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Otterbox has tried to make a set of extremely bear resistant coolers. Apparently they didn’t use CGI (It’s a real bear?) but we’re not sure. Via Inc:

OtterBox’s new line of high-end, heavy-duty coolers promises to keep ice frozen for up to 14 days and protect food against bears, the company announced yesterday. The products, which range in size by number of quarts, will cost between $250 and $400. But the idea of an expensive and bear-resistant cooler is already on the market and doing very well. Yeti, an Austin-based company, has been making similar coolers since 2005. Prices fall between $250 and $300 for most coolers, but its 85-gallon Tundra 350 goes for $1,300.

Yeti, which is rumored to go public this year, is currently valued at $5 billion–with sales approaching $450 million. Ryan and Roy Seiders founded the company after realizing a need for durable coolers that also acted as platforms for fishing. The brothers carved out a market for pricey coolers, but OtterBox could bring some competition to that market.

This isn’t the first time OtterBox has pivoted its business. When Curt Richardson launched the company in 1998, it specialized in waterproof electronics cases without anticipating the launch of smartphones and society’s addiction to snapping selfies. When iPods launched in 2001, OtterBox quickly developed a new line and saw a spike in sales. The private company has maintained a low media profile, but Forbes reported that OtterBox fetched $575.5 million in revenue in February 2013.

This ghost train prank in Madrid was promoting the remake of Ghostbusters, and won a silver lion at Cannes. Check it out! Via Adweek:

Here’s a freaky little ad stunt from Spanish agency Shackleton. The agency installed loudspeakers and hidden cameras in the busiest subway station in Madrid, and then played sounds that accurately reproduced those of an arriving train—the train approaching and braking, the doors opening and closing, the train leaving the station.

But the passengers couldn’t see it. “Just like a ghost!” the agency says.

The Ghostbusters all-female remake was famously controversial, with many fans of the original protesting its release before they had even seen the film. Via The Atlantic:

The vitriol directed at Ghostbusters seems to come in two forms: angry screeds in comments sections and people’s Twitter mentions, and videos like Rolfe’s, which try to justify the pushback as an idealistic defense of the original franchise’s legacy. Others look to dismiss the female cast as some sort of reverse-sexism, a “marketing gimmick” that diminishes the stars by turning them into tokens. “What offends me about this film isn’t that there’s women in it. Or even that the women are the protagonists. It’s that it’s going backwards 30 years in time and calling itself progressive,” one Cinemassacre commenter wrote. “I think the biggest reason this film will suck is they tried to shoehorn in a PC ideology instead of just telling a good story,” said another. Even the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump joined the pile-on last year, the substance of his criticism amounting to “What’s going on!?”

Immigrants (We Get the Job Done) is a music video by K’Naan inspired by the world-famous Hamilton musical, produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Also featuring Riz MC (Riz Ahmed in Star Wars!). Story behind the film, via Buzzfeed:

There’s a line that gets repeated several times in “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done),” a track off The Hamilton Mixtape — “It’s America’s ghost writers, a credit is only borrowed” — and that stuck with Tomás Whitmore. On Wednesday, shortly after the video began trending, the director behind the “Immigrants” music video talked to BuzzFeed News about the story he wanted to tell with it and its political implications.

“Within the political climate and all the xenophobia that’s persisting within the conversation, it felt like a really unique opportunity to give a voice to the immigrant narrative, and to shine a spotlight on, as the song says, ‘America’s ghost writers’ — a lot of people that make this country great and that we don’t often get to see in mainstream media,” Whitmore said.

