Hi guys, Ben here. Things got busy around Movie Advocate HQ this week, so my apologies for the relatively light amount of posts. To kick off your weekend right, I just wanted to share a link to Google's surprising, heartwarming ode to Charlie Chaplin on his 122nd birthday. Anybody who goes to www.google.com today sees this above the search bar:
This makes me happy on so many levels:
1. I'm reminded that it has been far too long since I've watched a Chaplin movie. I might have to throw on The Gold Rush this weekend.
2. How many people do you think will be exposed to Chaplin for the first time through Google's homage? Sometimes I wonder about the long term cultural impact of these sort of memes. But everybody uses Google, and if even a thousandth of a percent of those users follows one of the "Charlie Chaplin" Google search links the video forwards you to after it's finished and finds out what a treasure Chaplin was, it will have been worth it.
3. Damn, these guys really pulled the Chaplin mystique off surprisingly well.
4. As great a job as they did, there is still just no substitute for the real thing.
Happy birthday, Charlie.
-Ben