Creepiest movie poster of all time?

I was just perusing Slate's "A Brief History of the Bikini" when this image jumped out and touched me inappropriately:

IMDB provides this plot summary:

Baby photographer Ronnie Jackson, on death row in San Quentin, tells reporters how he got there: taking care of his private-eye neighbor's office, Ronnie is asked by the irresistible Baroness Montay to find the missing Baron. There follow confusing but sinister doings in a gloomy mansion and a private sanatorium, with every plot twist a parody of thriller cliches. What are the villains really after? Can Ronnie beat a framed murder rap?

Mocking the pretentious fashion "film"

There's been a trend, lately, for fashion brands to use the freedom of social media to give in to every excess in their advertising. As a result, their online ads have grown into excruciatingly pretentious fashion "films" featuring models living fantasy lives.

Vena Cava's budget label, Viva Vena has opted to satirize this trend with this film by Matthew Frost, featuring Lizzy Caplan:



Tip via Slate.

Welcome to Obamaville

Rick Santorum's team have cooked up a rather epic plan to discredit the policies of US President Barack Obama: Obamaville.

It's a dystopian "Anytown, USA" in 2014, two years into President Obama's second term: People are out of work, Main Street is a ghost town, gas prices are up, religious bigotry (sorry... "freedom of religion") is under attack and people have to deal with the horrors of semi-socialized healthcare.



Oh yeah, and the USA is under nuclear threat from Iran.

Or is its biggest threat its own President?

Dun dun dun...

David Weigel at Slate talks about the weird TV thing. To me its the least of this ad's idiocies.

For example, what is the meaning behind this baby image? Is this supposed to be "pro-life"? If so, it's confusing.

And what the hell does this symbolize? Sexual immorality? Loss of free speech? Too many public libraries full of secular books?

And then we're transported back to the industrial revolution for some reason.

Hey, cool! It's The Matrix!

Perhaps they'll explain all these random images when the 8-part webisode series launches on the Santorum campaign site in a couple of weeks.

But for the time being, let's imagine what "Santorumville" would look like. (I'm thinking something like Stepford, Connecticut, but with more Jesus.)

F'd Ad Fridays: The real story of Elf on the Shelf

The Elf on the Shelf phenomenon is disturbing enough for some people, but the good folks at Taiwan's Next Media Animation take it to the next level:



Can't sleep. Elf will eat me.

Sesame Street's catchiest tune was stolen from Italian porn

"Vorrei manamanarti!"

The most infectious tune ever written was apparently revisited in the new Muppet Movie (which I have yet to see) but I recall it best from the golden age of Sesame Street:



Slate tracked down the original song to, of all places,  a 1968 Italian soft-core movie called Sweden: Heaven and Hell by Luigi Scattini.

From Amazon: "Edmund Purdom narrates a pseudo-documentary about sexuality in Sweden. It shows contraceptives for teen girls, lesbian nightclubs, wife swapping, porno movies, biker gangs, and Walpurgis Night celebrations. It also examines Sweden's purported drug, drinking and suicide problems. It features the original appearance of the Piero Umiliani's nonsense song 'Mah Nà Mah Nà' which was later popularized by 'Sesame Street' and 'The Muppet Show'"

Piero Umiliani, according to Wikipedia, "composed the scores for many exploitation films in the 1960s and 1970s, covering genres such as spaghetti western, Eurospy, Giallo, and soft sex films. Although not as widely regarded as, for example, Ennio Morricone or Riz Ortolani, he helped form the style of the typical European 1960s and 1970s jazz influenced film soundtrack, that later experienced a revival in films such as Kill Bill, and "Crepuscolo Sul Mare" in Ocean's Twelve."

In other words, he may be the most awesome composer you've never heard of. But Henson heard it when it briefly charted on US radio, and gave it eternal life.

Here's the original clip. It is pretty uncontroversial.