#at the same time there is something very compelling in tom 'winning' succession

[tomwambsmilk]

Okay I know I've said this before but I need to spit it out of my head so I can get some work done. The succ writers really wrote the lines "do you want a deal with the devil?" "what am I gonna do with a soul anyways?". They really did that asbhfvewhfi. Like we all went "haha funny hyberbolic tomgreg moment" (myself included) but like. Succession is structured so closely to a Shakespearean tragedy (I'm actually writing a whole post series about that concept alone), and the idea of fate, of dramatic irony, of hubris and corresponding downfall is so central to literally any Shakespearian tragedy. It's making me crazy because I fully believe after season 4 airs we're all gonna look back at that moment and go "oh fuck me, that was it, that's where it all went wrong". Tom is offering a deal with the devil because he knows he's going to push Shiv down the stairs, but he's also about to be siding with Logan and like. You never win in deals with the devil. Even if you get what you want it comes at a horrible cost, often what you love most, often the very thing that would allow you to actually enjoy whatever it is you made the deal for.

What's making me extra extra crazy is that I remembered that Georgia Pritchett wrote for "Veep", which, even though it's last season as a whole was very "meh", had a fucking phenomenal finale, where Selina Meyers (Veep's main character) did exactly that. She completed her corruption arc and achieved what she wanted most in the world (becoming an elected president), but at the cost of all the people who at one point were dear to her, and whose presence would have made the presidency enjoyable. And the peak of that, the climax of that episode, was when she betrayed Gary, her loyal sidekick, who had been by her side since the beginning, the only person who had never left her, the person who believed in her and supported her the most. She sold him out to the FBI to take the fall for her election fraud - and that was the completion of her arc because he was the one person in the world she actually cared about. He was the thing she loved most, and so he was the one she would need to sacrifice to make her deal with devil.

Idk exactly what's gonna happen with Tom and Greg in season 4; I know we've joked about Greg betraying Tom, but... what if Tom actually ends up betraying Greg? Sure, he didn't sell Greg out in boar on the floor, but... if all of Tom's personal ambitions are actually in reach? If he becomes increasingly logan-esque? If he's so close to actually being Logan's successor, but cruises starts to rear its ugly head, and Greg's the one who signed out the papers, and there's a recording of Greg (but not Tom) talking about destruction of evidence, and there are text trails between Greg and Kendall about the papers? If Logan places the same choice in front of Tom that he placed in front of Shiv in 2x10; if he asks Tom to prove his loyalty by sacrificing the person he cares about most?

[grigori77]

Movies of 2021 - My Pre-Summer Favourites (Part 2)

The Top Ten:

10.  ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE – one of the undisputable highlights of the Winter-Spring period has to be the long-awaited, much vaunted redressing of a balance that’s been a particular thorn in the side of DC cinematic fans for over three years now – the completion and restoration of the true, unadulterated original director’s cut of the painfully abortive DCEU team-up movie that was absolutely butchered when Joss Whedon took over from original director Zack Snyder and then heavily rewrote and largely reshot the whole thing.  It was a somewhat painful experience to view in cinemas back in 2017 – sure, there were bits that worked, but most of it didn’t and it wasn’t like the underrated Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, which improves immensely on subsequent viewings (especially in the three hour-long director’s cut).  No, Whedon’s film was a MESS.  Needless to say fans were up in arms, and once word got out that the finished film was not at all what Snyder originally intended, a vocal, forceful online campaign began to restore what quickly became known as the Snyder Cut.  Thank the gods that Warner Bros listened to them, ultimately taking advantage of the intriguing alternative possibilities provided by their streaming service HBO Max to allow Snyder to present his fully reinstated creation in its entirety.  The only remaining question, of course, is simply … is it actually any good? Well it’s certainly much more like BVS:DOG than Whedon’s film ever was, and there’s no denying that, much like the rest of Snyder’s oeuvre, this is a proper marmite movie – there are gonna people who hate it no matter what, but the faithful, the fans, or simply those who are willing to open their minds are going to find much to enjoy here. The damage has been thoroughly patched, most of the elements that didn’t work in the theatrical release having been swapped out or reworked so that now they pay off BEAUTIFULLY.  This time the quest of Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) and Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) to bring the first iteration of the Justice League together – half-Atlantean superhuman Arthur Curry/the Aquaman (Jason Momoa), lightning-powered speedster Barry Allan/the Flash (Fantastic Beasts’ Ezra Miller) and cybernetically-rebuilt genius Victor Stone/Cyborg (relative newcomer Ray Fisher) – not only feels organic, but NECESSARY, as does their desperate scheme to use one of the three alien Mother Boxes (no longer just shiny McGuffins but now genuinely well-realised technological forces that threaten cataclysm as much as they provide opportunity for miracles) to bring Clark Kent/Superman (Henry Cavill) back from the dead, especially given the far more compelling threat of this version’s collection of villains.  Ciaran Hinds’ mocapped monstrosity Steppenwolf is a far more palpable and interesting big bad this time round, given a more intricate backstory that also ties in a far greater ultimate mega-villain that would have become the DCEU’s Thanos had Snyder had his way to begin with – Darkseid (Ray Porter), tyrannical ruler of Apokolips and one of the most powerful and hated beings in the Universe, who could have ushered the DCEU’s now aborted New Gods storyline to the big screen.  The newer members of the League receive far more screen-time and vastly improved backstory too, Miller’s Flash getting a far more pro-active role in the storyline AND the action which also thankfully cuts away a lot of the clumsiness the character had in the Whedon version without sacrificing any of the nerdy sass that nonetheless made him such a joy, while the connective tissue that ties Momoa’s Aquaman into his own subsequent standalone movie feels much stronger here, and his connection with his fellow League members feels less perfunctory too, but it’s Fisher’s Cyborg who TRULY reaps the benefits here, regaining a whole new key subplot and storyline that ties into a genuinely powerful tragic origin story, as well as a far more complicated and ultimately rewarding relationship with his scientist father, Silas Stone (the great Joe Morton).  It’s also really nice to see Superman handled with the kind of skill we’d expect from the same director who did such a great job (fight me if you disagree) of bringing the character to life in two previous big screen instalments, as well as erasing the memory of that godawful digital moustache removal … similarly, it’s nice to see the new and returning supporting cast get more to do this time, from Morton and the ever-excellent J.K. Simmonds as fan favourite Gotham PD Commissioner Jim Gordon to Connie Nielsen as Diana’s mother, Queen Hippolyta of Themyscira and another unapologetic scene-stealing turn from Jeremy Irons as Batman’s faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth. Sure, it’s not a perfect movie – the unusual visual ratio takes some getting used to, while there’s A LOT of story to unpack here, and at a gargantuan FOUR HOURS there are times when the pacing somewhat lags, not to mention an overabundance of drawn-out endings (including a flash-forward to a potential apocalyptic future that, while evocative, smacks somewhat of overeager fan-service) that would put Lord of the Rings’ The Return of the King to shame, but original writer Chris Terrio’s reconstituted script is rich enough that there’s plenty to reward the more committed viewer, and the storytelling and character development is a powerful thing, while the action sequences are robust and thrilling (even if Snyder does keep falling back on his over-reliance on slow motion that seems to alienate some viewers), and the new score from Tom Holkenborg (who co-composed on BVS:DOJ) feels a far more natural successor than Danny Elfman’s theatrical compositions.  The end result is no more likely to win fresh converts than Man of Steel or Batman Vs Superman, but it certainly stands up far better to a critical eye this time round, and feels like a far more natural progression for the saga too.  Ultimately it’s more of an interesting tangential adventure given that Warner Bros seem to be stubbornly sticking to their original plans for the ongoing DCEU, but I can’t help hoping that they might have a change of heart in the future given just how much better the final product is than any of us had any right to expect …

9.  SYNCHRONIC – writer-director duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are something of a creative phenomenon in the science-fiction and fantasy indie cinema scene, crafting films that ensnare the senses and engage the brain like few others.  Subtly insidious conspiracy horror debut Resolution is a sneaky little chiller, while deeply original body horror Spring (the film that first got me into them) is weird, unsettling and surprisingly touching, but it was breakthrough sleeper hit The Endless, a nightmarish time-looping cosmic horror that thoroughly screws with your head, that really put them on the map.  Needless to say it’s led them to greater opportunities heading into the future, and this is their first film to really reap the benefits, particularly by snaring a couple of genuine stars for its lead roles.  Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) are paramedics working the night shift in New Orleans, which puts them on the frontlines when a new drug hits the streets, a dangerous concoction known as Synchronic that causes its users to experience weird localised fractures in time that frequently lead to some pretty outlandish deaths in adults, while teenage users often disappear entirely.  As the situation worsens, the pair’s professional and personal relationships become increasingly strained, compounded by the fact that Steve is concealing his recent diagnosis of terminal cancer, before things come to a head when Dennis’ teenage daughter Brianna (Into the Badlands’ Ally Ioannides) vanishes under suspicious circumstances, and it becomes clear to Steve that she’s become unstuck in time … this is as mind-bendingly off-the-wall and spectacularly inventive as we’ve come to expect from Benson and Moorhead, another fantastically original slice of weirdness that benefits enormously from their exquisitely obsessive attention to detail and characteristically unsettling atmosphere of building dread, while their character development is second to none, benefitting their top-notch cast no end.  Mackie is typically excellent, bringing compelling vulnerability to the role that makes it easy to root for him as he gets further out of his depth in this twisted temporal labyrinth, while Dornan invests Dennis with a painfully human fallibility, and Ioannides does a lot with very little real screen time in her key role as ill-fated Brianna.  The time-bending sequences are suitably disorienting and disturbing, utilising pleasingly subtle use of visual effects to further mess with your head, and the overall mechanics of the drug and its effects are fiendishly crafted, while the directors tighten the screw of slowburn tension throughout, building to a suitably offbeat ending that’s as devastating as anything we’ve seen from them so far.  Altogether this is another winning slice of genre-busting weirdness from a filmmaking duo who deserve continued success in the future, and I for one will be watching eagerly.

8.  WITHOUT REMORSE – I’m a big fan of Tom Clancy, to me he was one of the ultimate escapist thriller writers, and whenever a new adaptation of one of his novels comes along I’m always front of the line to check it out.  The Hunt For Red October is one of my favourite screen thrillers OF ALL TIME, while my very favourite Clancy adaptation EVER, the Jack Ryan TV series, is, in my opinion, one of the very best Original shows that Amazon have ever done.  But up until now my VERY FAVOURITE Clancy creation, John Clark, has always remained in the background or simply absent entirely, putting in an appearance as a supporting character in only two of the movies, tantalising me with his presence but never more than a teaser.  Well that’s all over now – after languishing in development hell since the mid-90s, the long-awaited adaptation of my favourite Clancy novel, the origin story of the top CIA black ops operative, has finally arrived, as well as a direct spin-off from distributor Amazon’s own Jack Ryan series.  Michael B. Jordan plays John Kelly (basically Clark before he gained his more famous cover identity), a lethally efficient, highly decorated Navy SEAL whose life is turned upside down when a highly classified operation experiences deadly blowback as half of his team is assassinated in retaliation, while Kelly barely survives an attack in which his heavily pregnant wife is killed.  With the higher-ups unwilling the muddy the waters while scrambling to control the damage, Kelly, driven by rage and grief, takes matters into his own hands, embarking on a violent personal crusade against the Russian operatives responsible, but as he digs deeper with the help of his former commanding officer, Lt. Commander Karen Greer (Queen & Slim’s Jodie Turner-Smith), and mid-level CIA hotshot Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell), it becomes clear that there’s a far more insidious conspiracy at work here … in the past the Clancy adaptations we’ve seen tend to be pretty tightly reined-in affairs, going for a PG-13 polish that maintains the intellectual fireworks but still tries to keep the violence clean and relatively family-friendly, but this was never going to be the case here – Clark has always been Jack Ryan’s dark shadow, Clancy’s righteous man without the moral restraint, and a PG-13 take never would have worked, so going for an unfettered R-rating is the right choice.  Jordan’s Kelly/Clark is a blood-soaked force of nature, a feral dog let off the leash, bringing a brutal ferocity to the action that does the literary source proud, tempered by a wounded vulnerability that helps us to sympathise with the broken but still very human man behind the killer; Turner-Smith, meanwhile, regularly matches him in the physical stakes, jumping into the action with enthusiasm and looking damn fine doing it, but she also brings tight control and an air of pragmatic military professionalism that makes it easy to believe in her not only as an accomplished leader of fighting men but also as the daughter of Admiral Jim Greer, while Bell is arrogant and abrasive but ultimately still a good man as Ritter; Guy Pearce, meanwhile, brings his usual gravitas and quietly measured charisma to proceedings as US Secretary of Defence Thomas Clay, and Lauren London makes a suitably strong impression during her brief screen time to make her absence keenly felt as Kelly’s wife Pam. The action is intense, explosive and spectacularly executed, culminating in a particularly impressive drawn-out battle through a Russian apartment complex, while the labyrinthine plot is intricately crafted and unfolds with taut precision, but then the screenplay was co-written by Taylor Sheridan, who here reteams with Sicario 2 director Stefano Sollida, who’s also already proven to be a seasoned hand at this kind of thing, and the result is a tense, knuckle-whitening suspense thriller that pays magnificent tribute to the most compelling creation of one of the best authors in the genre.  Amazon have signed up for more with already greenlit sequel Rainbow Six, and with this directly tied in with the Jack Ryan TV series too I can’t help holding out hope we just might get to see Jordan’s Clark backing John Krasinski’s Ryan up in the future …

7.  RAYA & THE LAST DRAGON – with UK cinemas still closed I’ve had to live with seeing ALL the big stuff on my frustratingly small screen at home, but at least there’s been plenty of choice with so many of the big studios electing to either sell some of their languishing big projects to online vendors or simply release on their own streaming services.  Thank the gods, then, for the House of Mouse following Warner Bros’ example and releasing their big stuff on Disney+ at the same time in those theatres that have reopened – this was one movie I was PARTICULARLY looking forward to, and if I’d had to wait and hope for the scheduled UK reopening to occur in mid-May I might have gone a little crazy watching everyone else lose it over something I still hadn’t seen.  That said, it WOULD HAVE been worth the wait – coming across sort-of a bit like Disney’s long overdue response to Dreamworks’ AWESOME Kung Fu Panda franchise, this is a spellbinding adventure in a beautifully thought-out fantasy world heavily inspired by Southeast Asia and its rich, diverse cultures, bursting with red hot martial arts action and exotic Eastern mysticism and brought to life by a uniformly strong voice cast dominated by actors of Asian descent.  It’s got a cracking premise, too – 500 years ago, the land of Kumandra was torn apart when a terrible supernatural force known as the Druun very nearly wiped out all life, only stopped by the sacrifice of the last dragons, who poured all their power and lifeforce into a mystical gem.  But when the gem is broken and the pieces divided between the warring nations of Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail and Talon, the Druun return, prompting Raya (Star Wars’ Kelly Marie Tran), the fugitive princess of Heart, to embark on a quest to reunite the gem pieces and revive the legendary dragon Sisu in a desperate bid to vanquish the Druun once and for all.  Moana director Don Hall teams up with Blindspotting helmer Carlos Lopez Estrada (making his debut in the big chair for Disney after helping develop Frozen), bringing to life a thoroughly inspired screenplay co-written by Crazy Rich Asians’ Adele Kim which is full to bursting with magnificent world-building, beautifully crafted characters and thrilling action, as well as the Disney prerequisites of playful humour and tons of heart and soul.  Tran makes Raya an feisty and engaging heroine, tough, stubborn and a seriously kickass fighter, but with true warmth and compassion too, while Gemma Chan is icy cool but deep down ultimately kind of sweet as her bitter rival, Fang princess Namaari, and there’s strong support from Benedict Wong and Good Boys’ Izaac Wang as hard-but-soft Spine warrior Tong and youthful but charismatic Tail shrimp-boat captain Boun, two of the warm-hearted found family that Raya gathers on her travels.  The true scene-stealer, however, is the always entertaining Awkwafina, bringing Sisu to life in wholly unexpected but thoroughly charming and utterly adorable fashion, a goofy, sassy and sweet-natured bundle of fun who grabs all the best laughs but also unswervingly champions the film’s core messages of peace, unity and acceptance in all things, something which Raya needs a lot of convincing to take to heart.  Visually stunning, endlessly inventive, consistently thrilling and frequently laugh-out-loud funny, this is another solid gold winner once again proving that Disney can do this kind of stuff in their sleep, but it’s always most interesting when they really make the effort to create something truly special, and that’s just what they’ve done here.  As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the studio’s finest animated features in a good long while, and thoroughly deserving of your praise and attention …

6.  THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES – so what piece of animation, you might be asking, could POSSIBLY have won over Raya as my animated feature of the year so far? After all, it would have to be something TRULY special … but then, remember Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse?  Back in 2018, that blew me away SO MUCH that it very nearly became my top animated feature of THE PAST DECADE (only JUST losing out, ultimately, to Dreamworks’ unstoppable How to Train Your Dragon trilogy).  When I heard its creators, the irrepressible double act of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs), were going to be following that up with this anarchic screwball comedy adventure, I was VERY EXCITED INDEED, a fervour which was barely blunted when its release was, inevitably, indefinitely delayed thanks to the global pandemic, so when it finally released at the tail end of the Winter-Spring season I POUNCED. Thankfully my faith was thoroughly rewarded – this is an absolute riot from start to finish, a genuine cinematic gem I look forward to going back to for repeated viewings in the near future, just to soak up the awesomeness – it’s hilarious to a precision-crafted degree, brilliantly thought-out and SPECTACULARLY well-written by acclaimed Gravity Falls writer-director Mike Rianda (who also helms here), injecting the whole film with a gleefully unpredictable, irrepressibly irreverent streak of pure chaotic genius that makes it a affectionately endearing and utterly irresistible joyride from bonkers start to adorable finish.  The central premise is pretty much as simple as the title suggests, the utterly dysfunctional family in question – father Rick (Danny McBride), born outdoorsman and utter technophobe, mother Linda (Maya Rudolph), much put-upon but unflappable even in the face of Armageddon, daughter Katie (Broad City co-creator Abbi Jacobson), tech-obsessed and growing increasingly estranged from her dad, and son Aaron (Rianda himself), a thoroughly ODD dinosaur nerd – become the world’s only hope after naïve tech mogul Mark Bowman (Eric Andre), founder of PAL Labs, inadvertently sets off a robot uprising.  Cue a wild ride comedy of errors of EPIC proportions … this is just about the most fun I’ve had with a movie so far this year, an absolute riot throughout, but there’s far more to it than just a pile of big belly laughs, with the Mitchells all proving to be a lovable bunch of misfits who inspire just as much deep, heartfelt affection as they learn from their mistakes and finally overcome their differences, becoming a better, more loving family in the process, McBride and Jacobson particularly shining as they make our hearts swell and put a big lump in our throat even while they make us titter and guffaw, while the film has a fantastic larger than (virtual) life villain in PAL (Olivia Colman), the virtual assistant turned megalomaniacal machine intelligence spearheading this technological revolution.  Much like its Spider-Man-shaped predecessor, this is also an absolutely STUNNING film, visually arresting and spectacularly inventive and bursting with neat ideas and some truly beautiful stylistic flair, frequently becoming a genuine work of cinematic art that’s as much a feast for the eyes as it is the intellect and, of course, the soul.  Altogether then, this is definitely the year’s most downright GORGEOUS film so far, as well as UNDENIABLY its most FUN.  Lord and Miller really have done it again.

5.  P.G. PSYCHO GOREMAN – the year’s current undeniable top guilty pleasure has to be this fantastic weird, thoroughly over-the-top and completely OUT THERE black comedy cosmic horror that doesn’t so much riff on the works of HP Lovecraft as throw them in a blender, douse them with maple syrup and cayenne pepper and then hurl the sloppy results to the four winds.  On paper it sounds like a family-friendly cutesy comedy take on Call of Cthulu et al, but trust me, this sure ain’t one for the kids – the latest indie horror offering from Steven Kostanski, co-creator of the likes of Manborg, Father’s Day and The Void, this is one of the weirdest movies I’ve seen in years, but it’s also one of the most gleefully funny, playing itself entirely for yucks (frequently LITERALLY).  Mimi (Nita Josee-Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myre) are a two small-town Canadian kids who dig a big hole of their backyard, accidentally releasing the Arch-Duke of Nightmares (Matthew Ninaber and the voice of Steven Vlahos), an ancient, god-tier alien killing machine who’s been imprisoned for aeons in order to protect the universe from his brutal crusade of death and destruction.  To their parents’ dismay, Mimi decides to keep him, renaming him Psycho Goreman (or “P.G.” for short) and attempting to curb his superpowered murderous impulses so she can have a new playmate. But the monster’s original captors, the Templars of the Planetary Alliance, have learned of his escape, sending their most powerful warrior, Pandora (Kristen McCulloch), to destroy him once and for all.  Yup, this movie is just as loony tunes as it sounds – Kostanski injects the film with copious amounts of his own outlandish, OTT splatterpunk extremity, bringing us a riotous cavalcade of bizarrely twisted creatures and mutations (brought to life through some deliciously disgusting prosthetic effects work) and a series of wonderfully off-kilter (not to mention frequently off-COLOUR) darkly comic skits and escapades, while the sense of humour is pretty bonkers but also generously littered with nuggets of genuine sharply observed genius.  The cast, although made up almost entirely of unknowns, is thoroughly game, and the kids particularly impress, especially Josee-Hanna, who plays Mimi like a flamboyant, mercurial miniature psychopath whose zinger-delivery is clipped, precise and downright hilarious throughout.  There are messages of love conquering all and the power of family, both born and made, buried somewhere in there too, but ultimately this is just 90 minutes of wonderful weirdness that’s sure to melt your brain but still leave you with a big dumb green when it’s all over.  Which is all we really want from a movie like this, right?

4.  SPACE SWEEPERS – all throughout the pandemic and the interminable lockdowns, Netflix have been a consistent blessing to those of us who’ve been craving the kind of big budget blockbusters we have (largely) been unable to get at the cinema.  Some of my top movies of 2020 were Netflix Originals, and they’ve continued the trend into 2021, having dropped some choice cuts on us over the past four months, with some REALLY impressive offerings still to come as we head into the summer season (roll on, Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead!).  In the meantime, my current Netflix favourite of the year so far is this phenomenal milestone of Korean cinema, lauded as the country’s first space blockbuster, which certainly went big instead of going home. Writer-director Jo Sung-hee (A Werewolf Boy, Phantom Detective) delivers big budget thrills and spills with a bombastic science-fiction adventure cast in the classic Star Wars mould, where action, emotion and fun characters count for more than an admittedly simplistic but still admirably archetypical and evocative plot – it’s 2092, and the Earth has become a toxic wasteland ruined by overpopulation and pollution, leading the wealthy to move into palatial orbital habitats in preparation for the impending colonisation of Mars, while the poor and downtrodden are packed into rotting ghetto satellites facing an uncertain future left behind to fend for themselves, and the UTS Corporation jealously guard the borders between rich and poor, presided over by seemingly benevolent but ultimately cruel sociopathic genius CEO James Sullivan (Richard Armitage).  Eking out a living in-between are the space sweepers, freelance spaceship crews who risk life and limb by cleaning up dangerous space debris to prevent it from damaging satellites and orbital structures.  The film focuses on the crew of sweeper vessel Victory, a ragtag quartet clearly inspired by the “heroes” of Cowboy Bebop – Captain Jang (The Handmaiden’s Kim Tae-ri), a hard-drinking ex-pirate with a mean streak and a dark past, ace pilot Kim Tae-ho (The Battleship Island’s Song Joong-ki), a former child-soldier with a particularly tragic backstory, mechanic Tiger Park (The Outlaws’ Jin Seon-Kyu), a gangster from Earth living in exile in orbit, and Bubs (a genuinely flawless mocapped performance from A Taxi Driver’s Yoo Hae-jin), a surplus military robot slumming it as a harpooner so she can earn enough for gender confirmation.  They’re a fascinating bunch, a mercenary band who never think past their next paycheque, but there’s enough good in them that when redemption comes knocking – in the form of Kang Kot-nim (newcomer Park Ye-rin), a revolutionary prototype android in the form of a little girl who may hold the key to bio-technological ecological salvation – they find themselves answering the call in spite of their misgivings.  The four leads are exceptional (as is their young charge), while Armitage makes for a cracking villain, delivering subtle, restrained menace by the bucketload every time he’s onscreen, and there’s excellent support from a fascinating multinational cast who perform in a refreshingly broad variety of languages. Jo delivers spectacularly on the action front, wrangling a blistering series of adrenaline-fuelled and explosive set-pieces that rival anything George Lucas or JJ Abrams have sprung on us this century, while the visual effects are nothing short of astounding, bringing this colourful, eclectic and dangerous universe to vibrant, terrifying life; indeed, the world-building here is exceptional, creating an environment you’ll feel sorely tempted to live in despite the pitfalls.  Best of all, though, there’s tons of heart and soul, the fantastic found family dynamic at the story’s heart winning us over at every turn. Ultimately, while you might come for the thrills and spectacle, you’ll stay for these wonderful, adorable characters and their compelling tale.  An undeniable triumph.

