I've a smile on my face

The new Volkswagen Golf GTI advert is awesome.

You may have seen it on the TV by now. It's also available at numerous places on the internet, such as over at The Guardian's website. If you've not seen it, check it out!

It's a reworking of Gene Kelly dancing in Singing In The Rain, from back in the mists of time. It's been redone with a bunch of break dancers, kitted out in the same suit as he wore and with wigs and so on, with Gene's face composited onto the video. It's not a perfect job, and you can easily see that the face mapping is not seamless, and there's a stupid bit of editing when he jumps onto the lamp-post but at the end of the day who cares? It's just damn cool and never mind the little flaws.

It's a nice step forward for this kind of computer technology. They've been claiming for a while that they could do things like put Marilyn Monroe in a film using old footage and computer trickery, and this seems like quite a step in that direction. Not sure how useful it is to be able to "resurrect" dead actors, but I'm sure we'll find out.

In other advert news, there was an ad on the TV for ebay last night. Now, I'm a huge fan of ebay, and have bought and sold many things on there in the past, but it still seems weird to see it advertised on the TV. It's weird to see some parts of the internet, and specifically the web, becoming so... mainstream. I know it's been growing, and loads of people have been getting hooked up lately, but adverts on the TV for an auction site? That seems like quite a step to me.