A Quiet Place Part II

A thunderously loud trailer here for A Quiet Place Part II that starts with a couple of shocks: first that John Krasinski, back as director, is also returning as a star and second that his appearance is closely followed by a seat-ejecting arrival from one of those noise-loathing aliens. It’s a ferociously impressive tease for a sequel that many of us thought felt unnecessary, hinting that many of us might be very wrong.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run

This year, the record-breaking $5.6m price-tag for a 30-second spot has left some studios choosing to sit this one out while others, such as Paramount, have used their time to poke fun at the sky-high entry fee. The SpongeBob movies have always felt akin to a fever dream, a manic rush of images, ideas and one-liners, and this brief tease suggests that the next shall be more of the same, with added cameos from Snoop Dogg and Keanu Reeves, because sure.

Trump has a Super Bowl ad airing tonight that has already been the subject of criticism because, and this will surprise you, it’s full of lies. According to the DNC War Room here’s just a few of the fantasies it pushes:

• “Under President Trump, America is stronger, safer, and more prosperous than ever before.” By a 2-to-1 margin, Americans say that Trump’s recent foreign policy actions toward Iran are reckless and make America less safe.

• “Best wage growth I think we’ve seen in almost a decade.” Wage growth has slowed under Trump, and hit the slowest level in a year and a half at the end of last year.

• “Unemployment rate sinking to a 49-year low.” The economy produced an average of 193,000 jobs per month over the past three years under Trump, which is less than the 224,000 jobs per month created during the last three years of President Obama’s administration.

Sonic the Hedgehog

A vaguely panicked spot here for Paramount’s troubled big screen adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog, neatly missing the game’s peak of popularity by a solid 20 years or more. The words Sonic and trailer haven’t had the smoothest of relationships, with the first footage revealing a horrifyingly humanoid hedgehog which had fans screaming for it to be burned with fire. Instead, he was re-tooled but the latest spot, showing a range of athletes heap praise on Sonic’s speed, is the sign of a marketing team unsure just what the hell they’re doing. During one scene, tortured star James Marsden asks “What am I doing?” and it genuinely feels like an outtake.

Inside Out but make it Post Malone

Post Malone goes into bar. Post Malone orders a mango Bud Light seltzer. Post Malone’s brain orders Post Malone’s taste buds to assess said seltzer, shouts down his spleen, and confirms with the stomach it’s only 100 calories. Post Malone accidentally talks to his spleen outside the conversation in his head. I should mention that everyone involved here has Post Malone face tattoos, and it’s all under the hashtag #PostyBar.

True

And here’s a full review of the main event tonight:

Bad tweet

Arya Stark can sing

Not sure where the audience overlap for Game of Thrones, Frozen, fancy car enthusiasts and environmentalism is, but Audi is targeting it with this minute of Maisie Williams, aka Arya Stark, belting Let It Go behind the wheel of an all-electric car.

Chris Rock reps Facebook groups

The social media giant’s first ever Superbowl ad stars comedian Chris Rock to promote Facebook groups – in promos, Rock launched a rocket and did one-handed pushups to demonstrate that “whatever you’re into, there’s a group for you,” according to the company.

Budweiser defines ‘typical Americans’

The Great American beer takes a stab at the profound, defining typical Americanness with typically commercial understatements – a man pushing a stuck car in the snow is just “touching other people’s things”, protesters (cause unclear) are “being loud”. The US Women’s National Soccer team celebrating their World Cup championship are merely “partying with typical American beer”. It may be a pretty tame paean to Americanism, but at least it looks like a good time.

And here’s the whole glorious thing for you to watch:

It’s a crazy idea but ya know, maybe it just might work?

Groundhog Day 2

It wouldn’t be the Super Bowl without an actor taking on one of his loved performances yet again for a stack of cold hard cash and this year it’s the turn of Bill Murray celebrating Groundhog Day on Groundhog Day. It’s for Jeep but then who cares.

