A man pushes his electric mower along his front lawn in about as mundane a slice of weekend life as you can get. However, it seems there’s a slice of something else on his grass. He stops the mower, turns it off and looks down to see what is in his path.
The man bends over to pick up the object, which is a detached human ear. He stares at it intently as if mulling over who it belongs to, how it became detached from its owner and how it wound up on his lawn.
But his curiosity quickly dissipates as he throws the ear over the fence to the lawn of his next door neighbor.
A super then “explains” this seemingly inexplicable behavior. It reads, “After 16 days of film, nothing will faze you,” followed by an end tag for the Vancouver International Film Festival.
“Ear” is one of four similarly themed commercials in an offbeat campaign directed by the Perlorian Brothers via Soft Citizen, Toronto, for agency TBWA, Vancouver, B.C. (The Perlorians are handled stateside by Furlined, Santa Monica.)
The agency ensemble included creative director/copywriter Paul Little, copywriter Brent Wheeler, art director Mark Mizgala and producer Mike Hasinoff.
Eva Preger and Link York executive produced for Soft Citizen, with Tuula Hopp serving as producer. The DP was Tico Poulakakis.
Editor was Bill Hardman of Tonic Post, Vancouver.
Supreme Court Seems Likely To Uphold A Law That Could Force TikTok To Shut Down On Jan. 19
The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company.
Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company's connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States.
Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok's ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company's requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations.
If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to "go dark" on Jan. 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the justices on behalf of TikTok.
At the very least, Francisco urged, the justices should enter a temporary pause that would allow TikTok to keep operating. "We might be in a different world again" after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, also has called for the deadline to be pushed back to give him time to negotiate a "political resolution." Francisco served as Trump's solicitor general in his first presidential term.
But it was not clear whether any justices would choose such a course. And only Justice Neil Gorsuch sounded like he would side with TikTok to find that the ban violates the Constitution.
Gorsuch labeled arguments advanced by the Biden administration' in defense of the law a... Read More