The big news in the auto world is Jaguar’s controversial rebranding:
Apparently they’re going all-electric:
And in so doing they’ve evidently cast their lot with some sort of dystopian genderless future:
Of course, Dudley Moore pitched the definitive Jaguar ad campaign way back in 1990, and it remains the road we all wish they’d taken:
Meanwhile, over at Volvo, they’re making videos about how if you don’t buy one your wife and unborn child are going to die:
Volvo posted a 3 min and 46 second ad on Instagram, shot by Hoyte Van Hoytema, the cinematographer of Interstellar and Oppenheimer.
— Guillaume Huin (@HuinGuillaume) November 21, 2024
It goes against every single rule you can think about as a social lead. Length. Format. Over-produced.
Every comment under the ad said it… pic.twitter.com/wkmghuP4ye
Oh, give me a break.
This too is way off the mark, and once again one need look no further than this:
What the hell do they pay these ad agencies for, anyway?
Speaking of media, nobody’s written more insightfully than me on the role of the gravel bike in modern American cinema:
And here’s the latest film to feature a gravel bike-riding protagonist:
I haven’t actually finished watching it yet, and while it’s certainly not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, I wouldn’t exactly implore you to drop everything you’re doing and watch it immediately, either. However, unlike the Ben Affleck debacle, it is highly significant in that it’s perhaps the first time in modern movie history a filmmaker has used a bicycle to convey the positive traits of a character. Until now, it’s always been the vehicle of choice for weird man-children:
Or weird man-children:
Or else their polar opposite, the Salinger-esque reclusive old fusspot:
But now we have for perhaps the first time ever a fiercely independent and extremely capable ex-Marine who finds himself in a Rambo-esque struggle against law enforcement, the system, and society as a whole, and his use of a bicycle as his primary mode of transportation is used not to mock him, but instead to establish him as a self-sufficient renegade and certified badass.
Nevertheless, there’s one major problem, which is that in the movie he’s fighting against a small town police department that’s sustaining itself by engaging in rampant civil asset forfeiture, and the plot is set in motion when they run him down and fleece him of the $30-or-so thousand he’s carrying in his backpack:
My problem with this is that, immediately prior to getting run down, our hero is riding with two headphones in, listening to Iron Maiden at top volume, and swerving all over the road, lost in a reverie.
So are we really to believe this incredibly savvy and resourceful main character would be that out of it while riding through the deep south with a shitload of cash in his backpack? Also, he’s on a gravel bike! Had he found an alternate route on a dirt road he could have avoided the entire situation.
Oh, well. I continue to await a movie in which a cyclist is not, in some way, completely hapless. But at least he’s not wearing a helmet.