3.  JUDAS & THE BLACK MESSIAH – I’m a little fascinated by the Black Panther Party, I find them to be one of the most intriguing elements of Black History in America, but outside of documentaries I’ve never really seen a feature film that’s truly done the movement justice, at least until now.  It’s become a major talking point of the Awards Season, and it’s easy to see why – director Shaka King is a protégé of Spike Lee, and together with up-and-coming co-screenwriter Wil Berson he’s captured the fire and fervour of the Party and their firebrand struggle for racial liberation through force of arms, as well as a compelling portrait of one of their most important figures, Fred Hampton, the Chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the BPP and a powerful political activist who could have become the next Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.  Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya is magnificent in the role, effortlessly holding your attention in every scene with his laconic ease and deceptively friendly manner, barely hinting at the zealous fire blazing beneath the surface, but the film’s true focus is the man who brought him down, William O’Neal, a fellow Panther and FBI informant placed in the Chapter to infiltrate the movement and find a way for the US Government to bring down what they believed to be one of the country’s greatest internal threats.  Lakeith Stanfield (Sorry to Bother You, Knives Out) delivers a suitably complex performance as O’Neal, perfectly embodying a very clever but also very desperate man walking a constant tightrope to maintain his cover in some decidedly wary company, but there’s never any real sense that he’s playing the villain, Stanfield largely garnering sympathy from the viewer as we’re shamelessly made to root for him, especially once he starts falling for the very ideals he’s trying to subvert – it’s a true star-making performance, and he even holds his own playing opposite Kaluuya himself.  The rest of the cast are equally impressive, Dominique Fishback (Project Power, The Deuce) particularly holding our attention as Hampton’s fiancée and fellow Panther Akua Njeri, as does Jesse Plemmons as O’Neal’s idealistic but sympathetic FBI handler Roy Mitchell, while Martin Sheen is the film’s nominal villain in a chillingly potent turn as J. Edgar Hoover.  This is an intense and thrilling film, powered by a tense atmosphere of pregnant urgency and righteous fury, but while there are a few grittily realistic set pieces, the majority of the fireworks on display are performance based, the cast giving their all and King wrestling a potent and emotionally resonant, inescapably timely history lesson that informs without ever slipping into preachy exposition, leaving an unshakable impression long after the credits have rolled.  This doesn’t just earn all the award-winning kudos it gained, it deserved A LOT MORE recognition that it got, and if this were a purely critical rundown list I’d have to put it in the top spot.  As it is I’m monumentally enamoured of this film, and I can’t sing its praises enough …

2.  RUN, HIDE, FIGHT – the biggest surprise hit for me so far this year was this wicked little indie suspense thriller from writer-director Kyle Rankin (Night of the Living Deb), which snuck in under the radar but is garnering an impressive reputation as a future cult sleeper hit.  Critics have been less kind, but the subject matter is a pretty thorny issue, and if handled the wrong way it could have been in very poor taste indeed.  Thankfully Rankin has crafted a corker here, initially taking time to set the scene and welcome the players before throwing us headfirst into an unbelievably tense but also unsettlingly believable situation – a small town American high school becomes the setting for a fraught siege when a quartet of disturbed students take several of their classmates hostage at gunpoint, creating a social media storm in the process as they encourage the capture of the crisis on phone cameras. While the local police gather outside, the shooters discover another threat from within the school throwing spanners in the works – Zoe Hull (Alexa & Katie’s Isabel May), a seemingly nondescript girl who happens to be the daughter of former marine scout sniper Todd (Thomas Jane).  She’s wound pretty tight after the harrowing death of her mother to cancer, fuelled by grief and conditioned by her father’s training, so she’s determined to get her friends and classmates out of this nightmare, no matter what.  Okay, so the premise reads like Die Hard in a school, but this is a very different beast, played for gritty realism and shot with unshowy cinema-verité simplicity, Rankin cranking up the tension beautifully but refusing to play to his audience any more than strictly necessary, drip-feeding the thrills to maximum effect but delivering some harrowing action nonetheless.  The cast are top-notch too, Jane delivering a typically subtle, nuanced turn while Treat Williams is likeably stoic as world-weary but dependable local Sherriff Tarsey, Rhada Mitchell intrigues as the matter-of-fact phantom of Zoe’s mum, Jennifer, that she’s concocted to help her through her mourning, Olly Sholotan is sweetly geeky as her best friend Lewis, and Eli Brown raises genuine goosebumps as an all-too-real teen psychopath in the role of terrorist ringleader Tristan Voy.  The real beating heart and driving force of the film, though, is May, intense, barely restrained and all but vibrating with wounded fury, perfectly believable as the diminutive high school John McClane who defies expectations to become a genuine force to be reckoned with, as far as I’m concerned one of this year’s TOP female protagonists.  Altogether this is a cracking little thriller, a precision-crafted little action gem that nonetheless raises some troubling questions and treats its subject matter with utmost care and respect, a film that’s destined for major cult classic status, and I can’t recommend it enough.

1.  NOBODY – do you love the John Wick movies but you just wish they took themselves a bit less seriously?  Well fear not, because Derek Kolstad has delivered fantastically on that score, the JW screenwriter mashing his original idea up with the basic premise of the Taken movies (former government spook/assassin turned unassuming family man is forced out of retirement and shit gets seriously trashed as a result) and injecting a big dollop of gallows humour.  This time he’s teamed up with Ilya Naishuller, the stone-cold lunatic who directed the deliriously insane but also thoroughly brilliant Hardcore Henry, and the results are absolutely unbeatable, a pitch perfect jet black action comedy bursting with neat ideas, wonderfully offbeat characters and ingenious plot twists.  Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk is perfect casting as Hutch Mansell, the aforementioned ex-“Auditor”, a CIA hitman who grew weary of the lifestyle and quit to find some semblance of normality with his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen), with whom he’s had two kids.  Ultimately, he seems to have “overcompensated”, and his life has stagnated, Hutch following a autopiloted day-to-day routine that’s left him increasingly unfulfilled … then fate intervenes and a series of impulsive choices see him falling back on his old ways while defending a young woman from drunken thugs on a late night bus ride.  Problem is, said lowlifes work for the Russian Mob, specifically Yulian Kuznetsov (Leviathan’s Aleksei Serebryakov), a Bratva boss charged with guarding the Obshak, who must exact brutal vengeance in order to save face. Cue much bloody violence and entertaining chaos … Kolstad can do this sort of thing in his sleep, but his writing married with Naishuller’s singularly BONKERS vision means that the anarchy is dialled right up to eleven, while the gleefully dark sense of humour shot through makes the occasional surreality and bitingly satirical observation on offer all the more exquisite.  Odenkirk is a low-key joy throughout, initially emasculated and pathetic but becoming more comfortable in his skin as he reconnects with his old self, while Serebryakov hams things up spectacularly, chewing the scenery with aplomb; Nielsen, meanwhile, brings her characteristic restrained classiness to proceedings, Christopher Lloyd and the RZA are clearly having the time of their lives as, respectively, Hutch’s retired FBI agent father David and fellow ex-spook half-brother Harry, and there’s a wonderfully game cameo from the incomparable Colin Salmon as Hutch’s former handler, the Barber.  Altogether then, this is the perfect marriage of two fantastic worlds – an action-packed thrill ride as explosively impressive as John Wick, but also a wickedly subversive laugh riot every bit as blissfully inventive as Hardcore Henry, and undeniably THE BEST MOVIE I’ve seen so far this year.  Sure, there’s some pretty heavyweight stuff set to (FINALLY) come out later this year, but this really will take some beating …

[xcziel]

Killjoys Season 5: Everything You Need to Know

by Victor Stiff | July 18, 2019

"Killjoys are back!

It’s a bittersweet time to be a Killjoys fan. Space’s most electrifying sci-fi series caps off its five-season run starting this Friday, July 19 at 10 p.m. ET.

Killjoys is Space’s most-watched original sci-fi program, and you can guarantee that the show is going out with a bang. After a successful third season, Killjoys was greenlit for seasons four and five. This gave the show’s producers a two-year window to wrap up the story in the most satisfying way imaginable.

Late last summer, the show’s producers invited the media to visit their set for a behind-the-scenes look. You couldn’t ask for better hosts. We spoke with the writers and cast, toured the sets, and received up-close looks at the costumes and props. After talking to the team behind the show (and watching them shoot some scenes), it’s clear that season five is shaping up to be the best season yet.

In anticipation of Killjoys return, here is a rundown of what you should know.

Is this show for me?

First off, you couldn’t ask for a better summer watch. Expect ten weeks of high-stakes episodes packed with colourful characters, wrenching drama, and over-the-top-action sequences. And of course, plenty of screen time with the galaxy’s sexiest trio of bounty hunters.

If you’re looking for a show that places strong characters and moving relationships over epic action, Killjoys is the series for you — but the show also features top-notch action. Consider it a win-win.

Who are the Killjoys?

If you’ve never watched the show before, here’s the 411.

The series follows three space-travelling bounty hunters (Killjoys), Dutch (Hannah John-Kamen), John (Aaron Ashmore), and D’avin (Luke Macfarlane), who work for the Reclamation Apprehension Coalition (RAC). They travel the system taking on warrants to apprehend people and valued property on RAC’s behalf. But this description only covers the tip of the iceberg.

When the show begins, Dutch has a mysterious past linked to a manipulative character named Khlyen (Rob Stewart). And John and D’avin are brothers who are finally reunited after years apart. The show’s soapy twist and turns leads to plenty of drama for the crew to sort out; often while navigating life and death missions by the seat of their pants. By the time season five rolls around, the stakes are no less than the fate of the galaxy.

If you want to catch up, start binging right now.

What to expect heading into season five:

By the end of season four, things look bleak for our heroes. The Lady (Alanna Bale) has won; she left the Green, the Green was destroyed, and there’s no way to put her back in. Thousands of years studying human memory has taught The Lady how to manipulate it, and she has taken away the team’s knowledge of each other. Season five begins at the lowest point they’ve ever been in. But in a red pill versus blue pill-like twist, they all seem to be happy in their fake lives.

Season five’s memory wipe gave the writers and actors a chance to put familiar characters in new situations, which makes for compelling drama. What’s more impressive is how the storyline dovetails with Killjoys’ thematic pillars.

“TV is a bit of a magic trick. You start off with plans, and then you see what things excite you and interest you, what starts to come out naturally,” said executive producer and Showrunner, Adam Barken.

Barken added. “As we were working, right from the beginning, one of the things that came out very naturally was this idea of memory and how it relates to family. And the more we explored that every season, the more we found, the richer the stories became. While it wasn’t necessarily a plan that we knew in season five, ‘Aha. Ok, now we’re going to strip everybody’s memories,’ by season two we had a pretty good idea that one of the main themes of the show is family. And then, of course, one of the main ways you interact with and deal with family is through your shared memories. The idea of D'av and his lost memories started us down a path that seemed [like] a really good one to follow.”

Barken then said, “I think we were lucky to find one that meant a lot to us and allowed us to build in a season that goes back to some of those core themes of memory, family, what this trio means to each other and what the wider world means to them.”

The memory wipe gave the writers and actors free rein to take characters in fresh directions. The entire crew was enthusiastic about all the storytelling possibilities.

Barken enthusiastically added, “Let’s have some fun at least at the beginning of season five saying what if people were completely different? What if Pree (Thom Allison) wasn’t a bartender. What if Turin (Patrick Garrow) wasn’t the head of the RAC? Who would they be in a new Old Town society, and how could we have some fun playing around with it? I think we did.”

“One of the tensions they’ve been playing with is how unearthable are those [personalities],” said actor Luke Macfarlane who plays D’avin Jaqobis. “What is the pure state of these people, and does it supersede memory? Is there something pure underneath them? Will we actually be seeing a truer expression of these people without [what] they’ve gone through over the last four years?”

“The fun thing is to have a complete shift in roles and shift in costumes as well, which will be very fun to see,” said Hannah John-Kamen, who plays the crew’s resident badass leader, Dutch. “It’s the idea of how do you find each other again when you’re completely distant and completely alien to each other? And what remains? What are the remnants from the past life? What is that connection, and how do you bring these characters back together? That was really fun to play as well.”

“I don’t think it changes anything in the dynamics necessarily,” added Aaron Ashmore, who plays John Jaqobis. “I think a lot of those things are potentially under the surface, anyways. But it’s exciting to play with characters and actors that you know, but in these different lights because you don’t have to treat them the same. It’s almost like being in a different show, in a sense. It allows you to reveal things that are fresh and new. It’s exciting.”

Here’s a synopsis for season five’s first episode, Run, Yala Run. It’s a clear nod to German director Tom Tykwer’s 1998 thriller, Run Lola Run.

''In the season opener, “Run, Yala, Run” (Friday, July 19 at 10 p.m. ET) Dutch wakes up and realizes that The Lady has put Westerley under a collective delusion. With no memory comes a new reality. Dutch struggles to find a way to wake up her gang before it’s too late. But before she can, a new Killjoy comes into town looking for Jaq.''

How do I watch the show?

Canadian viewers can watch Killjoy’s final ten episodes Friday nights on Space (soon to be CTV Sci-Fi Channel), and American viewers can tune in to Syfy.

Season 1- 4 of KILLJOYS is currently streaming on Crave and On Demand."

[tyrantisterror]

FUCK IT LET’S GET ASININE

TT’s SUBJECTIVE RANKING OF THE MARVEL MOVIE VILLAINS (AND A FEW SPECIAL MENTIONS FOR THE TV VILLAINS TOO)

I maintain that ranking characters is stupid but sometimes I dare to be stupid so let’s do this.  SPOILERS FOR EVERY MARVEL MOVIE YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED SEE YOU AFTER THE CUT FUCK I’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT SUPERHEROES A LOT IN THE PAST TWO DAYS HUH

Ok, I guess I should give some criteria for this, so we’re going to be judging these guys both as villains and characters in general.  As characters, they need to be interesting and compelling - i.e. you want to follow their journey, you want to hear their story, because that’s a characters job.  If a character isn’t making a story compelling, they aren’t a great character.  As specifically antagonistic characters, they need to provide an interesting counterpoint and conflict for the heroes - there has to be a substantive reason for why they are opposing the main characters.  And as villains - and while villains are often antagonists, those two words AREN’T synonymous - they need to bring a level of menace to the table.  We don’t just want to see the heroes/protagonists win - we also don’t want the villains to succeed in their goal, because their goal is, y’know, bad.

If a villain is successful in all of these things, then there’s another criteria to consider: did they reach their potential?  There are some villains - actually A LOT of them - in the Marvel movies that are good on paper, but didn’t reach their fully potential, either because they lacked time or the writing just didn’t give them enough to do.  A number of the guys on this list would be higher if they hadn’t been, essentially, wasted by the screenwriters.

There are also some antagonists in the Marvel movies who I don’t really think qualify for the villain label - they were obstacles the heroes had to overcome, sure, but they weren’t meant to be full on SUPERVILLAINS.  There’s nothing wrong with that - hell, I honestly prefer stories to have multiple kinds of antagonists, because it makes the world more complex and interesting.  I’ll give these successful non-villains some honorable mentions.

Let’s dive in then!

As it currently stands, Loki is the best Marvel villain.  I know, I know, a lot of you hate Loki because teenage girls think Tom Hiddelston is cute, but has ANY villain in the Marvel movies gotten even close to as much development as he has?  Loki was one of the strongest aspects of the first Thor movie, with a sinister cunning backed by motives we could understand but not condone.  This guy has reasons for being the bad guy he started as - hell, the main one, his dad, is also the father of the hero he arches for, Thor.  From the start there was complexity and intrigue built into him, and his devious mind presented a great problem for not only Thor but also the three other big names in the first Avengers lineup - because while Captain America, the Hulk, and Iron Man can all hit really hard, those powers aren’t really great at beating a scheme.

Loki also opened the door (literally) for a greater scale of threats and scope of story possibilities in the universe.  Then, once his big starring villain moment in The Avengers came and went, he proceeded to take a slow but well done turn from villain to hero - one fraught with missteps and backsliding.  He didn’t turn into a good guy easily.  Again, he was arguably the best part of Thor: the Dark Wold, a movie that’s kind of a low point in the series (and yet one that’s still far from bad, because that’s how Marvel do).  Admittedly, Loki wasn’t the high point of Thor: Ragnorok, though that’s only because Thor: Ragnorok was great in so many other ways, taking a series that was up till that point a more middling part of the greater Marvel Franchise and making it one of the best.  Notably, Ragnorok finally allowed Loki to complete his turn to hero, all while keeping his personality traits that we’ve grown to love.  No villain has been better served by the franchise, and likewise none has served it better.

The first Guardians of the Galaxy had so much work to do - not only did it have to introduce us to and get us to love the five weirdest fucking superheroes of the franchise so far, but it also had to introduce the entire Space Opera side of Marvel’s universe to us - infinity stones, celestials, various planets with various sapient species with a great and varied history.  We had to learn about Groots and children of Thanos and the Kree and the Nova Corps and the Ravagers - we can forgive that movie for having a weak villain, especially given the fact that it had FIVE protagonists to develop meaningfully instead of one like every movie before it.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, by contrast, has a lot less to do.  Its heroes are introduced, as are a lot of great supporting characters, so in that regard it just had to follow through on what it had already built.  That gave the writers significantly more time to work on the antagonist, and the result was Ego, the second best Marvel movie villain.  Though his relationship with Quill is first and foremost, Ego also has meaningful thematic ties to the other heroes as well - he’s an abusive father of unfathomable power, much like Gamora and Nebula’s adoptive father Thanos, he’s an inherently lonely being that longs for a familial connection that may well be lost to him, like Drax, Rocket, and Groot, he’s a deeply flawed parent figure to Peter much like Yondu, and, well, he’s personally isolated and abused Mantis.  Ego’s motives are understandable but reprehensible.  We feel his pathos - no one wants to be alone, and most people can understand the desire to reconnect with one’s offspring - but we also know he can’t be allowed to succeed.  The threat he brings is palpable, and his conflict changes all the heroes in a meaningful way.

Like most Marvel movie villains, Ego dies in his debut, but to the film’s credit, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 makes every second of his screentime count.  We could have gotten more tales from Ego, but if this is his only one, then I feel we can say his potential was used well.

Like Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther had a lot of stuff on its narrative plate.  While it had a slight headstart in introducing its titular hero thanks to Civil War, it still has to do a lot of work to make us understand who T’Challa is, while also introducing Okoye, M’Baku, Wakanda’s greatest export Shuri, Nakia, and oh yeah, the Afrofuturistic country of Wakanda.  It also had to justify the existence of fakeout villain Ulysses Klaue and unnecessary white man Martin Freeman for, I imagine, the comfort of the white executives taking a “gamble” on a big budget movie with a predominately non-white cast, because somehow that was even more ludicrous in Hollywood’s eyes than a movie starring a talking racoon and an Ent.

where was I?

Oh, right, my point is that there was significantly less narrative space for Killmonger than the two villains above him, and that’s the SOLE reason he’s at number three here.  Killmonger’s motives are just as complex as Loki’s, and he is as thematically relevant to the MANY heroes opposing him in this film as Ego is in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2.  And he gets a lot of good development!

but... Killmonger dies at the end of Black Panther.  He dies when there is so, SO much more story we could have gotten out of him.  And while his story in the film is well told for the most part, some of it is abbreviated.  This dude needs, nay, DESERVES more time.  If they retcon his death and bring him back for a sequel, Killmonger may very well climb to the top of this list.

Thanos is the only villain on this list who is arguably the protagonist of a Marvel film - really, Avengers Infinity War is his movie more than anyone else’s.  He does a lot of the same stuff as the three villains before him - his motives are understandable, the threat he poses is immense, he challenges the heroes, and at the same time has thematic connections to... well, some of them (look there’s significantly more heroes in Infinity War than there are in Thor, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Black Panther, so cut him a little slack).  But he’s a bit weaker at all those ways except for the “level” of threat he poses.  The only heroes he’s really intimately tied to are Gamora and Nebula - for everyone else, his threat is more general than personal.  Sure, he’s a lot more SUCCESSFUL at killing named characters than the previous three villains on this list, but if you think all of those deaths are gonna stick you’re a very gullible person.  Ultimately, Thanos’ character had to sacrifice narrative complexity for the sake of establishing a higher scale of threat, and the result if a character that’s a bit weaker than Marvel’s best - but still pretty damn good.  I mean, he was good enough to feel like a credible threat to a literal army of superheroes - that’s gotta count for something.

Funnily enough, the Vulture is kind of on the opposite side of things from Thanos.  The threat he poses is significantly lower stakes than the villains that preceded and followed him - and, oddly enough, that’s in his favor.  He felt new as a result.  This wasn’t a guy who was starting wars or committing genocides - he’s just an asshole who sells illegal and highly dangerous weapons.  His motives are understandable, too - dude wants to give his family a good life, and this just happened to be a solution to that problem (if not a moral one).  He’s much closer to the kind of “villain” an average person would be affected by in real life.

At the same time, well, he’s not a world shaking villain.  He does what he’s meant to do well, sure, but he wasn’t meant to be the next Loki - he’s a one shot filler villain for a movie that was really about introducing its hero to us.  There are a LOT of villains who were meant for that niche, and of those villains, Vulture is the cream of the crop.

Though she was going to be higher, didn’t you?

My immense attraction to her aside, Hela is... kinda flat.  Her motivations are kinda weak - she’s a warhawk who wants to start wars and was kicked out of Asgard for starting wars too much and now is back to start some more wars because... because war is cool, I guess.  Cate Blanchett’s wonderfully campy performance elevates the material she’s been given a lot, don’t get me wrong, but objectively... Hela’s not very interesting.  In terms of her relation to the hero, she’s basically Loki except with no development or intrigue - yeah, she’s technically Thor’s sister, but we don’t feel a familial bond between them, so their conflcit doesn’t really get any intrigue out of that.  Hela isn’t really a character - she’s a conflict, as developed and emotionally complex as the tornadoes in Twister.

I hate to say it, because I love Thor: Ragnorok and just, like, the concept of a Goddess of Death played by Cate Blanchett, but Hela just isn’t very well developed.  She’s a lot of wasted potential - wasted potential made very... entertaining by Cate Blanchett’s... entertaining performance, but if it weren’t for the skills of the actress playing her and, uh, some aesthetic preferences on my part, she’d be even lower on the list.

Hey, speaking of really good actors who played elf leaders Lord of the Rings, here’s Red Skull!  And, like Hela, he’s kind of wasted.  Movie Red Skull is basically the cartoonishly exaggerated caricature pop culture has made nazis into - “evil” in the Snidley Whiplash sense, but not evil in the have-you-actually-read-up-on-how-fucking-horrifying-the-holocaust-is sense.  And, look, I understand that bringing in the actual horrors of the holocaust in a movie about a guy who’s basically wearing the American flag as a costume could very easily become uncomfortably misguided, but the defanging of the nazis - I’m sorry, HYDRA, the “more evil” nazis who somehow don’t do any of the actually ridiculously evil shit nazis did - that Red Skull represents isn’t a great solution to that problem.

