It’s been ages and ages since I linked to my wife, as she had taken a long break from posting, but recently she addressed an interesting issue on her blog, and it is tied to advertising. The Dove “real beauty” campaign came out with a new spot that sheds some light on the work involved in creating a billboard campaign for a beauty product, in a tv spot called “Evolution.”

The time-lapse effect is especially cool when it begins to show the various changes made in Photoshop. Watch it for yourself:

Yes, today I went to the theatre early and bought six tickets to see Borat the Movie. After reading the reviews in the paper this week (each and every single one of them overwhelmingly positive!) and some reviewers even going so far as to say it is the funniest movie they’ve ever seen (better than Caddyshack??), I’m really looking forward to it.

Alex and I, and some of the old CHUM TV pals are getting together tonight to have a good laugh, hence the half dozen tickets. I’ll post my “no-spoilers” review tonight or tomorrow as an update to this post.

Don’t like Borat? Jump on the Stop Borat bandwagon, which clearly has nothing at all to do with marketing the movie, and everything to do with having it removed from theatres. Can’t get enough of Borat? Check him out on MySpace, for plenty of YouTube hilarity.

Later: Well, it certainly was funny, start to finish. Like I said, I don’t want to play spoils for anyone planning to see it, but I have to say this; Sacha Baron Cohen makes more sacrifices for his comedy than any other comedian on the planet today. And yes, that means you too, Johnny Knoxville.

He channels Andy Kauffman, at times, with his unflinching dedication to staying in character (see any talk-show in America this week for examples of this; Cohen will appear only as Borat) and his penchant for pure shock value. Political correctness has been refreshingly abandoned for the duration of the film, and almost no group is safe from some form of ridicule.

One thing that i found a bit disappointing is that I had seen many of the gags in the film. I wasn’t exactly perusing the net for all things Borat, but I did see several trailers for the film, and I was in on a surprising number of jokes before they materialized. The thunderous roars of laughter from the rest of the audience made me wish that I wasn’t; hence my desire to keep this review “details free.”

Still, there were plenty of surprises; like when Borat visits a Confederate antique gift shop, and the ensuing gags have nothing at all to do with the obvious potential for politically-charged conflict.

Another item of note was the complete lack of actor credits, aside from Cohen and his sidekick Producer Azamat Bagatov. Everyone else is presumably an unsuspecting participant in the fun- having already signed their release form, thereby volunteering their dignity in exchange for a few laughs at their expense. I for one believe that there were several people “in on” the gags, but the beauty of the film is that you get to make up your own mind about what’s real and what isn’t.

If anyone else has seen it and wants to add their input, I’d love to hear what you thought.

I finally took the plunge and put a video podcast together. What you’re about to watch is Episode One of what could continue to be a podcast series from us here at Tell Ten Friends. Apologies in advance for the hilariously amateur antics of yours truly. It gets better, I assure you.

This is the true essence of a podcast experiment, in many forms. For starters, I’m simultaneously hosting it on Revver (seen below) Youtube, MySpace and I might even test Google Video as well. (itunes in the future?) More explanation following the video:

I’m measuring several metrics here. First, the amount of response I get in the form of comments, both here on the blog, (for my ego, I assure you) and on the various sites where it’s being shared. Also, I’m monitoring the number of views at each, to see which “channel” is the most popular for this kind of message.

**Update: YouTube has problems with lip sync, not sure why when the others don’t.

Lastly, I’m watching what this does for my site statistics and subscriptions. Are the video sites referring traffic to my site?
Are people linking to it and causing a rise in subscriptions? Okay, might be a bit early for that on this first crack at it

So you can see how important it is that I hear your opinion. It’s not too difficult to put the podcast together, but it takes a bit of time, and I will be encouraged to continue if the feedback is plentiful, let alone good or bad. I’m no Ze Frank, afterall. (More jokes on how I’m ripping him off in the editing, later)

As I mention in the video, if the feedback is what I’m hoping it will be, (hint) then I’ll continue the series with episodes that teach you “How to Build Your Own Video Podcast,” where I’ll go step-by step explaining how I create mine.

Let’s hear from you!