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So it turns out that if you make a commercial in which two men accidentally touch lips and then mortify their flesh in horror, some people will find it homophobic. Masterfoods USA has announced that it’s pulling the Snickers “Kiss” ad after protests from gay groups, thus ending the TV run of the most risque use of a chocolate confection …
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…possibly, nothing. It’s all in the hands of Time Warner Cable, which somewhere in a four-hour window today is supposed to install two Cablecards in my new HD TiVo. (Don’t know what Cablecards are? Good for you! I’d explain, but that would be too dorky even for Lev’s blog.)
I know, I know. When the TiVo Series 3 came out, I whined …
A number of papers have been reporting that Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has agreed to give a home to an unrealized Jeff Koons project — a replica of a 1940s locomotive that would hang nose down from a 161-foot tall crane. As Koons envisions it, every so often the thing will chug, turn its wheels and …
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Three items from the mediabiztertainment news: (1) Apple Corps and Apple Inc. have resolved their long-running name dispute; (2) Jeff Zucker is poised to be named head of NBC Universal today; and (3) Viacom and YouTube are still at a standoff over YouTube’s rights (and Viacom’s compensation) concerning copyrighted video.
Each in its way …
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With a settlement of $2 million, our long national nightmare is over. (And Hasbro will have to start paying for Lite Brite advertising again.) Now to attack the real urban threat: sneakers hanging from power lines.
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How I Met Your Mother (weirdly, it’s about the Super Bowl, as if to promote its network’s broadcast retroactively), Heroes, 24–although, after the last couple episodes, it’s on thin ice with me. A little more Bauer family drama and they can blow the whole thing up as far as I’m concerned.
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Variety is reporting that Jeff Zucker is going to be promoted to chief executive of the entire NBC Universal company, later today or tomorrow. It’s a curious move, because Zucker has headed up the NBC television business for the last several years, during which, you may recall, there has not exactly been a ton of good news for the …
Over the freezing cold weekend I curled up with The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts by Milan Kundera, the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It’s largely a meditation on fiction, its meanings and methods, but some of what he says applies to the arts generally. That would describe his passage about why it would have been …
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My Super Bowl ad-review extravanganza is now up. It doesn’t take comments, so feel free to use this post to tell me how thoroughly full of it I am.
To be honest, I’m too exhausted and commercialed-out to sum this up into one big wrap-up synthesis (I was shocked when I looked at the finished product online–65 freaking ads? How do they …
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Continuing what is fast becoming a tradition here at Tuned In–namely, letting C. Brown come up with post topics for me–our correspondent asks:
Who do you think is going to bite it on Heroes? I’m praying for Simone.
Glad you reminded me, C. Brown, because while I have no inside knowledge I do have a theory. The producers have been …
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It was a night to do a Midwestern boy’s heart good. There was Indianapolis squaring off against Chicago, of course. But in the end–or rather at the half–it was Minneapolis who tore up the field. When CBS announced Prince as the Super Bowl halftime act, I worried it meant that the wizard of Paisley Park had been officially neutered. No …
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Elsewhere on time.com, I’ve reviewed last night’s Super Bowl ads. (I’ll post a link once the extravaganza goes live. Update: Knock yourself out.) In other words, I already gave at the office–the home office–so I’m turning over the comments for your reactions. Any of the spots close the deal?
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OK, so 45 minutes to game time — there are what, like three people using the Internet right now? Still, I’m multitasking with my laptop in front of the TV, so I may as well post. I’m going to be rating the Super Bowl ads for our Monday-morning postmortem at time.com. But I may have already found my winner in the pregame show: the …