Movie Red Skull is less complex than Cobra Commander.  He is pure “I’m evil because... because!” villainy.  He’s less deep than Hela, and unlike Hela’s actress, Hugo Weaving was kind of phoning it in.  There’s some hammy fun in Red Skull, sure, but he could have had so much more impact than he did.

Ronan the Accuser’s motives are a bit better defined than Red Skull’s.  His people have been in an on again, off again war with the rival civilization of Xandar, and yeah, that’s a tale as old as time - dude wants to destroy a country because they fought his country in the past and all that, happens all the time, fine and dandy.  But... while we can understand that because it’s basically the bulk of human history, we never really feel it, y’know?  Xandar and the Kree’s history is TOLD to us, not shown, and as a result we don’t really FEEL Ronan’s motivation.

So what does that leave us with?  Well, a very shouty and hammy performance by his actor done from under some thick makeup.  It’s fun and campy, but Ronan’s a filler starter villain - he’s weak so the heroes may have time to be strong.  It’s fine - he does his job - but he’s not what he could have been.

Although I will say, the moment where his brain just short circuits when Peter Quill stops their fight to challenge him to a dance off?  Hands down the most satisfying thing in the entire Marvel universe.

Aww yeah, here’s an interesting guy!  Isn’t this not at all underwhelming after the colorful cast of characters above?  Look, it’s... a dude!  A white dude!  Swell!

Zemo is, like, the less-good prototype for Killmonger.  Dude got fucked over by American Imperialism and blames the superheroes for it, using a bunch of dastardly tricks and cunning schemes to create strife in their ranks!  He does it well enough, and he’s got a good amount of pathos, and the actor playing him does the job very well, but... c’mon, do you really want to see more of this guy?  Did you even remember his name?  He’s just complex enough to get the job done, but just boring enough to let the movie focus on its REAL conflict, which is the titular super hero Civil War.  Like the Vulture before him, he’s just as good as he needs to be - but since he didn’t need to be as good as the villains higher up, he didn’t reach those heights.

Also it should be noted that comic book Zemo looks OUTRAGEOUS and interesting and fun so it’s kind of a shame that, like, exactly 0% of that was translated into film.  You could have called this character Greg Fucktruck or whatever instead and saved that character for a movie where, like, he could be interesting and cool, instead of a one off filler villain.

Robert Redford begins as a good guy in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and initially feels like a reasonable authority figure, only to be revealed as a secret bad guy in a surprising plot twist!  It’s effective, but as villains go. he’s just, like, a guy.  He’s a guy in a suit.  Not a supervillain suit, just a... a normal suit.  He wields a lot of power and has an evil plan and is played charismatically by a very good actor, but like Zemo, he’s not exactly memorable.  I mean, fuck, I just listed him as Robert Redford because I couldn’t remember his character name and didn’t want to look it up.

Y’know how I said Zemo is the crappy prototype for Killmonger?  Yeah, well, Whiplash is the shitty prototype for Zemo.  Same motives but shittier, same personal connection to the hero but shittier, same critique of American Imperialism but much, much shittier.  At least he loved his bird, though.

I couldn’t find a gif of his monster form, but the Abomination is... uh... he’s a guy... a mercenary?  And he turns into a monster.  That’s neat.  Turning into a monster is the sole reason he’s this high on the list.  And I couldn’t even find a gif of it.

Ullyses Klaue was a boring, one dimensional filler villain who was given some fun quirks by his actor, Andy Serkis, but ultimately failed to not be boring and was thankfully killed off halfway through the movie so the actually interesting villain of the movie could take center stage in a surprise twist that made said interesting villain all the more memorable.  He died so a better plot may live, and a better character immediately filled his shoes.  Rest in peace, you boring ass red herring of a villain.

“I’m selling the entire universe to a hell dimension because the hell dimension doesn’t have death because there is no time!  That’s a complex motive, right?  Right?”  No, c...caecilian?  Cesarian?  Caeser Millan?  No it’s not.  I mean, an attempt was made, I guess?  It’s technically a different motive than past villains?  I guess?  This guy is the “You Tried” sticker of Marvel’s movie villains.

Ultron tried to be so, SO much more than most of the characters on this list.  In terms of authorial intent, he would rank higher - they were really, REALLY trying with him!  They really were!

But, for me, Ultron fails in everything he tries to be. That’s why he’s this low on my list - not because he’s not complex, not because he’s a boring concept, but because there was so much potential and effort here and it was all WASTED, and that is so much more frustrating than the boring villains that preceded him on this list!

Like... comic book Ultron is a giggling, manic lunatic of a villain, full of energy and intensity that is so unlike most of Marvel’s rogues gallery, especially those that made it to the films.  The default movie villain is “smug, disinterested bad guy who talks way too much and takes himself too seriously.”  Comic book Ultron ISN’T that.  Comic book Ultron is fun and passionate and coo-coo for coco puffs bonkers bananas!  And yet he’s also got a lot of pathos - he’s a new life form whose creator didn’t know how to nurture properly, who grew too fast for his unwitting parent to deal with.  There’s a tragedy to Ultron.

Also, he’s an awesome robot man with a scary as fuck unmoving robot mask that looks like some alien skull that is both screaming in fury and laughing in maniacal glee at the same time.  Like, visually, comic book Ultron is really good.

And... and an effort was made to capture some of that, but it failed.  They tried to capture Ultron’s loopy thought process, but in reality they just made his motivations and plan a fucking mess that’s impossible to parse.  They tried to give him a good design, but ditched the iconic and creepy screaming skull mask in favor of... weird robo lips, and then stuck those on a Michael Bay transformer body.  They took his manic personality and, well, chucked it out in favor of...

Well, a smug, disinterested bad guy who talks too much and takes himself too seriously.

Ultron should have been something we hadn’t seen before, or at least not recently - he should have been, well, Comic Book Ultron.  Instead, they forced him into the mold of MOST Marvel villains, and forced his design into the mold of the most profitable robot designs at the then-current time: the Michael Bay transformers.  The result was so disappointing.  It’s heart breaking.

You know what they should have imitated, but didn’t?  Darth Vader.  Darth Vader is perhaps the most well known movie villain of all time, and certainly the most lucrative.  You know what Darth Vader has?  An immovable mask that is iconic and terrifying and brought to life by a passionate, inspired vocal performance from the actor playing him.

Ultron is most effective at the very end of the movie, when he’s speaking through his drone, which DOES have that immovable, scream/laughter face of his comic counterpart.  It’s way more unsettling and interesting to watch, even if James Spader’s performance in that part still has that smug, bored disinterest to it.  I know this sounds like a minor point but really, it’s one of the many big missed opportunities of this character, and it’s a damn shame.

Malekith is a shitty prototype for Ronan the Accuser, played by an actor of great talent who was given absolutely nothing to work with from the script and then had his performance hampered by thick makeup.  Malekith sucks.

There are, like, fifty evil businessmen who want superhero technology to make money via evil in the Marvel movies.  They all have different names and different actors and they’re all boring and they suck.  They suck hard.  They’re all the exact same character, and the fact that some of them are played by really good actors sucks doubly hard because those good actors could have played, like, someone INTERESTING instead.  Fuckin’ Sam Rockwell?  You waste Sam Rockwell’s talents on this bland stereotype of a character?  You wasted the Fucking Dude on this?  Christ.

Honorable Mentions pt. 1: the Not-Really-Villains

Jeff Goldblum’s performance as the Grandmaster is a gift that humanity must treasure till the end of its days and beyond.  He is so delightfully weird and charming in every scene he’s in and I would watch a thousand movies with this character in him.  So why isn’t he on the villains list?  Well, because he’s... not really a villain.  He’s an antagonist, sure, and on paper he sounds pretty villainous - tyrannical ruler of a planet who forces people into gladiator games and all that.

But in execution he’s more of... a goof.  He’s basically Michael Scott from The Office - a weird fucking idiot who was given way too much power and weilds it irresponsibly.  He causes problems that can ruin peoples’s lives, sure, but, like, he’s entirely unaware of what he’s doing.  He’s not consciously evil - he’s just a silly bastard who doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions.  He’d be harmless if you took him out of that power structure.

When we first meet him, he metls a guy with a stick.  Most movies would play that for horror.  In Thor: Ragnorok, it’s a comedy beat.  Audiences lose their shit laughing at the dark comedy of that moment.  The Grandmaster COULD have been played as a villain, but instead he was played as a buffoonish antagonist - and he’s BETTER for that.  He’s more memorable for that.

Bucky is a great antagonist in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but he’s not a villain.  He’s a victim - you can’t hold brainwashed, mind-controlled man accountable for his actions, as everything he’s done was carried out specifically because his own will was overridden.  Bucky’s a damn good character, and if this was a ranking of ANTAGONISTS he’d be up in the top five, but you can’t call the dude a villain.

There are a lot of henchmen in the movies that were full on villains in the comics, like Skurge and Crossbones and so on.  But, look - in the films, these guys are just henchmen.  Some of them are very fun, very interesting henchmen - I chose Skurge to represent them for a reason - but they aren’t VILLAINS.  They aren’t the focus.  They’re a side dish, not the main course.

Holy shit I posted this only to remember Dormammu’s been in a movie ten minutes later while getting cereal.  Movie Dormammu isn’t a villain or a henchman - he’s a cameo, much as Thanos was until very recently.  He fills the same narrative role as a McGuffin - he’s the big bad weapon we have to stop the villain from using.  He’ll probably get to be a character in later movies, but for now he’s little more than a prop.  Fuck, I couldn’t even find a gif of his movie self - had to use his comic counterpart instead.

Honorable Mentions Pt. 2: Sirs And Madamns Not-Appearing-In-These-Films

So the Marvel movies technically share the same universe as various T.V. shows, though at this point the likelihood of that ever being played for more than a few winking nods and veiled references is PRETTY LOW.  Most of these series are designed to be binge watched on Netflix - i.e. consumed all at once, from the comfort of a couch, so the audience can enjoy a longer form story than an individual movie without having to wait several months between installments.  That’s a very different writing task than writing a MOVIE villain - structurally, it’s significantly different, with a whole lot of different problems and possibilities.  Judging the villains of the shows by the same criteria as we judge the villains of the movies isn’t fair - the villains of the shows have a LOT more time on their hands to prove who they are, and without long gaps.  Loki, the villain with the most screentime in the movies, still had less time for his arc than, say, Kilgrave, and Loki’s arc was staggered in two and a half hour chunks with years in between them, while Kilgrave’s story could be consumed all at one upon release.  That’s not a fair fight.

That said, I want to talk about some of the TV villains:

Kilgrave is the single most complex, terrifying, and overall effective villain the Marvel Cinematic Universe has produce, at least from all the content I’ve seen.  None of the other villains (that I’ve seen) are explored as thoroughly, none of them are as personally tied to every facet of the hero they oppose, and none of them - not even world ending Thanos - are as starkly fucking terrifying the depths of their depravity and the strength they have to achieve it.  Kilgrave is brilliantly written, and David Tenant outdoes himself in bringing him to monstrous life.  He is the best villain the MCU has produced.

You know how a lot of the movies have somewhat bland villains by necessity, because giving them too much narrative weight would keep them from properly introducing the hero?  Cottonmouth would have that problem had Luke Cage been introduced in a movie instead of a show.  As it is, Cottonmouth still feels like a “starter” villain - he’s a normal sort of criminal, not a Supervillain - but at the same time, he’s a damn complex and interesting starter villain.  He’s miles ahead of most of the movie villains, but it’s purely because he’s got a lot more time to develop.

Diamondback, by contrast, has a really interesting concept, but is kind of bland in execution.  The show builds him up very well, but slowly drops the ball once he finally shows up in the final half of the season.  Maybe a second season can make good on his concept, but as it is he was kind of mishandled.

I watched about three episodes of Dardevil.  It was very good, but there was a scene where Daredevil tortured a criminal to get information out of him to stop crimes, and that is a dealbreaker for me.  I don’t care if they “explored the ramifications” of it - as far as I’m concerned, when a character tortures someone for information, they are no longer sympathetic and I cannot call them a hero.  I will not watch the rest of that show.

I’ve heard Wilson Fisk is VERY well handled and interesting from enough people to feel that’s almost certainly true.  Shame I can’t see it.

Outside of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, I also watched two seasons of Agents of SHIELD  as well as The Defenders.  I can’t remember any of the villains from either.  I mean, there definitely were some, but I can’t remember a single one.  Unless we count Danny Rand - I certainly felt personally victimized every time he opened his shitty mouth to say some shitty dialogue and take some screentime from Jessica Jones and Luke Cage in The Defenders. Or the writers of Agents of SHIELD for killing Lucy Lawless off in the same episode they introduced her into the show, thus denying us an awesome character played by Lucy fucking Lawless.  But other than that, I don’t know the TV villains that well.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #460

Top Ten Games of Lockdown

So Happy Christmas! Did you have a good time? I know most of us won’t have been able to spend it with families the way we used to. I’m very fortunate in that I really enjoy spending time in the house with my family, so if that’s all we really get to do over Christmas it won’t be the worst thing in the world, especially considering what the world is nowadays. But for the people who couldn’t see families, missed their presents, struggled to find food, or suffered even worse problems, my heart goes out to you. Let’s hope 2021 is a little bit less crap.

Anyway. What with lockdown, there has been a fair bit of families-sitting-round-the-living-room going on. A couple of weeks ago I listed the films we’d been watching as a family that helped us get through this difficult time. Well, we also played a lot of videogames. We played on an evening; we played on a morning. Sometimes we even devoted a whole rainy day to sitting in the front room and enjoying some interactive entertainment! I mean, don’t get me wrong, we did other stuff too. But we had a few fun days with controllers in our hands.

I think we all needed stuff to help get us through this year, and games were a big part of that. For me, I probably ended up playing slightly less than usual; I was no longer alone in the house during the day, and for some reason everybody just stayed up a bit later so I didn’t get to go on after they’d all gone to bed quite as often either (this is also the reason why there are loads of films from 2019 and 2020 that I’ve still not seen). It’s great fun to gather round the TV with a Switch controller in your hands playing a game together. It was also great fun playing “passive co-op”, as I call it; when one person plays a single-player game but is given advice and support from others in the room. This happened a lot. Also sometimes someone would be on the Xbox, someone on the Switch, and someone on the laptop… we really need a fourth console, thinking about it.

Anyway, here are ten games that we as a family enjoyed; not necessarily all at the same time, but during communal gaming sessions or together in multiplayer. Games that helped make 2020 a little bit better. So even thought it’s not been the best year, let’s raise a glass to gaming – and also to the Switch and Xbox Game Pass. They’re great, they are.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017, Switch): Mario Kart is a great leveller, and one of those fantastic games that can encompass a wide variety of skill levels. Sometimes we let the kids win a bit; sometimes we try to show them that you can still have fun without coming first. Sometimes my youngest daughter insists I play as “her” character so then “she” can win. But I don’t need to tell you how great Mario Kart is, and the Switch Joy-Cons make it feel even easier to have a quick multiplayer session of an evening.

Stardew Valley (2016, Xbox One): I bought this a while ago thinking my eldest might enjoy it, but I’d barely scratched its surface; during lockdown, however, my wife and kids devoured it. My wife, in fact, has completed two farms and my kids aren’t far behind. The news of the update, with new farms and collections and a split-screen mode, is tantalising for the rest of my family. Incidentally, I’ve just installed My Time at Portia, which might be scratching a similar itch.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020, Switch): sadly we’ve not managed to sucker my wife into the charms of Tom Nook’s adorable vision of capitalist hell, but there’s still time. This was a great way to spend the pandemic: living on a tropical island full of weird animals, doing nothing but digging up fossils and adding rooms to your house. Serene, relaxing, compelling… and rather social, too, which is a plus.

Boom Blox (2008, Wii): yes, we still have our Wii out; it’s great for the kids. Boom Blox is a very underrated multiplayer, with simple turn-based levels and a mechanic that even a five-year-old can grasp. Yes, it’s prompted tears because someone didn’t win, but it also allows for much hilarity as you miss the blocks you’re supposed to knock down and instead send flying a cardboard squirrel or something.

Minecraft (2017, Xbox One): Minecraft was a social boon this year. Not only could my kids play together, but they could also play with – and chat to – their cousins in the game. Added to the fact that it’s a great construction and educational tool, and they gave way some interesting educational levels, and you’ve got a recipe for success. Now if only they’d release the path-traced version for Series X…

Pokémon Sword (2019, Switch): my kids love Pokémon; my eldest plays the card game, they both collect stuffed toys, and the anime is a regular feature on our Netflix account. Sword, I think, took a while for them to get into, but with us all playing it at different speeds it was good to compare notes and share in our respective journeys. Fun, too, to see how my youngest developed and became more competent as the year progressed.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Discovery Tour (2018, PC): it feels a little bit weird to say “hey, yeah, my two primary-aged children really loved playing Assassin’s Creed this year”, but that’s what they did; Ubisoft making the “Discovery Tour” versions of Origins and Odyssey free was fantastic, especially as my eldest was studying Ancient Greece. A huge, living world, realistic but accessible; suitable for kids but with the heft of a AAA adult videogame. They both love walking around this world, and I was impressed by how scalable the engine was.

The Sims 3 (2009, PC): yep, it’s old, but it’s good; I whack all the cheats on and it just becomes a sandbox construction game for my kids. But I’ll be honest, the thing they really love is designing families; they spend most of their time creating the characters and then have to switch off before they can really get to play. They don’t mind; that’s the fun part.

Untitled Goose Game (2019, Xbox One): another one that my wife and eldest adored, poring over the puzzles and trying to figure it all out. The “horrible goose” dynamic is a dark comic joy, and even though I got frustrated by the fail-repeat dynamic (I always do with these sorts of games), my nearest and dearest persevered. Daughter #1 was especially upset to discover it has departed Game Pass.

Wii Fit (2007, Wii): turns out sitting down inside all year can have a negative effect on your health; who knew? So we broke out the Wii Fit board to try to shed a couple of grams. My kids are way into it, even though I don’t think the game is designed to take such young frames into account. No matter; its fun mix of healthy activities and balance-based minigames still compels. They really love keeping the penguin on that ice…

Just bubbling under here are a few games that were very important, but didn’t quite have the reach to impact everyone in the household in quite the same way. Roblox, for instance, is huge with my eldest, and she’s just recently discovered Fortnite (these games have a social impact for kids her age, it seems); she and her sister also really enjoy Zoo Tycoon and Rush: A Disney-Pixar Adventure. For my part, playing on the PC of an evening while my wife was caning Stardew, I absolutely loved Gears Tactics. And – whisper it – I also let my eldest play a little Halo, too. How inappropriate of me.

Oh, and Civ VI. Obvs.

[ramajmedia]

10 Great Crime Movies To Watch If You Loved Breaking Bad

If you’re jonesing for your Breaking Bad fix (but can’t wait for the movie) then we’re here to help you out. The show has been permanently enshrined as a definitive crime story of our era. Its outstanding achievements in writing, acting, cinematography, and music have made it something that’s ranked alongside most major movies in the genre.

RELATED: El Camino: What The Breaking Bad Movie Title Means

It can feel like there’s nothing contemporary out there that really matches its relatable drama and compelling villainy. But it's easy to find if you know where to look. Here’s our list of ten great crime movies that share some of the show’s best qualities.

10 Shot Caller

Ric Roman Waugh’s prison thriller stars Game of Thrones actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as a successful California stockbroker who pleas down to a short prison sentence after a fatal car accident. Once inside the system, however, he finds himself at the mercy of prison’s gangs, particularly the local White Supremacists, and is forced to sink further and further into a life of violent crime in order to survive.

The harsh realities and almost Kafkaesque absurdity of the system that the main character finds himself trapped within echo many of Breaking Bad’s social commentaries. Not to mention the all too ignored White Supremacist element in American criminal culture.

RELATED: The Ultimate Breaking Bad Gift Guide

9 Life Without Principle

Johnnie To’s Hong Kong crime drama follows a loosely-connected ensemble of small-time players (a cop, a low-level gangster and a bank teller) as they face morally compromising situations in their collective quest to simply get by in modern life.

Fans of Breaking Bad’s focus on the mundane reality of crime, and the frantic desperation that spawns it, will find a lot of similarities in Life Without Principle. Particularly in its examination of moral equivalency and guilt. To’s following crime movie, Drug War, also being worthy of note due to its similar subject matter to Breaking Bad, despite a more traditional cops and robbers structure.

8 Gangs of Wasseypur (Parts 1 & 2)

If you’re looking for something a little different in your sprawling crime saga then look no further than Anurag Kashyap’s gangster epic, Gangs of Wasseypur, in its complete, two-part glory. Spanning over fifty years of bloody rivalry in the titular Wasseypur neighborhood of India, it sets its scenes and conflicts in rich detail. Ultimately facilitating a gargantuan story of iconic personalities and bitter family feuds.

Wasseypur’s desert landscape and the movie’s shocking violence will bring back memories of Breaking Bad’s alternate take on the kind of tragic crime fable that was more often than not reserved for the American mafia or the metropolitan streets of tourist hubs like New York, Paris or Hong Kong. 

7 Animal Kingdom

Writer and director David Michôd's Australian crime drama concerns a highly dysfunctional family of bank robbers in Melbourne, as they face extinction from a trigger-happy police squad that’s out to finish them once and for all. After the overdose of his mother, 17-year-old Joshua Cody finds himself flung back into this family that his mother attempted to keep him from and he’s irrevocably sucked into their paranoid, murderous, world.

James Frecheville’s performance as Joshua will no doubt conjure up images of Jesse Pinkman being in way over his head. But the whole ensemble, including Ben Mendelsohn’s terrifying sociopath and Jacki Weaver’s unforgettably evil matriarch, evokes the flawless network of performances that went into making the realistic ecosystem of Breaking Bad's drama. Unsurprisingly, the movie has since been adapted into a US-set TV show.

RELATED: Breaking Bad Movie: 10 Questions They Will Have To Answer From The Series

6 Trainspotting

Breaking Bad was a show that you could feel adapting and experimenting to find whatever worked best for a particular idea whilst always striving to feel cinematic. This often draws comparisons to Quentin Tarantino’s mish mashing of genres and techniques (and there are a lot of straight-up references to Tarantino in the show). But there are many distinct similarities, intentional or not, to be found between Breaking Bad and Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting.

There’s a strong resemblance between Boyle’s overall use of cameras, particularly smaller ones attached to actors or props, and Michael Slovis’ cinematography on Breaking Bad. With each of their honest, heartbreaking and wildly creative portraits of drug culture and addiction being of particular note, seen especially in Aaron Paul's and Ewan McGregor's performances as young, disaffected, men trapped within them.

5 Collateral

Jamie Foxx is the underachiever under the wing of a bad element, and Tom Cruise the psychotic mastermind, in Michael Mann’s story of a cab driver forced to drive around and assist a hitman through one night of work across Los Angeles. There’s no drug business but there is more duality, lies, manipulation and towering criminal persona than you can shake a stick at.

The confined space that the lead duo finds itself in, like Breaking Bad’s RV, pushes the pair of actors to create the biggest fireworks out of their characters’ dialogue and dynamic. And sparks do fly. Foxx was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at that year’s Oscars, losing to Morgan Freeman but going on to win Best Actor for Ray that same night.

4 Good Time

Josh and Benny Safdie’s whirlwind crime spree through New York is very reminiscent of Breaking Bad’s DIY, think-on-your-feet perspective of serious crime. Robert Pattinson creates another protagonist so bad that you can’t help but be impressed. His amateur bank robber will do anything to protect his brother and the entire city becomes a playground, or battlefield, in his mission to avoid the cops and get paid.