And yeah as predicted:

Disney+ Marvel montage

Another surprise reveal here, this time for the Disney+ Marvel shows, offering a tease of Loki, WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It’s a limited look but a reminder that unlike the Netflix Marvel shows, these ones will be attached to more substantial budgets and characters from the films themselves. It’s going to take a lot more than this though to convince many of us that a Marvel sitcom is gonna work ...

Valid

Here are some more pics from the half-time performance, which we are all grieving now that that team is playing that team to win a bowl or something?

Jimmy Fallon compares working out to drinking beer

Somehow, Jimmy Fallon comparing unfavorably to John Cena in the gym turns into a referendum on “it’s only worth it if you enjoy it” and drinking light beer (Michelob Ultra). Usain Bolt and volleyball stars Kerri Walsh and Brooke Sweat are involved.

Ellen DeGeneres gets philosophical … for Amazon

Ellen DeGeneres and wife Portia De Rossi get the honor of asking “What did we do before Amazon?” and not much else in this spot that imagines Alexa as various historical characters. What did we do before Amazon was listening to us in our homes? Play Yeah! by blowing into a water jug on a covered wagon, apparently.

Also same

Finally, Jeb weighs in

Doritos dance-off

Lil Nas X, Sam Elliott and Sam Elliott’s mustache dance battle to Old Town Road (with a little help from Billy Ray Cyrus) in the name of Cool Ranch Doritos. That’s it. Easily one of the night’s most enjoyable commercials.

This is as good a time as any to remember one of the best videos of 2019:

Little Caesars delivery is the best thing since sliced bread?

Hinged on a premise which can easily be torn apart by anyone who has ever tried Little Caesars, this ad suggests that delivering their pizzas and other greasy goods is the best thing since sliced bread. Oh, and just to reinforce that completely watertight premise is Rainn Wilson. Cool.

This is gonna take a while to process:

H.E.R. and Missy Elliott paint it black

Keeping with Pepsi’s tradition of bringing music stars together for the Superbowl (see: Pink, Beyonce and Britney as gladiators for Emperor Enrique Iglesias in their 2004 spot), H.E.R. and Missy Elliott remake the Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black to rep Pepsi’s Zero Sugar (whose black cans are new, I guess?)

It has been 16 years since this:

Hunters

Continuing the Pacinossaince that began with the one-two punch of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Irishman, Amazon’s fact-based thriller series Hunters looks set to give us a lot of Al – maybe, just maybe, too much? After years of thankless paycheque roles that pushed the actor further and further into the realm of parody, this new look at the Jordan Peele-produced show focused on Nazi killers has him screaming in a German accent, which I’m hoping isn’t indicative of the overall noise level of his performance.

Full video coming in due course but for now here’s a quick snippet of Shakira and her Bad Bunny cameo

This isn’t wrong:

SodaStream discovers water on Mars

In a “fictional story, for now” in a not-so-distant future (there’s still Instagram), astronauts collect one sample of water on Mars to transport back to Earth. Bill Nye celebrates. But there’s a perhaps predictable twist, given that the ad supports SodaStream, the producer of home beverage carbonators. In keeping with its eye on the future, the company promises that “by 2025, Sodastream will eliminate 67bn single-use bottles on this planet, so we won’t have to go looking for a new one.”

And here they are together. A full review will be dropping soon

Shakira just led a dance of golden helpers and now JLo has gone into her Vegas cabaret theme with lots of men dressed in white suits who look like waiters at a club you’d never go back to. And now it’s over. Patchy near the end but it all happened to fast that it’s hard to be negative. Quick, high-energy fun.

It’s a total club-themed vibe now which means JLo is dancing at high speed and the lighting is potentially dangerous from anyone suffering from epilepsy. She went from Waiting For Tonight to Love Don’t Cost A Thing to On the Floor but wait, now there’s a crowd of children helping her sing Let’s Get Loud which has then turned into Born in the USA kind of and she’s wearing a feathery Cuban flag gown and Shakira is playing the drums. Is this a fever dream?