“Immigrants” is performed by K’naan, Snow tha Product, Riz MC, and Residente — all of whom appear in the video — and it samples “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)” from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. The song was released in December on The Hamilton Mixtape, which featured covers and remixes of songs from the record-breaking musical. The titular lyric of “Immigrants” comes from a line that consistently gets applause during Hamilton, but the Mixtape version features other original lyrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrN1ytnQ-Tg

This short film by Michael Gondry for Apple was filmed entirely on an iPhone, and pushes the boundaries of what you can achieve on the phone. Via Adweek:

“Détour” is inspired by the works of Jaques Tati and Albert Lamorisse, but the man who gave us Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind owes many other cinematic debts for this compact and charming piece of work. You’d never guess it was shot using only a phone (though the skills of a veteran director probably help with that—it’s never really about the tools, is it?).

The 10-minute piece follows a family going on vacation. Their little girl insists they not forget her tricycle, which they attach (pretty iffily) to the end of their VW. Of course it detaches, setting off a two-sided Quest—the helpless heroine who longs for her beloved bike, and the bike working its hardest to get back to her.

If you’ve ever watched a Gondry film, you won’t be disappointed. Warm-hearted serendipity mixes with the surreal. Among singing fish and dancing chickens, you’ll feel vestiges of The Red Balloon, Amélie and even American Beauty, when a floating plastic bag whimsically helps draw the tricycle closer to its goal.

On a more serious note, another great film made entirely on smartphone footage that we’ve seen recently is Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time, about refugee abuses in Manus. Check that one out in festival circuits if you haven’t seen it yet.

This music video for Broke for Free’s Hella is a hyperrealistic, bizarre trip, made by Kouhei Nakama completely through animation. An art director for creative house WOW Inc in Japan, Kouhei’s videos have always pushed 3D to new boundaries. Via Creators:

Hyper-real scans of seemingly regular people are warped, wrung, and twisted like taffy in a new motion graphics music video called Makin’ Moves. The video was put together by visual art director Kouhei Nakama whose computer generated short films are known for combining animation with mathematical and biological concepts. Nakama uses a similar technique as that seen in the work of computational artist Albert Omoss. Makin’ Moves depicts scans of people dressed like they’re on a sitcom transforming into surreal geometric abstractions, creating almost kaleidoscopic designs out of limbs.

Nakama minces his rubbery creations, puts them back together, morphs them into a baffling set of geometric patterns, and makes them fly like a school of fish—reminiscent of the machines’ attack on Zion in The Matrix Revolutions. At certain points, the characters are distorted in sync with the song’s gyrating four-on-the-floor drum beat, making the whole scene that much more mesmerizing.

You can check out more of Kouhei’s work on his website here.

Polish sand animation artist Tetiana Galitsyna made a tribute to Game of Thrones Season 7 with this beautiful video of characters. Via Gizmodo:

There are some art forms that seem unbelievable — photorealism, shadow illusions, fumage. Then, you’ve got sand animation, one of the only types of art that truly exists in the moment, since it cannot be preserved. Unless, of course, you capture it on video. And it’s about Game of Thrones.

Polish sand animation artist Tetiana Galitsyna recently shared her latest creation on YouTube, using sand to depict some of Game of Thrones’ most famous characters and scenes from the upcoming season. It looks to be the first time the artist has made something about a popular television show (she normally creates artistic videos set to classical music), but it was worth the wait. It’s truly a sight to behold.

It takes a hell of a lot to skill to create art using nothing but your hands and tiny mineral grains that can be blown away by a thought. Through her work, a lion becomes Cersei, a wolf turns into Jon Snow, a White Walker (formed from a Three-Eyed Raven) becomes the Mother of Dragons, bringing new meaning to “Ice and Fire.” The piece shifts and bends as she works, letting the art exist within the movement, rather than just in the final product.

Scorch Motion’s new animated short is a beautiful film about what life would be like without stuff, in a world where objects disappear without warning. Although the film is about illustrating the importance of stuff, recently there’s been a trend towards minimalism, exploring whether life without stuff can actually make you happier. Via the Guardian:

Minimalism is a lifestyle in which you reduce your possessions to the least possible. Living with only the bare essentials has not only provided superficial benefits such as the pleasure of a tidy room or the simple ease of cleaning, it has also led to a more fundamental shift. It’s given me a chance to think about what it really means to be happy.

