#but my main goal this year is watch more movie made before 1970

[arikuiiwaltz]

my favorite first time watches of 2024 .... if u even care ...

[ljones41]

"SHAZAM!" (2019) Review

"SHAZAM!" (2019) Review I had been very surprised by Warner Brothers Studios' announcement to produce an adaptation of the Fawcett Comics (later D.C. Comics) character known as Shazam aka Captain Marvel aka Billy Baston. My only memories of the character came from the Filmation television series from the mid-1970s. Not being a fan of this particular series, I regarded this announcement with a leery eye.

The history of D.C. Comics' version of Captain Marvel is an odd and complicated one. Billy Baston aka Captain Marvel aka Shazam was created C.C. Peck and Bill Parker in 1939 and made its debut in Whiz Comics #2, published by Fawcett Comics. The character was an instant hit. Billy Baston was a 12 year-old boy who became a costumed adult with the powers of superhuman strength, speed, flight and other abilities; when he says the word "SHAZAM"! (an acronym for six "immortal elders" - Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury). By the middle of the 1940s, Shazam's popularity had surpassed Superman's. However, D.C. Comics also noticed that the costumed hero bore a strong similarity to Superman and filed a copyright infringement suit against Fawcett Comics in the early 1950s, ending the character's run for nineteen years. Then in 1972, D.C. Comics purchased the rights to Shazam from Fawcett. And in 1991, D.C. Comics required the rights of the entire family of characters associated with Shazam. Like I had said . . . complicated. The plot to this adaptation is a lot more simple. Basically, "SHAZAM!" is an origin story. Written by Henry Gayden and directed by David F. Sandberg, the film began in 1974 upstate New York with young Thaddeus Sivana arguing with his father and older brother during a car trip. Right before a dangerous car crash, Thaddeus is transported to the Rock of Eternity, a magical temple hidden in another dimension. He meets the ancient wizard Shazam, last of the Council of Wizards, who has spent centuries searching for a new champion who is "pure of heart" after the previous champion, driven by revenge, released the Seven Deadly Sins upon the world. Thaddeus is tempted by the Sins, entrapped in statues, and is deemed unworthy and returned to Earth by Shazam. Over forty years later in Philadelphia, foster child Billy Batson runs afoul of the law, while searching for his birth mother. He is placed in a group home with five other foster children, managed by Victor and Rosa Vasquez. Meanwhile, an embittered adult Sivana discovers a way to return to the Rock of Eternity, where he steals the Eye of Sin, becoming the Sins' vessel and besting the Wizard Shazam before returning to Earth. Later, he uses the Sins to murder his remaining family and the Sivana Industries' board of directors. Meanwhile, Billy saves Freddy (one of his fellow foster kids) from bullies and is chased into a subway. There, the wizard summons and chooses Billy as the new champion. By calling Shazam's name, Billy is transformed into an adult superhero endowed with the wizard's name and new powers. And the Wizard turns to dust, leaving behind his staff. While Freddy helps Billy utilize his new powers, Sivana searches for the new Shazam in order to steal the latter's powers. I do not know what to say about "SHAZAM!". It is probably the first D.C. Extended Universe (DCEU) film that I did not warm up to. I am not claiming that it is a terrible movie. I honestly do not believe it is. I thought Henry Gayden wrote a very straight forward narrative that introduced the character of Shazam, conveyed his struggles to control his powers, learn to be a hero and a faced a villain who wanted to steal his abilities. Very simple. Perhaps it was too simple. For me, the most interesting aspect of "SHAZAM!"was Billy Baston's struggles outside of the suit. Billy had to learn to put his past behind him and embrace his new foster family. The movie featured two very surprising plot twists in its narrative. One of those twists featured the other five kids at his foster home. Due to my unfamiliarity with Shazam, what