Latest news with #LosAngelesRaiders
USA Today
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Christian Bale in the John Madden biopic sure looks like Christian Bale
Christian Bale in the John Madden biopic sure looks like Christian Bale FIRST LOOK: Christian Bale as Al Davis in the Upcoming Film 'Madden' — Cinema Tweets (@CinemaTweets1) June 7, 2025 There's a John Madden biopic headed our way, with Nicolas Cage playing the titular character and Christian Bale as then-Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders franchise owner Al Davis. And, since it's summer and we're still about two months removed from exhibition American football, sure, let's talk about it. The first promotional image accomplished the impressive feat of tapping into the 1970s-cool aesthetic Davis used to user in a new era of NFL football and Raiders success. Davis was a pioneer, a win-first owner who also stood up for civil rights and used his platform to improve a growing league while also helping to develop the product on the field into the electric, violent display that helped the sport boom in popularity. That's no doubt how Davis, who passed away in 2011, would like to be remembered rather than the string of mediocrity that hung over the thrice-relocated team over the final two decades of his career. Candid shots have leaked during filming as well, showing a beefed-up, prosthetics-donning Cage looking a lot like the square-bodied Hall of Fame head coach. On Monday, a shot of Bale as a less-flattering, older version of Davis dropped. And, maybe it's because "Christian Bale undergoes weird physical transformation for role" is basically a Hollywood trope at this point, but it's a little underwhelming. Yep, that's Christian Bale, all right. Good talk everybody. See you out there.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The best psych-out artists know how to mess with your mind, but Trump's push for tariffs shows how this strategy can backfire
Moments before a three-point shooting contest at an NBA All-Star Game, basketball legend Larry Bird warned his fellow contestants that they might as well skip warmups because he was going to win the event anyway. Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the eve of a Mr. Olympia body-building competition, casually mentioned to Lou Ferrigno, a highly touted up-and-comer, that, golly, he himself had already won that particular championship five whole times. In a maneuver vastly less subtle than either of those, Los Angeles Raiders defensive end Howie Long once yelled across the line at a Chicago Bears blocking guard, 'I'm gonna follow you to the parking lot and beat you up in front of your family.' That's pretty much the same negotiating tactic that President Donald Trump recently attempted to pull off in threatening to levy tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China. He talked trash. He practiced the art of the psych-out. Except it appears so far largely to have backfired. Yes, like athletes, executives occasionally talk trash, too. They engage in Machiavellian bullying, all bluster and bluff, whether in sales pitches, job interviews, board meetings, business lunches, or chance encounters in the bathroom, to lobby for everything from raises and promotions to bigger budgets, lower leases, new clients, a higher profile, and a corner office. For Donald Trump, talking trash is by now a signature lifelong modus operandi. He talked trash as a snotty kid in prep school, he talked trash as a real estate developer and casino owner, he talked trash as the make-believe big boss hosting the TV show The Apprentice, he talked name-calling trash against all of his opponents, Republican and Democrat alike, as a presidential candidate, and now, true to form, he's once again talking trash as commander-in-chief. As I long ago discovered both in my corporate career with global consulting firms and on the schoolyard basketball courts of New York City, the best psych-out artists know how to mess with your mind. They provoke your fear of failure, trick you into ad nauseum second-guessing of yourself, and manipulate you into panic bordering on paralysis. They attempt to belittle, unnerve, taunt, intimidate, and otherwise sabotage an adversary—whatever it takes to humiliate foes into submission and gain a competitive advantage. The psych-out is, of course, an old-school Darwinian ploy. In Greek mythology, the heroic warrior Achilles swaggered before the gates of Troy accusing Hector and the Trojans of being sissies. In medieval times, the fabled knights of King Arthur, no strangers to gamesmanship, often entered jousting contests bragging to opponents about inevitably achieving victory. Even Davy Crockett, our beloved native frontiersman, soldier, and politician, demonstrated similar