Before watch­ing The Golden Com­pass, I got to sit through lots of ads and trail­ers. Cit­i­zen Sol­dier The National Guard has a new and appallingly bad recruit­ing cam­paign, fea­tur­ing a (com­mis­sioned?) “song” and “music video” by allegedly “pop­u­lar” alter­na­tive rock band, 3 Doors Down. The video, which is over four min­utes long, cuts between shots of the band per­form­ing on a blasted heath under a tene­brous sky (com­plete with bad, fake anamor­phic lens flare), shots of National Guard sol­diers help­ing recov­ery efforts in a dis­as­ter area of uncer­tain ori­gin and local­ity (com­plete with obnox­ious nar­row shut­ter effect, a.k.a. the Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan Effect), and shots of [ . . . ]

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