Loud Toilet Flushing Ruled as Human Rights Violation

From Italy: the country’s supreme court has ruled in favour of a couple who sought action against one of their neighbours on the grounds that the loud flushing noise made by their toilet was “intolerable”.  Excerpts from coverage of the news by The Washington Post:

Italy’s top court has added a new human rights violation to a list commonly thought to include enslavement, torture and forced starvation: the sound of a toilet flushing at night.

That country’s supreme court cited rulings by the European Court of Human Rights in deciding a 19-year legal battle that began when a couple living in an apartment near La Spezia complained that their neighbors’ new toilet was keeping them awake with “intolerable noises,” according to the Milan-based newspaper Il Giornale.

The court was sympathetic to the couple’s struggle to sleep. The sound of flushing — “aggravated by frequent night use” — compromised their quality of life and violated the right to the free exercise of daily habits established by the European Convention on Human Rights, the appellate judge said, according to Il Giornale.

When Dance Becomes a Dialogue

That’s how Dutch designer clothing company, G-Star RAW is describing its new spot, dubbed ‘Rhythm of the Denim’, which features an exquisitely choreographed performance of tap dancing.

Link to video

What’s in a Campaign Name?

From Australia: the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator has launched a road safety campaign to teach youngsters how to drive safely when trucks are around.  The campaign name:  ‘Don’t #uck With A Truck’.

RIP Marilyn Bergman

Of the many notable songs that she co-wrote with her husband, there are a couple that I especially admire: The Way We Were and The Windmills of Your Mind.  Besides the sheer appeal of the lyrics, what has stood out for me is the way that the former embodies the soul of the movie it was written for, and the way that the latter nails the turbulence in the mind of the character it was written for.

From The Way We Were:

Memories
May be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget

From The Windmills of Your Mind:

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly
Was it something that you said

When you knew that it was over
You were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair

Handbutts

How do you show the effectiveness of a butt shower without actually showing any butts?  That was the challenge before the creative team leading this campaign.  Well, they have certainly managed to ace that, coming up with a pretty creative and cheeky visual solution (pardon the pun). 

Link to video

Link to DIY video (Apparently, this was triggered by overwhelming interest among viewers to replicate what is shown in the ad)

Discount from the Sky

A British real-estate firm has come up with, what I am tempted to describe as, an unearthly idea to entice first-time home buyers, and enhance its own visibility.  On 19 January, it will parachute a couple of house keys, somewhere over the UK.  Whoever snares the package, stands to get £10,000 towards a house deposit.

Link to campaign website

Above and Beyond Land

The new spot for Land Rover Defender is as epic and visually stunning as one might expect- and then some.

Link to video

Locked down with a Blind Date

As reported by the BBC:

A woman, only identified as Ms Wang, posted on Chinese social media platform WeChat last week that she had got locked down with her date after visiting his house for a meal.

In the post, she said that she had recently returned to the city of Zhengzhou from Guangzhou ahead of the Lunar New Year.

“I'm getting quite old, so my parents arranged more than 10 blind dates for me,” she said in this post. She wrote that her fifth date had said “he was good at cooking, and invited me to his house so he could cook a meal”.

However, during the meal, she discovered that her date’s community had gone into swift lockdown due to cases of Covid-19, and ended up being unable to leave his house for several days.

Ms Wang told media on Sunday that she had been stuck for four days at her date’s house, and that the situation was “not ideal”.

The Guardian had this to add about her experience, quoting her from an interview to a Shanghai newspaper:

“Besides the fact he’s as mute as a wooden mannequin, everything else [about him] is pretty good. Despite his food being mediocre, he’s still willing to cook, which I think is great.”

File tax returns like a cowboy

In a new campaign, tax filing platform TaxSlayer is promoting its services as a way to get tax refunds with ease.  I don’t claim to know the mindset of American taxpayers but it strikes me as rather strange that TaxSlayer has chosen to compare the experience of filing returns on its website, with that of lassoing a cow- even if it is literally a cash cow.

Link to video

Medusa’s Makeover

This new addition to Amazon’s ‘Prime changes everything’ campaign is a wonderful mix of a great idea, splendid visuals, deft little touches, with a dash of wicked humour.

Link to video

Watch movies under hypnosis

Remember Göteborg Film Festival’s ‘isolated cinema’ offer, from last year?  This year, the organisers have another unusual and extreme offer- to  watch screenings under hypnosis. As explained on the website:

The Hypnotic Cinema is a unique experiment with three exclusive screenings at Stora Teatern in Gothenburg. Before the film starts, a hypnotist will perform a mass hypnosis that will transform the audience’s state of mind in accordance with the mood and theme of the specific film. After the screening, the hypnotist will break the hypnosis. The selected films are all suggestive and in different ways they bring the audience on an emotional journey where different states of consciousness are explored.