happened in the hero's final battle against Sivana and the Sins at a local winter carnival took me completely by surprise. This first twist involved SHAZAM spell and Billy's foster sisters and brothers. But a previous plot twist not only surprised me, but in a way that truly satisfied. For a brief period, the movie featured a scene in which Billy not only discovered his birth mother, but also learned the truth behind their separation. I was very impressed by the ambiguous nature of this scene and how it helped develop Billy's character arc. I thought this scene was worthy of the ambiguity featured in the early DCEU movies and left me longing for them more than ever. The cast for "SHAZAM!" proved to be first-rate. The movie featured solid performances from the likes of Faithe Herman, Grace Fulton, Ian Chen, and Jovan Armand as Billy Baston's foster brothers and sisters. I could say the same for Cooper Andrews and Marta Milans, who portrayed Billy's parents. Djimon Hounsou gave a nice, dignified performance as the wizard Shazam, who granted Billy his powers. And it was nice to see John Glover, who gave a deliciously spiteful performance as Mr. Sivana, the estranged father of Dr. Thaddeus Sivana. But there were performances that I especially took notice. Caroline Palmer gave a subtle and skillful performance as Billy's biological mother, Marilyn. Jack Dylan Grazer was very entertaining as Billy's disabled foster brother, the nerdy and enthusiastic Frederick "Freddy" Freeman. Mark Strong's portrayal of the villainous Dr. Sivana really impressed me, for he managed to both sinister and emotionally pathetic. The movie's leading man, Zachary Levi, was also entertaining as the recently empowered Billy Baston in an adult body. But for me, the best performance came from Asher Angel, who I thought gave a very nuanced and complex performance as the adolescent Billy Baston, who is reluctant to accept his new foster family, due to his obsession with finding his mother. Despite these virtues, "SHAZAM!" proved to be something of a disappointment for me. Quite frankly, I thought it was a rather bland and conformist comic book hero movie. In a way, it reminded me of 2008's "IRON MAN", a movie that was saved from its mediocre or paint-by-the-numbers narrative by a volatile leading character. In the case of "SHAZAM!", it had a mediocre narrative and direction style saved by a leading character that was a boy in an empowered adult body. In fact, someone had dubbed the film as the DCEU's version of the 1988 movie, "BIG". Otherwise, I felt as if I was watching a comic book movie from the 1990s. I found it sad to watch a movie that had regressed a film genre by two decades. Actually, I found that not only sad, but disturbing. Despite Mark Strong's best efforts, the movie's main villain proved to be unsurprisingly one-dimensional. Dr. Sivana did not strike me as a memorable villain. Nor did his goal - namely the acquisition of more supernatural powers. He came off as a typical villain from the old 1998-2006 television series, "CHARMED". And as much as I admired Zachary Levi's performance, I also noticed that his portrayal of Billy Baston seemed to be at least half a decade younger than Asher Angel's portrayal. Levi's Billy struck me as less mature and more silly. Nor did it help that the one moment that allowed Billy to mature a bit more, happened when he was NOTthe empowered Shazam. It almost made Billy's acquisition of his new powers irrelevant to his character development. And for me, that is not a good thing for a comic book hero movie. I would comment on David F. Sandberg's direction, but frankly it seemed to lack any challenging or innovative qualities to me. Is "SHAZAM!" indicative of Warner Brothers' new direction for the DCEU franchise? I fear so. What a pity. It is not a bad film. The latter featured two interesting plot twists and a first-rate performance from one of its leading men, Asher Angel. But overall, I found both the plot and David F. Sandberg's direction rather bland. The film critics and many moviegoers seemed to love this. Needless to say, I do no share their feelings. And if this is the DCEU's new direction, it can keep it as far as I am concerned.

