“What do women’s rights, a one-armed surfer, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the first man on the moon have to do with the California Lottery?” begins an actual press release for a new TV spot from David&Goliath. “None of them could have been possible without this single word: Believe. Because in order to achieve the seemingly unfeasible, you must truly believe that big things are possible.”

In an event that easily trumps women’s rights, one-armed surfers, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Powerball is coming to California. From the Redwood forest of Humboldt county to the beaches of San Diego, Californians lifted their arms to the sky and shouted in unison, “We believe!” Hearing their confession of faith, God opened up the heavens and began pelting his children, mouths agape, with millions of white balls.

Some wept, some sang praises, and some lucky dude got a red ball. It was truly the greatest thing that ever happened to anyone. Credits after the jump.

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Instead of churning out a typical camera advertisement, Nikon and McCann put the former’s product–the new D800 Digital SLR–to the test by producing Broken Night, a 10-minute short film capable of displaying its advanced cinematic capabilities. Don’t worry if you’re not a camera geek. The project is meant to appeal to professionals on a technical level, but the film’s story stands on its own legs. Sundance, in fact, selected it for the festival’s 2013 U.S. Narrative Short Film Competition.

Personally, I’m not a fan of horror movies, but this is more cerebral and gothic than a blood-and-guts flick. Oscar nominee Guillermo Arriaga (Babel) wrote and directed the short, and Oscar winner/Steven Spielberg‘s go-to DP Janusz Kaminski (Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan) provided the cinematography.

If you’re fed up with the crap currently playing in theaters and reeling from the post-Super Bowl ad hangover, Broken Night is for you. Credits after the jump.

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We guess things have come full circle in a sense with CP+B’s “Slicing Up Freshness” campaign for Arby’s, which kicked off with two spots at the beginning of October and now closes out the month with a long-form version of the campaign. This time around, director Larry Charles, the agency and client take a closer into the world of “Slicing” star and former New York detective Bo Dietl, who’s hellbent on exposing that Subway’s meat is anything but freshly sliced–unlike, say, Arby’s.

The significant difference between this mini-doc and the original spot starring Dietl, though, is that there’s no real mention of the plant in Iowa where some of Subway’s meat is sliced. If you recall, just days after the original spot aired, Arby’s faced a backlash from the prideful folks of Mount Pleasant, IA  who felt their town and state were being disparaged–hence, the tweak. We can understand their feelings, but we think it was Subway that took the large portion of the beating here. Credits after the jump.

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