It’s rare to see a protagonist as devoid of morality as Pattinson's is in anything, let alone a feature film. The realism not only accentuating this but, like Breaking Bad, creating a world where the sharp turns in the story seem all the more genuine and incredible.

RELATED: 10 Facts Behind The Making Of Breaking Bad

3 Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time

Yoon Jong-bin’s chronicling of a particularly corrupt moment in South Korea’s history serves as a fascinating character study that, like Breaking Bad, highlights how the biggest forces in the volatile world of crime are often the wannabes. 

Choi Min-sik provides a Bryan Cranston-esque icon for the era with his performance as a minor customs official with aspirations of criminal kingpinery. His character’s mixture of impressive ingenuity and utter buffoonery demonstrating a range of emotion and dedication to the performance that feels once in a lifetime level good. 

2 A Prophet

Being mostly set in prison doesn’t make Jacques Audiard’s modern crime epic feel any less far-reaching. Like Breaking Bad, it’s bursting with intelligent tricks to make its world feel more real whilst never letting that world feel predictable. Sudden bursts of intense, almost bizarre, violence can inject themselves into the monotony of day to day life at any moment.

From a prison cell, Tahar Rahim’s nobody finds his way in a vast underworld of warring factions, cultures and languages in modern France. As Breaking Bad does, A Prophet serves as much as a time capsule as it does as entertainment.

1 Sicario

If you took all of the tensest, most violent moments from Breaking Bad, condensed them and dialed up their cinematic features into overdrive, then you’d get something like Sicario. Denis Villeneuve’s brief glimpse into the deepest, darkest recesses of the criminal underworld that stretches across nations and governments, is a web of manipulation and swift, ruthless, actions. 

Fans of Dave Porter’s pulse-pounding score in Breaking Bad’s crisis scenes will enjoy Jóhann Jóhannsson’s intensely ominous magnum opus from Sicario. With legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins, similarly, outdoing himself to stunningly convey a world of limitless deception and almost religious evil within the US/Mexico drug trade.

NEXT: 5 Characters We Hope To See In The Upcoming Breaking Bad Movie (And 5 Who Can Stay Away)

source https://screenrant.com/breaking-bad-great-crime-movies/

[awkwardlyamusing-blog]

Holcomb refuses to listen to constituents about Hoosier State train

New Post has been published on http://doggietrainingclasses.com/holcomb-refuses-to-listen-to-constituents-about-hoosier-state-train/

Holcomb refuses to listen to constituents about Hoosier State train

CLOSE

Instead of listening to ordinary Hoosiers along the train’s route he took the advice of the Department of Transportation, and killed the service.

The pundits are saying that Gov. Eric Holcomb, who just announced he’s running for re-election, is a shoo-in. After all, he’s not the perceived dour, judgmental Mike Pence, but a smiling, jovial figure. But as I learned recently, he’s also the one who puts right-wing dogma over public opinion.

Back in 2012, Amtrak announced that the four-day-a-week Hoosier State train between Indianapolis and Chicago would be discontinued in 2013 if the state did not fund its operation. Pence wasn’t enthusiastic about spending the money, but when people all along the line — especially in Lafayette, where Purdue students depend on the train —promised to help, Pence went along with it.

This year, Holcomb, instead of listening to ordinary Hoosiers along the train’s route, took the advice of his transit-hating Department of Transportation, and killed the service. While he was happy to subsidize the Indianapolis airport to the tune of $20 million, he wouldn’t even consider $3 million to maintain daily train service to Chicago.

Given Holcomb’s refusal to listen to constituents in the case of the Hoosier State, his smiling countenance is more of a mask. Democrats need to find someone good at unmasking.

Stephen Wylder

Elkhart

Create employment opportunities, offer mentorship for Indy’s youth

While we celebrate the thousands of recent graduates, others won’t seek post-secondary credentials or a career. EmployIndy estimates 30,000 people in Indianapolis, ages 16-24, are not enrolled or employed. And they are disproportionately people of color.

It’s tempting to suggest that if a person works hard, he or she can be successful, but we know environmental stressors and systemic racism often disrupt individual ambition. These young people, “opportunity youth,” are at a critical moment in their lives. Education and employment decrease a person’s likeliness to be incarcerated or to use government supports. They’re more likely to have stable housing and contribute to the growing economy.

We, the eight advisors of the Community Leadership Innovation Fund at Central Indiana Community Foundation, have committed $400,000 to create the first Opportunity Youth Collaborative to engage this population. Participants include: EmployIndy, Indiana Black Expo, Groundwork Indy, Martin Luther King Center and Hamilton County Youth Assistance Program.

We urge you to support these youth by offering mentorship, creating employment opportunities or by making a financial gift to these organizations. This population is vital to the current and future success of our community.

Instead of detention facilities, U.S. could provide foreign aid to Central America

Here’s a thought: Rather than spending millions, if not billions of dollars on detention facilities and border walls, develop a plan to assist the people in Central America to improve their living conditions in their homelands. The people who have migrated must provide reasons for their actions and this might be a starting point for developing a plan. If drug cartels are the problem, provide military support to eliminate the cartels. If it’s food or water or lack of energy, send some corporations down to address those issues. Money spent on these issues would better serve Central America.

Tom Schroeder

Indianapolis

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Enforce speed limits on Indiana’s highways

The recent tragic accident where a mother and twin toddlers were killed has been attributed to excessive speed of a truck driver. The speed limit on most if not all of I-465 is 55 mph. A lot of the time if one is driving at that speed you’re getting your doors blown off’ by autos and trucks that are flying by. When will the Indiana State Police and other law enforcement more vigorously enforce speed limits in all of Indiana? If  ISP’s Supt. Douglas Carter and other law enforcement leaders say a lack of personnel and equipment is due to insufficient funding, then it’s up to Gov. Eric Holcomb, the General Assembly and local government to provide law enforcement with the means to slow all drivers to posted speed limits. Until all driver’s speeding is reduced, the slaughter of innocent persons on Indiana highways will continue.

David Schellberg

Carmel

Boost law enforcement to stop speeding violations

Another tragedy on I-465 involving a big rig. And where is law enforcement? Anymore, it is absolutely frightening to travel I-465. Recently I took a grandson to the airport from the far east-side and while I was doing 60 mph, most were going much faster. Please put law enforcement back on the roadways to stop all of the many violations that occur by the minute.

William Hilton

New Palestine

Republicans justify Trump’s racism, hypocrisy

I find it amazing that Republicans profess so much love for Israel that they cite a Democratic congresswoman’s questioning of AIPAC’s undeniably undue influence in our politics as justification for their racist comments against her when the base of the Republican Party is seemingly filled with neo-nazis and other various white supremacists who actually are anti-Semitic. Remember all those “very fine” people marching in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us?” Of course hypocrisy, racism and ignorance are hallmarks of the Republican Party. I also suppose that anyone who actually believes that climate change is a hoax, that Russia is our friend and that President Trump is a stable genius cannot be held accountable for what they say and do.

James Clark

Indianapolis

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Democratic Party fumbles election rules

Once again the Democratic Party is preparing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In order to qualify for the debate in September, the party leadership has decreed that candidates must not only have a required number of donors, but must also have support in certain polls. Let us hope not the same polls that showed Hillary Clinton winning in 2016.

The only thing that polls are good for is assessing name recognition. None of the current Democrat front runners are likely to garner Republican crossover voters. Only a relatively non-controversial moderate could do that, but the polling requirement will probably eliminate him or her. Having won the popular vote but lost the electoral college twice in the last 19 years, the Democrats are gearing up to do it again.

Antonia Sekula

Speedway

Trump encourages divisiveness in America

By definition a demagogue is a (political) leader who appeals to his or her constituency’s fears and prejudices and makes false promises to remedy their conceived problems. It seems to me that President Donald Trump’s picture ought to be next to this definition.

It causes me great consternation when I see Trump or Vice President Mike Pence at a rally where there are signs proclaiming, “Promises Made, Promises Kept.”  The reason for this is that I can think of absolutely nothing that our president has accomplished that has benefited our country.  Some would say that the tax cuts have benefited them, however, I challenge them to show me how. Others would say that appointing conservative judges will benefit our country and again I ask how. I have also heard that Trump has made our country safer and once again I am forced to ask how and from whom?

I am terribly tired of the divisiveness encouraged by Trump. With a slogan of Make America Great Again, I again have to ask how and for whom?

Mel Pfeiffer

Indianapolis

Humans disrupt ecosystem by killing turtles 

A recent front page story on Hoosiers killing turtles for food is disturbing to say the least. It truly depicts why humans are one of the cruelest species on this planet. When humans enter an ecosystem and begin killing, we disrupt a perfect balance. It’s no wonder the Asian Carp are flourishing — there are no more turtles to eat the larvae.

“Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventure, and for hides and furs is a phenomena which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality,” the Dalai Lama once said. A turtle has one defense — strong jaws. They will never win against a human predator. I feel very sorry for these poor, beautiful creatures who are terrified of these large men invading the creek homes they may have been inhabiting for a hundred years or more — not ever bothering those around them. These Hoosiers need to find a better Indiana tradition to keep alive, or better yet, start a new tradition. Teach compassion to the younger generations. The world will be a much better place when we treat those species who are smaller than us, and even other humans who may be different than us, with respect and kindness.

Lindsey Hehman

Indianapolis

‘Many of us love this country too much to leave it’

As the son of an immigrant I feel compelled to express my disgust for the president’s racist remarks and his suggestion that four congresswomen leave the country if they don’t love it. What he fails to realize is that many of us love this country too much to leave it. We love it too much to stand by in complacent and complicit silence as its moral fiber is shredded. We love it too much to see it become a nation scorned by the rest of the world. And, most of all, we love it too much to blindly wrap ourselves in the flag and cover our eyes to xenophobia, misogyny, and racism.

Jim Solomon

Indianapolis

Trump makes no racist references to Congresswomen

It is with continued disappointment that I read the July 18 front page article “New Lines of Division.” With no attribution, IndyStar published the sentence: “Trump’s aggressive condemnation of women of color in Congress…”  The president made no reference to these four women in any racial sense.

Had these ladies been Caucasian and from Canada, the president would have said the same thing — and no mention of race would have been made. However, all four of these ladies have made some awful, unpatriotic statements about our country in the past. They deserved to called out for them. The president’s statements had nothing to do with race.

Ever since President Barack Obama entered the White House, the Democrats have kept race on the front burner.  It is a shame, because It keeps these wounds from healing and it really shows that the Democrats do not really want racial harmony in America.

Gordon Rose

Fishers

Immigrants, nonwhites fight for American freedoms

In the July 18 Letters to the Editor, one could interpret by letter writer Ryan Sorg’s viewpoint that he is consumed by hate for anyone having a difference of opinion when it comes to President Trump, and he wants to draw a line whereby he labels certain people to have no right to be representation. He wants to automatically label everyone else not conforming to Republicanism (Trumpism actually) as those who do not love this country. He suggests that they are anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, racist, communist, and anti-American.

Yes, too many people died for this nation in past wars for the common good, and a number of those people who went to fight were of non-white skinned races, immigrants that were not yet citizens, and even Democrats. Sir, President Trump is the one dividing this country.

Dennis Henderson

Indianapolis

Humanitarian crisis exists at border

Last Thursday I listened to an interview on NPR that Ari Shapiro conducted with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Jordan is the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee who had, that day, heard testimony from Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan. Jordan played some semantic games in order to deflect attention from the Inspector General’s finding that the conditions were deplorable in border detention centers, and then blamed Democrats for failing to provided funding.

Shapiro tried several times to ask why the Republicans didn’t provide the funding in 2018 when they controlled both the House and the Senate, but Jordan, as he is prone to do, just kept talking. McAleenan, at the hearing, testified that he had warned Congress a year ago that there was a humanitarian crisis coming at the border. When Shapiro finally was able to ask his question, Jordan said he was only talking about the last two-and-a-half months when he blamed the Democrats. These are the games our politicians play on both sides. We have our fellow human beings caged in conditions that would not be allowed in a dog kennel and Congress just wants to point fingers. It seems that politics is more important than humanity.

Doug Broberg

Fishers

Read or Share this story: https://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/readers/2019/07/21/holcomb-refuses-to-listen-to-constituents-about-hoosier-state-train-letter-to-editor-says/1756194001/

Source link Train Your Dog

[anythingstephenking]

Catch Your Dream

…. and shackle it to your heart.

Catch your dream, don't let it spread its wings and fly away.

-Mouse Rat

Since King loves quoting popular music, we’ll get started with some lyrics to one of America’s greatest tunes. And just like that, here we are, arriving at King’s first post car crash novel, Dreamcatcher. And, uh, it is something.

Where to begin? After the crash that nearly took his life, King is stuck in bed, in pain, and high as a kite. An author addicted to opioids after a car wreck - I feel like we’ve heard this one before. It’s Paul Sheldon all over again. But this time it’s real life. Due to being bedridden, King wrote the first draft of this novel by hand - a feat in and of itself as the paperback copy I own of Dreamcatcher clocks in at a hefty 882 pages.

There’s plenty in Dreamcatcher to like. King reaches into his standard bag of tricks - we’ve got Derry Maine! We’ve got 4 childhood friends with a secret! We’ve got aliens! We’ve got lots of bodily functions!

Ok wait, so that last one is new. Based on what I’ve read, King stuck in bed nursing his wounds with oxy, he came to grips with control over his own body, and why shouldn’t poop and vomit and blood find its way into the pages of this story? Sure sure, we’ve got almost 900 pages, lots of room for farts and poo. The last time we had to read in lengths about aliens was The Tommyknockers, a rough go through nosebleeds that plagued the protagonist and King himself as he wrote line after line of book while doing line after line of coke.

Dreamcatcher was not a critical or Constant Reader success. Released in March 2001, it was quickly eclipsed by On Writing, which was published in June of the same year, which became a favorite of fans, aspiring writers and college english professors alike.  

I’m getting ahead of myself. Dreamcatcher introduces us to a group of pals that grew up in Derry - we’ve got Gary "Jonesy" Jones, Pete Moore, Joe "Beaver" Clarendon and Henry Devlin as the core group, with a young friend with Down Syndrome they befriend, nicknamed Duddits. These bros were too old for the Pennywise version of Derry - off to college before our favorite eternal being shows up in Maine in the 80s. Not unlike the Loser’s Club though, this group of ragtag dingdongs share a certain amount of ESP, based on their connection through Duddits who is “special” and “sees the line”, whatever that means.

The core story revolves around these 4 childhood friends, now entering middle age, who get together each November in the remote Maine woods to hunt and shoot the shit. This year, Henry is contemplating suicide. Jonesy was injured in a car accident with striking similarities to King’s own. Basically they’re all a hot mess of middle age. Relatable content. Unfortunately for them, fate has brought these 4 together on the same week that an alien spaceship crashes in Northern Maine. Tough break boys.

These alien life forces claim to be harmless, but uh, they’re not. They brought some sort of fungus with them, as well as parasites that grow inside humans then exit out your butthole. They’re referred to as “shit-weasels”. People infected literally poop them out then die. Y’all. It’s something.

King says in the ending Author’s Note that the story was originally called “Cancer” but my gal Tabs made him change it. God I love her. She referred to Dreamcatcher as “that book” or “the one about the shit-weasels.” Even after the car wreck, King confined to his bed, Tabs refuses to sugar-coat her feedback to her husband. Relationship goals.

Outside of the alien story, we’re compelled to keep turning pages as the mystery of the connection of these friends is unraveled, which is the real heart of the story. The connection of their minds, the power of Duddits, the repressed memories of childhood, come together in a climax that is classic King. We know the good guys will prevail - the last 100 or so pages become a slog to find out just how the winning happens. (If I told you it was because the alien had developed a taste for bacon that ultimately causes his downfall, would you believe me? Cause, uh, that’s what happens.)

There’s also a “government is bad” subplot that is very Firestarter. Terrified of the public learning of the alien craft crash, the military shows up with big guns and bigger assholes. The human-bad-guy is an officer named Kurtz (**Heart of Darkness**cough**cough**), who has very little humanity in him. Ready to slaughter innocent people and ask questions later, we’re reminded that the government will go to any lengths to keep secrets. This message doesn’t require any symbolism as it smacks you in the face every time Kurtz’s name appears on the page.

Other than the plot themes outlined above, there’s a deeper message hiding that is convoluted to say the least. The epilogue, typically available to tidy loose ends, exists only to confuse me. There’s some symbolism around the dreamcatcher that hangs in the hunting cabin, the rules of the game cribbage the boys played together as kids, and the connections of their minds. What it is, I have no idea. “Our wickedest moments, in a cosmic sense, come down to no more than counting someone crib, pegging it backwards, then playing dumb about it” Henry says at end. WTF does that mean?

I enjoyed this better than The Tommyknockers, which isn’t necessarily a glowing review, but there’s something to be said for the comforts of King Classics (TM) even if the core of the story is ALIENS. Boo.

First Line: It became their motto, and Jonesey couldn’t for the life of him remember which of them started saying it first.

Last Line: Then they walked down the steps and across the lawn side by side, Jonesey limping, Henry with the sleeping child in his arms, and for that moment the only darkness was their shadows trailing behind them on the gross.

6/10

Adaptations:

This movie gets a bad name. I saw it back when it came out in 2003 and remember thinking it was garbage - I almost didn’t rewatch it but it was available for rent for .99 and I had no plans.

I seriously would watch Jason Lee in anything. I love him so much. He deserved a lot more than dying on a toilet. 

What a peanut! 

Look at this iTunes description! This movie really does have a ton of talent. 

Academy Award-nominee and Golden Globe-winner Morgan Freeman ("The Sum of All Fears," "Along Came A Spider") stars in this supernatural thriller from the master of horror, Stephen King, with a screenplay by Academy Award-winner William Goldman ("Absolute Power," "All The President's Men"). Tom Sizemore ("Saving Private Ryan," "Heat") and Donnie Wahlberg ("The Sixth Sense," "Band of Brothers," TV's "Boomtown") also star in the film directed by Academy Award-nominee Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote the screenplays for "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi." Four friends, tied together through a telepathic bond they gained as children, reunite as adults to fight an invading alien force that controls human beings like helpless puppets and threaten to take over the earth. Also starring Thomas Jane ("Deep Blue Sea," "Face/Off"), Jason Lee ("Vanilla Sky," "Enemy of the State") and Timothy Olyphant ("Gone in Sixty Seconds," "Go").

My complaints - the shit-weasels look like vaginas with teeth. The movie really falls apart in the last act of nonsense with Morgan Freeman and his fake eyebrows, but I didn’t hate this as much as I hated other King movies. A win in my book. 

Castle Rock bought the rights from King for just $1, which at the end of the day was good for them because it didn’t even make back 1/2 of its budget at the box office. 

Before it was released, King said that it would do for toilets what Psycho did for showers. Spoiler alert: It didn’t.  

[harrisjv]

VideoMax Review Discount And Huge Bonus

VideoMax Review - Are you searching for even more understanding concerning VideoMax? Please go through my straightforward evaluation about it before choosing, to evaluate the weak points and staminas of it. Can it be worth your time and effort and also cash?

7 Video clip marketing patterns that will certainly continue into 2019

Given that our previous blog post on this topic, the proportion of business identifying the advantages of utilizing video clip marketing has risen from 63% in 2017 to 81% in 2018. These companies are plainly recognizing that VideoMax Material is now an important tool in their sales utility belt.

For the previous two years, video clip material has actually experienced an unmatched increase in popularity as a device for marketing. Whether you are doing your regular online store, playing Candy Crush or researching the quickest method to take a trip to your aunt's house, it's there. Have you ever before visited to Facebook to overtake your close friends, and logged off an hour later on having conserved a delicious brand-new recipe as well as bought a brand-new, sophisticated set of socks? You're not the only one. Such is the indisputable power of Video clip Marketing.

With 76% of marketing experts reporting that video has helped boost their business sales, its influence can not be disregarded. It's not only firms who are profiting, however. 20 years ago, young adults would shriek with delight at a glimpse of Justin Timberlake, Tom Cruise ship as well as the stars of TELEVISION show Ally McBeal-- Justin as well as Tom have actually still got it yet YouTube stars, vloggers as well as also specialist gamers are related to with the exact same love. Without video content, this success would not have been possible.

In our previous access, we discovered a few of the benefits of video clip over various other types of content. We will certainly now take a better take a look at the video fads that we can anticipate to maintain growing for the remainder of 2018, well into 2019.

Video Marketing Fad # 1: Spielberg in your pocket

Do you recognize anyone without a mobile phone or tablet computer? Nowadays, that's like asking if you understand anyone without a head.

If you leave your house in a thrill, you could neglect your wallet. Drag. You may forget your secrets. Darn it. However if you forget your smart device ...?! Just how will you cope? Suppliers have actually got wise to the reality that individuals are expecting our phones to act as an expansion of ourselves instead of a mere device, specifically when VideoMax involves the picture quality generated by the integrated cameras.

Smart device electronic cameras are now like an added pair of eyes, producing images and also video of such quality that on the internet visitors can feel they are with you; climbing up that mountain, browsing the shopping center and consuming that vegan, paleo, gluten-free hamburger.

Steven Soderbergh, director of Sea's Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, Erin Brockovich, as well as Magic Mike has all the movie studio paraphernalia at his disposable, yet also he selected to film his latest film entirely on an apple iphone.

With the capability to produce such quality literally at our fingertips, creating engaging, appealing video advertising material is no longer the advantage of big sector alone.

Video Clip Marketing Pattern # 2: It's hip to be square

Simply a couple of years back, marvelous widescreen was where it went to. Most people have a widescreen television to get that full cinema experience in the house. Nonetheless, if our practices continue to advance, VideoMax looks likely that soon those TVs will be accumulating dirt.

Researches suggest the average individual invests 45 mins everyday watching mobile videos on-line, and also it is predicted that the web will catch up with tv in terms of hrs seen in 2019. All you require to do take a look around any kind of coffee bar to see that this forecast is most likely to find true; gone is the buzz of discussion, to be changed by staring at screens while drinking a cappucino.

Due to this increase of mobile video, pictures are evolving from the horizontal, vast layout we are all knowledgeable about, to the vertical.

Fortunately, this advertising pattern is very easy to stay on par with by creating video clips in a square style. When Instagram introduced it was right in addition to this. Initially, the new, square format appeared alien but now it's typical. When it pertains to Facebook, square video clips inhabit 78% more space in its News area as well as receives a higher portion of engagement.

Video Advertising Pattern # 3: Keep an eye out! It's behind you!

360 level video clips are on the increase, alongside digital reality.

By supplying users with a much more 3-Dimensional, immersive experience by means of video, they practically feel like they are right there, despite the fact that they could be in their PJs, consuming Jerky on the sofa.

These types of video clips are especially beneficial tools for those in the traveling and tourism sector. After years of tourists grumbling "it's absolutely nothing like VideoMax remained in the brochure", they can now get the full image. In fact, if a location or resort does not stay up to date with this trend, potential consumers might begin to question what they are hiding.

Video Advertising Fad # 4: Place your pocketbook away

Hands up who intends to spend much more on advertising. Nobody? Certainly you don't! In a world of increasing expenses, it is a welcome relief that reducing expenditure no longer has to suggest cutting web content when creating video.

As formerly discussed, high quality video is simple to accomplish with just a smartphone as well as a straightforward editing and enhancing app. Even if you have the creativity of a potato, the rise of the job economic situation implies working with professionals to layout, movie or voice your video clip is extra economical than it ever was.

Video Clip Advertising Trend # 5: Welcome the globe to your event

Videos don't only need to concentrate on selling and promotion to reap financial benefits. E-learning videos can profit both customers and staff members.

Training days can be a nightmare for staff members. Needing to take a day out of their active timetable to being in a feral room to pay attention to a person talk at them concerning the value of spread sheet maintenance is far from appealing.

Video can communicate a lot greater than words, especially if it is a complicated or, risk we state, plain topic. In just a few frameworks, computer animations can state far more than a whole day in a stuffy training area can. Also, by utilizing video, you can train more employees at any kind of one-time-- they can also find out in the comfort of their own residence, conserving loan for the company on all fronts.