[restinpicturespod]

DEBORAH KERR WATCHLIST

It has been 10 years since we have lost the effervescent Deborah Kerr but luckily she left us with a lifetime of movie watching.

While the two of us watched whatever we could get our hands on, our goal is to always watch three of the same films together in order to create a deeper discussion. Check out our complete LETTERBOXD for everything that we watched as well as our pick for the Must-See Deborah Kerr movie.

BLACK NARCISSUS (1947)

An early predecessor to the Nunsploitation films prominent throughout the 1970s, BLACK NARCISSUS may not be the most conventional of exploitation films featuring nuns but it works as long as Sister Ruth is involved.

A group of nuns seek a remote Himalayan village to set up a school and hospital for the indigenous people. They set up this new covenant in a palace previously utilized as a Harem and is now owned by the wealthy "Young General". It is apparent over time that the two opposing societies struggle to hold control over this land. The nuns attempt to create a cultured place of teaching, healing, and worship but the tide soon changes. In order to stay at the palace, Sister Clodagh allows the Young General entry to the women and children only teaching environment. From here on out, the struggle is lost and the nunnery soon spirals into chaos.

There are the struggle and cultural misunderstandings (both on and off the screen) is the base of this film but it all comes down to Deborah Kerr's overwhelmed Sister Clodagh facing off against Kathleen Byron's unhinged Sister Ruth. Both are equally fantastic and completely make the movie even if there was nothing else there... but there is so much more.

Powell and Pressburger (The Archers) team up with cinematographer Jack Cardiff to create a vivid spectrum of colors to create an almost dreamlike atmosphere. Alongside the beautiful cinematography, they harnessed the full limits of technicolor by creating in-camera glass matte paintings to maintain color control.

Color is used even more to signify the sisters and their surroundings. This covenant conveniently wears all white habits. Throughout Sister Clodagh's decent into madness the pure white innocence of her habit becomes dirty and tarnished the more she loses control of her nunnery. When it's time for Sister Ruth to let her freak flag fly, her face becomes pale, her lips terrifyingly red, her black hair exposed, her eyes and clothing as dark as her soul. The Archer's create an amazingly tense climax between Clodagh and Ruth at the edge of the belltower. It is a complete movie through and through and one that cannot be missed.

And just when you think you've seen it all, there's Mr. Dean and his tiny pony.

THE INNOCENTS (1961)

On the surface level, it plays out like just another Hammer Horror film; Although it was not under the Hammer productions nor did the director, Jack Clayton, want it to be confused with the style. The finished product is much more acutely polished with a more cerebral style of fear. The kind of horror movie that creates a narrative through its story equally with its visuals.

Deborah Kerr (amazing as always) plays the demure Miss Giddens as she takes over the paternal responsibilities of two young children Miles and Flora. Before long, whispering voices and shadowy figures torment Miss Giddens. But the balance and deception that Clayton expertly crafts, creates a genuinely haunting atmosphere of distrust and sanity.

The first thing that popped into my head within the first 15 minutes of the movie was... "I think Guillermo Del Torro would love this". Not just within the obvious case of CRIMSON PEAK but within other work like PAN'S LABYRINTH and DEVIL'S BACKBONE. With a little bit of research wouldntcha know, THE INNOCENTS was one of GDT's main influences for CRIMSON PEAK. THE INNOCENTS screams of passion, style, and mystery and leaves you hanging with a sense of unease, a dose of astonishment and a final WTF head scratching moment.

THE GYPSY MOTHS (1969)

It felt more like one of those True-Life documentaries that Disney used to produce back in the 50s. Almost like Frankenheimer wanted to get in on that new skydiving craze all the kids are talking about. There's a lot of buildup to a trio of guys jumping out of a plane and the piece de resistance being the "cape jump" which by today's standards is extremely tame. The ending has a nice and unexpected twist, however, leaves us with about a 20-minute ending of predictability. Maybe the only thing that made it particularly unexpected is just how bland the rest of the story was. Kerr is elegant as ever. Hackman is a firecracker of energy. Lancaster sleepwalks himself right into his very last scene.

It's surprising that this was one of Frankenheimer's very favorite movies. Different strokes I guess.

The two of us watched 8 Deborah Kerr films. Check out the entire list on LETTERBOXD.

[bookishbloggerreviews]

Prometheus vs Alien: Covenant --An Honest Review

Hey guys! So today I decided that I would do my first movie(s) review and the reason why I’m posting this is because I was binge-watching the Alien series again and I wanted to do compare and contrast of the newer Alien movies. So before I review, I’m not here to glorify these movies. Many people clearly already like these movies and they have a lot of good to them obviously. But I will point things out and compliment them when done well, so having said that, lets get started!

