Clever Business Cards, Part III

So many of you were very kind and sent me cards that were not included in my last two posts, so here is the final batch of clever business cards.

Fortune Cookie

Optometrist

Greek Restaurant, business cards printed on broken plates

Clever Business Cards, Part I  & Part II

 

Apple Sends Out Invitations For September 9th Special Event

Apple has begun sending out notices to various members of the media inviting them to a special event on September 9, one week from today. The invitation, entitled “Let’s Rock,” looks like an iPod Now Playing screen, with the album art replaced by one of Apple’s common silhouette iPod dancers, and the track information replaced by the event details. The “Let’s Rock” event will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts in San Francisco, and is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time. 

 

Lego Batman Gets Animated For 20-Minute Short, Possible Cartoon Series

Gameindustry.biz has reported that Traveler’s Tales — developers of the upcoming Lego Batman video game — will be moving into the realm of animation with a cartoon based on the latest installment of their franchise of Lego-based games. In their exclusive interview with Traveler’s Tales Producer, Rich Earl, the company plans on helping to produce one, 20-minute cartoon, which they hope would then springboard into a TV series for kids.

Unlike many of the other Lego game titles (i.e. Lego Star Wars and Indiana Jones), Lego Batman is unique in that it is actually not based on a movie franchise, but rather the comics, lending itself to a world of Batman heroes and villains.

Robin’s Big Date Starring Justin Long & Sam Rockwell

Dr. Horrible Sings Again

Dr. Horrible hasn’t given up on his plans of world domination — and neither have his creators. The promised soundtrack so you can actually sing along to “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” will be downloadable on iTunes as of September 2, and the next comic is already being written by Zack Whedon.

“The soundtrack is rapidly approaching,” Whedon said. “And all those cut-offs, where the songs would just end,” such as on “Freeze Ray,” when Neil Patrick Harris sings, “I will stop…” just as he’s interrupted and forced to stop singing, “they will be on there as they are on the show. They’re just in a much higher quality, and no sound effects. I sing along to everything and it’ll be weeks before I can stop. It’s driven me mad. Luckily, I can still hold down a job.”

That job would be writing for J.J. Abrams’ new television show “Fringe” and writing “Fringe” comics, but on weekends, Whedon is freelancing on more Dr. Horrible-themed webcomics. His first one focused on Captain Hammer, and the next will be about Horrible’s friend-in-crime, Moist.

“I’m interested in exploring how Moist became Moist,” Whedon said. “It’ll be ‘Moist: Humidity Rising.’ He is so far from making it into the Evil League of Evil, because he really isn’t that bad at all.” (Instead, Moist is in the Henchman’s Union, because he accumulated enough hours “assisting evil people, and inconveniencing people. It doesn’t take much,” Whedon said.)

Whedon said they’ve talked about Fake Thomas Jefferson being next up. “Maybe we can get Drew [Goddard] to do some,” Whedon said, considering Goddard played FTJ in the webisodes and wrote the “Wolves at the Gate” arc in the Buffy Season Eight comics. “That’s a no-brainer for him. And that would be a coup.”

And after that, it’s up for grabs. “All of the Evil League of Evil characters have elaborate and hilarious backstories,” Whedon said. “You could even do one about the groupies in an Archies comics style. Anyone who is seen in the web musical is a candidate for an eight-page comic in my book.”

But because Whedon’s moonlighting and he doesn’t have an exact deadline — he’d like to time the next comic to the DVD release — “it’s a ways off. Who knows? I could have one productive weekend and it’s done, but no one should be holding their breath. Fortunately, I have a big support system, and my brothers [Joss and Jed] can also pick up some of the slack.”

In the meantime, hang tight if you wish to be considered for the Evil League of Evil (the ten best three-minute video applications get on the DVD). Try and reach Bad Horse, and you get a response of “Please stand by. P.S. Please forgive the absence of song. The Bad Horse Chorus currently is recovering from a Horrible hang-over.”

“When people are supposed to be submitting, it’ll be abundantly clear how,” Whedon promised. “Everyone will know.”

Remembering Don LaFontaine

Every movie fan has tried to impersonate the deep, gravelly, eerie voices used in trailers at one point or another. Though they didn’t often know, the trailer voice they were most often imitating belonged to Don LaFontaine. It was because of Don LaFontaine that the famous “In a world…” opening line that so often started movie trailers became so popular. The trailer voice of Don LaFontaine was copied for ages and even used in one of Gieco’s recent commercials. But Don LaFontaine has passed on to another “In a world…” as he was pronounced dead at age 68 on Monday, according to CNN.

Don LaFontaine was reported to have died from complications of pneumothorax, which is a collapsed lung that builds up air in the pleural cavity. He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

LaFontaine became “The King of Voiceovers” by recording narration for over 5,000 movie trailers, including The Godfather, Fatal Attraction, Terminator 2, The Elephant Man and The Simpsons Movie. LaFontaine was also a voice of thousands of TV and radio commercials for the likes of General Motors, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Pontiac and Ford.

In addition, LaFontaine was an in-show announcer for the Academy Awards and the Screen Actors Guild. In more of his spare time, LaFontaine used his voice for Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, and in other work for all of the major networks and cable channels like TBS, TNT and the Carton Network.

LaFontaine did most of his voice-over work from his home studio in Los Angeles, when not being driven to other studios in limos. LaFontaine may have been one of the busiest actors in the history of SAG with his many 30 second or 2 ½ minute projects.

LaFontaine was born in Duluth, Minnesota, beginning as a recording engineer. He became a voice-actor in the mid 1960’s, which led to his long career in teasing movies. In trailers, the phrase “In a world…” was and is often used to tease the world and setting that a movie is made in- a phrase which LaFontaine coined and used as his catchphrase.

 

Post-It Note Race

The challenge was creating a video (TV Spot and viral video) to communicate Nike’s Human 10K race. With a total participation of approx. 1,000,000 runners, the event is scheduled to take place in 24 different cities at the same time.

 

The video is a call to all Argentines to inspire them to make a joint effort to race the world on August 31 ^st. There will be 15,000 Argentine participants.

 

Since in this opportunity, the 10K would be a race against nations, the spot shows an Argentine runner defeating the rest of the participants from other countries. The characters of the runners are all represented with the famous “Post it” papers. The goal was to cheer Argentine runners for them to give everything they’ve got to leave a mark in the rest of the countries. The spot is a stop motion video. The runners in it are animated human figures made with Post-it papers in different colors. The Argentine “paper” figure defeats the participants of the other countries while running through different scenarios of the city of Buenos Aires.

Google Unveils Free Browser Chrome

Google Inc. is releasing its own Web browser in a long-anticipated move aimed at countering the dominance of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer and ensuring easy access to its market-leading search engine.

The Mountain View, California-based company took the unusual step of announcing its latest product on the Labor Day holiday after it prematurely sent out a comic book drawn up to herald the new browser’s arrival.

The free browser, called “Chrome,” is supposed to be available for downloading Tuesday in more than 100 countries for computers running on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Google said it’s still working on versions compatible with Apple Inc.’s Mac computer and the Linux operating system.

Google’s browser is expected to hit the market a week after Microsoft’s unveiling of a test version of its latest browser update, Internet Explorer 8. The tweaks include more tools for Web surfers to cloak their on-line preferences, creating a shield that could make it more difficult for Google and other marketing networks to figure out which ads are most likely to appeal to which individuals.

Read more HERE.