We think that the more we have, the happier we will be. We never know what tomorrow might bring, so we collect and save as much as we can. This means we need a lot of money, so we gradually start judging people by how much money they have. You convince yourself that you need to make a lot of money so you don’t miss out on success. And for you to make money, you need everyone else to spend their money. And so it goes.

So I said goodbye to a lot of things, many of which I’d had for years. And yet now I live each day with a happier spirit. I feel more content now than I ever did in the past.

More than T is MAC Cosmetics’ latest unbranded content: a docuseries about seven transgender people and their daily lives. Via FastCompany:

Since its inception in 1994, the MAC AIDS Fund, the philanthropic arm of cosmetics giant MAC, has given more than $450 million to organizations focused on the rights and health of women and the LGBTQ community. As vital as fundraising is, MAC has devoted just as much attention to increasing the cultural visibility of such marginalized groups–most recently by commissioning the documentary film More Than T.

In partnership with Showtime, More Than T profiles seven transpeople with seven vastly different stories to tell. The subjects giving such intimate accounts of their experiences fill a broad swatch of identities that extend well beyond being trans. There’s defense attorney Mia Yamamoto, minister Louis Mitchell, makeup artist Gizelle Messina, policy analyst Joanna Cifredo–just to name a few.

“There’s still a lack of diversity of stories and the way those stories are depicted,” says More Than T director Silas Howard. “I was looking for a story that was about humans that happened to be trans. You can’t two-dimensionalize someone when you actually see, ‘Oh, you’re this amazing artist; you’re this fierce defense attorney; you’re this chain-smoking, cussing minister who’s just full of heart’. I wanted to show people with their long list of amazing things that were above their gender and sexual identity, but also not dismiss that.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3JCA4lCMGw

In this great new SKII sci-fi-esque ad, women are stamped with an expiry date from birth–and try to tackle age-related pressures. It’s a follow-up to their incredible Marketplace ad from last year. Via Marketing:

Only 2 out of 10 women in Asia described themselves as comfortable with the idea of getting older according to a new study by SK-II.

The reasons are many – pressure from family and friends, society’s scrutiny or feeling the burden to marry before an artificially created deadline is up.

More than half of women in Asia surveyed felt uncomfortable and offended by other people’s view on their status especially with regards to topics about their age or marital status. Almost 72% of women in Korea and 62% of women in China have experienced this discomfort and scrutiny.

Japan and Korea emerged as the two most extreme countries where women feel unhappy about getting older — almost 6 out of 10 Japanese women and more than half of South Korean women feeling this way.

In China, finding a suitable partner for marriage is the biggest cause of concern among single women under 30 with more than 6 out of 10 single Chinese women under 30 sharing this concern.

These findings underline a broader social issue connected to age-related pressure.

Gillette has just scooped up a well-deserved Cannes Gold for its assisted shaving ad about a son who cares for and has to help shave his father.

And the making of the new shaver, TREO:

Via TIME:

For many men, keeping a freshly-shaven face provides a sense of dignity. But as men lose their dexterity to age or illness, it can become impossible for them to shave themselves, relying instead on caretakers. The population of Americans aged 65 and older will nearly double by 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, meaning an increasing number of men will need grooming help. The problem is that razors are not designed for use on somebody else — until now.

Gillette’s new TREO is the first razor engineered for caregivers to shave men who can’t shave themselves. It handles like a paintbrush, making it easier for users to give a careful shave. The blade requires less water, helpful because many elderly men are shaved away from the bathroom. And the squeezable handle includes a scented gel, making the TREO a standalone shaving package.

Gillette hopes the TREO can help give elderly men a renewed sense of self-respect. “It’s clear when you watch carers looking after men in this condition that dignity is a huge part of it,” said Matt Hodgson, the project’s lead engineer.