Jimena Navarrete is Miss Universe 2010; Miss USA Rima Fakih still hot

22-year old Jimena Navarrete is Miss Universe 2010 and represents Mexico. And this blogger has to say, is a real looker, with killer great cheekbones, and lips.

Jimena Navarrete won in what was reported to be an upset, as Miss Ireland, Miss Venezuela or Miss USA was expected to win.

That's too bad, because with all of her cheeky looks, Jimena Navarrete's still not as hot or as sexy as Miss USA Rima Fakih.

Remember Rima Fakih? If not, perhaps this video will remind you:



Rima Fakih had the pole dance scandal and some really baseless and racist views to overcome after she won the crown of Miss USA. She overcame all of that to be a front runner for Miss Universe 2010.

Too bad she didn't win.

Jennifer Ammann blasts Telluride Film Festival on YouTube, Quits

Jennifer and The Telluride Gnome

Something snapped for Jennifer Ammann. After serving as production manager for the Berkeley-based Telluride Film Festival and its Galaxy Theater for 10 years, she not only abruptly quit, but made a frank YouTube video that added up to a kick in the Telluride's executive staff's pants as she went out of the door.

And all of this, just two weeks before The 2010 Telluride Film Festival's Labor Day Weekend launch.

This blogger has only heard good things about The Telluride Film Festival, and thinks positive thoughts about the people involved in it. Thus, something happened to Jennifer Ammann that, in listening to her impassioned speech on the video, may have been related to how well an organization adjusts to a poor economy, and how its staff reacts to those changes.

One thing's for sure: Jennifer Ammann was so into The Telluride Film Festival, her YouTube channel is called telluridegnome "The Gnome's Movie Outtakes," and contains 110 uploaded videos about The Telluride Gnome, which was reportedly stolen from the film festival.

While it's video number 110, uploaded August 14th 2010, that's causing all the buzz, it's interesting to go back through the video collection to learn, to a degree, what was on the mind of Jennifer Ammann. Why not? From the looks of things, video #110 was her last one on Telluride. Here's the first one she made on September 24th 2008. Called The night the Telluride Gnome was kidnapped! it looked like something a couple of drunks made after some film festival love-making:



The rest of the video concerns the "Kidnapped Telluride Gnome" and feature the voice of an unknown white guy with hairy, wrinkled hands. Jennifer Ammann appears in two of the three videos of this theme.

The video set continues and slowly we realize Mark and Jen have taken the Telluride Gnome on trips to various places, like Paris, Miami and Barcelona, and all in some quest to present their film ideas, or just act like fools:



In all of this, the theme seems to be Mark and Jen just fooling around. Take this video:



Digging around for more on The Telluride Gnome, a blog pops up in search called Mark and Jen's Telluride Gnome Productions, a photo of Jennifer Ammann with The Telluride Gnome, and two descriptions, one that reads "THE REAL BEHIND-THE-SCENES OF OUR BIG MOVIE! HERE YOU CAN FIND ALL THE OUTTAKES FROM THE MOVIE AND ALL THE DETAILS OF OUR FILM-MAKING PROCESS..." And another that says "I am the Telluride Gnome, stolen from the Telluride Film Festival by Mark Sgarzi and turned into an international star and beneficent helper to all the children of the world."

Right.

Whatever the case after two years of blogging, Mark and Jen stopped any kind of posting to the blog on February 1, 2010, and without reason.

Then the video everyone's talking about appeared:



One can see what Jennifer's talking about by one look at the Telluride Film Festival's organization. When one looks down the lists of names, a few hundred of them appear.

When you get to Jennifer's name, it's in a sea of 20 production managers. She looks like a fly in the soup, which is what she's turned out to be after the video.

The video itself is literally a cry out for a time she feels has been lost: one where the Telluride Film Festival wasn't the bureaucracy she describes it to be. "The bureaucratization of this festival has taken all the joy out of working for it," she says. "And I don't see it as a not-for-profit, independent, promoter of film art, any longer."

She goes on to say she's "a woman of principals and refuses to work for people who don't value their employees," then says the Telluride does not value its employees.

