#BeenThereDoneThatAlready, Subway!

Well that didn’t take long.

The so-called-artists of Subway apparently don’t exist in their advertising department.

Take a look at their latest commercial:

Why am I up in #arms, you ask?  Jimmy Fallon (and Justin Timberlake) already took a crack at this last month:

But what should I expect from a place that makes sandwiches?

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? I Knew Something Was Fishy About Oz The Great And Powerful

I saw Oz the Great and Powerful when it was in theaters.  Heck, I even watched it in 3D.  I wanted to like it, but those hopes fell asleep in the poppy field.

It was an attempt – but not enough of an attempt.  It seemed to try – but not try hard enough.

Here may be the official reason why – it’s a remake retread ripoff of Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness.  Take a peak:

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? Liberal Borrowing 2013!

For those of you that are new – I call stealing something in the name of art liberal borrowing.
For those of you that knew – what didn’t you tell the new people?

My latest discovery comes in the form of Hey Rosetta’s Red Heart.  Though it’s not as cut-and-dry cut-and-paste as some of my cases, I think you’d be remit to not admit a blatant similarity to Better Than Ezra’s In the Blood.  Take a listen to the opening melody structures and meet me down below:

Okay it’s more like a liberal liberal borrowing.  Or maybe one just reminds me of the other.  Kind of like how the opening of Churchill’s Change reminds me of Dean Martin’s Sway:

Oh what do you know about anything!

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? Umbrella Corporation Is For Real

Nothing like a little Regenerate to improve your complexion.

Nothing like a little Regenerate to improve your complexion.

If you’re unaware of the Umbrella Corporation, here’s a sampling of one of their products:

In reality, it’s a youth-restoring product invented for  a movie/video game series involving zombies.  Or is it?

A little Regeneration, I mean, Meaningful Beauty goes a long way.

A little Regeneration, I mean, Meaningful Beauty goes a long way.

If it’s not that shit stuff, then how about this stuff shit?

Why does Justin Bieber have a perfume?

Why does Justin Bieber have a perfume?

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk… Where Have I Seen Or Heard That Before?

It’s been a while again, folks, and I’d like to present to you a few more occurrences of homages liberal borrowings.  If you are unfamiliar with my concept of liberal borrowing, click liberal borrowing (not this one, the previous one).

The first few I’m going to breeze through because they’re already older songs, and other people have thought the same or the artists acknowledge the similarity.

  • SOME NIGHTS BY fun. (do I really have to write it that way?) CECELIA BY SIMON & GARFUNKEL

My friend swore up and down about this one, and being the defender of originality that I claim to be, I just didn’t really hear it… until this video:

He also thinks fun.’s We Are Young shares common ground with The Beatles’ Hey Jude.  I told him to find me a sample; he’s still looking.

  • I WON’T GIVE UP BY JASON MRAZ = DELICATE BY DAMIEN RICE

This one even Mr. A-to-the-Z can’t argue with… it’s on Wikipedia.

When I first heard I Won’t Give Up, I wondered why I felt like I knew its melody but not the words (by the way, does Jason Mraz realize he looks like that now?):

  • WASHINGTON NATIONAL’S LOGO = WALGREEN’S LOGO

I’m late to this, but I only noticed because my Detroit Tigers made it as far as they did.  Otherwise, I don’t watch National League games at all.  But answer me this – notice anything?  ‘Cuz Walgreen’s did.

W-w-w-w-what?!

(SIDENOTE: This last one is my favorite.)

Does M83’s Reunion

…sound at all like the theme song to Supernanny?

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? Wallflower Bites?!

Love is to woe is me as films about love is to waaah is me.

Take the film adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower as an example… an example already set previously by 1994’s Reality Bites:

Pictured in each poster: two dudes (one square, one “like, whatever”), short-haired pixie chick, wall.

If the posters are any indication, these are supposed to be the films that define the generations they’re made in.  But that shouldn’t be the case for TPOBAW (nerd acronym alert!).

The book written in 1999 by Stephen Chbosky actually takes place around the early 90’s in which sex, drugs, homosexuality, and aimlessness were common themes (a.k.a. buzzkills) also featured in RB (n.a.a. again!).  Does the same pre-social media angst of the 90’s translate to now?  If the posters can do it, so can the celluloid.