For VideoMax clients, e-learning remains to be a versatile, easily accessible alternative for those with busy way of livings wanting to discover brand-new skills. You can also incorporate material training as well as advertising and marketing by using a training course as an incentive for customers who accept share their information. Win-win!

Video Clip Advertising Fad # 6: It's still awesome to be slick

Broadcasting live? Yes. It might seem daunting some, yet if your business is to stay on par with the pattern, it's something you're mosting likely to need to think about.

The ongoing development of Social Media platforms is driving this. Look at Instagram's launch of Live Streaming at the beginning of 2018. Actually, with 50 million even more customers than Snapchat, Instagram is driving lots of patterns in Video clip Marketing as well as is definitely one to see. Likewise, Facebook Live broadcasts have actually increased year on year considering that its launch in 2016.

If you are yet to embrace the power of Social media site, it's time to hop on board, make close friends with it and also treat it like a partner.

The wish for real-time material is definitely growing in toughness. Actually, upwards of 13% of internet traffic from VideoMax originates from online video clips. Below are a few reasons why:

Cost-effective

Broadcasting live eliminates at any time and investment previously utilized in manufacturing and editing and enhancing. The video clip after that stays on the system, all set to be shared and also reposted.

Authentic

Target market are most likely to depend on live streaming. They understand it hasn't been doctored as well as it exudes authenticity.

Engaging

Individuals spend three times much longer viewing live video clips online compared to their pre-recorded counterparts. The spontaneity as well as regarded risk involved in an online program is extremely compelling.

Video Advertising Trend # 7: From one to a million

It only takes one engaged individual to spread your message to millions of consumers around the world. Simply one. This is the potential video advertising, as well as social networks currently has.

The competitors for clicks is raging. Although the manufacturing is extra obtainable than ever, it will always require creative thinking, ability as well as an understanding of human psychology to launch an absolutely effective campaign.

To cover it up

It only takes one involved individual to spread your message to millions of customers across the globe. Just one. This is the possible video clip advertising and social media now has. The competition for VideoMax clicks is raging.

Although the production is more easily accessible than ever before, it will constantly need creativity, ability and an understanding of human psychology to release a truly successful campaign!

VideoMax Review & Introduction

Designer: Dr Ope Banwo

Item: VideoMax

Launch Date: 2019-Jan-22

Release Time: 11:00 EST

Front-End Price: $27

Particular niche: Video clip

What Is VideoMax?

VideoMax is new video clip Advertising and marketing Innovation that permits you to include limitless contact us to activities, optin types as well as any kind of html elements on top of your youtube or wordpress videos to take prompt activity as well as transform those clients/ visitors right into direct leads, sales as well as payments for you.

PROS

Add social sharing switches on top of your video clips

Add Click To Call/ Action For Click To Share Your Video clip

Include Unlimited Optin Forms On Your Video clip

Add Banners Advertisements Inside Your Video clips

Add affiliate links right into your video clip and earn money

Ability to add a survey in addition to your video clips

Quickly Redirect to pages after playback

Automate Email List building with approximately 10 Autoresponder assimilations

VideoMax Characteristics & Benefits

Include social sharing buttons on top of your videos

Include multiple social media sites sharing icons on your video clips so Customers can share your material across 5 social media systems for even more reach and unrestricted website traffic ...

Include Click To Call/ Action For Click To Share Your Video

Now you can make audiences do something about it after, prior to and even at the middle of viewing your video advertisements. Make your customers take any type of activity you desire straight from inside your Video clips ... It could be to a landing page, to a sales page or even to a check out page ...

Automate Email List building with up to 10 Autoresponder combinations

VideoMax has up to 10 e-mail autoresponder integrations that you can select and also incorporate your optin type to. So when audiences optin to your optin form inside your video, their e-mail address goes directly right into your email autoresponder. This is Checklist building on Steroids.

Capability to include a survey on top of your videos

Add a study on top of your videos so customers can share what they think about your video clip and also this likewise aids with comments for additional marketing functions.

Add Unlimited Optin Forms On Your Video clip

With VideoMax you can include endless optin kinds directly inside your video clip and you can utilize this to accumulate leads right from inside your video and convert them for even more sales, commissions as well as profits

Include affiliate web links right into your video clip and also generate income

Add your affiliate web links appropriate inside your evaluation video clips for immediate sales and also compensations

You can add your webinar web links as well as lots of other choices

Have a Video ad for your webinar? You can currently gather leads best inside your video clips, obtain endless button web traffic also right from inside your video clip ad. Send your customers to your webinar registration page right from inside your videos too.

Video Training & Text Guidebook

Complete step-by-step training on just how to make use of the software program for finest results ... Software is additionally idiot-proof to make use of. Definitely no technology abilities needed!

Price & Assessment

FRONT END: VideoMax License includes [Developer + Commercial]

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A picket line outside the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas proved to be a hot ticket for most Democratic hopefuls aiming to pick up a vote or two ahead of the Nevada caucuses.Elizabeth Warren turned up with donuts to support workers demanding a union contract, while fellow presidential candidates Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer also found time in their busy schedules to meet workers, pose for pictures and express solidarity.One candidate notable by his absence was Bernie Sanders. The reason may be related to a recent dust-up between the Vermont senator’s campaign and the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, known in Las Vegas as “the Culinary.”Concern about damage to Sanders and the eagerness of his rivals to curry favor with the Culinary underscores the importance of the union in Nevada. Moreover, the political clout the Culinary possesses serves as an example of how unions can prosper at a time when legislators and politicans are working to limit labor rights.So who is the Culinary backing in the Nevada Democratic caucus? Nobody.The flash point in the Culinary’s decision not to endorse was the “Medicare for All” proposals of Sens. Sanders and Warren.In a leaflet distributed to members, the union stated that Sanders’ plan would “end Culinary Health Care” – the generous zero-deductible plan that serves 55,000 Culinary members and 70,000 of their dependents.Some of Sanders’ backers countered that the union had betrayed progressive values by protecting its members while sacrificing higher standards of care for all working-class families. Online, the fight quickly turned ugly. The Vermont senator disavowed supporters who “attack trade union leaders” during a televised debate with other candidates, but not before being accused by Pete Buttigieg of being “at war” with the Culinary.The online fracas harkened back to an old trope about labor unions that is relentlessly exploited by employers: that they don’t care about workers, only themselves and their own power. Which side are unions on?The spotlight on union power in Nevada comes at a time of debate within the labor movement over whether it needs to turn away from “business unionism” in order to survive. Business unionism, which organizes around specific goals for employees rather than a wider class struggle, was the dominant orientation of the labor movement in the U.S. though much of the 20th century.Some labor historians like Nelson Lichtenstein and David Montgomery point to business unions’ tendency to take care of their own rather than organizing new workforces as a primary reason for the decline of the labor movement to its current nadir, representing just 6.2% of the private sector workforce from nearly 35% in the 1950s.They have argued that in order to attract more members, unions need to adopt the tactics and strategies of new social movements and become engaged in political struggles for broad-based changes that affect all workers, not just those in unions.In a recent book, I argue that the Culinary bridges this traditional divide between business and social unionism.The union has been successful despite Nevada being a “right-to-work” state where employees don’t have to pay union dues to join a workforce and receive benefits. Culinary has grown its membership by touting the benefits that a strong union can bring, such as 24-hour health clinics, back-pay awards totaling hundreds of thousands dollars, and protections that have seen the return of terminated workers. At the same time, the Culinary has made political engagement a cornerstone of its value, both to its members and the wider public. In the 2016 election, the union knocked on more than 250,000 doors and was instrumental in getting Democrats elected to the state legislature, the governor’s office, and the U.S. House and Senate in Nevada.The social movement aspect of the union’s work is also seen in other policy areas that it used to compare the candidates: organizing rights and immigration reform. Policy changes on these issues will benefit members of the union, which include large numbers of recent immigrants. But it would also help many low-wage workers outside of the union. A brave face on JanusUnder President Trump, the National Labor Relations Board appears more intent on finding ways to limit labor rights than expand them. And the labor movement faced a major setback in 2018 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. ASCME that nonunion public sector workers could not be compelled to pay dues for services they receive. After that decision, the Culinary shows how the labor movement can adapt to the hostility of employers, government agencies and courts.It has been facing these headwinds for more than 80 years in Nevada. Today, Culinary members have wages and health care that are the envy of nonunion workers in the hospitality industry. But that standard came only as a result of historic strikes and hard-fought campaigns with multinational corporations like MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment.Other locals of the Culinary’s parent union Unite Here have backed Sanders, including in Boston. The Los Angeles local co-endorsed Sanders and Warren. But they are in states with very different politics than Nevada.The Culinary has always had a good sense of where the electorate is in Nevada, sometimes leading the union to endorse Republicans like former two-term Gov. Kenny Guinn. And it has been successful at helping to keep Nevada blue in the last three presidential elections, countering one of the more predictive variables for how a state will vote for president – whether or not it has a right-to-work law. My research has shown a correlation between right-to-work laws in red states and a vote for the Republican candidate for president. In the last election, Nevada and Virginia were and the only states to buck that trend. Far from being a referendum on Medicare for All, the Culinary’s non-endorsement returns the focus where they want it: getting the biggest turnout possible to meet the union’s goals of immigration reform, workers’ rights and better health care. The mixture of business and social unionism that made the Culinary a political force in Nevada can now serve as a model for other unions in the post-Janus era.[Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * Something Democrats and Republicans have in common: Exaggerated stereotypes about both parties * When presidential campaigns end, what happens to the leftover money?Ruben J. Garcia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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[weopenviews]

A picket line outside the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas proved to be a hot ticket for most Democratic hopefuls aiming to pick up a vote or two ahead of the Nevada caucuses.Elizabeth Warren turned up with donuts to support workers demanding a union contract, while fellow presidential candidates Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer also found time in their busy schedules to meet workers, pose for pictures and express solidarity.One candidate notable by his absence was Bernie Sanders. The reason may be related to a recent dust-up between the Vermont senator’s campaign and the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, known in Las Vegas as “the Culinary.”Concern about damage to Sanders and the eagerness of his rivals to curry favor with the Culinary underscores the importance of the union in Nevada. Moreover, the political clout the Culinary possesses serves as an example of how unions can prosper at a time when legislators and politicans are working to limit labor rights.So who is the Culinary backing in the Nevada Democratic caucus? Nobody.The flash point in the Culinary’s decision not to endorse was the “Medicare for All” proposals of Sens. Sanders and Warren.In a leaflet distributed to members, the union stated that Sanders’ plan would “end Culinary Health Care” – the generous zero-deductible plan that serves 55,000 Culinary members and 70,000 of their dependents.Some of Sanders’ backers countered that the union had betrayed progressive values by protecting its members while sacrificing higher standards of care for all working-class families. Online, the fight quickly turned ugly. The Vermont senator disavowed supporters who “attack trade union leaders” during a televised debate with other candidates, but not before being accused by Pete Buttigieg of being “at war” with the Culinary.The online fracas harkened back to an old trope about labor unions that is relentlessly exploited by employers: that they don’t care about workers, only themselves and their own power. Which side are unions on?The spotlight on union power in Nevada comes at a time of debate within the labor movement over whether it needs to turn away from “business unionism” in order to survive. Business unionism, which organizes around specific goals for employees rather than a wider class struggle, was the dominant orientation of the labor movement in the U.S. though much of the 20th century.Some labor historians like Nelson Lichtenstein and David Montgomery point to business unions’ tendency to take care of their own rather than organizing new workforces as a primary reason for the decline of the labor movement to its current nadir, representing just 6.2% of the private sector workforce from nearly 35% in the 1950s.They have argued that in order to attract more members, unions need to adopt the tactics and strategies of new social movements and become engaged in political struggles for broad-based changes that affect all workers, not just those in unions.In a recent book, I argue that the Culinary bridges this traditional divide between business and social unionism.The union has been successful despite Nevada being a “right-to-work” state where employees don’t have to pay union dues to join a workforce and receive benefits. Culinary has grown its membership by touting the benefits that a strong union can bring, such as 24-hour health clinics, back-pay awards totaling hundreds of thousands dollars, and protections that have seen the return of terminated workers. At the same time, the Culinary has made political engagement a cornerstone of its value, both to its members and the wider public. In the 2016 election, the union knocked on more than 250,000 doors and was instrumental in getting Democrats elected to the state legislature, the governor’s office, and the U.S. House and Senate in Nevada.The social movement aspect of the union’s work is also seen in other policy areas that it used to compare the candidates: organizing rights and immigration reform. Policy changes on these issues will benefit members of the union, which include large numbers of recent immigrants. But it would also help many low-wage workers outside of the union. A brave face on JanusUnder President Trump, the National Labor Relations Board appears more intent on finding ways to limit labor rights than expand them. And the labor movement faced a major setback in 2018 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. ASCME that nonunion public sector workers could not be compelled to pay dues for services they receive. After that decision, the Culinary shows how the labor movement can adapt to the hostility of employers, government agencies and courts.It has been facing these headwinds for more than 80 years in Nevada. Today, Culinary members have wages and health care that are the envy of nonunion workers in the hospitality industry. But that standard came only as a result of historic strikes and hard-fought campaigns with multinational corporations like MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment.Other locals of the Culinary’s parent union Unite Here have backed Sanders, including in Boston. The Los Angeles local co-endorsed Sanders and Warren. But they are in states with very different politics than Nevada.The Culinary has always had a good sense of where the electorate is in Nevada, sometimes leading the union to endorse Republicans like former two-term Gov. Kenny Guinn. And it has been successful at helping to keep Nevada blue in the last three presidential elections, countering one of the more predictive variables for how a state will vote for president – whether or not it has a right-to-work law. My research has shown a correlation between right-to-work laws in red states and a vote for the Republican candidate for president. In the last election, Nevada and Virginia were and the only states to buck that trend. Far from being a referendum on Medicare for All, the Culinary’s non-endorsement returns the focus where they want it: getting the biggest turnout possible to meet the union’s goals of immigration reform, workers’ rights and better health care. The mixture of business and social unionism that made the Culinary a political force in Nevada can now serve as a model for other unions in the post-Janus era.[Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * Something Democrats and Republicans have in common: Exaggerated stereotypes about both parties * When presidential campaigns end, what happens to the leftover money?Ruben J. Garcia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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[thegloober]

Campaign spending by for-profit colleges mostly absent from midterm elections

Just two years ago, Democratic candidates settled on for-profit colleges as a favorite political target on the campaign trail.

ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges had recently collapsed, and regulators were pursuing high-profile investigations of other colleges, making the sector a compelling target for political barbs. And political donations from for-profit higher education made an attractive cudgel to swing at GOP opponents.

During this campaign season, though, for-profits have received little mention. And they’re mostly staying on the sidelines themselves.

For-profit chains that were once big-time spenders — mostly on GOP campaigns — have once again dropped their campaign spending in the midterm elections, a downward trend that has continued for multiple election cycles.

Bridgepoint Education Inc. steered more than $443,000 through its political action committee to candidates, parties and fund-raising committees two years ago. But the company, which owns Ashford University, has spent about $252,000 so far in the 2018 midterms, according to data analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics.

A political action committee for the University of Phoenix’s owner, Apollo Education Group, donated more than $195,000 through its PAC in the 2016 election, but has spent $47,500 in the current cycle.

And Education Management Corporation, which gave close to $147,000 through its PAC in the 2016 elections, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.

Industry observers say the sliding numbers reflect both the changing political environment in Washington — and the weakened position of the industry. While for-profit colleges have notched key regulatory wins, enrollment across the sector began declining long before the Trump administration started putting its stamp on higher ed.

“They are not swimming in cash the way they were in previous cycles,” said Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. “But there also may be a different political judgment and a different political dynamic at work. They are very active when they felt like they were under existential threat.”

Political spending by for-profits peaked in the 2012 election cycle, when the sector poured money into congressional campaigns and political action committees.

That year, a Senate investigation led by Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin wrapped up an investigation into for-profits. The Obama administration was crafting gainful-employment regulations that would sanction career education programs with poor rates of loan repayment among graduates. And the movement to seek loan forgiveness through the previously little-used borrower-defense process was well under way.

Enrollment in for-profit colleges peaked in 2012 as well and has been on the decline as the economy has continued to strengthen. For a sector already on its heels thanks to that trend and federal and state investigations, the 2016 election was seen as critical to deciding whether or not Obama-era regulations targeting the sector would go forward.

Under the Trump administration, for-profits have found the U.S. Department of Education to be much friendlier to their priorities. For example, among the first major steps taken by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was rolling back the gainful-employment and borrower-defense regulations.

The department has also extended a second chance to ACICS, a national accreditor to many for-profit colleges, which the Obama administration sought to eliminate. That decision kept federal student aid money flowing to dozens of colleges that couldn’t find approval from other accreditors.

“The sense of urgency is definitely diminished,” said Trace Urdan, a managing director at Tyton Partners who follows the for-profit education industry.

After lawmakers failed to make serious progress on reauthorizing the Higher Education Act in the past year, there’s also little expectation that a new law with major implications for for-profits will be passed any time before 2020 at the earliest.

“Why spend money to influence something that’s just not going to happen?” Urdan said.

Even as officials in Washington have created a friendlier regulatory environment, though, the industry has undergone a major restructuring that has had implications for entities that once played a big role in funding campaigns. There is less regulatory pressure on colleges, said Jeff Silber, a managing director and senior research analyst at BMO Capital Markets, but at the same time Phoenix and many of the other largest for-profit entities are smaller, and others like Corinthian have gone out of business entirely.

Meanwhile, Grand Canyon University converted to nonprofit status earlier this year. Kaplan University stopped issuing credentials after it formed a new public-private venture with Purdue University. And the parent company of DeVry University has agreed to sell the chain of colleges to a California-based private equity investor.

The trend in the sector’s political activity also is reflected by trade association representing for-profit colleges, once a big-time spender but this cycle much less of a factor in campaigns.

Career Education Colleges and Universities’ political action committee spent close to $300,000 on campaigns in 2012. But CECU, which by 2016 had seen its membership decline, gave more than $87,000 to campaigns through its PAC in the last election cycle. So far for this year’s midterm elections, the PAC has spent $57,000, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. At the peak of the group’s political spending, it gave more than $367,000 to candidates and political action committees.

But Steve Gunderson, CECU’s president and CEO, said those numbers shouldn’t be interpreted as the group declaring victory on its federal priorities.

“We have found our most successful political engagement today is organizing and hosting events for members rather than simply raising money for the PAC and sending checks,” he said. “Our members, like everyone else in America, want to have some personal control over where their dollars go. The PAC is not as popular as a political vehicle,” he said.

Gunderson said the organization now goes as far as asking candidates and officeholders to visit a member college before CECU will send donations to campaigns — a requirement he said he cleared with the Federal Elections Commission.

CECU has been as engaged as any group on federal higher ed policy in the Trump administration — it backed the department’s overhaul of Obama-era student loan rules and lobbied hard for ACICS to keep federal recognition. And the PROSPER Act, House Republicans’ bid to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, reflected many of the group’s priorities.

But Gunderson said CECU is focusing more on engaging its member colleges than contacts in D.C.

“This is really about the future of your constituents, not about the politic of Washington,” he said.

Source: https://bloghyped.com/campaign-spending-by-for-profit-colleges-mostly-absent-from-midterm-elections/

[keywestvideo]

Negative Marketing, Positive Results

Grumpy Cat. Oscar the Grouch. The Grinch. These are all negative characters, but we love them anyway. So can negativity actually be a positive thing? We think so! Done right, a negative approach can actually be an effective marketing tool.

All the Feels

Inciting ANY emotion is good for marketing

To put it simply, positive messages appeal to a person’s hopes and aspirations. Negative messages address fears and anxieties. Your goal with any marketing, video included, is to make an emotional connection. That can be any kind of emotional connection. If what you’re doing incites emotion, you have audience attention. Regardless of whether you’re making someone happy, sad or angry.

When to Call in Negative Nelly

You’ve probably seen the Nike ad featuring Colin Kapernick. Many felt the corporation was taking a huge risk with this ad, potentially hurting sales. I think it’s fair to say that some would call this ad a negative approach. At the very least, it was controversial. If you’re going to make such a bold move, you have to be prepared for the consequences. Initially, there was a backlash, but ultimately Nike scored a win by banking on their customers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-grjIUWKoBA

Video can’t be loaded: Nike releases full ad featuring Colin Kaepernick (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-grjIUWKoBA)

  A negative approach can be provocative. Consider headlines that make you want to keep reading: “Why You Can’t get a Promotion”, “Vegetables that Will Make You Sick”, “The 10 Worst Traffic Cities”. All compelling, right? And all are negative.

Negativity can be tied to exclusivity. Make a special offer, but only for a short time. Give a break to loyal customers. Let it be known that only a limited amount of a product is available. These exclusive offers may offend those who miss out, but it also rewards those who take advantage. Plus, this tack can compel people who were excluded to commit to your company to avoid future disappointment.

United by Negativity

People can bond over a negative shared experience. Misery loves company, right? Use negativity to create a unifying moment, then move on to the positive. For example, ask the audience a question: Don’t you hate it when a store doesn’t have the one item you really need? Now you have people thinking about how angry this situation makes them. Time to swoop in with a solution: With Hank’s Overstocked Emporium, you’ll never waste another trip to the store!

Something that people can really bond over is a common enemy. Choose a villain that everyone can relate to and suddenly we’re all in this together. Consider the lazy co-worker, a useless significant other or an evil boss. We can all relate to these archetypes and they’re often used in marketing.

Tomato, Tom-ah-to

Full or empty, it’s all about perception

Generally, the job of a spin doctor is to put a positive spin on the negative. The inverse can also be done. Consider the language below. Each pair is saying essentially the same thing, but with either a positive or negative connotation. Choose your words wisely to convey the tone you’re after.

concerned party vs. nosy neighbour

glass half full vs. glass half empty

arrogant vs. confident

traditional vs. old-fashioned

inexpensive vs. cheap

old vs. vintage

On a Positive Note

Always consider how your negativity will play with your audience. If negativity, in whatever form, doesn’t help you achieve your objective, leave it alone and go another route. Even if your video has a negative approach, we’re positive we can help you make it a success. Call Key West Video today for a free quote.

The post Negative Marketing, Positive Results appeared first on Corporate Video Blog.

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[lindyhunt]

The Ultimate Guide to Storytelling

An art.

Not a process, method, or technique. Storytelling is described as an art … the “art” of storytelling.

And — like art — it requires creativity, vision, skill, and practice. Storytelling isn’t something you can grasp in one sitting, after one course. It’s a trial-and-error process of mastery.

Sounds like a lot of work, right? It is, and rightfully so because storytelling has become a crucial component of the most successful marketing campaigns. It sets apart vibrant brands from simple businesses and loyal consumers from one-time, stop-in shoppers.

It’s also the heart of inbound marketing.

Storytelling is an incredibly valuable tool for you to add to your proverbial marketing tool belt. That’s why we’ve compiled this guide, to help you discover and master storytelling and weave gorgeous, compelling tales for your audience.

Pick up your pen, and let’s dive in.

While this definition is pretty specific, stories actually resemble a variety of things. This graphic from ReferralCandy helps outline what stories are and are not.

Storytelling is an art form as old as time and has a place in every culture and society. Why? Because stories are a universal language that everyone — regardless of dialect, hometown, or heritage — can understand. Stories stimulate imagination and passion and create a sense of community among listeners and tellers alike.

Telling a story is like painting a picture with words. While everyone can tell a story, certain people fine-tune their storytelling skills and become a storyteller on behalf of their organization, brand, or business. You might’ve heard of these folks — we typically refer to them as marketers, content writers, or PR professionals.

Every member of an organization can tell a story. But before we get into the how, let’s talk about why we tell stories — as a society, culture, and economy.

Why Do We Tell Stories?

There are a variety of reasons to tell stories — to sell, entertain, educate or brag. We’ll talk about that below. Right now, I want to discuss why we choose storytelling over, say, a data-driven powerpoint or bulleted list. Why are stories our go-to way of sharing, explaining, and selling information?