JLo is here in a revealing leather suit singing a frantic medley of her biggest hits from Jenny to the Block to Ain’t It Funny to Get Right. She’s backgrounded by a crowd of dancers whose dress appears to be based on black and white cookies.

Ooh but now they are gone and somehow JLo has changed outfit. Now we’re seeing her replicate some of her incredible Hustlers pole-dancing skills with a new crowd of dancers whose dress appears to be more based on Milla Jovovich’s character in The Fifth Element.

Hips Don’t Lie has the singer bravely crowd-surfing before a dance routine that looks exhausting from afar let alone in the actual moment. It’s a brief show as there’s now someone else to take the stage...

The half-time show will begin in minutes. Here’s a reminder that JLo has her own emoji in celebration:

Pop-Tarts pretzel lookin’ like a snack!

Apparently Pop-Tarts is launching a pretzel flavor, which seems like a stretch but we’ll give it to them on account of spokesman Jonathan Van Ness, of Queer Eye fame, who celebrates the lowly snacks transformation from “ho-hum to so yum”. “Let them change your life,” he promises – which also seems like a stretch, but the enthusiasm is solid as ever.

Google wants to know MORE about you

Google seems to be going for the sweet and sentimental here – an old man asks the search engine to pull up old photos of his wife, Loretta, and reminisces on her quirks – how she hummed to show tunes, loved Alaska, always told him to go outside. “OK, I’ll remember that,” Google-voice replies, and stores these memories to be regurgitated later. Nice sentiment, but given how much Google already knows about you … do you really want it to remember these things?

No Time to Die

A semi-surprise reveal here for a solid tease of the 25th James Bond film which appears to be more plot-heavy than most, following on from the underwhelming Spectre and bringing back characters other than 007 himself. Apart from the teases of secrets and backstory, there’s the requisite mix of one-liners and action one would be expecting.

Mr. Peanut ... dead?

Honestly, I have avoided the social media attention suck that is the death of Mr Peanut (1916-2020), which seems like a befittingly dark marketing choice for the new decade, at best. But this ad, in which the mascot crashes his van, drops off a branch into a canyon, and explodes, seems to confirm his demise. Stay tuned for an epilogue, I guess.

Martin Scorsese, the impatient texter (for Coke)

Will Jonah Hill flake out on Martin Scorsese? Such is the burning question behind this ad for Coke’s energy drink, a spot which does more to evoke the existential dread that is waiting on those three blinking iMessage dots than any movie I’ve seen recently.

So what can we expect from the JLo/Shakira half-time show? Well we know for sure that their special guesrs will be J Balvin, Bad Bunny and Lopez’s 11-year-old daughter Emme. We also know that there will be a tribute to Kobe Bryant.

“We’ll all be remembering Kobe on Sunday and celebrating life and diversity in this country,” Shakira said. “I’m sure he’d be very proud to see the message we are trying to convey on stage that day.”

We believe that Shakira will perform Hips Don’t Lie, Whenever, Wherever and I Like It Like That and then JLo will reportedly perform a mash-up of her biggest songs. More surprise guests may also join them.

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend introduce young luxury

Already going down rather well on YouTube with a massive 21m views is this Genesis ad which has the internet’s favourite couple, Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, saying goodbye to old luxury and hello to young luxury. Which means them critiquing the posh archetypes we’re all sick of and then driving away in a fancy car.

The TurboTax dance

It’s the gift no one asked for: one minute plus of the “All People Are Tax People” remix, complete with a diverse cast of knee-shakers, sign language, a beat drop and a promise to “get deductions, get deductions, make sure you’re not missin’ nothin.’”

Pringles: the Rick and Morty edition

The show which singlehandedly (and controversially) brought back a 19-year-old McDonald’s condiment (Szechuan sauce, we’re talking Mulan promotion 1998 here) is trying the same magic on Pringles, with a typically dark twist.

Filing alongside celebrities at the Super Bowl who aren’t football-related:

Avocados from Mexico

Three entirely serious questions: what is Avocados from Mexico? Why is Molly Ringwald playing a home shopping network host here? And where can I buy this chip floatie?

