promo

We all know the story: Britney Spears got divorced, shaved her head, beat a car with an umbrella, went to rehab for a little while, and generally acted in an unstable fashion in front of the paparazzi. Then, last year, she was supposed to put all of that behind her and reclaim her rightful crown as a pop princess by performing her new single, "Gimme More" at the MTV Video Music Awards.

So she opened the show--but her performance was more befitting a zombie stripper than a multi-platinum artist. Things continued to go downhill for a while, until her dad stepped in. After that, it was better extensions, visits with her kids and guest spots on How I Met Your Mother. It was good all around.

Now, after several months of relative stability, Britney may be ready for a comeback from her comeback. Along with VMA host Russell Brand, Spears is starring in a couple of promos for the VMAs. The videos are after the jump.

I love advertisements. Especially since the use of PhotoShop has become so widespread, ads and pictures in magazines have become less and less interested in reality, and more interested in the general idea of what an image is.

For instance, the ad for Cycle 11 of America's Next Top Model featured in the September issue of Vogue doesn't look like a picture of Tyra Banks surrounded by fashionista wannabes, so much as the idea of Tyra Banks surrounded by fashionista wannabes ... as imagined by an unholy union of Pixar artists and caricature-drawing carnies after a 72-hour absinthe and 'shroom binge that featured Jesus Christ Superstar stuck on a loop in the DVD player.

NBC has released a 3-minute promo for the next season of The Office. First of all, it's great to see the cast again and I am now feeling very impatient for season 4 to begin (Sept. 27).

The video is like that old elementary school essay: What I Did Last Summer. The cast--supporting and main players--all talk about what their summers were like. Some of them even seem to tie up a few loose ends, especially Karen's testimonial, which is a little... bitter. We also get to see Ryan at his new job and Kelly's reaction to him is priceless.

Video after the jump and I've also embedded a great promo for Chuck with NBC's promo guy:

Icetruck.tv looks like a normal Youtube knockoff at first glance. It has friendly soft blue icons with rounded edges that just scream, "let's watch dramatic chipmunks all day long." But beneath the unsuspecting veneer lies one of the greatest viral marketing campaigns to hit the internet since Al Gore invented it so long ago.

The Icetruck site is actually a webvertisment for Showtime's Dexter, about a serial killer who works as a forensic analyst to help catch murderers. If that doesn't sound cool enough, it stars Michael C. Hall from Six Feet Under. What more do you need?

Last night, SciFi aired the first promo for the upcoming Battlestar Galactica movie and today it's up on YouTube. We all know Battlestar Galactica: Razor is about the Pegasus and what happened to it between the time the Cylons started a war and it met up with the Galactica.

Our favorite characters (Starbuck, Admiral Adama, Apollo) are also in the movie so it appears to start as the war with the Cylons begins and then the Pegasus somehow gets separated from the rest of the group. Of course, the promo doesn't reveal much, but it was enough to wet whet my appetite for some new BSG. I'm particularly anxious to see another side of Admiral Cain, who was pretty rotten once she appeared on BSG. Also... notice all the female soldiers on the Pegasus.

Battlestar Galactica: Razor airs on Sci Fi in November.

Video is after the jump:

Big huzzahs to reader John Geezer, who sent us a link to this fantastic promo for the upcoming new season of Futurama. The promo was created by Speed Bump Studios in an effort to get a job doing these for Comedy Central. It features a CGI version of Bender walking into a random house, drinking the owners' wine, and stealing their candlesticks. "Hello, peasants!" he yells as he walks in. Really great stuff.

Speed Bump also provides a clip showing the computer rough-draft of the CGI Bender, and an opportunity to download the Bender model (for fun only, of course). Good stuff, and a fun way to close out the week.

The premiere of season three of Lost is still a few weeks away, Wednesday October 4th in case you forgot, but that shouldn't stop anyone from speculating about what is going on with those crazy kids from that ill fated Oceanic flight. ABC has released a new promo to help get you started. You can watch the video after the jump, but if you really want to get into the nitty gritty of it, the fine folks over at dharmasecrets have screen caps of all the little jump-cut bits. They also have a fairly extensive collection of other season three promotional media. One interesting thing I saw was the list of authors for the first six episodes. Carlton Cuse or Damon Lindelof have written five of them. I think that bodes well for the continuity of the show.

Listen up, fans of The Office. NBC and YouTube have teamed up for a cool new contest and they're asking folks to create a twenty-second promo for the show. Eligible clips will be shown on YouTube and NBC.com, while the winners will be seen on NBC this summer during The Office.  The deadline for submitting your video is July 21. Oh yeah, and you can't use any footage from the actual show, though you can use the theme song, which is made available on the contest's site along with downloadable graphics. Alternatively, I suppose there's no one stopping you from making a promo and just sticking it up on YouTube yourself, contest be damned. It's all about choice, brothers and sisters.

This is both hysterical and bittersweet. Someone has found footage of film critic Roger Ebert and his late partner in crime, Gene Siskel, shooting promos for their syndicated program Siskel & Ebert & the Movies. Listen as they both go off on a hilarious tongue-in-cheek rant about WASPs and Protestantism, laugh as they try to get through yet another promo while lobbing insults at one another, and try not to wet your pants when Gene explains that Roger's answer to every question he's asked at McDonald's is "yes."

Funny as all of this is, it does make me miss watching these two guys lock horns with one another. Richard Roeper does okay holding his own against Roger, but it's nothing compared to how he and Gene used to go after one another in what often seemed like an extremely vicious and callous manner. And yet, when it was all said and done they still remained friends.

Note: Links above contain swearing, so probably NSFW.

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