AIDS AWARENESS "AIDES" > Boasting a colorful, brushed-plastic look that's reminiscent of The Sims, Wilfrid Brimo's animated short comprises a girl's sexual travelogue, from pre-pubescence to happily ever after. Boasting a tight narrative and some surrealistic flourishes, "Aides" is bursting with distinctly un-PC surprises, including a gaggle of hormonal teenage boys with wagging penises (penii?) floating above their heads and a particularly inspired montage of a marathon sexcapade. If there's one unifying theme, it's our heroine's insistence on safe sex. The message: "Live long enough to find the right one."

Agency/Record Company: TBWA\Paris
Agency Producer: Christine Bouffort
Creative Director: Erik Vervroegen
Director: Wilfrid Brimo
Production Company: Wanda Productions
Producer: Claude Fayolle
Post-Production: Akama Studio
Editorial: Wanda Productions
Music: "The Vibrators" Sony BMG

REXONA "STUNT CITY" > Stunt people are the sole occupants of "Stunt City", which explains why they prefer to drive cars around on two wheels and commute to work by hanging from helicopter rails. While this slapstick catastrophe sequence isn't at all like the cinema-styled dazzlers we're used to seeing from Stink's Ivan Zacharias, it must have taken some assured moviemaking to choreograph its multitude of stunts with such precision. Because action fills every frame, this reminds us of one of those richly detailed children's books where you have to find a hidden object on each page.

Agency: Lowe, London
Creative Director: Ed Morris
Creatives: Simon Butler, Geoff Smith
Agency Producer: Charles Crisp
Director: Ivan Zacharias
Production Company: Stink, London
Producer: Nick Landon
DP: Jan Velicky
Post-Production: The Mill, London
Editorial: Filip Malasek, Robota

BACARDI "COCO" > Since taking the Best New Director prize at our 2005 First Boards Awards, Czar.US's PES has been hard at work on this stop-motion campaign for Bacardi. One of four spots based on a series of flavored rums, the space-themed "CoCo" employs the Bacardi bottle, martini shakers, tissue paper and (surprise!) a coconut as its primary props. Reminiscent of PES' clever peanut-centric short films and, to a lesser extent, his hugely imaginative work for Diesel Dreams, this shows off a director with a vicelike grasp on the properties of matter and motion and the fanciful imagination to match.

Agency: davidandgoliath, Los Angeles
Chief Creative Officer: David Angelo
ACD/Copywriter: Ben Purcell
ACD/Art Directors: Greg Wells, John Figone
Senior Producer: Marlene Winder
Production Company: Czar.US
Director: PES
Executive Producer: Steve Shore
DP: Eric Adkins
Animators: Ivan Abel and Peter Sluszka
Editor: Sam Welch, Homestead Edit NYC
Digital FX Artist: Kiki Chansamone, R!OT
Music: Beacon Street

LEVI'S "WORLD GONE PRETTY" > An archetypal GI Joe-styled action figure gets a full-on metrosexual makeover in this :120 stop-motion short from Chelsea's Simon Blake. Spurred on by a throng of immaculately groomed, calorie-conscious peers, our lantern-jawed hero begrudgingly swaps his combat fatigues and generous hirsuteness for pedicures, pilates and pastels. Luckily, he snaps right before he's buffed, styled and waxed beyond recognition, peels away the fruity layers and returns to something a little more comfortable - his Levi's 501s. Kinda like Fight Club, only with less blood and more denim.

Agency: McCann Erickson/TAG
Production Company: Chelsea Pictures
Director: Simon Blake
DP: Spence Lasky
Executive Producers: Steve Wax, Ken Yagoda
Producer: Marcello Bue
Editorial/Visual FX: Jeff Um

PLAYSTATION "WAR" > Director Keith Rose refers to this PlayStation work as some of the very best of his career (Director's Chair, pg. 23) and, after repeated viewings, we're inclined to agree. Shot on 35mm in rich, monochromatic greens, "War" traces a soldier's final few seconds. As a slowed-down, heavily-filtered version of Alphaville's "Forever Young" drones on in the background, the bullet-ridden soldier stumbles through a battlefield, falls to his knees and expires. As his body disintegrates into a ghostly mist, we see the overlay of a depleted gamer, clearly suspended in a state of shock herself.

Agency: TBWA Hunt Lascaris Johannesburg
Creative Director: Paul Warner
Creative: Paul Warner
Agency Producer: Chantel Kriel
Director: Keith Rose
Production Co: Velocity Films, Cape Town
Producer: Karen Kloppers
Post: The Refinery, J'burg/Cape Town
Editorial: Willie Saayman, City Cuts, J'burg
Music: V/V/M, London
Mixers: Andrew Stansfield, Videolab and Rob Schroeder
Music: Trivers/Myers