Category Archives: TV

Worst Ad Campaigns — Carfax

There are annoying ads and then there are really annoying ads. The campaign for used car subscription database CARFAX.com has gone from the former, when it used to feature skeezy dealers with a fox puppet trying to dupe buyers, to the latter, with the agency doubling down on the creepy talking Car Fox spokesthingy and introducing a managerie of other critters to help uncover the true condition of potential used car purchases. Because nothing says “reliable detailed research” like a terrifying drop into the Car Fox’s secret high tech lair so talking CGI animals can report back to him about used cars. Or something. Wes Anderson this ain’t, folks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5jEBEuktx0

I guess you could say it’s a little like a Disney movie with the customers being the nice humans transported into a magic world and the not-very-cute animals reporting on crash history instead of bursting into song. Uh, oh. I hope I haven’t given the creative team a new idea of where to take this damn campaign next. Because if there’s one rule of thumb I have for ads it’s that, along with omniscient talking babies, yappity animals are the worst sort of cheap trick used to obfuscate the lack of a clear, creative message with a cloyingly cutesy mnemonic device. Look, I admit the Carfax-Carfox ploy is so stupid it works on the most annoying level of simple association. But if those helpful little beasties start bursting into elaborate musical numbers I just may throw my flatscreen out the window.

Gorgeous Lady of the Week — Lucy Liu

Lucy Liu has had a pretty long run as one of the sexiest women on the planet. The Chinese-American beauty first burst onto the scene back in the late 90s as the ultra-hot, ultra-nasty Ling Woo on David E. Kelley’s Ally McBeal. Despite deliberately trading on a lot of stereotypes surrounding the cruel yet sensual “dragon lady”, Liu’s character was one of the first Asian females to be featured as a principal character in American television.

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From there it was a one-way ticket to the top, as Ms. Liu was immediately tapped for big budget Hollywood features in 2000 like the Jackie Chan-Owen Wilson vehicle Shanghai Noon and, more importantly, the Charlie’s Angels reboot alongside Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore, a huge popular success. She had a key supporting part in the Oscar-winning Chicago in 2002 and then reprised her role as Alex Munday in 2003’s sequel, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

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2003 also saw her work for auteur Quentin Tarantino on his cult revenge epic Kill Bill (Volume I & II) as samurai sword wielding yakuza boss O-Ren Ishii, the first killer to be crossed off Uma Thurman’s list. Beautiful and lethal, O-Ren’s snowy duel with the Bride is a coup de cinema in a major work that deserves to be revisited. A pale imitation like 2012’s The Man with the Iron Fists, in which she also starred alongside Russell Crowe, shows just how good a movie Kill Bill was in retrospect.

Seeming to get lovelier by the year, Ms. Liu is now an ageless 46 and continues to do important work, returning to television for the critically acclaimed cop drama Southland and the highly entertaining CBS hit series Elementary, where she plays an unconventional Watson to Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes in New York City. She is also an accomplished visual artist and active in several charities, including as a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign. Beautiful, accomplished, pioneering and whip-smart: Lucy Liu is the total package and definitely a MFL kind of woman. In fact, why she hasn’t been a Bond girl is beyond us. Better yet, we think she’d make a killer 008. You’re welcome, Eon Productions.

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