immodesty, boasting before brawls that he would handily whip any upstarts. Psych-outs as brinkmanship can work. Trump threatened to impose a 25% tariff on all goods from Mexico. In response, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum quickly succumbed to the pressure and agreed to deploy 10,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexican border to stifle fentanyl trafficking and the flow of illegal migrants. The tariff plan has gone on a one-month pause. Yet the psych-out as bargaining tool is by no means an automatic guarantee of success. Sometimes bullies get a comeuppance. Only minutes after a 10% tariff on products from China was to go into effect, Beijing retaliated with a 10% tariff on our oil and agricultural machinery and a 15% tariff on our coal and liquefied natural gas. In this case, talking tough has escalated into an all-out U.S.-China trade war. Even so, Trump is unlikely to break issue he confronts, whether deportation policy or tax reform or our potential acquisitions of Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada as the 51st state, or the Gaza Strip, the psych-out will likely serve as his go-to standard operating procedure for the next four years. Underneath it all, he has the same sensibility as your average professional wrestler talking smack in the ring. So look for our president to slap on the warpaint to do his stuff and induce suspicion and paranoia in faceoffs domestic and foreign, perhaps next with the European Union. He'll do whatever it takes to rob morale at every opportunity from his perceived nemeses—chuck temper tantrums, throw sucker punches, pound his chest King-Kong-like and gloat over his victories. Just one problem. Such showdowns run the risk of mutating into nothing but tit-for-tat stalemates. In the end, how can anyone win if everyone loses? The opinions expressed in commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune. Read more: Are Trump's trade and tariffs tantrums repairing market failures or eroding global trust? Trump tariffs: Stealing from the China playbook—to boost car making in America This story was originally featured on
CNN
04-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
How Apple's ‘1984' Super Bowl commercial changed advertising forever
CNN — The year is 1984. It's Super Bowl Sunday and you turn on the TV to see a procession of stern men marching through a tunnel. No, it's not the Los Angeles Raiders. It's the most important Super Bowl commercial of all time. Apple's iconic Macintosh advert, simply called '1984' and based on George's Orwell's novel of the same name, featured a 'Big Brother' figure addressing hordes of subjects from a giant screen and a woman who escapes riot police to smash the screen with a hammer. When viewed now, it is the epitome of the 1980s – CRT TVs, dramatic voiceovers and big hair. But back then, it was unlike any commercial America had ever seen. 'They sold $150 million worth of computers in 100 days,' says David Stubley – sports marketing expert and author of Gamechangers and Rainmakers: How Sport Became Big Business – in an interview with CNN Sport. 'The whole ad industry just stopped in their tracks and went: 'What just happened? How did that happen?'' A big splash It might be hard to believe, but the Super Bowl was not always such a big deal. Long before Taylor Swift or the invention of the jumbotron, Super Bowl I was won, fairly comfortably, by the 1967 Green Bay Packers. If you were one of the 24 million people watching at home, you would have seen halftime commercials from the likes of Goodyear, McDonald's and Tang, each of whom would have paid a reported $38,000 for the slot – about $350,000 when adjusted for inflation. By 1984, Stubley estimates that companies were forking out around $300,000, or $900,000 adjusted. That's a sizeable amount, until you consider that the NFL is now selling some 30-second slots for $8 million. It would be disingenuous to claim that '1984' is the sole reason for Super Bowl commercials now releasing with the fanfare that they do. But, as Stubley explains, there is a noticeable 'before and after' effect around the iconic commercial. 'Advertising before that time was either cheesy, personality driven, or what I would describe as transactional – 'Here it is, do you want it?'' he explains. 'What this ad did, it basically said: 'Forget everything that's happened in the past. And the only way to do that is to smash that hammer through that big screen.'' It is perhaps no surprise that the commercial was so cinematic, given who directed it. Ridley Scott had enjoyed so much success with 'Alien' and 'Blade Runner' by that point that many did not realize the Englishman had actually started his career in the advertising industry. His signature dystopian style lent itself perfectly to Orwell's story. 