I know what brings traffic to movie blogs: Megan Fox wearing as little as possible. Case in point: Movie Gab debuted some paparazzi pics of Fox on the set of Jonah Hex a few weeks ago, but she was wearing a robe, and not surprisingly I heard nothing of the photos. Today the same site presents more images, this time of Fox in an Old West Prostitute costume (i.e. corset, stockings, boots, gloves) and the internerds explode with posts. Sure, it’s also yet another slow news day in terms of stuff that excites the collective film bloggery, but I’m sure these shots would still have shown up on every movie and gossip site on a much busier day. Why? Because Megan Fox pays our bills, of course.
Not that I understand the attraction. I don’t mean to insult Fox, who is indeed an attractive woman. But I don’t get what she’s got that at least a thousand other hot young actresses don’t have. Aside from the fact that she’s sold on sex, be it through cleavage-exposing publicity photos or that recent Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen footage of her stripping, what is it about her that makes her the Clara Bow of the late 2000’s? (Confession: Bow never did “It” for me either, so maybe I’m just out of touch). Anyway, I am noticing that these new Fox photos are garnering some criticism for how skinny her corset makes her look, and I do appreciate that not everyone is positively spellbound by her.
Anyway, check out what other bloggers are saying about the images after the jump. Meanwhile, I’ll be checking out that sexier wet, tattooed back shot of Sandra Bullock that Mark Graham has posted over at Vulture.
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Through one of the smartest film promotions I’ve seen in awhile, Disney has already sold 500,000 advance tickets to its little nature doc-for-kids, Earth, by promising to plant a tree for each audience member who pays to see the film during its first week (starting tomorrow and ending Tuesday, April 28). Never mind that all those people could just plant a tree themselves, and that families may ultimately be disappointed to find the movie is less focused than the ads would have them believe (the “three animal families” narrative is often abandoned for a broader look at the planet’s ecosystems) –– the fact that Disney managed to come up with such a successful marketing gimmick, and incentive, that has no necessary web-related elements is extremely commendable in these mostly viral-campaign-obsessed times.
Of course, there’s nothing at all wrong with online movie marketing, and it’s worth pointing to another new film opening this week, Obsessed, which has a fun little gimmick utilizing personalizing technology we’ve seen in plenty of prior viral promotional tools. It may not help save the planet, but we actually had more fun making this video, in which we made Ali Larter seem to be obsessed with SpoutBlog editor Karina Longworth, than we did watching Disney’s Earth. Then again, we at least saw the documentary, primarily because of its promotion, yet we probably won’t be seeing the very banal-looking Obsessed.
Ignoring whether or not they were successful, we picked ten other favorite viral gimmicks, many of which were more enjoyable than the movies they promoted:
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