Category: Uncategorized

Filmmaker Ladd Ehlinger Jr. earned a measure of notoriety in 2010 with his ads for Dale Peterson, the Alabama agriculture commissioner candidate, that showed Peterson waving his gun around and ranting about the "thugs and criminals" and "dummies" who were driving Alabama into the ground. Ehlinger also dressed up Nancy Pelosi as the Wicked Witch of the West in ads for her 2010 opponent John Dennis. But those spots look like PTA bake-sale ads compared to Ehlinger's latest effort—the unreal spot below attacking Janice Hahn, a Democrat running for Congress in California. It's called "Give us your cash, B–ch!" and that might be the least offensive thing about it. The racial and sexual insults just keep on coming, as Ehlinger hammers Hahn on her supposed support for "gangsters." On the YouTube page, Ehlinger says his goal is "to expose stupid, corrupt politicians on all sides of the aisle with humorous but hard-hitting videos!" Where's the joke? Via Slate.

Here's the first Louis Vuitton ad with Angelina Jolie, photographed by Annie Leibovitz in Cambodia's Siem Reap province, where the actress filmed Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2000 and got the urge to pursue humanitarian activism. Women's Wear Daily got the exclusive on the image and the interview with Vuitton evp Pietro Beccari. The whole piece goes on and on about how natural Jolie looks. It opens with this: "She's barefoot, wearing her own clothes, no makeup, and toting her own elegantly weathered monogrammed Alto bag. Yet Angelina Jolie looks radiant and completely in her element, reclining on a wooden boat in a verdant, lakeside landscape." Then Beccari says: "People are not used to seeing Angelina in this situation. I like the fact that it's a real moment." Wait, is it just me, or does this image not seem like the most unrealistic, highly stylized portrait imaginable? No makeup? She's been airbrushed to the point of looking plastic. A real moment? It couldn't look more staged. None of Vuitton's ads ever look spontaneous—they all look heavily worked over, almost like paintings. Which is fine, but why pretend otherwise?