Gisèle Bündchen stars in Chanel N°5 latest commercial

After all the teasing and taunting the new commercial for Chanel N°5 has been released.

Starring Brazilian supermodel (such a cliché) and directed by Australian Baz Luhrmann, it is without doubt an advertising "masterpiece" (which means it captures your attention, if only for its extravagance), running to over three minutes at its longest version and featuring all the glamour and style you would expect.

Gisèle Bündchen (screenshot from Chanel N°5: "The One That I Want - The Film"

But does the self-proclaimed "world's most desirable fragrance" need to spend the spondoolicks on a campaign (and a launch party) for a product which already projects an image of unobtainable luxury.

Bündchen alone was reportedly paid $4 million for her role (admittedly less than the $7 million Brad Pitt apparently received for his yawn-along part in a previous commercial) - and that launch party in New York?

Gisèle Bündchen (screenshot from Chanel N°5: "The One That I Want - The Film

Well, as usual, Chanel is keeping mum about the figures. But the marketing people must know what they're doing - n'est ce pas?

Opinions are divided over the new commercial. "Wonderful" for some, "average" for others.

Perhaps the most captivating element as, in the words of the New York Times review, Bündchen "an overtaxed modern gal" struggles with the complexities of every day life (as if) such as "surfing in the Hamptons, sending her daughter off in the care of a nanny, getting in a quick photo shoot and reuniting with her man for a canoodle at a jazz club" is the background track.

It's an almost soporofic but at the same time hypnotic remake by US singer-songwriter Matthew Hemerlein - better known (apparently) under his stage name Lo-Fang - of the appropriately entitled (for the purposes of the commercial) "You're the won that I want" from the 1978 film version of the musical "Grease"

Conclusion - beautifully shot, definitely bewitching on first viewing (it holds your attention) but as triumphant as previous campaigns - the jury's out.

And whether, as Luhrmann insists, Bündchen "is the perfect modern No.5 woman" - well the answer is a resounding "no."

That accolade belongs - and this is going to appear entirely contradictory to many probably - to the woman, who when asked what she wore in bed, famously said "Chanel No. 5, of course".


Marilyn Monroe surely remains as modern today as she did back in April 1960 - a fact Chanel recognised in a 2012 retro (in fashion you just have to wait a bit for the "old" to become "new" again) campaign.

Marilyn Monroe (screenshot from "Marilyn and N°5 - Inside Chanel")

Marilyn Monroe (screenshot from "Marilyn and N°5 - Inside Chanel")

Anyway, here's Bündchen in Luhrmann's "mini-film" commercial.

You judge for yourselves.

Your Tweet on Angelina Jolie was not funny Madame Boutin

Some people shouldn't be allowed anywhere near Twitter.

Or there again perhaps they should be encouraged as it shows just how insensitive and out of touch they can be.

Take the case of Christine Boutin for example.

Boutin was housing minister (for a while, until being unceremoniously fired) under Nicolas Sarkozy.

But she's perhaps better known for being the leader of centre-right Parti chrétien-démocrate (Christian democratic party, PCD) and a fervent opponent of same-sex marriage just as she was of the bill to allow civil union, the Pacte civil de solidarité or PACS, between two adults regardless of their sex when it was making its way through parliament in 1999).

Remember her "malaise" and indignation after she was one of the protesters sprayed with tear gas at a "Manif our tous" demonstration in Paris back in March?



Well as usual Boutin has been tweeting this week but one in particular has surely revealed her for what she truly is... Choose whatever word you wish to describe her.

Boutin's tweet came in a response to an article in Le Nouvel Observateur's Le Plus.
about Angelina Jolie's Op-Ed "My Medical Choice" in the New York Times in which the actress wrote about her double mastectomy to reduce her chances of getting breast cancer.

Le Plus tweeted its piece saying Jolie was sending out "a message of hope for women."

Unfortunately Boutin didn't quite seem to think along the same lines - or at least hadn't bothered to read either Le Plus or Jolie's original Op-Ed because she responded, clearly without engaging her brain.

And in a manner which displayed her real compassion and sensitivity Boutin wrote, "Pour ressembler aux hommes ? Rire ! Si ce n'était triste à pleurer".

screenshot Twitter

Bravo Madame Boutin. Congratulations on your "sense of humour".

Boutin deleted the tweet, but not before a fair number of Internet users had responded both on Twitter and her Facebook page, the latter becoming the target of a "poop" attack with appropriately-shaped smileys being left after every new post.

screenshot Facebook

The story of 52 Hertz - the lonely whale

So you think you've got it tough?

Perhaps you want to reach for the Kleenex or at least sit down quietly for a few moments as you read this.

A humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) - a species of baleen whale
(from Wikipedia, author - Whit Welles Wwelles14)

It's the story of the lonely whale - a baleen whale apparently - who has spent the past couple of decades swimming around in the ocean all by herself - or himself according to some reports on the Net - nobody really seems sure.

What is certain is that the whale is alone, singing at a different frequency which means, writes Jesus Diaz on the technology weblog Gizmodo that, "No other whales can hear her. Every one of her desperate calls to communicate remains unanswered. Each cry ignored."

Yes there might be a fair bit anthropomorphising going on in the way Diaz tells the tale but that certainly doesn't lessen its impact.

In 2004 the New York Times took a look at the plight of the whale, revealing that the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution had been tracking it since 1992 with "a classified array of hydrophones used by the (US) Navy to monitor enemy submarines.

Scientists had no single explanation as to why the whale made a different sound but rather, "A host of them," wrote Andrew Revkin in the paper.

"Among them that the animal is malformed or, most likely, is a hybrid of a blue whale and another species."

Eight years down the line and still nobody seems to know why the whale is out of synch with those around it.

All that's certain is that it's out there all by itself, "Seeing other creatures around her but unable to communicate with any of them," writes Diaz.

The whale doesn't just sing differently, it also follows a completely different migration route according to the sustainability website TreeHugger.

"It fails to travel along any known migration route of any baleen whale species - so other whales can't hear it, and they don't run into it along migration paths," writes Jaymi Heimbuch.

It can't be seen and it can't be heard - apart, that is by researchers. And that's the way it looks set to spend the rest of its life.

You can hear the 52 Hertz whale’s song for yourself, here.