Abram Sauer Online

Chloe, a small thriller, is big on Apple. While the husband and wife clearly don’t see eye to eye on their marriage they do agree on computers.

To many it was a shock last weekend when the film Dear John blew by  ticket sales predictions by almost double to become the number one film at the box office. This week, experts like Entertainment Weekly are predicting Valentine’s Day is going open huge and that Dear John “is going to be crushed this frame by the Valentine’s Day juggernaut. If it drops 50% it should consider itself lucky.”

That’s not going to happen and not just because Valentine’s Day is more horrible than anyone expects.

The photo at the top of this post is from around my neighborhood. Those are just a few of the very humble homes displaying service stars that represent active duty personnel overseas. And that doesn’t mean in Germany.

Dear John is a sappy love story. But it also revolves entirely around a soldier serving in Afghanistan (and Iraq). But the story itself isn’t about the wars themselves (Hurt Locker). And it’s not about soldiers dealing with the toll of being soldiers (Stop Loss, Taking Chance). It’s simply a love story very specifically focused on the romance between a young soldier and a young girl… in South Carolina. Besides being a not-all-that-bad (if heavy handed) weepy romance tale, that specific situation very much appeals to a whole segment of the nation that writers of Entertainment Weekly do not come into contact with often (which is ironic as they are probably EW’s audience). It’s the same kind of thing that happens when a Tyler Perry film or a small Christian film like Fireproof open huge and all of the mainstream entertainment scrambles to ask “how the hell did that happen?”

Dear John will not be number one this weekend. But I predict the film is going to do way better than expected, again. And it’s going to remain wildly popular with soldiers, soldiers’ friends, soldiers’ wives, girlfriends and ex-girlfriends, a group that doesn’t see itself represented very often on the conventional popular entertainment landscape.

Well, it was less of a question of “if” than one of “where.” The question now is how many Apple placements will the slick little number Valentine’s Day, due out tomorrow,  boast?

Homer has an iPhone.

Earlier: Simpsons Apple Product Placement Slam Continue

The Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps teaser trailer is online and sure enough, a Mac makes it into the film.

RELATED: Jack Bauer will fight terrorism with an iPad?

City Island, also known as Jersey Shore: 20 Years Later, looks to feature a number of Macs, old and new.

Also, after the jump, a porn site gets a huge starring turn:

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If you can be bothered to look away from the lower part of this photograph you will see an Apple iPod makes a fairly big splash in the upcoming rom-com When in Rome. And, come to think of it, “when in Rome” pretty much sums up most film producers’ approaches to putting Apple products in films, no?

Left: Film named after an act of violence, due in 2010

Right: Film named after an act of violence, due in 2010

One of the key characteristics of 3D, as used in Avatar, is “limited depth of field.” Essentially, this means that the figure onscreen in 3D pops out at the audience while the background appears out of focus. An attempt to focus on the background causes what some call “Avatar h3dache.”

For product placements though, the loss of a clear background means the elimination of countless placement opportunities for a wide range of brands. Cars logos, soda names, box graphics and any number of other brand identifiers will appear to be just a swirl of blurry color. Any attempt to distinguish them will be pointless. What good is a product placement that cannot be seen?

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Taking a page from the Wall-E playbook, here’s Book of Eli working an Apple iPod placement into our apocalyptic future.But wait, is that an iPod or something else?  Scroll wheel, jack location, color? Yes. Top row of buttons? Whaaaaa?