Edward Norton and Daria Werbowy launch Prada Phone by LG 3.0

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Mr Norton also added: "It was a pleasure collaborating with PRADA and LG, both Global brands with impeccable reputations for being the most innovative and respected in their fields."

How nice of Mr Norton to write that sentence for the press release!

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Geekized

Barf.
- bluest_one
  
  Actors will say any old shit for money.
  
  It’s in the job description.
http://www.facebook.com/blazeldude Marc Blazel

All of those things make me want to buy this probably terrible phone.
ridestowe

collaborating, lol
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

The first rule of Prada Phone by LG 3.0 Club is you do not write press releases for Prada Phone by LG 3.0 Club.
wygit

This makes me so sad. I respect him a lot, but just a bit less than I did 5 minutes ago.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Chloe Sevigny made a good point about this kind of thing. To paraphrase her: It’s better to do an ad to pay the bills than to do a shitty RomCom that will be around forever.
  - phreakincool
    
    That’s funny. Until you said that, I never thought of Fight Club as a RomCom, shitty or otherwise. But there you go.
    - dculberson
      
      Well, the trailer spelled it out as such:
      
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80mmq3h58b0
  - Marcus Pseudonymius
    
    Pay the bills? More like support an extravagant lifestyle.
    
    On the money he made on one film you or I could live comfortably for many, many years.
    
    Fuck Edward Norton. Ed’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      I think that you massively underestimate the cost of hookers and blow.
    - EH
      
      Posting with an anachronistic name from a dead language, you got a lot of nerve criticizing extravagance.
  - IamInnocent
    
    If either S. or N. have any trouble paying their bills, with all the money they make, they’re just stupid. So why listen to them ?
  - Halloween Jack
    
    Hell, there are so many movies out there that even though it may be around, no one pays attention to it. Someone asked Michael Caine about Jaws: The Revenge once, and he said, “I have not seen it, although I understand that it’s quite awful. I have, however, seen the house that it bought for me, and it is quite nice.”
ROSSINDETROIT

I’d like to know what Mr. Jalopy thinks of this. He’s a fan of Ms. Prada. Having sold some of their merch I can say it’s probably well made and undoubtedly beautiful. If it doesn’t have state of the art features and specs, that probably doesn’t matter to their clientele any more than a Morgan driver cares that he hasn’t got world class performance.
- EH
  
  No no, you have to go all Beverly Hillbillies on their asses. Prada? “Proud ‘a what?” Don’t mind the craft that goes into Hermes products, just pull out your dogeared Jameson and go to town.
ROSSINDETROIT

Suggested caption: “My telephone. Let me show you it.”
https://twitter.com/misterjayem MrJM

Isn’t LG the new name for Goldstar.
- Comrade7
  
  Yes, it stands for Lucky / Goldstar…
- Flashman
  
  Uh, new as in since like 1994.
  - https://twitter.com/misterjayem MrJM
    
    So does it still mean “crap”?
http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

He might make more from this one marketing campaign than from all his movie roles combined. It’s a very very mad world.
bklynchris

As a straight woman, all I can say that all this add makes me want to do is to have sex with that woman. No, I don’t want the phone, and Ed Norton-good photoshopping/never liked “Brothers McMuffin”/whatever, but is there any chance I can get that woman to sleep with me?

I wonder what she’s like in bed. Although, often times there is no correlation between good looks and boudoir skillz. Sigh….in retrospect, I guess all that ad makes me want to do is go eat some cake.
- robuluz
  
  Really? I think she looks like a de-shelled tortoise. In fact the ad kind of makes me want to sleep with Edward Norton.
  
  They really fucked this one up, didn’t they?
  - Stu_Por
    
    What? It really makes me want to take the phone and cram it up my ass like the consumer-whore that I am.
    
    And they know it. Just look at their stares and body language. It’s the LG challenge.
    - robuluz
      
      Huh? Cram what up where like what? You’re not making any sense Edward. I mean Stu. You’re not making any sense Stu.
- IamInnocent
  
  One ‘like’ just for the last sentence.
sugarsails

This may just be poor photoshopping, but next to Nortan, Werbowy’s eyes seem like they’re sliding off the sides of her face.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  That’s The Look. Since Jackie Kennedy. Compare to Kate Moss, who’s dominated the supermodel scene for several decades.
  - AttackHamster
    
    Blimey, is there a better demonstration of the ravages of tobacco chic? She is barely 38.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      She’s the rare celebrity who’s actually been filmed doing coke.
  - http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul
    
    Or are they Greys?
Ben Becker

So this is the scene in Fight Club before he freaks out and realizes that all of this brand name material crap doesn’t actually make him happy, right?
http://twitter.com/vvant Stefan

Dude! LG needs people with better Photoshop skills.
http://twitter.com/malonicus Mark Malone

I hope it’s bigger than it looks and comes with a stylus otherwise Samsung’s gonna bitch-slap them both.
http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

It looks to me like Norton has mixed feelings about the whole thing.

edit – whoa, if you clone/flip the left side of his face he looks just like Mark Harmon.
Bucket

I am Jack’s overpriced phone.
penguinchris

Hmm. I don’t think this is photoshopped in the sense that the two people were photographed separately and then combined. It’s a very simple yet clearly quite effective lighting setup and all of the details are correct.