'We were all so scared about 1984, so it tapped into that brilliantly,' says Stubley. 'Everyone thought the world was going to come to an end in 1984, if you'd read George Orwell's book. And so to have this take on that whole scariness and confront it in such a brilliant way, I think it really caught people's imagination.' Despite the Macintosh computer never actually featuring in the commercial itself, it is hard not hard to infer that 'Big Brother' represented the existing tech companies. 'The juxtaposition between the alternative of IBM and HP and Dell and this was probably what made it so exciting for everybody. It's a bit like the Air Jordans 10 years later. You know, sticking two fingers up to the establishment,' explains Stubley. 'Steve Jobs, if you look at any of his talks from that era, he openly stokes that. He says: 'All these suits who just crank out vanilla hardware and vanilla software, there's got to be a better way, surely.' He was very good at saying: 'That's the establishment, that's traditional. We're nothing to do with that.'' Handily for Apple, the 1980s were not only defined by Orwellian anxiety. They were also a decade when advertisers started to devote real attention – and budget – to the power of the little box in everyone's living room. 'TV advertising at that time suddenly blew up. All these new categories suddenly discovered it,' says Stubley. 'In America, there was this huge war between Miller and Budweiser. Then you had finance suddenly discovering the power of TV, retail discovering the power of TV. So all of these categories were all kind of piling in.' It meant Apple were able to spend the kind of money – estimated by Stubley to be around $600,000 ($1.8 million when adjusted for inflation) – that was required for what was essentially a 60-second blockbuster. Of course, you can spend all the money you want on the perfect Super Bowl commercial, but if everyone the next day is talking about the game itself, then the effects will be limited. Luckily for Steve Jobs and co., that was not the case. With the Raiders up 21-3 on the then-named Washington Redskins at halftime, the contest was essentially over. 'All the action was taking place in the ad break, not on the pitch,' says Stubley. 'You're sitting there, it's a dull game, you know what's going to happen. You've got your beer, you've got your burger. You're sitting through traditional advertising – Taco Bell, Walmart, whatever. 'And then suddenly, boom! This thing comes into your living room. It must have been shocking.' A new age The success of the Macintosh commercial, according to Stubley, prompted other companies to spend bigger on their own Super Bowl advertising. 'Post-1984 there was a lot of money to go around,' he says. 'And so if you want to build rapid brand awareness (and) you've got a $400 million ad budget, as Budweiser would have had in the 90s, and you want to put Miller Light back in its box … you just buy up the ad breaks in the Super Bowl.' Even now, when Super Bowl commercials come with a price tag of $8 million, Stubley still believes they can be a worthwhile investment. 'If you're looking to build brand awareness amongst American adults aged 35 and under, the Super Bowl is one of the quickest ways of doing it, if not exactly the cheapest,' he explains. But the halftime advertising landscape after the Apple commercial was not just defined by its ever-increasing budgets. Companies also borrowed stylistically from the way Apple approached the task. Nowadays, more than 40 years later, it is not hard to see the ripples left by '1984.' Big-name directors routinely trade Hollywood for the Super Bowl, with the likes of Martin Scorsese, David Fincher and Zack Snyder all contributing commercials in recent years. In fact, many halftime commercials are now mini movies in themselves, with A-list actors, storylines, and even teaser trailers released ahead of time. Many tune in just to watch the adverts, such is their cultural importance. In the streaming age, when many people can watch anything at any time, live sports remain as one of the few ways advertisers can create watercooler moments. 'In today's fragmented world, to still be able to get 120 million Americans – that's not even the global audience – to sit in front of something, it's quite breathtaking,' says Stubley. 'This is the biggest event in the advertising calendar, period.' This year, when you watch Kendrick Lamar perform in the halftime show, it will likely be accompanied by a small Apple logo in the bottom-right corner – a privilege the tech giant paid $50 million for. And if you find yourself laughing, or texting a friend, or just thinking about about any of the commercials you see this Sunday, spare a thought for '1984.' They might not exist without it.