Our reporter Lauren Gambino is at a Bernie Super Bowl event and has this to say:

Bernie Sanders has never been a football guy. Baseball is his sport. The Dodgers are his team — that is the Brooklyn Dodgers (before they moved to Los Angeles in 1957).

Nevertheless he turned up at Igersoll Tap in Des Moines on Sunday night for what he half-heartedly referred to as a “Super Bowl thing.”

It was a watch party for all his supporters and volunteers on the eve of the Iowa caucuses he is well positioned to win and the last event of his campaign before voting begins here on Monday night.

The venue smelled like barbecue sauce and buffalo hot wings (of which there were both). The floor was sticky with beer (likely a permanent state). And the TVs were muted (an accommodation that seemed to unsettle the wait staff who might be among the few people in the bar who could definitely name both teams in tonight’s game.)

Sanders arrived with the “future First Lady” and some of the the “future first grandchildren.” He remembered that some of his children’s children were back in Vermont. Four, he thought. Five, his wife Jane corrected him.

“Oh we have another one! I didn’t know,” he said grouchily as his supporters roared with laughter.

“Math is not my strongest suit,” he added before diving into an abbreviated version of his stump speech, attacking Trump and vowing a political revolution.

“Tomorrow night,” he said in closing, “is the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.
When he finished, Sanders left the building to catch a flight back to Washington, where his presence is required in the impeachment trial of the president he hopes to have the chance to replace.

Oh and this happened:

And then this:

Olay Makes Space for Women

Busy Philips, Lily Singh, Taraji P Henson and real-life astronaut Nicole Stott don spacesuits for Olay’s #MakeSpaceForWomen campaign, a “mission” which launches 2 February. The campaign is intended to increase opportunities for women in Stem fields and for every Super Bowl Sunday tweet of the hashtag, Olay has pledged to donate $1 (up to $500,000) to Girls Who Code.

Pahk the Cah

It is a truth universally acknowledged that at least one Super Bowl ad per year must make fun of Boston accents, and in 2020, the honor goes to three Massachusetts natives: John Krasinski, Rachel Dratch, and Chris Evans, dropping r’s left and right in service of Hyundai’s Smaht Pahk. If you’re a fan of the phrase “wicked hahd”, a quick tour of Boston geography (Dorchestah? Foxboro? The Gahden? Revere? The Hah-bah? “Pahked it”), Big Papi cameos or Chris Evans holding coffee, you are targeted.

Winona goes to Winona (for Squarespace)

Who’s that girl lying in the snow with … a laptop? It’s Winona Ryder, returning to her namesake town of Winona, Minnesota (where she was born in 1971), for the website-building company Squarespace. Approached by a stereotypically spare and unassuming Minnesota cop, she reveals that she is building a website for the town (“It’s got pictures on it!” she shouts). That site does exist and true to her word, there are pictures on it, as well as the explainer: “I was born on a small farm on the outskirts of Winona, Minnesota. Dad tells stories of a shoelace and umbilical cord, but I don’t know how true that is. Regardless, Winona is my origin point, in more ways than one.”

Bryan Cranston and Tracee Ellis-Ross remake The Shining

Or, a revision of The Shining, in which Cranston, Jack Nicholson, takes an axe to the bathroom door to offer Tracee Ellis Ross a bottle of Mtn Dew Zero. The spot promises it’s all “as good as the original, maybe even better?” and to be fair, Bryan Cranston as the Shining twins is … not an easily forgettable image.

Snickers fixes the world

Snickers has come up with a way to fix the world and it’s by feeding it a giant Snickers and then making an ad about it and using Luiz Guzman as their celebrity spokesperson. Since the world officially lost its way in 2016, I’ve heard worse ideas.

Black Widow

One of the most anticipated ads of the game gives us a closer look at Marvel’s belated solo adventure for Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow. It’s not a great deal different to the trailer that already launched but it does reintroduce that wonderful “warped guitar” noise as well as remind us that Oscar nominee Florence Pugh is starring in a big old blockbuster so it’s hard not to love it.