The weird thing is the way Norton is stuck in there, right? I think it’s just weird posing. I mean, look at that awesome grimace on his face – it’s weird posing. I searched for a clearer photo of the phone, and there are a couple of other shots from the same photoshoot out there. It seems legit enough. Or are people thinking the phone is what’s inserted? That’s harder to tell, but it’s certainly not obvious if it is.

All that aside, I think the phone actually looks pretty good, especially when compared to the design of most android phones.
- http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino
  
  The photo just looks awkward altogether. I don’t think it’s ‘fake’ either, but it makes me wonder what the idea behind it was (assuming it was a tiny bit more creative than “2 famous people with the phone”).
  
  Why these two together? They’re not interacting at all. The woman is oddly hovering over his shoulder without touching him, holding the phone in the weirdest way. He’s not acknowledging the woman OR the phone. They don’t even look good together (she makes him look tiny with beady eyes, he makes her look like a grey alien). The ads featuring him and her alone are much better and make more sense.
  
  I mean, of course it’s ultimately just another trite and superficial advertisement; but if you’re going to be all about surface, you should at least do it properly and have it look good…
  - penguinchris
    
    Yeah, it’s a really weird pairing and a weird photo. I like it, though, because of the look on Norton’s face. He clearly realized how ridiculous the whole thing was.
    - http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul
      
      He’s trying not to break the pose, despite her loudly farting.
- teapot
  
  I too believe this shot is not a composite (though some retouching has likely been applied) and the crowd’s reaction is mostly due to armchair specialists in every field that seem to inhabit the internet in large numbers.
  
  This is not a shoop people. Calm down. Terrible pose – yes. Bad photoshop – no.
  
  Re: the phone – It looks like an LG Optimus Black with a Prada logo. Anyone who flushes money on this thing is an idiot.
Doug Flint

Wait, two really pretty people want me to buy an expensive luxury item that I don’t need? My world has been shaken to it’s core!
ROSSINDETROIT

Never mind the phone. I want that necktie.
- Jake0748
  
  Ross, my image of you is in tatters. A necktie? I always imagined you with a soldering iron and a half-burnt-off mustache, toiling away in the basement. :)
  - Bucket
    
    Not only that, the knot is way over to the right, and the dimple way over to the left! That’s a half-windsor, baby. The domain of high-school debate teams and junior execs. If it ain’t symmetrical, don’t respectrical, man.
  - ROSSINDETROIT
    
    Stubble, actually and the singe is growing out. I used to work at Saks in Menswear and we had Prada neckties. They were fantastic. Like dark eggplant color sparsely flecked with infinitesimal gold specks. And odd light-absorbing textures that looked the same from any angle. The opposite of flashy but a quality look. I never bought one because I’m more of a Ferragamo guy but boy, were they cool.
niktemadur

Echoes of Sting peddling Motorola in his Jaguar, which coincided with the exact moment when Mr Sumner shed his last fleck of street cred.
MikeKStar

I’m not sure I understand the criticism. Since when is it frowned upon for a movie star to peddle his celebrity by endorsing a sponsor’s products?

*cough*
Watchismo!
*cough*
- BijouxBoy
  
  Very funny Mike. Thumbs-up.
- t3kna2007
  
  Every week I wait for the sponsor SHOOT-OUT. Every week, hopeful, every week, disappointed. I’ll just say, Prada vs. Watchismo would not be a bad place to start.
- guanto
  
  Incidentally, this phone would go great with one of those $1,000 Watchismo watches that Rob is genuinely excited to recommend every so often ;-).
- bklynchris
  
  I see your *Watchismo* and raise you one PH artichoke pendant lamp available at Hive for $8000+. You gotta love whoever is doing BB’s ad sales. I can see them saying, “Oh, mos def, are readers spend a minimum of 1 G large on lighting treatments, I mean as long as the design is Scandinavian, or even-sniff-Italian.”
  
  http://hivemodern.com/pages/products.php?sid=2064
  
  I wish I could spend 8K on that light.
ROSSINDETROIT

I’d like to see Mark Cross or Ferragamo do a phone. Maybe they already have. Something classic and understated. I worked for B&O when their first, $900 cell phone came out. People practically swooned. It was pretty outstanding for its day.
http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius

I’m confused. Why are people all snarky about this? Celebrities do this all the time and LG has been making Prada phones since 2007. The last models weren’t even particularly expensive. This one looks like it’ll be free with a contract at least in the UK.

This one is an Android phone that apparently will run Ice Cream Sandwich, an 8 megapixel camera that’ll shoot 1080p and a dual-core OMAP4430 1GHz. It has a nice sharp display (LG makes the displays for the iPhone last I checked) and it looks aesthetically pleasing.

