Odd TV Commercial Is A Brilliant Short Film

A scene from the epic 2009 ad for Cullman Liquidation

Believe it or not, the ad you'll watch at the bottom of this post is a real TV commercial. It's also an absolute work of art.

It actually came out a decade ago, but is enjoying some new viral fame out there on social media.

It's an ad for Cullman Liquidation, a purveyor of used mobile homes. I checked, and it IS a real business. 

The proprietor of Cullman Liquidation introduces us to his team, and gives us some intriguing personal biography.  For instance, he tells us, for no apparent reason, "My wife's boyfriend broke my jaw with a fence post."

There's quick cuts to the team looking menacing, a woman smoking a cigarette and a few sound effects. It's really a terrific short film.

Producers of several "reality" shows contacted the company pitching a show, but they turned the idea down, which is probably kind of smart.

Watch:

"Bringing Back" Virtual People Has Scary Orwellian Implications

Will the Light Stage technology shown here someday be used
to make it look like to the world that somebody who's innocent
is doing something not innocent?
Photo by Al Seib, Los Angeles Times

I was watching "CBS Sunday Morning" and what started out as a quirky fluff piece quickly scared the hell out of me.

The segment began by noting that the recent Star Wars movie "Rogue One" had in its cast the British actor Peter Cushing.  

Cushing died in 1994, so how can he be in a recently released film?

It turned out actor Guy Henry performed the new scenes, and a special effects engineers replaced Henry's face with Cushing's.

Here's where we begin to turn scary, when they introduced a guy named Paul Debevec.

According to CBS, Debevec invented something called the Light Stage. It has more than 10,000 LEDs, inside of which a subject - a person - is photographed with roughly 20 high quality DSLR cameras, which produce a series of high-resolution photos from different angles to reconstruct a 3-D model of the subject's face.

Debevec told CBS: "We'll have the actor make a succession of about 50 different facial expressions. And that produces all of the different motions of their face. But we also can record a facial performance from all these different angles, and then create a digital performance of that character that does exactly what they did in the video."

Adds CBS: "Once an actor has been scanned into Light Stage, engineers can digitally insert him or her into scenes, even if the actor is unavailable, much older or younger or deceased."

That's all fine and dandy if we're talking about the make-believe world of Hollywood. At least 100 famous actors have stood in this Light Stage to be scanned for movies, notes CBS.

The Light Stage was wicked expensive to build, but the price of this type of technology is coming down, and like most technology, will continue to come down fast.

Here's the scariest part, brought up by CBS Sunday Morning: What happens if someone scans a person, even unwittingly, and tries to pass it off as reality?

I'll take it to a ridiculous level. Remember that insane wacko rumor that Hillary Clinton was running a childhood sex ring in the non-existent basement of a Washington DC pizza restaurant?

So imagine scanning all these images of Hillary Clinton and making a film that "proves" she was running the child sex ring.

There are so many gullible people out there. An insane number of people believed the Clinton sex ring story. What if there was a computerized film to "prove" that it was true.

People are also always looking for blackmail opportunities, or to make it look like people did something bad that they didn't do.

Already, people hack into computers, making it look like they were committing crimes. Imagine using this Light Stage technology to produce videos for blackmail or worse that "show" the victim doing something terrible.

The lines between reality and fiction are blurring, be it politicians who do it by repeating false things, or people who use technology to make things up and pass them off as real.

This is another example of this blurring.

What kind of world will we live in when we can't distinguish the difference between what is really going on before our eyes, and what is pure fiction?

Weird But Satisfying Video Of Things Melting

A melting keyboard becomes something that
looks like a zinnia  

I guess some people had some time on their hands and decided to melt everyday objects like computer key boards and cell phones, then film it.
   
The resulting video is actually quite cool, in a weird way.  

Here it is:

Haunting, Strangely Beautiful Video Of Abandoned City Near Chernobyl

Trees grow atop a roof, and invade a building
in abandoned Pripyat, near the Chernobyl
nuclear disaster. From a drone film by Danny Cooke.  

The worst nuclear plant disaster in history happened in Chernobyl, in what is now Ukraine, almost 30 years ago, in 1986.