Here’s why.

Stories Solidify Abstract Concepts and Simplify Complex Messages

We’ve all experienced confusion when trying to understand a new idea. Stories provide a way around that. Think about times when stories have helped you better understand a concept … perhaps a teacher used a real-life example to explain a math problem, a preacher illustrated a situation during a sermon, or a speaker used a case study to convey complex data.

Stories help solidify abstract concepts and simplify complex messages. Taking a lofty, non-tangible concept and relating it using concrete ideas is one of the biggest strengths of storytelling in business.

Take Apple, for example. Computers and smartphones are a pretty complicated topic to describe to your typical consumer. Using real-life stories, they’ve been able to describe exactly how their products benefit users … instead of relying on technical jargon that very few customers would understand.

Stories Bring People Together

Like I said above, stories are a universal language of sorts. We all understand the story of the hero, of the underdog, or of heartbreak. We all process emotions and can share feelings of elation, hope, despair, and anger. Sharing in a story gives even the most diverse people a sense of commonality and community.

In a world divided by a multitude of things, stories bring people together and create a sense of community. Despite our language, religion, political preferences, or ethnicity, stories connect us through the way we feel and respond to them … Stories make us human.

TOMS is a great example of this. By sharing stories of both customers and the people they serve through customer purchases, TOMS has effectively created a movement that has not only increased sales but also built a community.

Stories Inspire and Motivate

Stories make us human, and the same goes for brands. When brands get transparent and authentic, it brings them down-to-earth and helps consumers connect with them and the people behind them.

Tapping into people’s emotions and baring both the good and bad is how stories inspire and motivate … and eventually, drive action. Stories also foster brand loyalty. Creating a narrative around your brand or product not only humanizes it but also inherently markets your business.

Few brands use inspiration as a selling tactic, but ModCloth does it well. By sharing the real story of their founder, ModCloth not only makes the brand relatable and worth purchasing, but it also inspires other founders and business owners.

Source: ModCloth

What Makes a Good Story?

Words like “good” and “bad” are relative to user opinion. But there are a few non-negotiable components that make for a great storytelling experience, for both the reader and teller.

Good stories are …

… entertaining. Good stories keep the reader engaged and interested in what’s coming next.

… educational. Good stories spark curiosity and add to the reader’s knowledge bank.

… universal. Good stories are relatable to all readers and tap into emotions and experiences that most people undergo.

… organized. Good stories follow a succinct organization that helps convey the core message and helps readers absorb it.

… memorable. Whether through inspiration, scandal, or humor, good stories stick in the reader’s mind.

According to HubSpot Academy’s free Power of Storytelling course, there are three components that make up a good story — regardless of the story you’re trying to tell.

Characters. Every story features at least one character, and this character will be the key to relating your audience back to the story. This component is the bridge between you, the storyteller, and the audience. If your audience can put themselves in your character’s shoes, they’ll be more likely to follow through with your call-to-action.

Conflict. The conflict is the lesson of how the character overcomes a challenge. Conflict in your story elicits emotions and connects the audience through relatable experiences. When telling stories, the power lies in what you’re conveying and teaching. If there’s no conflict in your story, it’s likely not a story.

Resolution. Every good story has a closing, but it doesn’t always have to be a good one. Your story’s resolution should wrap up the story, provide context around the characters and conflict(s), and leave your audience with a call-to-action.

Now that you know what your story should contain, let’s talk about how to craft your story.

The Storytelling Process

We’ve confirmed storytelling is an art. Like art, storytelling requires creativity, vision, and skill. It also requires practice. Enter: The storytelling process.

Painters, sculptors, sketch artists, and potters all follow their own creative process when producing their art. It helps them know where to start, how to develop their vision, and how to perfect their practice over time. The same goes for storytelling … especially for businesses writing stories.

Why is this process important? Because, as an organization or brand, you likely have a ton of facts, figures, and messages to get across in one succinct story. How do you know where to begin? Well, start with the first step. You’ll know where to go (and how to get there) after that.

1. Know your audience

Who wants to hear your story? Who will benefit and respond the strongest? In order to create a compelling story, you need to understand your readers and who will respond and take action.

Before you put a pen to paper (or cursor to word processor), do some research on your target market and define your buyer persona(s). This process will get you acquainted with who might be reading, viewing, or listening to your story. It will also provide crucial direction for the next few steps as you build out the foundation of your story.

2. Define your core message

Whether your story is one page or twenty, ten minutes or sixty, it should have a core message. Like the foundation of a home, it must be established before moving forward.

Is your story selling a product or raising funds? Explaining a service or advocating for an issue? What is the point of your story? To help define this, try to summarize your story in six to ten words. If you can’t do that, you don’t have a core message.

3. Decide what kind of story you’re telling

Not all stories are created equal. To determine what kind of story you’re telling, figure out how you want your audience to feel or react as they read.

This will help you determine how you’re going to weave your story and what objective you’re pursuing. If your objective is to …

... incite action, your story should describe a how a successful action was completed in the past and explain how readers might be able to implement the same kind of change. Avoid excessive, exaggerated detail or changes in subject so your audience can focus on the action or change that your story encourages.

… tell people about yourself, tell a story that features genuine, humanizing struggles, failures, and wins. Today’s consumer appreciates and connects to brands that market with authenticity and storytelling is no exception.

… convey values, tell a story that taps into familiar emotions, characters, and situations so that readers can understand how the story applies to their own life. This is especially important when discussing values  that some people might not agree with or understand.

… foster community or collaboration, tell a story that moves readers to discuss and share your story with others. Use a situation or experience that others can relate to and say, “Me, too!” Keep situations and characters neutral to attract the widest variety of readers.

… impart knowledge or educate, tell a story that features a trial-and-error experience, so that readers can learn about a problem and how a solution was discovered and applied. Discuss other alternative solutions, too.

4. Establish your call-to-action

Your objective and call-to-action are similar, but your call-to-action will establish the action you’d like your audience to take after reading.

What exactly do you want your readers to do after reading? Do you want them to donate money, subscribe to a newsletter, take a course, or buy a product? Outline this alongside your objective to make sure they line up.

For example, if your objective is to foster community or collaboration, your call-to-action might be to “Tap the share button below.”

5. Choose your story medium

Stories can take many shapes and forms. Some stories are read, some are watched, and others are listened to. Your chosen story medium depends on your type of story as well as resources, like time and money.

Here are the different ways you can tell your story.

A written story is told through articles, blog posts, or books. These are mostly text and may include some images. Written stories are by far the most affordable, attainable method of storytelling as it just requires a free word processor like Google Docs … or a pen and paper.

A spoken story is told in person, like  a presentation, pitch, or panel. TED talks are considered spoken stories. Because of their “live”, unedited nature, spoken stories typically require more practice and skill to convey messages and elicit emotions in others.

An audio story is spoken aloud but recorded — that’s what sets it apart from the spoken story. Audio stories are usually in podcast form, and with today’s technology, creating an audio story is more affordable than ever. (For a great story-driven podcast, check out The Growth Show!)

A digital story is told through a variety of media, such as video, animation, interactive stories, and even games. This option is by far the most effective for emotionally resonant stories as well as active, visual stories … which is why it’s also the most expensive. But don’t fret: video quality doesn’t matter as much as conveying a strong message.

6. Write!

Now it’s time to put pen to paper and start crafting your story.

With your core message, audience objective, and call-to-action already established, this step is simply about adding detail and creative flair to your story. Read more about our storytelling formula to help you with this step.

7. Share your story

Don’t forget to share and promote your story! Like with any piece of content, creating it is only half the battle — sharing it is the other.

Depending on your chosen medium, you should definitely share your story on social media and email. In addition, written stories can be promoted on your blog, Medium, or through guest posting on other publications. Digital stories can be shared on YouTube and Vimeo. While spoken stories are best conveyed in person, consider recording a live performance to share later.

The more places you share your story, the more engagement you can expect from your audience.

Storytelling Resources

Storytelling is a trial-and-error process, and no one tells a story perfectly on the first try. That’s why we’ve collected these resources to help you fine-tune your storytelling skills and learn more about the different ways a story can be told.

For a written story

OEDb’s writing resources

HubSpot’s list of writing tools

For a spoken story

The TEDx Speaker Guide

For an audio story

HubSpot’s guide on How to Start a Podcast

For the digital story

Vimeo’s Video School

Animoto

Over To You

Storytelling is an art. It’s also a process worth mastering for both your business and your customers. Stories bring people together and inspire action and response. Also, today’s consumer doesn’t decide to buy based on what you’re selling, but rather why you’re selling it. Storytelling helps you communicate that “why” in a creative, engaging way. Plus, isn’t storytelling more fun?

[netunleashed-blog]