Walmart gets “Famous Visitors”

In an ad touting “out-of-this-world convenience”, Walmart grocery pick-up is visited by a slate of extraterrestrial and sci-fi characters: Buzz Lightyear, Bill & Ted, the creatures from Arrival and characters from Flash Gordon, among others (the Star Wars contingent got lost on another planet). Shout out to the Lego Movie guys for carrying a blue bag five times their size.

Jennifer Lopez’s boyfriend and actual baseball legend Alex Rodriguez is there and will surely be cheering her on come half-time. The pair also threw a pre-game party on Friday night in Miami.

“You know Alex. He’ll be as close as he can get to that stage!” she said. “Alex and all of our kids will be watching, they’ll all be in the stadium.”

Quibi now means ‘less than ten minutes’

The task ahead for Quibi, the much-hyped short-form content service developed by former DreamWorks head Jeffrey Katzenberg and Hewlett-Packard chief Meg Whitman, is steep. The service, which will launch in April, promises “quick bites, big stories” and boasts a slew of talent, from Sophie Turner to Chance the Rapper’s Punk’d reboot to Oscar-winning director Guillermo Del Toro. But whether it can get content-saturated audiences to pay for shows and movies in installments less than 10 minutes long – or, as its bank heist commercial claims, get “quibi” to stand for a unit of time – is very much an open question.

F9 aka Fast and Furious 9

The full-length version of tonight’s Super Bowl spot has a lot for us to take in. Vin Diesel has a brother! That brother is John Cena! Charlize Theron is back! And she’s in a perspex cage! There’s a magnet plane or something! Whatever that is! How did we get to the ninth Fast & Furious film? Does that make any rational sense? Do we all still want to see this when it comes out in the summer? Yes!

Important Blue Ivy content:

And you can see Demi Lovato’s rousing National Anthem here:

This is awkward

Top Gun: Maverick

The film that’s almost kind of just about maybe almost been happening for decades now is finally coming out this summer. A sequel to a hit that didn’t seem like it needed a sequel but here we are, months away from the release of Top Gun: Maverick. It’s the first previously unreleased film ad tonight and it offers what we might expect and little else – but here’s hoping it proves its existence by the time June comes.

Mulan

A necessary insertion here from Disney, continuing the cartoon-to-live-action machine with Mulan, arguably its riskiest bet so far. It’s a genre switch-up of sorts, with the film set to be more of a historical action adventure, a far cry from the more easily-marketed-to-kids magic of Disney’s previous efforts. The latest tease promises again to bring us some rousing sequences though and a vital reminder that not all Disney heroines are waiting for a man to save them.

And the game is about to begin but who cares about that. What we do care about is that Demi Lovato is singing the National Anthem. She’s all dressed in white and acompanied by music that often threatens to overtake her voice but as she gets further into it, she manages to dominate with a pretty flawless performance. It certainly lays down quite the gauntlet for anyone else singing later tonight ...

Tonight’s National Anthem will be performed by Demi Lovato, a solid choice given her proven track record of singing rather brilliantly live. Also she’s done it before. Also she predicted she would do it 10 years ago which isn’t not weird:

There have been a couple of warring protests outside the stadium in Miami and not from groups you might expect to see. Firstly, residents protested about the pollution and noise that F1 racing would bring to the city and secondly, activists from Bloodstained Men, a national nonprofit that lobbies for an end to circumcision, made their voice heard.

Even if you’re not watching the game or even if you’re barely paying attention to it, this is something everyone can take part in:

Fox scored an exclusive Super Bowl interview with a man who hates giving interviews and generally keeps his thoughts to himself, which is one hell of an exclusive, huh?

Here he is complaining about how hard his life is. Again:

While it might not have brought the political edge many had hoped for, Lady Gaga’s energetic 2017 Super Bowl performance brought pretty much everything else, including flawless vocals.

At a Miami concert on Saturday, she delivered a message/warning to JLo and Shakira: “I better hear no lip-syncing tomorrow!” Let’s see if the pair have Gaga to answer to in the morning.