Abram Sauer Online

I thought it would be interesting to see how the upcoming film Jules & Julia impacts the Amazon ranking of the Julia Child’s Mastering The Art of French Cooking. I will update after the film opens

But also of interest is the film’s featuring of Amy Adams blogger character. After Amy’s friend brags to her about how her blog has been bought for publishing or some such thing, Amy whines, “I can write a blog!” Oh, honey, we’ve all been there. She logs on to create a blog on Salon (turns out it IS a period piece!) to chronicle her attempt to cook all of Julia Child’s recipes in a year (a concept which we now know as “The A.J. Jacobs” which has resulted in a year of living the bible, living on dumpster food, and, gasp, attempting to bone one’s own wife on a daily basis.)

Anyway, the Adams character joins a growing list of film protagonist bloggers, from the unknown Gossip Girl to Rachel McAdams in State of Play. Good to know that Hollywood is keeping it real and making sure that, like everyone else, onscreen bloggers will be ridiculously, and fictitiously, hot.

Total Product Placement Recall presents a screen-grab of product placement from a film. Can you guess what the brand is.

This time, Cannonball Run

Click thumbnail below for the product.

The Final Destination series is all about the mysterious unseen hand killing off those who need to die in a certain order and leaving behind others to try and figure out just what the F*CK is going on. This is why it is often confused, by me anyway, with the Left Behind series.

But Final Destination specializes in Rube-Goldbergian ways of killing people. Teens don’t just die in a car wreck; they die in a car wreck after a piece of gum causes a squirrel to run out in the road which causes a tractor trailer to swerve which causes its load of steel tubes to fly into the highway which causes a woman in a minivan to slam on the brakes which causes the bicycles on top of her vacationing vehicle to fly forward into the teens’ car’s wheelbase which then sparks and makes the extra gas they were carrying to help a friend with a stranded car burst into a conflagration in which they burn alive.

The final Final Destination (”The Final Destination”) comes out this summer and from the trailer it appears to be chock full of all the kind of things that I, a person who considers all the possibilities of his own grim death enough thank you very much, won’t mind missing at all.

However. You Can’t Spell Final without the Letters “F A I L.”

Six-year-old Abigail Taylor was caught in a Minnesota pool drain which resulted in the unspeakable scenario of her guts literally being sucked out her body, a condition from which she later died:

“an evisceration of her lower intestine, which was sucked out of a 2-inch laceration in her rectum… a search of the pool filter turned up several feet of Abigail’s intestine.“

This horrific story — and many others: 170 people, mostly children, got sucked into drains and 27 of them have died since 1990 — resulted in the federal government passing the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool Safety Act, which mandates all public pools have flat safety drain covers.

Now one would think that with all the possible wild way to kill off their characters, filmmakers might have been a little more creative than to pick a method — a pool drain — which actually does kill children every year. You stay classy, Final Destination.

I love collecting old postcards. This one is apparently from an age before a certain group controlled the media.

Based on the trailers for the upcoming film “Funny People,” I’ve amended the poster to offer a more accurate title for the kind of “funny” brought by the so-humorous stars of the film.

eBay is a great place to find random bits and pieces of film memorabilia. From replicas to production-used props. eBay motors is especially interesting.

Currently over at eBay Motors, one can get some awesome film automobiles and auto memorabilia.

This Kawasaki ZX 14 is Transformers 2 themed, with art from the film. (Though Megan Fox rode an Aprila in the film.)

And how about the “other car” from the movie Idle Wild? 1937 Plymouth

There is a 1968 El Camino used in the upcoming biopic Jimmy, about Jimmy Hendrix.

Here is a 1961 Mercury Monterey used in American Gangster.  It appears the seller specializes in gangster movie car, as it sells another Mercury (1963 Comet) also used in American Gangster. Of course, looking at the film screenshots the sellers include, “used in the film” is a liberal term.

And: “With this purchase you have the opportunity to own the most seen VIPER in the world!  THE VEGAS VIPER, from the 1997 movie, VEGAS VACATION!  Everyone dreams of walking into a casino, pulling the handle of a slot machine and winning this dream car just like Rusty Griswold did.”

There is some Harley chopper that the seller claims will be in a released-soon film.

And then there’s an actual M3582 2 1/2-ton Army truck that, it’s claimed, appeared in a 2008 summer blockbuster: “ This is one of the background trucks that was used in the area 51 scene of the movie Indiana J_nes. We signed a agreement with the studio that We can’t use the name of the movie or actors for any advertising.” Hmmmm, ok. 

Interestingly, the sellers of these vehicles seem to think that the simple fact that the vehicle appeared in a  film somehow gives it extra value, even when these “starring roles” simply meant they spent two seconds parked on a street, in the background, out of focus.

I have already pointed to the awesomeness of some German posters for American films, notably Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Observe and Report.