Best Amazon Prime movies: the best films to stream in July 2018

http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=5201 Best Amazon Prime movies: the best films to stream in July 2018 - http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=5201 Amazon Prime's movie selection keeps getting better and better. While it's rival Netflix focuses on original content, newer movies and TV shows (something that Amazon does admirably at too), Amazon does a good job of keeping its movie streaming catalogue loaded up with classics and award-winning flicks. Having said that, there are lots of films in its library that are boring, mediocre and really, really rubbish. The cream is there, but there's a lot to dig through first.That’s why we've done all the hard work for you. We've scoured all of the movies on offer for anything and everything that's worth watching on Amazon Prime.We've collected together more than 100 movies that you can stream on Amazon Video (that’s the movies and TV streaming section of Amazon Prime) right now. Expect a mixture of recent releases and timeless classics, as well as films that are suitable for the whole family.     [Update: Amazon Prime has recently added The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky's touching and heart-breaking movie about a wrestler (played by Mickey Rourke) who despite being too old and ill for the ring tries to cling onto the success he had decades before. Dark comedy classic Death Becomes Her has also landed on the streaming service, which stars Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis.]We all know that streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video can turn an occasional movie-watching hobby into hours (and hours and hours) of endlessly flicking through film options. It's also worth bearing in mind that for every award-winning work of art on Amazon Video, there's lots of B-movie trash that isn't even worth putting on to ease away a Sunday morning hangover.Although we do love the odd guilty pleasure now and again, in this list we’ve created you'll only find the best picks. So let's dive straight in. Get your free 30-day Amazon Prime trial New Entry:  This dark comedy stars Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep who are on a mission to stay young, beautiful and full of life forever. As you'd expect, that wish comes with pretty disturbing consequences, especially when you're buying a creepy elixir from a witch, played brilliantly by Isabella Rossellini. New Entry: This touching and (and at times heart-breaking) movie from Darren Aronofsky is about a wrestler (played by Mickey Rourke) who despite being too old and ill for the ring tries to cling onto the success he had decades before while trying to rebuild his relationship with his daughter. New Entry: The Mummy Sure Tom Cruise and co. tried to remake the 1999 version of The Mummy, but it just didn't have the cheesy charm of this original. If you haven't seen it already, it's a fun and at times actually quite creepy, classic adventure tale about awakening an ancient Egyptian mummy. Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser are kooky and lovable as the lead characters and the sequel, The Mummy 2, isn't half bad either. New Entry: The Theory of Everything Managing to be both beautifully heart-warming and heart-breaking at the same time, this biographical movie follows the early life of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. It's been adapted from the book Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen, written by Hawking's ex-wife Jane. It particularly focuses on his time at Cambridge University, his relationship with Jane and his ALS diagnosis.  New Entry: True Romance It's not your standard love story, but True Romance stands up as one of the greatest in Hollywood history. Take two unlikely lovers, a bunch of crooks, drugs, guns and arguably the best script Quentin Tarantino has ever worked on, and you've got a cult classic if ever there was one.When comic book nerd Elvis falls in love with Alabama, the beau of a big time drug dealing pimp, the two have to race across country in an attempt to avoid the mob from whom they've accidentally stolen a suitcase of cocaine from. With violence around every corner, will they ever be free to just enjoy each other's company? Here's our Best Amazon Prime TV ShowsRival check: These are our best movies on Netflix UKAnd here are the best shows on NetflixThe best Netflix sci-fi movies you can stream right nowThe best horror movies you can scare yourself silly with Logan Lucky Brothers Jimmy, played by Channing Tatum, and Clyde, played by Adam Driver, plan to carry out an elaborate robbery during the Charlotte Motor Speedway. It's an action-packed comedy with a stellar cast, alongside Driver and Tatum, Daniel Craig, Hilary Swank, Katie Holmes and Sebastian Stan all star. Steven Soderbergh reportedly came out of retirement in order to direct and distribute Logan Lucky, if you wanted anymore proof it's definitely worth a watch. The Last Stand Arnie plays a small town sheriff on a border town who has to go head-to-head with a fugitive on the run from the FBI. It's not the best movie on offer, but if you like action, one liners and edge-of-yer-seat thrillers then it's one for you.   The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow is one of the best action directors around, so it’s no surprise that The Hurt Locker won her the Best Director award at the Oscars - the first time a women won the accolade. What is surprising, though, is just how nuanced the film is. Given it’s about disposing of bombs, the tension is in the quiet moments, rather than when the explosions start.  Full Metal Jacket Stanley Kubrick's classic take on the Vietnam War follows the journey of Private Joker Davis, from his gruelling training regime all the way to marine status. It looks at the ups, downs, horrors and psychological damage of war. Free Fire Set in Boston in the late '70s, Free Fire is a fantastic, inventive film that mostly takes place in a warehouse. Because of the limited scenario, it's thanks to Ben Wheatley's effortless and stylish direction and the superb ensemble cast - and lots and lots of gun play - that Free Fire never becomes boring. The Man From U.N.C.L.E The Man From U.N.C.L.E is by no means a faithful adaptation of the TV show of the same name (the characters remain but everything else has changed) but it is a super-stylish crime caper from Guy Ritchie. It looks great, thanks to its '60s setting, and the cast are superb. Henry Cavill (a Brit playing an American CIA agent) finally shows the world the charisma he lacks as Superman, while Armie Hammer (an American playing a Russian) is fantastic as Cavill's KGB opposite. Alicia Vikander (a swede playing a German) shows off her funny side, while Elizabeth Debicki (a french woman playing someone who is not French) is great as the villain of the piece. It's a tad overlong and convoluted but a great, underrated watch. Heat Heat is widely regarded as Michael Mann’s best film. And it also has the classic combo of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino at the height of their acting powers. De Niro’s Neil McCauley is planning one last heist before retirement and Pacino’s Lieutenant Hanna has to stop him. A story of two flawed alpha males on each side of the law, their relationship is one of both enmity and respect. This isn’t your average by-the-numbers crime thriller. End of Watch Before David Ayer was assembling a Suicide Squad and creating one of the most abysmal comic-book movies ever, he made this highly original film that’s shot documentary style and focuses on a couple of cops whose job it is to patrol South Central LA and keep the peace. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña are superb as the pair who risk life and limb to do their job. Given Ayer grew up on streets not dissimilar to what’s being portrayed in the movie, End of Watch is a searing and honest portrayal of an area of America few would dare venture. The Wave Norway isn’t renowned for its disaster movies, but with The Wave and Troll Hunter it is making a decent name for itself. The Wave is about a tsunami that hits the country when a Norwegian fjord collapses. Given the relatively low budget, not much disaster is actually seen. Instead we are let to deal with the individuals who are trying to survive the wave. As disaster movies go, this is one of the more interesting to watch. Get your free 30-day Amazon Prime trial Pawn Sacrifice Tobey Maguire plays American chess legend Bobby Fischer in this dramatic biographical film. It follows the true story of the 1972 World Chess Championship when the troubled genius Fischer battled Soviet Grandmaster Boris Spassky, played by Liev Schreiber. Perfect if you're looking for a gripping Cold War drama.  There Will Be Blood Award-winning US drama There Will Be Blood tells the compelling, chilling and at times very, very emotional tale of a silver miner-turned-oilman desperate to make a fortune during California's oil boom in the late 19th century. Critics loved the movie and Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays the lead role, landed himself a BAFTA, Oscar, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, NYFCC and IFTA Best Actor award for his performance. Wowee!  Last Flag Flying Based on Darryl Ponicsan's book of the same name, Last Flag Flying is Richard Linklater's latest movie starring Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne. That stellar line-up play three veterans who reunite after one of their sons is killed in the Iraq War.  The Florida Project Indie critical hit The Florida Project is one of the newer films on Amazon Video. It follows a summer in the life of six year-old Moonee, a joy-filled child who lives in a motel just outside Disney World. And the struggles of her mother as she tries to makes ends meet. The film is directed by Sean Baker, one of today’s most interesting indie film-makers. He also made 2015’s Tangerine, a low-budget hit shot entirely using iPhone 5 phones. Borg Vs McEnroe  Perhaps one of the most iconic tennis matches of all time has been immortalized in this drama from director Janus Metz Pedersen starring Sverrir Gudnason as Björn Borg and Shia LaBeouf as John McEnroe. This isn't just about the tennis though, as the drama follows how the legendary duel at Wimbledon affected the men's lives too. A Clockwork Orange We could argue all day about which of Stanley Kubrick’s films is the best. But A Clockwork Orange is up there with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr Strangelove and The Shining, no doubt. It’s an adaptation of Stanley Burgess’s novel of the same name. A Clockwork Orange follows Malcolm McDowell’s Alex and his gang of Droogs. They stalk the streets, committing acts of “ultra-violence” and talking in an affected argot. A description like this doesn’t uncover the unsettling and weird appeal of this 1971 classic, though. You’ll have to watch it. Falling Down William Foster is a man falling apart. He’s divorced, fired from his job, a middle-aged white man who feels like a victim of the world. So he takes to the streets with an uzi, terrorising ordinary people. Falling Down was a powerful film in 1993. The current issues of US gun policy and racial division make the movie seem as vital as ever. Michael Douglas plays the lead role, and some consider it to be the best performance of his career. Magnolia You’ll need to set an evening aside for this one. Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 Magnolia is a sprawling three-hour epic of the interconnecting lives of disparate people living in the San Fernando valley, Calfornia.Some criticise it for being overlong and melodramatic. But if you can submit to this film you’ll find it powerful and moving, an insight into human nature. “Do not expect subdued taste and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic ecstasy,” said movie reviewing legend Roger Ebert. Goodfellas An unalloyed classic among gangster films, Goodfellas isn’t to be missed. Ray Liotta is Henry Hill, a young man who idolises the gangster lifestyle and rises up through the ranks under the guidance of De Niro’s menacing but charismatic James “The Gent” Conway.There are guns, drugs and the downfall of powerful figures. It’s all laced with black comedy, and director Martin Scorsese's masterful movie-making doesn’t waste any of Goodfella’s two and a half hour run time. Dial M for Murder We're sure you've heard of this one. Dial M for Murder is a Hitchcock classic starring Ray Milland and Grace Kelly. Milland plays a man who suspects that his wife (Grace Kelly) is having an affair and blackmails an old friend to murder her. What follows is a thrilling crime drama that's a true classic.   The Lost City of Z Largely overlooked upon its release, The Lost City of Z is in fact a fascinating tale, with Charlie Hunnam playing real-life British explorer Percy Fawcett. At the turn of the 20th century he ventured into the heart of the Amazon, and discovered an unknown, advanced civilisation. It become a great passion, understanding this culture, with Fawcett returning multiple times to demystify a people previously considered "savages", before Fawcett himself mysteriously disappeared. If you're adverse to films starring Robert Pattinson (co-starring here) after his Twilight days, don't let that stop you from giving this wonderful film a go. Jackie Jackie is all about Natalie Portman. Her portrayal of Jackie Kennedy, days after the assassination of her husband and president of the United States John F Kennedy, is a masterclass of acting. She has studied footage of Jackie and got her mannerisms and speech imprint spot on. The film is a stark and intimate look and the former First Lady and is a rollercoaster of emotions. It's endlessly watchable and it's all because of Portman who earned (and subsequently missed out on) a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar nomination. Silence Martin Scorsese has been in the movie business long enough to do whatever he wants. Silence is his him at his most uncompromising. A difficult sell after the fleeting fun that was Wolf of Wall Street, Silence is a meditative, hard-to-watch movie about pilgrimage. Starring Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver as two monks who go on a journey to find a place where Christians are put to extremes to prove their love for god. It's a trying movie and one that takes the utmost concentration. It's not quite the masterpiece Scorsese was seeking, given he's been mulling the story for decades but it's a worthy, if meandering watch. Moonlight Moonlight is stunning film. Split into three parts, the movie charts the life of Chiron, a black man growing up in Miami. It's heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure and just so happens to be the lowest-ever budgeted movie that has won the Best Picture Oscar. While the acting is superb in all three of the sections - it's the storytelling that really shines and shimmers here. It's captivating, brooding stuff. Manchester By The Sea It's hard not to write about Manchester By The Sea without stepping into spoiler territory so here's the broad strokes: Casey Affleck stars as a Boston janitor who has to take care of his brother's son after his brother dies. What ensues is a heartbreaking movie. Its backdrop is a snowy Manchester in Massachusetts, something that echoes the characters in the movie. This isn't a film that wraps up neatly in a bow in the end - it's much more closer to fractured, complicated business that is real life. Lion Lion sounds like a movie that's been manufactured for awards season but it's much cleverer than that. It's based on the true story of Saroo Brierley, a child from India separated from his family when he was just five years old and adopted by a couple from Tasmania. The story follows Saroo in his younger years then flips to him as an adult on the lookout for his real parents. Dev Patel is brilliant as the adult who goes on a journey to find out his true heritage. While it all sounds a little melodramatic, it really isn't - director Garth Davis  of Top Of The Lake fame manages to make a movie that's not too overly dramatic but really rather moving. I, Daniel Blake Some 40 films into his career, you would expect director Ken Loach's talents to be on the wane but I, Daniel Blake may well be his masterpiece. It's a superb study of the class system in the UK, and what happens when someone tries to be a better person despite bureaucracy stopping them from doing just that. Yes, it's political but Loach doesn't play this part of it up - it just naturally seeps through because of the frustrations the film presents. Essential stuff. The Impossible The Impossible is what Tom Holland was doing before he became Spider-Man, starring in a true tale about the devastating tsunami in Thailand. He is one of three sons of Naomi Watts and Ewen McGregor's characters and part of a compelling character study of what happens to people with natural disasters strike. Director JA Bayona proved he is a talent to look out for with The Impossible. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which he is helming in 2018, should cement that fact. Room Brie Larson stars in this heartfelt study of human endurance. Larson is Ma. She has been imprisoned in a small shed for years, having to bring up her little boy Jack (a great Jacob Tremblay) in isolation. The film follows their story to the bittersweet end. For a film that’s mostly shot within the confines of a small room, director Lenny Abrahamson manages to eek out pathos in the mundane but it’s the acting of the two leads that’s the real reason to watch the heart-rending movie. Apocalypse Now Apocalypse Now is a rare gem of a movie. Born out of chaos, where leading actors had to be replaced, medical problems blighted the shoot and Marlon Brando went somewhat off piste, it’s a miracle there was any film at all to show for the shoot, let alone one of the greatest movies ever made. Based loosely on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, the film follows a soldier’s descent into hell as he tries to track down the elusive Colonel Kurtz, a decorated war veteran who has seemingly gone mad. From the amazing visuals, to the sweeping score, to the acting chops of the main cast, Apocalypse Now is a terrifying masterclass in filmmaking. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy John LeCarre’s superb spy novel is given a decent adaptation, thanks to Let Me In director Tomas Alfredson’s measured, careful take on the source material. Gary Oldman is superb as George Smiley, the veteran spy catcher brought out of retirement to find an Russian mole in the ranks of the MI6. Even if you know who the mole is, the way the film unfurls this information is utterly captivating. Spotlight A deserved winner of the Best Film Oscar, Spotlight is a searing look at investigative journalism at its finest - trying to uncover the truth of child abuse within the Catholic church. The film is a true testament to real journalism and throws shade at online clickbait and its erosion of proper investigative news gathering. Oh. The King's Speech Another Oscar winner seemingly grown in a petri dish for the sole purpose to win awards, The King's Speech is one man's struggle to get over a speech impediment and subsequent fear of public speech - it just so happens this man is also the king of England. For all its faults, it tugs on the right strings and is very watchable. The Deer Hunter The Russian roulette scene may be what most people think of when someone chats about Deer Hunter but the movie has so much more to offer. It shows the horrors of war during and after the Vietnam conflict, shining a light on what a situation like that does to a person and their relationships. It's a gruelling but sometimes beautiful watch. Mulholland Drive What started off as a failed TV pilot ended up being one of David Lynch’s most accomplished films. As with any Lynch movie describing the plot won't do Mulholland Drive justice. What starts off as a portrayal of a woman seeking fame in Hollywood ends up being a nightmarish look at the duality of personality and what happens when reality turns into a fever dream. Captain Fantastic It’s great to see Viggo Mortensen back as a leading man and Captain Fantastic suits his eclectic sensibilities down to the ground. It’s a film about a family of homeschooled children who have lived off-grid with their eccentric parents. When their mother dies, they come back to civilisation with a bump. Mortensen is superb as the grizzled patriarch and the casting of the kids is spot on. In a film full of surprises, perhaps the most surprising thing about Captain Fantastic is its writer-director Matt Ross. He plays Gavin Belson in Silicon Valley! Get your free 30-day Amazon Prime trial Interstellar Even when Christopher Nolan missteps, he still manages to hide the stumble with a highly orchestrated dance routine. Interstellar is overblown and weighed down by its own importance but, boy, is it an epic watch. Matthew McConaughey stars as Cooper, a farmer and former test pilot who helps on a mission to save the people of Earth, which is ravaged by lack of land resource. The mission involves going to space and entering a wormhole and exploring a new planet that may have the means for sustaining human life. The film falls in on itself as it nears its conclusion but it’s a bold, measured ride into the unknown with some of the best visuals Nolan has created. Just don’t go expecting a masterpiece, however. The Island The Island may not be new, but it's new to Amazon Prime Video and it's a sci-fi action movie with a fairly smart, interesting plot. Directed and co-produced by Michael Bay, it follows the story of Lincoln Six Echo (played by Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (played by Scarlett Johansson), who are trapped on an island for pretty dark and scary reasons. As you can guess, they escape and try to figure out the nature of their existence and why they're been kept captive. Colossal Fancy something a bit offbeat and wacky to watch today? This Anne Hathaway-starring film features an unemployed young writer who finds out she's the reason a giant monster is causing havoc on the other side of the planet. The film also stars Jason Sudeikis and Dan Stevens, and it's ready to watch on Amazon Prime now. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring  It’s the movie that started two decades of Gollum impressions and Gandalf quotes. The Fellowship of the Ring is the first third of the Lord of the Rings saga, starting in the Shire. It dramatises all the delicious backstory that makes fantasy epics seem so grand.We only get the standard theatrical cut of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring on Amazon Video, and neither of the two films that followed. But this three-hour cut is worth revisiting. While visual effects have improved a lot since this film’s release, its grand vistas filmed in New Zealand are still quite something to witness. Inception A dream with a dream within a dream. When Inception arrived it did so with a similar impact as The Matrix, a decade earlier. It made you think, but was wrapped around a blockbuster shell that demanded to be seen on the big screen. But, hey, lots of us have big screens in our living rooms these days.Leonardo DiCaprio is a thief who enters people’s subconscious to plant ideas in their minds. But when the border between the dream world and reality has been broken, how can you tell which you’re in? Inception had all the makings of a high-concept hokey mess on paper but Christopher Nolan turned it into one of the best action films of recent decades. Gremlins We know you know Gremlins. This is the film that tells the story of a young man who receives a Furby-like creature as a pet and fails to follow every instruction with regards to its care. What results is an army of destructive, evil Gremlins set on destroying a small town at Christmas. It's a festive classic. Arrival Like aliens and whiteboards? Get you a movie that can do both. Arrival was an astonishing science fiction film, released towards the end of 2016, and making its way to Amazon Prime Video before it's even landed on cable or satellite TV in the UK. Based on the novella 'Stories of Your Life' by Ted Chiang, and directed by Sicario director Denis Villeneuve (whose next task will be the long-awaited sequel to Blade Runner), it's a fantastic film exploring love, loss, communication and the lengths we should all be prepared to go to in order to understand, accept and value the differences between us. Super 8 If you bypassed this sci-fi movie from J.J. Abrams when it was first released in 2011, it's definitely worth watching now. It'll especially appeal to those who really got into Stranger Things, as well as those with a soft spot for classic coming-of-age adventure movies, like E.T. and The Goonies. There's a lot of great character development, mystery, action, sci-fi and, of course, lots of lens flare because it's a J. J. Abrams movie after all. Looper One of the more interesting sci-fi movies of the past decade and a huge reason why director Rian Johnson got the Star Wars: Episode VIII gig. Looper focuses on the timey wimey tale of a bunch of hitmen, whose job it is to send people from the future into the past to kill them. Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are superb in the film, which manages to take complex ideas and boil them down into an entertaining popcorn thriller. Attack The Block Star Wars alumni John Boyega got his first break on this great UK indie, as did newly instated Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker. Attack The Block is the first movie by Joe Cornish - of Adam and Joe fame - and it’s an absolute corker. Aliens have come to earth to wreak havoc and it’s down to a South London gang to make sure their neighbourhood doesn’t become a disaster zone. Full of warm wit and fantastic humour - not to mention some startling special effects - the movie mashes together a number of genres together and has a whole lot of fun doing it. Source Code You wait years for a sci-fi movie that’s influenced by Groundhog Day to come along and then two appear at once. Yes, Source Code has a similar time-repeating plot to Edge of Tomorrow but it’s less bombastic and more thoughtful in its approach. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as the soldier who only has eight minutes to stop a bomber on a busy train, before time resets and he has to do the whole thing again. Duncan Jones does well in the director seat, managing to make a plot device that could grow old rather quick really work. Get your free 30-day Amazon Prime trial Legend It’s by no means a perfect movie, but Legend has two fantastic central performances… both played by Tom Hardy. Hardy is both Ronald and Reggie Kray, the notorious twins that ruled half of London’s underworld in the Sixties. Legend is about their rise and subsequent fall, shot through the lens of Reggie’s relationship with Frances Shea, the ever-brilliant Emily Browning. While Legend doesn’t offer anything different to the, er, legend of the Krays it’s still a brutal and occasionally funny watch. Jackie Brown Quentin Tarantino's 1987 crime thriller is about a stewardess called Jackie Brown who smuggles money from Mexico to L.A. for a big arms dealer. She gets caught, but strikes a deal with the agents to help them bring down her boss in exchange for her going free. Of course there are other plans afoot and a dramatic thriller unfolds about crime, deceit and corruption. It's got all the twists and turns of a Tarantino flick with some stellar acting from Pam Grier, who plays Jackie Brown, as well as Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton.  Swordfish This slick and stylish thriller is about a mystery man who hires a hacker to steal billions from a government bank account. An FBI computer crime specialist is one step ahead and gets involved in the action too. It's got a stellar cast with John Travolta and Hugh Jackman in the lead roles supported by Halle Berry. It's fast-paced, thrilling and full of plenty of twists and turns.  The Killing of a Sacred Deer Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos or The Lobster and Dogtooth fame, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is an intense psychological horror movie based on the Greek play Iphigenia at Aulis by Euripides. It follows the story of a successful cardiac surgeon (played by Colin Farrell) who befriends a mysterious teen. As you'd expect from a psychological horror from Lanthimos, this is hardly an easy Sunday afternoon watch. You've been warned. The Handmaiden Describe a movie as erotic and it usually conjures up something that's utterly not sexy like 50 Shades of Grey or the Lego Movie. The Handmaiden, though, is erotic and shimmers as a result. Directed by South Korean's finest, Park Chan-wook, the movie is masterful in its suspense and when sex is shown - and it's a lot of the time - it's used to bolster the characters and the story, rather than for pure titillation. The Handmaiden is yet another new release that's headed to Amazon Prime Video - we're not sure why it keeps getting all these 'just released on Blu-ray' movies but we're happy that it's happening. Shutter Island Nothing is as it seems in Martin Scorsese's chilling Shutter Island. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a marshal who investigates the disappearance of a patient at Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. The hospital is one renowned for bizarre experiments on its inmates which ups the freaky ante somewhat. Then things get really scary and a lot more obscure when a hurricane cuts the island off from the mainland. This is definitely a film you will want to watch again, probably straight after you watch it the first time. Munich Steven Spielberg ratchets up the tension to near breaking point in Munich - a wonderful movies that charts the Black September aftermath. The movie follows the assassin's whose job it was to rid the world of those who created the atrocities that saw a number of Israeli athletes killed at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Girl On The Train It's difficult to talk about Girl On The Train without giving a twisty plot point or two away. So, let's just say that Emma Blunt is great in this tense thriller that does justice to the hugely successful book. The only issue we have is the whole plot has been transposed to an American town. We prefer the distinctly British setting. Other than that, prepared to be both shocked and entertained. Hell Or High Water Taylor Sheridan is a man of many talents. Not only has he starred in hit shows such as Sons of Anarchy and Veronica Mars, he's also penned some of the finest thrillers in recent years. First there was the superb Sicario and now Hell Or High Water, for which he was nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar. It's easy to see why, this is a taut, tense film about two brothers who turn to bank robbery to help their family. Starring Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Jeff Bridges, the film is a fast-paced modern take on the Western. Chloe Director Atom Egoyan is not one to take the conventional route when telling his tales - and Chloe is no different. Starring  Julianne Moore, Amanda Seyfried and Liam Neeson, it’s about a seemingly normal couple who resort to using a sex worker to test the trust in their relationship. This turns out to be a very bad decision. The film is a remake of the superior French drama Nathalie but it’s a decent thriller that manages to walk the line between gratuity and maturity well. 99 Homes This is a devastating film. Based on the true events of what is still a recent economic disaster in the US, 99 Homes is about Andrew Garfield’s Dennis Nash, someone whose home faces foreclosure. To make ends meet he starts working for the real estate company - and the villainous Michael Shannon - that caused him and his family to lose his home. It’s a convoluted but brazen look at what can happen to a person when they are on the brink of losing everything. Fish Tank Andrea Arnold’s second movie was the one that cemented her as one of the UK’s best filmmakers. Fish Tank stars Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender as a teenager and the boyfriend of her mother. An uneasy relationship is struck between them both that goes from bad to worse. This is one of Fassbender’s first starring roles and watching it back, it’s easy to see why he’s such a big star now. The Place Beyond The Pines This is most definitely a movie of two halves - in that something significant happens midway through that changes both the pace and tone of the movie considerably. For some, the shift is too much but it really does work. Ryan Gosling plays Luke, a fantastic stunt motorcyclist turned bank robber who’s trying to do the best for his family. Eva Mendes is his estranged partner, while Bradley Cooper crops up as Avery, a good cop that’s trying to make the best out of some terrible situations. Brilliantly acted and expertly told, The Place Beyond The Pines is a powerful movie watching experience. Get your free 30-day Amazon Prime trial Submarine Richard Ayoade has proved over two feature films that he is a director to watch. While The Double was a fascinating Gilliam-esque comedy thriller, his first movie was much more in keeping with the French New Wave, despite being set in the depths of Wales. It’s set in 1980s Swansea and focuses on the relationship between a teenage loner and a girl who seems to share his passion for doom and gloom. Craig Roberts is fantastic as the loner - a role that won him plaudits and the starring role in Amazon Prime’s fantastic TV show Red Oaks. Clueless Is this the perfect film? You wouldn’t notice from Clueless’s bubblegum sheen, but its plot and characters are based on those of Emma by Jane Austen. This is no period piece, mind, but one of the best romantic comedies of all time. Alicia Silverstone is Cher, a pampered teen who gives the new girl in school, Tai, a makeover. She thinks it’s Tai that’s “clueless”, but finds it’s her who needs to re-think her life. That’s the cheesy movie poster version anyway. As usual, Paul Rudd oozes charm, playing Cher’s half brother. And the script is razor-sharp. Few movies hold up to repeat viewings over the years as well as Clueless. Anchorman Not every film on your must-see list needs to be from the IMDb top 250. Anchorman is a deeply silly Will Ferrel vehicle from 2004. He plays chauvinist, incompetent TV anchor Ron Burgundy who starts to fall apart when a female anchor joins his team.    On first sight it seems the pairing of comedy greats Steve Carrell, Ferrel, David Koechner and Paul Rudd that makes Anchorman work. However, just as Spinal Tap skewers something real, elements of Anchorman’s setting in the world of local news TV ring true. Practical Magic Starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as two witch sisters who use their magical powers in a quest to break a curse and find love. A pretty standard romantic comedy elevated by an excellent cast, this is one worth watching if you're in the mood for something light-hearted. Addams Family Values While the first Addams Family was a fun but flawed reboot of the old TV show, Addams Family Values is a subversive gem. Comedy sequels are rarely better than the first movie but what Barry Sonnenfeld did with Values was make it far more twisted than anyone expecting. Whether it's cooking strippers alive (Lurch), various attempts by Wednesday and Pugsley to kill their newly born brethren or the constant references to Morticia and Gomez’s sex life it's a whole lot of ooky fun. Mindhorn A once-famous actor in the '80s tries to resurrect his career in Mindhorn, a superb pastiche of cop shows of old. Julian Barrett is on top form as the titular Mindhorn, whose desperate attempt to become relevant again means he unwittingly finds himself in a murder investigation on the  Richard Thorncroft. Goon As underrated movies go, Goon is pretty much on top of the list. Wrongly brushed aside as another farcical American Pie style movie, because it's got Seann William Scott in it, Goon is much more than that. It's funny, yes, but it's also an affectionate look at the underdog, filled with some pretty big scenes of violence and a number of tender moments too. There's a sequel in the works, which is fantastic news, as Goon is a little-watched gem. The School Of Rock This shouldn't work. Jack Black as a high school teacher teaching kids to play music sounds like it has 'straight to video' written all over it but School of Rock is a whole lot of fun. Director Richard Linklater and writer Mike White take most of the sickly sweet moments  out of the movie and leave a fun, riotous movie that is a brilliant showcase of Jack Black's talents. The film has been a big hit since its launch and has recently been turned into a stage production, sans Jack Black though - he's still raking it in through his movies. Toni Erdmann This is a superb movie. It's so good that a US remake has already been announced. Toni Erdmann is about an estranged father trying to reconnect with his daughter in a rather bizarre way: by pretending to be her boss's life coach.  It's a surreal movie, packed with embarrassing moments and some surprising empathy. Ted Ted shouldn’t work. It’s a comedy about a man and his childhood toy, which just happens to be alive. That man is the normally dour Mark Whalberg, the toy is voiced by Seth MacFarlane and sounds strangely like Peter Griffin in Family Guy. But it does work - it’s occasionally laugh out loud, funny throughout and proves that Whalberg does comedy best when he’s just playing a more earnest version of himself. Unfortunately all of this come untangled in its disappointing sequel, but the original Ted is well worth a watch. Four Lions It’s a shame that Chris Morris doesn’t do more stuff as when his new projects come along they always change the game in some way. Four Lions finds humour in one of the most serious subjects: terrorism. For a film shot in 2010, it’s still surprisingly current. It follows docu-style British jihadists who are trying to conjure up a terror plot. The problem is, they’re idiots. Starring, among others, Riz Ahmed, Four Lions is funny, frank and endlessly controversial. But it’s done in such a way that you can’t help but admire the movie. Moonrise Kingdom Wes Anderson's style is so unique that he’s following some of his director heroes - David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick etc - and becoming an adjective. If a film is Wes-like, then it’s filled with childhood wonder, symmetry and quirk. Moonrise Kingdom is packed with all of this and is about two children who escape from a town in the US, only to be tracked down by a search party. It’s a wonderfully innocent movie drenched in melancholy but funny with it. Bruce Willis, Edward Norton and Bill Murray all star but its real stars are the children - played by Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward. In The Loop It’s a shame that The Thick Of It never hit the big screen. What with Brexit madness and the UK government a mess of contradictions, a movie starring Malcolm Tucker swearing them all into shape is sorely needed. In The Loop is the closest thing we’ve got. It’s a strange movie as it takes strands from The Thick Of It and ports it to the US. This means the film is a hybrid of The Thick of It and the US show Veep. What we do get though is Malcolm Tucker (a never-bettered Peter Capaldi), full of vim and vigor, spinning his way through the choppy waters that is US politics. It’s not perfect, but as satires go it’s one of the most searing. Get your free 30-day Amazon Prime trial Where the Wild Things Are We tend to feel protective when movie producers get their hands on texts from our childhoods. However, Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are captures the wonder and adventure of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book, on which it is based. Max is a young boy who finds himself in the land of the Wild Things. They’re the big furry creatures you’ll have seen if you’ve ever walked down the children’s lit aisle at a bookshop. Max becomes their leader, and the film follows their adventures. Where the Wild Things Are is a little darker than you might expect, earning a PG rating. However, it is also a useful exploration of anger, with greater depth than many a family film.  Rango When Gore Verbinski set sail for The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise everyone thought we would never see him make an indie film again but then came Rango. A brilliant, subversive animation, Rango is an LSD-tinged Western where all the characters are animals or lizards. Johnny Depp plays Rango, a chameleon who leaves his family home and ends up in the strange town of Dirt. Brilliantly, nutty stuff. Your Name A surprise 2016 hit that saw a rare mainstream overseas success for Japanese anime, Your Name is a supernatural high-school-romance-come-body-swap disaster movie. Yep – there's a lot going on here, as a teenage boy and girl find themselves inhabiting each other's bodies, slowly unravelling the mystery surrounding their condition – and that of an awful disaster. J J Abrams of Lost and Star Wars fame is said to be looking into making a live-action version, such was the success of the animation – but it'll take something to top the magnificent original. The Red Turtle Will the magic ever dim at Studio Ghibli? The lyrical animation powerhouse delivers yet again with The Red Turtle, the story of a man shipwrecked on a remote island, inhabited just by turtles, crabs and other critters. What appears a simple story slowly peels back to reveal hidden depths, with Studio Ghibli's inimitable attention to detail in animation remaining the industry benchmark. Batman Beyond - Return of the Joker  Everyone loves it when Batman meets the Joker but this movie does it with a twist. The Batman that meets the joker here is Terry McGinnis, a new Batman mentored by an ageing Bruce Wayne. McGinnis is equipped with new-fangled tech to make sure the Joker and his gang don’t end up running the city, but it also takes some old-school advice from Bruce Wayne to save the day. Superman - Doomsday Based on the controversial Death of Superman storyline, this animated movie is all about Doomsday - the hideous creature that puts an end to Superman. Although it’s faithful to the comic-book series from which it is adapted, it is all a little rushed. But great animation and voice talent - Adam Baldwin is superb as Supes and James Marsters is menacing as Lex Luthor - make this film a must watch, especially if you are annoyed with the treatment of Superman in the recent DC movie universe. Batman - Mask of the Phantasm When people argue about the best Batman, Kevin Conroy’s name never comes up. But it really really should. He’s been voice acting as Batman for a number of years and one of the best ways to hear his dark, dulcet tones is by watching Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. This animated movie pitched Batman against another masked vigilante - one that wants to bring Gotham City to justice. If that wasn’t enough, The Joker makes an appearance too. The film is a must for those who grew up on Burton’s Batman and had their faith restored with Chris Nolan’s interpretation. If it wasn’t animated, Mask of the Phantasm would be hailed as one of the best Batman movies. It’s certainly the best Batman animated movie. Bridge to Terabithia This isn’t the film that was advertised but it is still a great children’s movie. When it was promoted back in 2007, you would be forgiven that this is a fantasy epic. While there are those elements, they only make for a section of the movie. The rest is a sad, gripping tale about the relationship between two school friends who deal with the darkness in their lives by creating the imaginary world of Terabithia. Son of Rambow One of the most endearing coming-of-age movies you are likely to see, Son of Rambow is about two children growing up in the ’80s who are obsessed with Rambo. So much, they decide to make their own version of the movie with the help of their friends. What ensues is a fun, inventive film about the magic of childhood friendship and imagination. Directed by music video supremo Garth Jennings, Son of Rambow is a trio of love letters: one to the Eighties, one to home videos and the other to the cartoon violence that was born out of an era where Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis ruled the box office. Get your free 30-day Amazon Prime trial Lost In Translation Lost in Translation is a superb, dreamlike movie that wonderfully captures feeling of alienation and loneliness you can feel in a city you don’t belong in. The city in question is Tokyo, the lonely people are Bill Murray as an ageing actor and Scarlett Johansson as a college graduate left to her own devices by her photographer husband. The chemistry between Murray and Johansson is electric, both endearing and hilarious, as is the soundtrack and the way the film slowly creeps up on you in an wonderful way. Gone with the Wind Today your best chances of seeing a film that pushes past the three hour mark are from Bollywood epics or ultra-slow art house films. But 1939’s Gone With the Wind is a four hour romance story. When Harry Met Sally this is not.Our lead is Scarlett O’Hara, a name so famous you’d swear it was the actor (Vivien Leigh), not the character. Gone with the Wind follows her life, around the time of the US civil war, on a plantation in Georgia. And, supplying the romance, her knotted affairs with Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). Its portrayal of slavery and the deep south may jar for the modern viewer, but this remains a classic watch. Before Sunrise Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise is a simple, beautiful romantic movie about an American man who meets a French woman and they spent the whole night walking around the city together. Because they both don't think they'll see each other again, they end up sharing a lot about their lives, their fears and everything in-between. But it turns out they do see each other again (erm, spoiler alert?) because Linklater followed the movie up with two others, Before Sunset and Before Midnight. The Big Sick Loosely based of the real lives of the film's stars, Emily V Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani play an interracial couple who have to deal with Emily becoming ill and how cultural differences affect the couple. The film has been nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards 2018, but it's already on Amazon Prime ahead of this year's big ceremony. Vicky Cristina Barcelona Woody Allen managed to assemble a cracking ensemble for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The film is a fun look at friends Vicky Cristina (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) as they travel to Barcelona and meet a mysterious artist, played by Javier Bardem. It’s all sex and sultriness until his unhinged ex-wife appears. She’s played by Penelope Cruz with such magnetism that you are drawn to her and kind of forget the rest of the characters. It’s not Allen at his best but even his ‘good enough’ films are a cut above most. Blue Valentine There’s a deep, maddening love portrayed in Blue Valentine that is so powerful it ends up being destructive. With that in mind, this isn’t the movie to put on if you don’t want you and your loved one to question your own relationship. It’s a brutal, raw movie that focuses on the relationship between married couple Dean and Cindy, played by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams respectively. They are two people in love, pushed apart by circumstance. The story flits back and forth in time, so with each tender moment you get anguish. Powerful stuff. Carol Todd Haynes is one of the world's most fascinating directors, who loves to mine different eras for inspiration. While he courted the ’70s with Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There, it is perhaps the ’50s where he has managed to use the tensions of the era to create superb character dramas. Carol is just that, a romantic tale between two women - Rooney Mara is the clerk that falls in love with Cate Blanchett’s character who is unhappy in a marriage of convenience. The anxieties and problems Haynes highlights in his earlier movie Safe are back with Carol. In this movie, though, everything has been given a more sumptuous sheen. Knight of Cups Thank goodness we live in an era where Terrence Malick is back and making movies on a regular basis. Knight of Cups is as dreamlike and fractured as you have come to expect from the revered director. As with all his movies, it’s clear he shot way more footage and didn’t decide on what film he was making until he hit the edit suite, but that’s part of its charm. Here we see Christian Bale as Rick, a writer who flits between Vegas and LA with six different women. Vegas is perfect Territory for Malick, a desert of neon suits his filmmaking style. While the supporting cast Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman and Freida Pinto all add gravitas to the film. Once Writer-director John Carney’s debut is a low-budget joy that’s since been turned into a very successful play. The plot is slight: a busker and immigrant spend a week in Dublin falling in love and making music together. But it’s the songs that make the movie. Each one is a gem, sprinkled throughout the movie to give it a musical quality. Carney’s latest Sing Street is well worth a watch, too. Get your free 30-day Amazon Prime trial Amy The Amy documentary is a hard watch, one that will have you fighting back tears. The talent on show is blighted by the talent that is thrown away. The doc showcases Amy Winehouse in her early years, using archive footage of the star that shows just how much of a talent she was. There are talking heads with her family - including her husband - as well as good friends of hers. Dark Days This documentary may have gained prominence thanks to its DJ Shadow soundtrack, but it’s the subject matter that makes Dark Days such a must watch. Shot and directed by Marc Singer, Dark Days shines a light on those who live in underground tunnels under New York. Criminally, this was Singer’s only foray into documentary filmmaking but at least he created a classic. Gimme Danger Jim Jarmusch uses music in his movies to fine effect, so it makes complete sense that he is the one to helm a documentary about The Stooges and their enigmatic frontman, Iggy Pop. The Stooges may not have hit the heights of, say, The Rolling Stones but they’re an important piece of the rock puzzle. This doc does well to uncover what made the band tick, complete with recent talking heads with members of the band. The Beatles: Eight Days A Week A-list director Ron Howard took a break from feature-filmmaking to direct this documentary about the most famous band ever. It’s a slick production, meshing old interviews, archive footage and new interviews with the surviving members together to create a vivid look at a band in their pomp to their rather sour end. Man on Wire Forget the rather disappointing 3D movie and instead focus on this riveting documentary about a French high-wire artist who decides to one day scale one of the towers World Trade Center and walk across to the other one using just a tightrope. It’s utterly absorbing Man on Wire features an in-depth interview with the person that did the stunt, Philippe Petit. The way he tells the story of how he got past security to walk the Twin Towers is as engrossing as any heist movie. Marley Bob Marley’s music is as strong today as when it was released back in the ‘70s. His politics are as strong as they are now, his protest songs have lost none of their vibrancy. Which is why Marley is such a brilliant watch. It tells the tale of how Marley brought his music to the masses, his love of football and his life living in both London and Jamaica - all of which are brought brilliantly to life by interviews with friends and family and archive footage. Get your free 30-day Amazon Prime trial Kill List Director Ben Wheatley adds the right amount of realism and menace to Kill List - a film that is never quite what it seems. On the face of it, it’s a kitchen sink drama about a hitman and his latest assignment to kill three people but as the story unravels so does the hitman’s life (played in earnest by the brilliant Neil Maskell). It flirts at being a family drama, teases you that it’s a crime saga then hits you with the most relentless horror that you’ll be watching the end behind your hands. Great stuff. The Faculty This teen horror flick comes straight from the minds of the Scream and Scream 2 creators, so expect nerds, jocks and lots of teen drama with plenty of gore and frights thrown in for good measure. But in our books there's something a bit different about The Faculty that makes it a not-so-guilty guilty pleasure. Whether it's the compelling cast (with Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett and Famke Janssen), dark yet ridiculous tone or parasitic creatures from another planet, it's a fun flick for the weekend.  Constantine You can rarely go wrong with an action horror starring Keanu Reeves and Constantine is one such movie. Reeves takes up the role of John Constantine, a man who can see half-breed angels and demons who stalk the Earth disguised as humans. Driven to attempt suicide by his visions, Constantine is returned to the land of the living and must use his gift to protect humanity an earn his place in Heaven.   The Shining We know what you're thinking. Why has The Shining only just arrived on Amazon Prime Video? Well, worry not. Stanley Kubrick's classic movie about family, isolation and plenty of unnerving, bloody horror is now available to stream on Amazon Prime. The film is a true classic for a whole host of reasons, from Kubrick's ambitious film-making to spectacular performances from the cast and a score that makes your skin tingle. It's always worthy of a re-watch, just go and check all the doors and windows are locked first before you really get stuck in. Train To Busan South Korea has slowly but surely marked itself out as a country that's producing some fantastic filmmakers. Interestingly, two of the best movies from South Korean directors of recent times have been based on trains - Joon-ho Bong's Snowpiercer (which criminally never got a UK release) and Sang-ho Yeon’s Train To Busan. Train To Busan is a brilliant zombie horror movie. By having most of the action take place on a train, we see what it's like when a zombie epidemic takes hold in close confines, complete with cloying claustrophobia. It's part action movie, part love story, all character study, showing that a situation such as a freaking zombie outbreak can bring out the best and the very worst in people. Hell House LLC Well this was unexpected. The name Hell House LLC doesn't exactly scream 'must watch' but despite its rather Grindhouse-esque title, this is a brilliant slice of horror. The plot is simple: a group of friends who create haunted house experiences for Halloween find a house to convert that's seemingly filled with real-life ghosts. The movie is their footage spliced together, with police reports and the like. The found footage genre is rather stagnant now but Hell House manages to breathe new life into it, mustering up some genuine scares that will have even the most hardened horror fans watching from behind their fingers. Its final scenes don't quite match what went before it (or make much sense) but this is one of the best horror films to come out in years. Sinister Sinister is that rare horror film: it has brains, A-listers and is still really scary. Ethan Hawke is a true crime writer. After finding a box of what he thinks is footage of murders committed by a serial killer, things start to go very bad in his life. Director Scott Derrickson may have recently made the more family friendly Doctor Strange, but with Sinister he proves that he is just as adept at garnering scares as he is guiding the Marvel universe. Pontypool A low-budget chiller that takes place in a small town in Ontario, Canada (bet you can’t guess its name) and follows the exploits of a talk radio team who are reporting on strange goings on in the town. It’s essentially a movie about zombies but distilled through the eyes of a small, yet vocal, group of people. Its budget may well be small but its ambition is big and that’s what makes Pontypool such a fun watch. I Saw the Devil This serial killer cat-and-mouse movie is one of the most visceral around. Starring Old Boy’s Min-Sik Choy as the killer, the film is graphic in its content - Its tale of revenge is uncompromising - but is a fantastic watch. It’s also one of the best movies from director Jee-woon Kim who has a platinum line-up of films, including A Tale of Two Sisters, A Bittersweet Life and to a lesser extent his sole US movie, The Last Stand. Get your free 30-day Amazon Prime trial Source link