(SIDENOTE: I read and bought TPOBAW multiple times.  It was one of my favorites.  A Holden Caulfield for Gen-X’ers.  I’d hate it now.)

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? Let’s Play Liberal Borrowing Or Homage!

It’s been a few months since I’ve championed originality in music, or as I call it whilst demonizing (rock and roll!) it – liberal borrowing.

Of the latest two occurrences, one I should have caught a while back.  The last time I mentioned Ryan Star on this blog was to pick on his name (go on – click it… it’s one of my better posts).

Needless to say, I embedded the video for his song Breathe, and I never noticed that it’s opening guitar solo sounded oddly familiar…

  • Ryan Star’s Breathe

Ringo any bells?

  • John Lennon’s Woman

I would consider it an homage if it was about the same thing.  But it’s not.  So it’s…

LIBERAL BORROWING!

As for my latest find, I overheard this song playing overhead in a sports bar:

  • Lee Brice’s Hard to Love

Any other song’s intro come racing to mind?

  • Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car

What’s the verdict here – liberal borrowing or homage?

LIBERAL BORROWING AGAIN!

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? Sometimes Titles Are Just The Same

I’ve never claimed to be hip.  But then again, I’ve never claimed to be elbow either.  (I should stop claiming to be funny.)

So when I recently discovered that rapper T.I. had a song called Rubber Band Man, somewhere deep in my core idiot actually hoped and thought it might be a remake (or let’s say, re-imagining) of The Spinners’ The Rubberband Man.

Needless to say, I was sorely mistaken:

You see, one’s a song that I’ve been told I loved as a baby (that’s about a fat kid); the other is about how a drug dealer uses rubber bands on his wrist to hold money.  How’s that for a remake/re-imagining?

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? The Year Of The Arrow (Plus Bonus COC’s!)

I figured know I’m not the first to notice this, but are you noticing a trend?

Keep your sights on the bulls-eye…

First, Katniss has her way with the bow and arrow in The Hunger Games, then Hawkeye shows up as a master archer in The Avengers, and finally Princess Merida goes all Robin Hood in Brave.  Kinda weird, right?  Like Hollywood’s prepping us for Armageddon by developing a fondness for rudimentary varieties of arsenal.

But like I said, I unfortunately was late to the (hunger) game catching that one, so howzabout this Coinkydink or Coinkydonk… the flying vessels the Chitauri use in The Avengers are similar to the flying disks in Masters of the Universe movie:

Sorta…?

What about the Chitauri Leviathan, then?  It looked comparable to those Decepticon ships in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, right?

Yeah, this one’s a bit better… let’s go for one more COC!

Remember how it looked for Tony Stark inside the Iron Man suit?

Don’t look so surprised, Mr. Jr.

Do you think they got their idea’s from 1997’s Star Kid?

Spot on, I’d say.

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? Colin Farrell – Remake King

Face upgrades throughout his Hollywood career...

With Colin Farrell’s Total Remake Recall coming out this summer, it got me thinking… hasn’t he done this before?  It’s kind of like Total Recall in Total Real Life.  He’s becoming sort of the Remake King, and it may suit him well.

When S.W.A.T. was originally released, Farrell was the Sam Worthington of that moment.  He was the foreign Actor! living the Hollywood dream.  You couldn’t escape his movies – Hart’s War, Minority Report, Phone Booth, The Recruit,  and, ugh… Daredevil (his Bullseye was the best thing about that movie).

By the time Miami Vice was released, Anytown Vice could have been breathing down his neck.  Addictions to pain killers and Playboy models were derailing his career, and this film was not helped by it (or, ugh… Jamie Foxx.)

(SIDENOTE: Insert In Bruges here.  This film is not a remake, but to me, it remade his career.  This was the first time I thoroughly enjoyed his work as an Actor in bold, versus my usual sarcastic Italics!)

As for Fright Night and Total Recall, the court’s still out for me.  I enjoyed the originals of both, and I don’t think his presence will hurt either of the newer incarnations.  My big question is:

What’s the next remake he’ll, um, remake?

Now that Hollywood’s diving into 90’s television with the reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch (which I guess was technically and re-imagining of the comic book character), my suggestion is to go back to the TV remakes with Full House: The Movie!

Uncle Jesse, anyone?