When I saw the below, I thought it might be for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Alas, it’s just for a (still awesomely titled) documentary.

I’ve already pointed out a bunch of the Apple product placement going on this summer.  One of those notes was for the MacBook in Funny People. It appears there is a PowerBook as well. (Below)

But there is another Apple in Funny People. Except, there isn’t. An extended scene featuring a couple of the so-called funny people prominently features n iMac. But the Apple logo has been scrubbed.

Oddly enough a similar iMac can be seen in Apatow’s last film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, logo intact.

So does this signal the beginnings of entertainment producers getting tired of Apple overload in films and TV? Now that Apple isn’t exactly a unique, scruffy brand with attitude, but istead a mass-market juggernaut, will we see more and more of the Apple logos ghosted? This is already happening in advertisements and some television, as seen below in Veronica Mars and a Health mag ad.

Of course, it culd also just be that Funny People is embarrassed of its product placements, showing cleaned versions of itself in trailers, reserving the full brands and their logos for the film audiences. Indeed, the non-iMac above is a screenshot from a trailer while the MacBook and PowerBook shots are official production stills, not widely circulated to potential audiences.

Showing more that this latter theory may be true is another example of an online and in-theaters only long-form trailer screenshot (left) vs. a shorter, widely-seen TV ad screenshot (right). In this case though, Funny People seems to be embarrassed about its clear Diet Coke placement.

It is over and over again stated that one of the keys to successful product placement is getting your placed product into a film as a “character.” Think “Wilson” from Castaway. Well, from the below screenshot of a throwaway story about weekend box office numbers, it seems the Camero has successfully moved into this coveted product placement area.

Except. Did anyone buy a Wilson ball because of its successful characterization in Castaway? A placement, by the way, that was 99-percent assuredly not paid for (like the fact, which many on both sides of the product placement debate may find absolutely shocking, that FedEx also paid zero dollars for its role in film, outside providing FedEx-branded resources and supplies).  Probably not. Or no more anyway that they did use FedEx over, say, DHL because of the former’s role in the film.

From a practitioner level, the Camero’s Transformers placement has a number of things going for it. First and foremost of which is that it (the placement) is of a significantly redesigned model that hasn’t been in-market for long while at the same time not being a completely new brand, a handicap which would often leads many to confusion or forgetfulness.  Secondly, Camero’s timing could not have been more perfect; teasingly introducing the new Camero model in the first film a few years ago, the brand now pounds down hard in the least film at the exact time (no accident) that the model is available for order.

Additionally, Camero has done a much better job than have many internal combustion brands at capitalizing on its particular recent starring role (see my ongoing problems with Jeep and Harley). For example, Google “camero transformers” and you will see the brand’s made a ad buy directing searchers to a relatively cool GM site. (Meanwhile, do the same for “jeep terminator” and this very sad site you’re reading now is the fourth top result, before any official Jeep site whatsoever. Pitiful.)

Ok. So Camero is doing a good job, comparatively, of drawing attention to its latest film role (which, existing exposure considered, isn’t some insurmountably feat). But will Bumblebee be able to move beyond “cool” to moving GM autos in the marketplace? By some report, the Camero’s transformational role is a already a bone-fide hit. Reports of above-average pre-orders have the Camero looking like the next James Bomd’s Goldeneye BMW Z3. Hey there product lacement grad students and researchers, make room in your dissertations/trade-books for a while new (long-awaitied and fresh) case study chapter. (You might even be able to finally stop using the tired Red Stripe example!)

USA Today even claims that “GM sold 5,463 Cameros in May, the first month of the sporty car’s revival, compared with the 8,812 Mustangs sold by Ford. Chrysler sold 2,695 of the rival  Dodge Challenger it brought a year ago” adding “Camaro may catch Ford’s Mustang in monthly sales when it has enough available.” A lofty claim against one of auto’s product placement leaders going back to Bullit. Nonetheless, this is a major success considering GM has not formally paid for the placement.

Would the Camero model relaunch be successful without the Transformers attention? Probably. But certainly not as much. And that simple fact makes all the guff the brand might get for its bloated roel in the film series worth it. Is it going to single-handedly save GM? No. But it’s good for sales and for better for morale. USA Today: “Dealer Mike Martin of Dudley Martin Chevrolet in Manassas, Va., says the Camaro has “hit the sweet spot.” The 14 people on his waiting list up to 10 months ago have their cars and he has another seven ordered for new customers.”

Finally is the notable fact that the Camero’s two Transformers roles, in both its new and old junker model forms, has effectively erased from memory the fact that the original Bumblebee was a Volkswagen Beetle. One wonders if VW reps fought for, or even knew about, the opportunity.

Lordy. Does John C. McGinley have a contractual clause now to take his shirt off in all the feature films he lends his manic-nut character-act to? Are We Done Yet and Wild Hogs.