Ritchie Directs Wife Madonna in Cyber Film

June 8 -- In episode four of our story, the rock star takes a wild spin through Los Angeles in the back seat of a BMW. Buckle up, baby, you've entered the twilight zone between art and commerce.

Madonna appears as the haughty diva in Star, the latest installment in a series of short films bankrolled by German automaker BMW and shown exclusively on the Internet. Segments are featured in broadcast ads meant to arouse interest in the film series, which can be downloaded at bmwfilms.com.

Hitch a Ride With Madonna

Star is directed by Guy Ritchie, Madonna's husband and just one of the "rising talents" that BMW recruited to direct the cybermovie series called The Hire. Other directors in the series are Oscar-winner Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), John Frankenheimer (Ronin), Wong Kar-Wai (In the Mood for Love) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the Mexican director of the Oscar-nominated Amores Perros.

The final film in the series, Inarritu's Powder Keg, premieres July 16 and features a war photojournalist in need of a lift out of harm's way.

Intimate Connections With Consumers

As any James Bond fan knows, BMW is no stranger to Hollywood. The luxury carmaker got plenty of mileage when its Z3 roadster debuted with Pierce Brosnan as Bond behind the wheel in the 1995 film GoldenEye. BMW vehicles also had supporting roles in the two subsequent Bond flicks.

But The Hire takes product placement to a new realm, and may present manufacturers with an attractive way around the dual problems posed by television advertising: a dwindling audience and technologies that allow couch potatoes to skip ads entirely.

Automakers have been at the cutting edge of marketing efforts that seek a more intimate connection with consumers in the interactive realm of cyberspace. Earlier this year, Jaguar distributed CD-ROM containing a Spike Lee film, and Ford sponsored a collection of shorts at AtomFilms.com, an Internet film site. Volkswagen last year featured a drive-in theater on its Web site.