I’m personally an iPhone person, but I swear I didn’t expect Boing Boing to be so full of haters.
- http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul
  
  I think the original point is more specific.
  
  Those two are as likely to have designed that phone as Ed Norton is to have written ”It was a pleasure collaborating with PRADA and LG, both Global brands with impeccable reputations for being the most innovative and respected in their fields.”
- Halloween Jack
  
  Well, you know how it is; so many people who insist that they’d never be whores for corporate America like this (that, incidentally, is a phrase I first heard applied, in the letters page of Rolling Stone, to Lou Reed, of all people, because he did like one ad for Honda scooters). Me, I’d be more than happy to take one for the team if I were offered the chance to do this, and by “the team” I mean “me and my checking account, and all you haters can suck it.”
- http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch
  
  I’m snarky about it because my world doesn’t have ads or luxury-branded products in it. My eyes just sort of slide away from them, and the last time I watched a show on TV instead of the ‘net was many years ago. This is what the hoi polloi get up to?
  
  Wait, I haven’t snarked yet. Snark snark snark snark, snark snark.
Jake0748

Sorry I’m so out of it, but who is this Darla Werblowowy?
- http://twitter.com/TokyoSpark TokyoSpark
  
  She was the basis for the Avatar aliens, I mean seriously, just paint her blue
  - Jake0748
    
    Ah… you are correct for the daily double.
  - Halloween Jack
    
    She can beam down to my planet any time.
  - http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch
    
    Is that why she’s so damn tall in that photo?
- David Lavictoire
  
  I got that phone and the voice wecognition on that thing is tewwibow.
http://www.appliedesoterics.com bfarn

I’m weighing in on the side of alien. Her left eye is literally as big as Ed Norton’s mouth. Nobody would do that in post on purpose.
http://profile.yahoo.com/GDEQZABVCVNVM3XWTXVUA4M6QU Gust

I liked it.
- Rob
  
  I did too. Its comforting to know what phones are fashionable.
  
  Im grateful that I can make a purchase thats part of something involving two impeccable brands like LG and Prada, along with stars like Ed Norton and that Darla Weboby
http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

“Two global brands, each impeccable in their field. PRADA, the field of shoes. LG, the field of electronic rectangles. Your powers combine, to make me so rich. I mean, to make this phone so good.”
http://twitter.com/hughstimson Hugh Stimson

Why did Mr. Norton capitalize Global brands?
Palomino

It’s the accessories that purchasers will be mining the internet for. Edward Norton, really? Boy, was I ever fooled.
Halloween Jack

Hey, he has to make up for that lost Avengers paycheck somehow.
ahmacrom

Any time I see ads like these, I have Bill Hicks in my head. “You are off the artistic roll call forever, everything you say is suspect……….”
Gordon JC Pearce

Am I supposed to know who these people are…?
M W

fix’d http://i42.tinypic.com/153sgf6.png
Earth Man

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?
Camp Freddie

Ed Norton has the look of a 14-year-old boy who’s been ordered by mum to, “Sit still so I can take a nice photo of you and your sister”.

Not that I think Ed is doing anything wrong. I think if someone offered me a load of cash to appear in some shitty advert, I’d take the money too.
The fact that the press statement is so obviously transparent makes is a bonus. I’m pretty sure no-one will think that Ed actually thinks this.

I especially like the way that global has been capitalised.
Unless LG and Prada are both owned by a mega-corp called Global, in which case the joke’s on me I guess.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZH5LQHHJPERMWNVHCR2Y5GRHHE Jose

Ed must be trying not to transform into the Hulk. That would explain the look on his face. I’m not sure about the look on Daria’s face. Maybe she is wondering why they couldn’t find someone who’s closer to her 5′ 11″ height.
journey46

the ad should be honest and read…yes, you too can be a 1%er !
well, not really.
but you can pretend.
with domestication comes a price.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=768578178 Chi-Yun Lau

Did anyone else see this?
Maj Variola

You are not your fancy phone
http://twitter.com/nesnora nesnora

Badly photoshopped (the size of the phone looks ridiculous). Which doesn’t matter much these days, but what does is the lazy art direction.

They get Edward Norton and THAT’s what they do with it? They could at least position him crying on a bunch of train tracks… or how about suicidal window shopping?

http://cdn.sheknows.com/articles/2011/11/Steinfeld-prada-ad.jpg

http://www.tforia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/prada_film.bmp
Their feldspars

And then he stabs her with a hypodermic and grins maniacally.
jimh

In this clip he actually says “Let’s hold the phone”…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFD5lbN4p60
http://profiles.google.com/max.kingsbury Max Kingsbury

Shillin’ like a villain.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Cred loss like a boss.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=693064597 Ian Whitehouse

If that sentence was his only contribution to the Prada phone, then he probably should’ve realised that “Global” doesn’t require a capital letter.