That's telling, because Jennifer then says that the production staff is the backbone of the Telluride Film Festival, but its not valued and people are "fired demoted, squeezed, or simply ignored due to cut backs and personal grudges. And now you're taking away breakfast."

Jennifer says that while Telluride execs cut out breakfast, "I'm sure you'll be flying business class."

Wow.

What I make of this, knowing a lot of people, players, and stuff, is that, first, Jennifer's film dreams were attached to the Festival. Second, Telluride Film Festival Co-Director Tom Luddy, who I personally know to be a good guy, made have caught Jennifer on a bad day. Third, whatever cut backs are being made, Jennifer Ammann may reflect an idea from some staffers that their needs have been forgotten, or just plain ignored.

If I were Tom, I'd at least make a phone call to Jennifer to make amends and try to get her back. It would turn a bad story into a good one, and give the feeling that the bureaucracy she complained about wasn't so large that directors lost touch with the staffers who make the film festival work.

Old Spice Man Makes Shirtless Brothers Cool

YouTube ,
Yahoo, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, StupidVideos and Viddler

Another Old Spice Man?  

On Wednesday, August 25th, The San Francisco Chapter of The American Marketing Association announced they were going to hold a meeting called "The Old Spice Phenomenon: A Panel Discussion On The Advertising Genius Behind The Old Spice Re-branding," On Wednesday, August 25th at 6 PM, at BARS+TONE, 1550 Bryant St, 11th Floor, San Francisco.

Thinking the panel might fail to discuss the cultural significance of having an African American man wearing next-to-nothing be a corporate brand symbol, and figuring that because I'm in Georgia and will not return in time for the SF AMA event, this blogger created the video above, and wrote another blog post, thanking Old Spice Man for his historic first.

Remember, there have been black men who have pushed products, but not shirtless and certainly not to so many rave reviews.

Old Spice Man, along with President Obama, make shirtless brothers cool.

And as women of all colors dig Old Spice Man, we can say racial barriers have come down to a dramatically low level in America.

Read my full blog post on this, and tell me what you think...about the milestone, I mean.

Old Spice Man, Thanks For Making Shirtless Brothers Cool

YouTube ,
Yahoo, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, StupidVideos and Viddler

At first, this blogger ignored the whole Old Spice Man deal until a headline article in Ad Age. Still I ignored it.

Then, the San Francisco Chapter of The American Marketing Association announced they were going to hold an entire meeting called "The Old Spice Phenomenon: A Panel Discussion On The Advertising Genius Behind The Old Spice Re-branding," On Wednesday, August 25th at 6 PM, at BARS+TONE, 1550 Bryant St, 11th Floor, San Francisco.

Another Old Spice Man? 

Then it occurred to me the SF AMA panel - and in a New Media world panels are stupid - might just hold an entire conversation without mentioning the historic racial significance of "The Old Spice Phenomenon." So, to keep them on their toes, and make people think, I created the video you see above.

The marketers will focus on the metrics, like the 29 million video views Old Spice Man has gained, or the 80,000 Twitter followers the Old Spice Brand has, or the 106 percent increase in Old Spice sales, but what they miss is the fact that for the first time, America went wild for a brand pushed by a smooth-talking black guy wearing next to nothing.

Nothing against Terry Crews, who stars in The Expendables, but the success of Isaiah Mustafa is a triumph for the African American man who doesn't fit the kind of black male stereotype Crews' version of Old Spice man presented and can be summed up in one word: menacing.

The Real Old Spice Man

Instead, Isaiah Mustafa's Old Spice Man is more like a lot of black men in American society (save for the kinda-sorta, maybe fake British-style accent, which he could have done without), well-spoken and apparently intelligent.

Women Dig Old Spice Man

The viral video performance and product movements associated with Old Spice Man are due to women. As Mary Jo Rapini wrote in Health News Digest, many of the women she talks to have a "thing" for the Old Spice Man. Mary Jo Rapini's white; she never mentions The Old Spice Man is black.

 So, from this we can see how dramatically far American Society has come, and that's something to both talk about and celebrate.

Chevron Ecuador Challenge: Steven Donziger Joe Berlinger, Show All Crude Movie Outtakes!