[theadmiringbog]

Steven Pressfield

I’m 74. Believe me, you’ve got all the time in the world. You’ve got ten lifetimes ahead of you. Don’t worry about your friends “beating” you or “getting somewhere” ahead of you. Get out into the real dirt world and start failing. Why do I say that? Because the goal is to connect with your own self, your own soul. Adversity. Everybody spends their life trying to avoid it. Me too. But the best things that ever happened to me came during the times when the shit hit the fan and I had nothing and nobody to help me. Who are you really? What do you really want?

--

Susan Cain

I wanted writing to be a permanent source of pleasure, and never to be associated with financial stress or, more generally, the pressure to achieve.

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Terry Crews

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession?

“Work hard to beat the competition.” 

The truth is that competition is the opposite of creativity. If I am working hard to beat the competition, it actually prevents me from thinking creatively to make all concepts of competition obsolete.

This competitive mindset destroys people. It’s the scorched-earth way of thinking, and everyone is burned.

The truth is that you need the success of everyone in your field in order to achieve your own success. Creativity operates differently. You work hard because you’re inspired to, not because you have to. Work becomes fun, and you have energy for days because this life is not a “young man’s game.” It is an “inspired person’s game.”

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? 

I realized that I had to let people leave my life, never to return.

It’s the realization that there is a “will to pleasure,” a “will to power” and, in the words of Viktor Frankl, a “will to meaning.” You won’t take a bullet for pleasure or power, but you will for meaning.

--

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” 

–Niels Bohr Danish physicist and Nobel Prize winner

--

“These individuals have riches just as we say that we ‘have a fever,’ when really the fever has us.” 

–Seneca Roman Stoic philosopher, famed playwright

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Mike Maples, Jr.

Ego is about who’s right. Truth is about what’s right.

--

“Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’”

—C. S. Lewis

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Aniela Gregorek

... our Eating Out Jar, Happiness Jar, and others. The three of us are strong-willed individuals with distinct preferences, and the Eating Out Jar came out of a struggle. Each time we talked about going out to eat, we would spend so much energy bickering that we would be exhausted or discouraged by the time we finally chose. It was not fun. The same situation occurred with choosing an activity for the weekend.

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Amelia Boone

For every major event in my life—everything from races to job changes to breakups—I assign a song. Most of these come organically: what I was listening to at the time, lyrics that spoke to me at a moment in my life, or a song I sang on repeat during a race (a common habit of mine). I keep these songs in a playlist, ordered chronologically. I can go back through and listen to that playlist and relive major experiences, both highs and lows, in my life.

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Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

I define faith as the ability to hear the music beneath the noise.

...

If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say, and why? It would say three words: “Live. Give. Forgive.” They are by far the most important things in life.

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Julia Galef

One distraction I’ve learned to avoid is consuming media that’s just telling me things I already know and agree with.”

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Annie Duke

When two extreme opinions meet, the truth lies generally somewhere in the middle. Without exposure to the other side, you will naturally drift toward the extremes and away from the truth of the matter.

...

Poker has taught me to disconnect failure from outcomes. Just because I lose doesn’t mean I failed, and just because I won doesn’t mean I succeeded—not when you define success and failure around making good decisions that will win in the long run.

What matters is the decisions I made along the way, and every decision failure is an opportunity to learn and adjust my strategy going forward. By doing this, losing becomes a less emotional experience and more an opportunity to explore and learn.

--

“There is no exact answer to the question ‘what is the meaning of life.’ It’s like asking a chess master ‘what is the best move in the world?’ It all depends on what situation you are in.”

-- Victor Frankl

--

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” 

–Bill Gates Co-founder of Microsoft

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“What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn’t have any doubt—it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.”

—Hal Boyle

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Maria Sharapova

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours? 

In my profession, losses are often seen as failures. Not being the person who wins the last point, walking off the court first. All those visible things. But internally, losing sets you up for winning. Losing makes you think in ways victories can’t. You begin asking questions instead of feeling like you have the answers. Questions open up the doors to so many possibilities. If a loss sets me up for those tough questions I might have to ask, then I will get the answers that will ultimately turn those losses into victories.

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Jason Fried

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession?

No, don’t scale. Start small, stay as small as possible for as long as possible. Grow in control, not out of control.

--

“Raise capital to launch a software/services business.” No, bootstrap. As in life, we form business habits early on. If you raise money, you’ll get good at spending money. If you bootstrap, you’ll be forced to get good at making money.

...

I’ve always been pretty good at saying no, but over the last couple of years I’ve come up with a new rule. If the ask is more than a week away, I almost always say no, regardless of what is it. Exceptions include family things I need to attend, and a conference or two I really want to speak at, but other than that, if the “yes” would tie me to something further than a week or so out, it’s almost always a no.

I always explain why and say something like, “Thanks for the invitation, but I just can’t commit to anything more than a day or so in advance. I need to keep my schedule open for me and the people I work with on a regular basis. Best bet is to hit me up a day or two before you wanted to get together. If I’m available we can set up a time.”

--

Gary Vaynerchuk

What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? 

Macro patience, micro speed. They should not care about the next eight years, but they should stress the next eight days. At a macro, I think everybody’s super impatient. I think I’m unbelievably patient in years and decades, and unbelievably sporadic and hyper every minute on a day-to-day basis. I genuinely think everybody’s the reverse. Everybody’s making decisions about, like, “What am I going to do at 25? I better do that. . . .” In years, they’re impatient and making dumb decisions, and then in days, they’re watching fucking Netflix. They’re super worried about 25 when they’re 22, yet they’re drinking every Thursday night at 7 P.M. They’re playing Madden. They’re fucking watching House of Cards. They’re spending four and a half hours on their Instagram feed every single day. This is super important. Everybody’s impatient at a macro, and just so patient at a micro, wasting your days worrying about years. I’m not worried about my years, because I’m squeezing the fuck out of my seconds, let alone my days. It’s going to work out.

...

I still need a healthy balance of 20 percent yeses to things that seem dumb, because I believe in serendipity, and that’s an important balance that people struggle with.

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Tim O’Reilly

Every morning, on my run, I try to take a picture of a flower and share it on Instagram. I was inspired to do this by a passage I read many years ago in a book by C. S. Lewis (I think it was The Great Divorce), in which a character, after death, only sees the flowers as blobs of color, and his spirit guide tells him, “That’s because you never really looked at them when you were alive.” As the line from Hamilton says, “Look around. Look around. How lucky we are to be alive right now!”

...

I have profited greatly from Esther Dyson’s advice about accepting speaking engagements: “Would I say yes if it were on Tuesday?” Because the day will come when it is on Tuesday.

...

We equate being smart and being driven as the ways to get ahead. But sometimes, an attitude of alert watchfulness is far wiser and more effective. Learning to follow your nose, pulling on threads of curiosity or interest, may take you places that being driven will never lead you to.

--

“Let life ripen and then fall. Will is not the way at all.”

—Lao Tzu, from The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu

--

Tom Peters

They say: “Think big! Have a compelling vision!” I say: Think small. Do something super cool by the end of the day!

...

I write about “excellence.” Most see excellence as some grand aspiration. Wrong. Dead wrong. My two cents: Excellence is the next five minutes or nothing at all. It’s the quality of your next five-minute conversation. It’s the quality of, yes, your next email. Forget the long term. Make the next five minutes rock!

--

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”

-- Albert Einstein

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Brene Brown

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? What questions do you ask yourself? 

Always these questions: 

Sleep? Exercise? Healthy food? Am I resentful because I’m not setting or holding a boundary?

--

Leo Babauta

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? 

I am absurdly fond of minimalist aesthetics. I get a ridiculous amount of pleasure from an empty room with just one piece of furniture and a plant. Sometimes I fantasize about owning nothing but an empty room!

--

Esther Dyson

Always take jobs for which you are not qualified; that way you will inevitably learn something. And do not drop out of college unless you truly have a better alternative.

--

Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse: This small, short book provided me a vocabulary to think about the meaning of life—not just my life, but all life! It gave me a mathematical framework for my own spirituality. As it says, the game is to keep the game going forever, to rope all beings into playing infinite games versus finite (win-lose) games, and to realize that there is only one infinite game.

--

Kevin Kelly

I learned far more about business from that $200 than from a debt-inducing MBA.

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What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore? 

Don’t try to find your passion. Instead master some skill, interest, or knowledge that others find valuable. It almost doesn’t matter what it is at the start. You don’t have to love it, you just have to be the best at it. Once you master it, you’ll be rewarded with new opportunities that will allow you to move away from tasks you

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Eric Ripert

An orb of shungite stone. Its incredible protective and healing qualities—mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical—can be felt by even the most skeptical people. One benefit relevant for many of us today: it diffuses negative waves from electronics.

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Five or six years ago, I decided that I was going to live my life in three parts—one-third for my business, one-third for my family, one-third for myself.

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“Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.” 

–Fred Rogers Creator of the famous television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

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“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” 

–Lao Tzu Chinese philosopher, author of Tao Te

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“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” 

–Terry Pratchett English fantasy writer

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Gabor Mate

If you’re really smart, you’ll drop the drivenness. It doesn’t matter what’s driving you; when you’re driven, you are like a leaf, driven by the wind. You have no real autonomy. You are bound to be blown off course, even if you reach what you believe is your goal. And don’t confuse being driven with being authentically animated by an inner calling. One state leaves you depleted and unfulfilled; the other fuels your soul and makes your heart sing.

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John Arnold

The reality, best captured in The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley and The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, is that the long-term trend in almost every measure is resolutely positive. Optimism is a reflexive trait, with a circular relationship between cause and effect. The more optimistic society is about the future, the better the future is. These books serve as a reminder of the great advances.

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Mr. Money Mustache

You are free for life once you have 25 to 30 times your annual spending locked up and working for you in low-fee index funds or other relatively boring investments. If you save the standard 15 percent of your income, this freedom arrives roughly at age 65. If you can crank that up to 65 percent, you’re free just after your 30th birthday, and you often end up a lot happier in the process. Of course, there are other ways to solve the money problem: Own a profitable business, or find work that is joyful enough to do it for life. But even these things happen more quickly if you don’t get mired in the earn-to-borrow-to-spend trap that is part of that big middle-class assumption.

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David Lynch

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? 

I sit and desire ideas.

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Evan Williams

Mindfulness meditation, which I started doing regularly about five years ago, has changed my life more than any other behavior. I feel like it rewired my brain (probably because it did). At first, I felt the effects very powerfully. After a few years, it feels less dramatic but necessary. If I go more than a couple days without sitting, I feel off. Wish I had started many years before.

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Be in a hurry to learn, not in a hurry to get validation. In a team environment, you will make a much better impression if it seems like you’re not at all worried about yourself. It’s okay to actually be worried about yourself—everyone is—just don’t seem like it. If you resist asking for too much, you will often get more.

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Chris Anderson

The realization that the best way to get things done is to let go. Here’s the thing. . . . It’s often the case that people want to help you or work with you. But they can’t if you insist on holding on to tight control. The more you let go, the more people will surprise you.

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Many of us have bought into the cliché “pursue your passion.” For many, that is terrible advice. In your 20s, you may not really know what your best skills and opportunities are. It’s much better to pursue learning, personal discipline, growth. And to seek out connections with people across the planet.

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Michael Gervais

“Every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece.” We have far more control in our lives than many embrace. We create or co-create our experiences in life, and each day is a new opportunity to be fully engaged in the present moment. It’s the present moment where glimpses of our potential are revealed and expressed.

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What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? 

“You can do anything you put your mind to.” Ah, no, that’s not accurate, and it reveals the advice-giver’s naiveté about human experiences.

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“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

 –G. K. Chesterton English philosopher known as the “prince of paradox”

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“All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.” 

–John Gunther American journalist

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Katrin Tanja Davidstodir

If you are asking about an exercise, I would say it is basic “fitness.” It is hanging out around your lactic threshold for an extended period of time—it’s hard. But that’s where the magic happens. It’s not going guns blazing through a workout and it’s not “talking pace.” It’s hanging out right where you might start dropping off soon but you can hold on. Once your general fitness is higher, your recovery is better between lifts and between events; it translates into so many other things.

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Terry Laughlin

My five steps to mastery: 

Choose a worthy and meaningful challenge. 

Seek a sensei or master teacher (like George Leonard) to help you establish the right path and priorities. 

Practice diligently, always striving to hone key skills and to progress incrementally toward new levels of competence. 

Love the plateau. All worthwhile progress occurs through brief, thrilling leaps forward followed by long stretches during which you feel you’re going nowhere. Though it seems as if we’re making no progress, we are turning new behaviors into habits. Learning continues at the cellular level . . . if you follow good practice principles. 

Mastery is a journey, not a destination. True masters never believe they have attained mastery. There is always more to be learned and greater

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Drew Houston

If I had a cheat sheet I could give myself at 22, it would have three things on it: a tennis ball, a circle, and the number 30,000. 

The tennis ball is about finding something that you can become obsessed with, like my childhood dog who would go crazy whenever anyone threw a ball for her. The most successful people I know are all obsessed with solving a problem that really matters to them. 

The circle refers to the idea that you’re the average of your five closest friends. Make sure to put yourself in an environment that pulls the best out of you. 

And the last is the number 30,000. When I was 24, I came across a website that says most people live for about 30,000 days—and I was shocked to find that I was already 8,000 days down.

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Make sure the problem you become obsessed with is one that needs solving and is one where your contribution can make a difference. As Y Combinator says, “Make something people want.”

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“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” 

–Louis L’Amour 

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Muneeb Ali

Asking myself the question, “When I’m old, how much would I be willing to pay to travel back in time and relive the moment that I’m experiencing right now?”

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Steven Pinker

Find a new topic or area or concern that has a small number of people you respect behind it, but which has not become a culture-wide fad or conventional wisdom. If it’s already common knowledge, it’s probably too late to make a major contribution. If you’re the only one excited, you may be deluding yourself. 

Ignore advice to simply follow your intuition or gut without thinking through whether the course of action is likely to be fruitful and rewarding. 

Focus on effectiveness—what your actions will actually accomplish—and not self-actualization or other ways of trying to feel good about yourself. 

Don’t think that the arts and verbal professions are the only respectable occupations (a common mindset of grandchildren of workers). The elites sneer at commerce as tawdry, but it’s what gives people what they want and need, and pays for everything else, including the luxury of art. 

Think about what you will add to the world. Some lucrative professions (e.g., ultra-high-tech finance) are dubious applications of human brainpower.

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Whitney Cummings

There’s something very liberating about being dirty, because then you don’t have to worry about getting dirty.

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What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?

 “Network.” In creative fields, I think networking actually hurts you in most cases. Don’t waste your time socializing with people who you think can help you. Just get better, and opportunities will naturally present themselves once you deserve them. Only focus on things within your control. And if you don’t know what those things are, find someone who can tell you. Don’t network, just work.

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Rick Rubin

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? 

Anything having to do with commercial success. Anything having to do with testing things, doing polls, or getting public opinion on your work so you can change it. Anything suggesting a safe path and anything suggesting a stable situation, especially in the beginning. When you start out doing something, you’re likely charting uncharted territory, and it’s good to ask a lot of questions from people in the industry and to learn from them. Remember, though, when people give you advice, they’re giving you advice based on their particular skills, experiences, and perspectives. So know that when you get expert advice, it’s often people telling you about their journey, and every journey is different.

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Ben Silberman

Even at the company, every week I show employees the current week within the year visually, just to remind them that every week matters.

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I left Google in 2008 to start a company, and the first two or three things didn’t work out. Pinterest launched in 2010. It didn’t really start growing quickly for another year or two, and it really took off around 2012. That’s a four-year period where things weren’t going awesome. But, I thought: “That’s not that long. That’s like med school before you go into residency.”

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Yuval Noah Harari

Nobody really knows what the world and the job market will look like in 2040, hence nobody knows what to teach young people today. Consequently, it is likely that most of what you currently learn at school will be irrelevant by the time you are 40.

So what should you focus on? My best advice is to focus on personal resilience and emotional intelligence.

Change is usually stressful, and after a certain age, most people don’t like to change. When you are 16, your entire life is change, whether you like it or not. Your body is changing, your mind is changing, your relationships are changing—everything is in flux. You are busy inventing yourself. By the time you are 40, you don’t want change. You want stability. But in the twenty-first century, you won’t be able to enjoy that luxury. If you try to hold on to some stable identity, some stable job, some stable worldview, you will be left behind, and the world will fly by you.

Don’t trust the adults too much. In the past, it was a safe bet to trust adults, because they knew the world quite well, and the world changed slowly. But the 21st century is going to be different. Whatever the adults have learned about economics, politics, or relationships may be outdated. Similarly, don’t trust technology too much. You must make technology serve you, instead of you serving it. If you aren’t careful, technology will start dictating your aims and enslaving you to its agenda.

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Lorenzo stopped the action and walked around the net. He spoke quietly: “When I was a young player in Italy, nine or ten years old,” he said, “my coach gave me a rule: I could make mistakes, but I couldn’t make the same mistake twice. If I was hitting balls into the net, he would say, ‘I don’t care if you hit balls over the fence or anywhere else, but you’re not allowed to hit any more balls into the net. That’s the only rule.’”

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Most of the time, “What should I do with my life?” is a terrible question. “What should I do with this tennis serve?” “What should I do with this line at Starbucks?” “What should I do with this traffic jam?” “How should I respond to the anger I feel welling up in my chest?” These are better questions. Excellence is the next five minutes, improvement is the next five minutes, happiness is the next five minutes.

This doesn’t mean you ignore planning. I encourage you to make huge, ambitious plans. Just remember that the big-beyond-belief things are accomplished when you deconstruct them into the smallest possible pieces and focus on each “moment of impact,” one step at a time. I’ve had a life full of doubts . . . mostly for no good reason.

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Based on everything I’ve seen, a simple recipe can work: focus on what’s in front of you, design great days to create a great life, and try not to make the same mistake twice.