looking at real estate in Oregon., becausePhil Knight's new animation company, Laika Entertainment, is about to expand. Knight plans to build a 30-acre campus in Tualatin, Oregon, not too far from his Nike headquarters. With the new complex and studio will come more openings for talented animators to work on Laika's first two films, Coraline (based on Neil Gaiman's book, pictured) and Jack and Ben's Animated Adventure. Right now Laika is centered in Portland with less than 200 employees, but they plan on hiring about 400 more by the time the campus opens in 2008.

Although Knight hasn't always been the most admirable man in business (see Michael Moore's The Big One), I am excited about his move into movie-making. As you can expect from the man who made sneakers one of the most important consumer products of our time, he is taking great care to learn his new business in depth so that he can be just as successful with animated films as he is with high-tops. Of course, the thing I keep thinking is that he could easily do some cross-promotion by producing a sequel to Space Jam. But he's probably smarter than that.

 

Hokey smokes, Al Cabino sure does like sneakers. The young man, who chooses to remain silent about himself, is not at all silent when it comes to his love of footwear, and especially his quest to convince Nike to create a pair of shoes based on the swanky footwear worn by Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future II. I mentioned this back in December, and also opined that such online petitions rarely get results. Those in the sneaker biz tend to agree, claiming the shoes would be more for show than anything and not serve any useful function. Yeah, well, Cabino doesn't care. He's garnered over 3,700 signatures, some of which are allegedly from such big names in the recording industry as Lupe Fiasco, DJ AM, and Billions McMillions. Personally, I'd rather have a pair of Inspector Gadget shoes. Now those would come in handy.