When the disaster happened, the nearby city of Pripyat, population about 50,000, was hastily evacuated because of the radiation. Nobody was able to return, and the city is slowly crumbling away.

A film maker and cinematographer named Danny Cooke was recently hired by the CBS show "60 Minutes" to help them produce a piece on the Chernobyl disaster.

While there, Cooke flew a camera-equipped drone over the ruined city, creating a post-apocalyptic horror show that is simultaneously beautiful.

You see how life at an amusement park, a school, and in bland Soviet-style apartment blocks just came to a halt in an instant during that April of 1986 when Chernobyl spewed all that radiation far and wide.

Nature is reclaiming Pripyat. Probably a radioactive, dangerous nature, but nature. Trees are starting to grow on roofs of the old buildings. Tree branches are poking through broken windows, growing up against the concrete buildings.

Those trees will finally swallow the remains of the city one day. In the video, Cooke also intersperses the drone view with interior scenes.

The top of an abandoned ferris wheel in abandoned Pripyat,
from the film by Danny Cooke.  

Piles of paperwork on a floor. School work left behind by children.

An abandoned swimming pool in a gymnasium, with poplar tree branches reaching through the windows and the last of paint on the walls chipping away and falling to the floor.

It's just such a spooky, contemplative video, made even more so by the sad song overlaid in the video.

Watch:

Thursday Dance Party: Superfun Supercut of People Dancing In Films

Supercuts from YouTube are always fun. A lot of them are little glimpses of movies that fit a theme.

Dancing seems to occur in most movies, or at least many. So here's a highly entertaining supercut of 246 movies in which people dance.

See if you can count how many movies you recognize.

If you need help, just go to the About section beneath the YouTube video. You might have to click on "more" to see them all.

Enjoy!

Beautiful Short Film Showing How Dogs and Cats Live Better Than We Do

OK, let's get the complaints out of the way first. There's a point to this, trust me.

It's early Monday morning. I'm stressed. My husband just left for an out of town trip for work. He'll be gone for a week and I miss him already.

A promotional shot for the wonderful, beautiful
"Savour Every Moment" short film.  

One of our two dogs, the older, wiser one, Bailey, is sick. He won't eat, and he's lethargic. We don't know what's wrong. He's probably going to the veterinarian this afternoon. I'm terribly worried about him.

I'm behind with work and the work keeps piling up. I can't even find time to keep up with the messes I'm making, or break away for just a half hour to go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription I need.

Sigh.

Alright, done with the complaints. Life isn't bad, of course, it's good. The problems outlined above are trivial. (Except for Bailey, of course)

All that said, I know I sometimes need to change my perspective. We all need that nudge some time.  I found a reminder, in the form of a beautiful short film,  on how to live that moved me to tears.

It's probably just my mood. But still.

Filmmaker Keith Hopkin has come up with a short film called "Savour Every Moment."  All it is is pretty much just dogs and cats playing, being goofy, having sublime, quiet moments.  Their lives seem so complete. I guess there's something to living in the moment.

Hopkin's  Facebook page also has lots of wonderful dog and other animal photos, to Savour some more

The notes on the YouTube video, which you will see at the bottom of this post, tell the story best:

"Dogs and cats seem to possess some inner secret to enjoying life.

They're able to savour every single moment of the day; all the fun moments, and the goofy ones. The playful moments, the loving moments. If our pets could talk, they might tell us: "When you're happy, don't forget to tell your face. Napping is beauty sleep for the soul. Eat like nobody's watching."

Oh, how I wish I could learn to live like that more often!  We all do. The animals in the video are giving us a primer on how to do that, and so do my Boys, Jackson the Cocker Spaniel and Bailey the Wonder Dog.

Jackson and Bailey often make me stop my work, my responsibilities, my obligations, to tussle with a toy, enjoy a nice chest or back rub, or just cuddle on the floor or couch.

They try really hard to tell me to live like this all the time, not just sometimes.

I know I can't live like them, of course. Humans have to be "productive" and "responsible"  I wonder if that frustrates the Boys, or do they just patiently live their happy, in the moment lives, hoping I finally catch on?

At least the Boys, and the film in this post, give us a chance to take a deep breath and just live. And smile. And that's something.

Here's the wonderful video. It's your lesson for your Monday