By Mae Anderson, Technology Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --Each year Super Bowl ads offer a snapshot of what’s going on in the culture.
But this year’s Budweiser ad released Tuesday featuring an immigrant’s travel to the U.S. became suddenly more topical than Anheuser-Busch executives were probably expecting, released days after President Donald Trump’s executive order Friday temporarily banning refugees and nearly all citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The 60-second ad called “Born the Hard Way,” shows Anheuser-Busch co-founder Adolphus Busch traveling by boat from Germany to the U.S. in 1850s. He goes through travails including jumping off a burning boat and catching a glimpse of Anheuser-Bush’s Clydesdales mascots, before meeting fellow immigrant Eberhard Anheuser.
“When nothing stops your dream, this is the beer we drink,” the copy reads.
Ricardo Marques, vice president of Budweiser, in a statement said the company has been working on the ad since May.
“The powerful thing about the story is the fact that it’s a human story and the human dream resonating,” he said. “Of course it would be foolish to think the current context is not putting additional eyeballs (on the ad), but that was absolutely the not the intent and not what makes the spot as special as it is.”
He added that Budweiser as a beer brand is inherently bipartisan.
“On Super Bowl Sunday, we want to bring people together in bars across the nation — that’s who we are.”
The Super Bowl at the NRG Stadium in Houston between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons airs Sunday on Fox.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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