Steven Donziger and Joe Berlinger 

Recently, a judge ordered Crude film director Joe Berlinger to turn over outtakes from his film about alleged pollution by Texaco (now owned by Chevron) in the Amazon of Ecuador.

Chevron reportedly reviewed the outtakes and found a series of conversations by the attorney behind the lawsuit, Steven Donziger, admitting that the case is "nothing more than smoke and mirrors and bulls__t" as well as other statements that ruin the credibility of the case against the American oil company.

But not so fast, says Berlinger and Donziger.

They wildly claim the outtakes submitted to the 2nd Circuit Court in New York City by Chevron, which is seeking more outtakes from the movie Crude are taken "out of context" and distorting their words.

Berlinger wrote in an e-mail statement to Fortune magazine "The footage citations are being taken out of context and not being presented to the court in its entirety, creating numerous false impressions, precisely what we feared when we were first issued the original subpoena,"

Now, my friends Amazon Watch and Steven Donziger publicist Karen Hinton (who would make a great dinner partner) are pissed that I wrote that the Crude outtakes destroy their case.

I stand by my previous blog on this. I believe that the evidence produced from the movie Crude not only wipes out their case, but probably makes them liable in both the U.S. and Ecuador of fraudulent and misleading legal actions against Chevron.

And, what legal issues could Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network, and everyone else face if all their rants against Chevron are knowingly false? Right?

Here's my challenge: Prove me, Zennie Abraham, wrong.

Produce all the footage from the movie so that the public can make up their own mind whether the case against Chevron is a sham created by Donziger and Amazon Watch or whether Chevron is taking their words out of context.

And when I write all the footage, I mean all of the outtakes from the movie Crude.

What do Berlinger, Donziger, Hinton, Amazon Watch, Luis Yanza, Pablo Fajardo and their team have to fear? Apparently a great deal because they are continue to prevent the footage from being seen - and letting all of us make up our minds whether they're telling the truth or not.

It's time for Berlinger, Donziger, and Amazon Watch to put up or shut up.

And for Karen Hinton to buy dinner.

(And a side note: I want it known I support the right of filmmakers to protect their film and videos from unnecessary inspection, but only in the case of real politically important, difference-making work, not in the instance of a trial lawyer in the middle of a lawsuit, trying to make billions under the color of helping the poor of a third world country, when he's clearly partnered with its government.  Crude was made during the Chevron Ecuador legal battle, so it looks like what is it: propaganda. My challenge will reveal that...if they take it.)

Piranha 3D Gets A Sequel

Piranha 3D was a movie i enjoyed immensely this past weekend, it really was a genuine throwback to the eighties with some of the goriest sequences that I've ever witnessed on film. Well today comes news that Dimension Films has given the greenlight to move ahead with a sequel. Producer Mark Canton and Dimension is very pleased with the word of mouth that the film has received from audiences and critics, and with the movie costing hardly anything to make a sequel seems like a no brainer.

The film has also garnered a lot of attention via a Funny or Die video with stars of the movie asking The Acedemy to nominate the film for Best Picture at the Oscars. Check out the video and check out Piranha in theaters now.

Piranha 3D: For Your Consideration from Piranha 3D

Donald Trump on the Mosque, say what? By Suzannah B. Troy

The New York Post has a big photo that perhaps has been air brushed just a little of Donald Trump chiming in on the Mosque at Ground Zero saying it is wrong.

I wrote this comment and posted on The New York Post website.

Suzannah B. Troy

08/23/2010 6:28 PM

Donald Trump is describing how every community feels about his buildings and at Spring and Varrick a construction worker died. No one wanted that hideous building and Christine Quinn would not even show up to the city council task force meeting on DOB where I did show up and speak about way too many construction deaths. It is believed she did not show up because she did not want to face a massive turn out protesting the Trump build at Spring and Varrick. I am for religious freedom but I do think the mosque build at the WTC is not appropriate and instead of building bridges and healing they are creating far more pain and why would they do that. Also they need to be open about where they intend to get money to build their Mosque.

Here is my previous post on this blog site on The Mosque....