If you’ve been visiting this site on a semi-regular basis, you may have noticed the link to The Daily Puppy on the right side of this page. You might even have followed it; hopefully you did so on a day when the puppy was not one of those bug-eyed freaks they sometimes feature.
I do not apologize for this; everyone should see at least one puppy per day, and I like to do my part. But if you click over there today — on Tuesday, March 31st — you’ll notice that the site has been overtaken by a virus. Or, more specifically, by viral marketing.
Today’s puppy is Marley the Labrador retriever, as seen in the Fox movie “Marley & Me”, which just so happens to be coming out on video today. Fox has rented the Daily Puppy site to advertise the movie to its ultimate target audience.
I guess it makes sense. Cute puppy movie taking over a website dedicated to cute puppies … why not? And it’s certainly not the worst marketing angle they’ve used to sell the picture; that would be this one, which was either an attempt to make the movie’s ending seem controversial or to retroactively protect the movie from said controversy. (Spoiler alert on that link, obviously.)
Anyway, I hope the site was well-compensated for this. Oh, and “Marley & Me” is out on disc today. I’ll be over here, writing about “Slumdog Millionaire”.
Indeed I followed The Daily Puppy link sometime ago so have you to thank for my daily quota of adorable puppies (and, okay, the occasional bug-eyed freak).
Actually, I’d be grateful to the spray-painting spoiler for Marley & Me, whether thinking of bringing kids to see it, or just my own sappy animal-loving self. When I sell the book I always warn people that it deals with the dog’s WHOLE life, that 3/4 of the book is very funny, and that you can see the inevitable sad part coming if you want to just close the book. Even the abridged kids’ version of the book goes right to the end. Old Yeller, which made me cry, deals with sacrifice and becoming a man. Marley just gets old and dies. If it wasn’t written so sensitively in the book I’d think it was gratuitous sadness. I’m ambivalent about it being in the movie.
Rent Slumdog Millionaire. And then rent Sunshine, which not enough people saw. Which makes me think about zombies (28 Days Later)…Norm, is there good advance buzz for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead? And have you caught up with the mash-up book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? (I am so totally in the niche market for that book.)
Speaking of zombies (and what more natural segue is there from puppies than to zombies?), I’ve heard good things about a British miniseries called “Dead Set,” in which zombies overtake the world while the contestants on “Big Brother” (the real one, officially licensed use of the name, the house, and everything!) have no idea what’s going on. Sounds funny. I have the R2 DVD on order.
@ Chris — I wanted to catch “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern …” at Canadian Music Week, but the damn press screening didn’t line up. Still hoping to see it somewhere, but there’s always DVD. And I’ll be picking up “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” as soon as I can lay my hands on it; apparently, it was released two weeks ago, but I can’t find the damn thing anywhere. I’m also embarrassingly excited about “Pride and Predator”.
@ Josh — I haven’t seen “Dead Set”, but I’ve been hearing about it for months and it’s perched at the top of my pop-cultural want list. I’ll almost certainly be picking it up on my next trip to the UK.