Link to promotional video

Norwegian conscripts asked to return underwear due to supply shortage

From a Euronews report:

Norwegian conscripts will now have to return their pants, bras, and socks at the end of their military service, as the Norwegian army is experiencing stock problems, public broadcaster NRK reported on Friday.

Until recently, it was customary for demobilised conscripts to leave their garrisons with the underwear they had been issued during their service in the army.

But the Covid-19 pandemic has seriously complicated the flow of supplies, leading the Norwegian army last year to invite conscripts to hand over the most intimate items in their kit to their successors.

“The decision to reuse this part of the kit, will help us have more volume in circulation and increase the delivery capacity of the equipment. We have too little in stock,” Army Logistics spokesman Hans Meisingset explained.

“The linen is washed, cleaned and checked. What we distribute is in good condition,” he said.

A conscripts’ representative, however, criticised recurrent shortcomings that could affect operational capabilities.

“Severe shortages of equipment and clothing can potentially affect operational readiness and, in the worst case, the safety of the soldier,” Eirik Sjøhelle Eiksund told the Norwegian trade publication Forsvarets Forum.

Guarding NATO’s northern borders from neighbouring Russia, Norway maintains a semi-mandatory military service, calling up around 8,000 boys and girls each year, selecting only the most motivated to serve in the age group.

RIP Sidney Poitier

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
  - ‘You don’t own me’

RIP Peter Bogdanovich

TCM tribute from a few years ago

Trailer of Saint Jack- a version that features Bogdanovich himself, introducing the movie

Sheep Enlisted for Vaccine Campaign

From a Reuters report:

A German campaigner is hoping the emotional appeal of 700 sheep forming the shape of a giant syringe will reach the hearts and minds of people hesitating to take a COVID-19 injection.

Germany has lower vaccination rates most other Western European nations, although some are simply unsure if they should get a jab rather than vehemently opposed to vaccination.

“Sheep are popular with people and carry positive emotional connotations. So perhaps they can reach many people emotionally when logic and scientific reasoning don't do the job,” the organiser of the campaign, Hanspeter Etzold, told Reuters.

Etzold works with shepherds, companies and animals to run team-building events in the northern German town of Schneverdingen.

“I have noticed how enthusiastically the sheep are received and that it simply reaches people deep inside, which is perhaps not possible rationally, with rational arguments,” he said.

The animals, which belong to shepherd Steffen Schmidt and his wife, followed pieces of bread spread on the ground to form the 100 metre long syringe shape as they were filmed by drone.

Link to video

Man puts up billboards to look for a wife

As explained in this report:

29-year-old Mohammed Malik has taken over a series of billboards across Birmingham in the hopes of finding his perfect match.

Malik, who’s originally from London, chose Birmingham to activate this hilarious campaign because of the “top quality food spots in the city centre, bustling Alum Rock (and) the incredible mosques.”

For those interested in responding, he has posted a form on his website along with other details about himself.

Spot the Abuse

A glitzy game show is the unlikely but effective setting for a message about coercive control in this domestic abuse PSA.

Link to video

Editorial Standards

As has been widely reported, the decision by the BBC to have Alan Dershowitz analyse the Ghislaine Maxwell verdict was dubious and dumb.  Among other things, Dershowitz had been Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer and has himself been accused of being in cahoots with him.  The subsequent statement by the BBC has added to the scorn and ridicule.

This is what journalist David Simon had to say in his brutally eloquent style:

Hate to be an old-timer who chirps about better days. But at my old paper, a disaster this raw and embarrassing required us to shoot a senior editor, burn the cadaver in a newsroom pyre, then mix the ashes with printer’s ink and sent out in the home final as a warning to others.

Arguably, the most striking riposte came from the Sunday Sport- a paper with a reputation for loose fact-checking and which was once described on the BBC as “a diligent exponent of tabloid journalism’s lower reaches.”

That’s putting it mildly. It didn’t even meet OUR editorial standards.

Focused Detectives

Apple’s campaign to promote the cinematic capabilities of its iPhone 13 pro takes a distinctly amusing turn with this new, tongue-in-cheek commercial.

Link to video

Squirrel on rampage put down

Excerpts from a report out of Wales:

A squirrel’s reign of terror has been brought to an end after it caused chaos in a North Wales town.

The grey squirrel was branded “psycho” and “nutty” after indiscriminately attacking pensioners, children and pets in Buckley, Flintshire. At least 18 people were injured over two days after the squirrel went rogue.

Like something out of a low-budget horror movie, it launched itself at people as they put out their bins – and even chased people down streets.  Some were left bitten, bruised and bleeding by the rascally rodent. A few even needed tetanus jabs. 

The squirrel was quickly dubbed “Stripe” by locals after the evil character from the Gremlins film.

Forty eight hours of tyranny was finally brought to an end on Monday, December 27, when it was caught in a humane trap by 65-year-old gran Corrine Reynolds. 

After she failed to contact animal rescue charities, Stripe was put on death row.  Corrine, who works as a home carer, asked vets to put him to sleep, as it is illegal to release grey squirrels back into the wild.