(Also, to briefly add in, this is all just speculation and opinion so if I'm totally wrong please feel free to correct me.)

[WARNING: SPOILERS]

If you haven’t watched the movies then I suggest you do so because from this point on, everything I say will be spoilers.

Prometheus vs. Alien: Covenant. 

Which was the better movie and which one stayed closer to the true Alien origin? 

The first person I would like to talk about in these movies is our “villain”, David. 

As we all know David is a “working Joe”, or basically a robot/AI that is meant to serve and assist human beings. And when I say “villain”, I say it as strictly as broken ruler, and here’s why. 

In Prometheus, or what would be the “beginning” of the Alien series, we meet David. In this movie David is assisting his creator attempt to reach HIS creator so that his life may be spared. And during this movie, we have what I would like to define as a “true neutral”. David’s intentions are not full of malice, hate, joy, or happiness. David, if anything, is more like a three year old childish immortal and he is simply.... curious. 

His definitions of life, the world, morality and emotions are so limited and basic that he truly can’t understand them and in this movie, for the majority of the movie, all we see David doing is attempting to interact and understand the world he sees around him. As humans, would we define David’s interactions as wrong, and perhaps maybe even hostile? Sure. Because we relate with the humans. 

In the prologue to Alien: Covenant we are made aware that David fully understands how short-lived and futile human life is, and that he doesn’t understand why he is serving it. Yet all throughout Prometheus, he does not take one violent action against the crew members. 

Now we have a debatable scene where he infects one of the crew members with the pathogen but even then I would not consider that to be a violent action against the crew. He asks Charlie, one of the original scientists how far he would go to achieve his goals and find what he came to find, and in a sense, was asking for permission to infect Charlie with the pathogen. When Charlie said, “Anything”, David took this as permission. But David, although it may have been somewhat sly, still asked for permission and consent, meaning that David, who believes humans are underneath him, still values morality. 

Now if we were to compare this to the David we see in Alien: Covenant, we have an entirely different character. 

In Alien: Covenant, David lies, he deceives, he’s violent, he doesn’t ask for permission or consent, he attacks, and he’s full of malicious intent. Now comparing that to the AI who just wanted to learn more about space, this character threw me for a curve ball. The actor, Michael Fassbender, certainly brings around those same character attributes that make David who he is, but the characters personalities in these movies are two entirely different beings. 

In Prometheus, you can choose to make David the villain, but in Covenant, he IS, undeniably, the villain. 

Now I love talking about character arcs and how characters evolve, however, I believe that this change was too abrupt to accurately say that they should be even labeled as the same character, which is pretty detrimental for David being the main character of a prologue series.

Moving onto the atmosphere Alien brings, anyone who has watched the movie recognizes that old, 1970′s science-fiction/horror atmosphere that is filled with both wonder and fear. And I believe that Prometheus, although not as accurate, managed to retain that original atmosphere. For the majority of the movie, our main characters are simply exploring, using medical and scientific equipment to discover who/what they are and it is only until two thirds through the movie that the “Alien” appears. And even then, it’s not all about the alien at that point. There is still more to the story to be discovered and it’s not just the crew running for their lives. 

But if we compare Alien: Covenant to this, the atmosphere is not only entirely different, but we spend almost half of the movie watching an alien-based action/horror film. The characters in the movie are not “scientists”, as we could describe in Prometheus, in fact, outside of the first half an hour of the movie, the only characters who seem remotely engaged in anything scientific is David, Walter, and Daniels. 

And, of course, we could bring up how hilariously dumb the characters are and how poorly protected they are as scientists (who should probably know better), but in the end, I think we can all safely come to the conclusion that Alien: Covenant, was not made to be a sci-fi/horror, it was made to be an action movie. 

So which movie, overall, was better and stuck with the Alien universe better? I’d have to say it would be Prometheus.

However, did I enjoy Alien:Covenant regardless? 

Yes. Because while I love sci-fi more than action, I still love action. 

Thanks for reading this review. I hope you enjoyed it and if you agreed or disagreed please let me know. I’m always happy to fangirl over stuff together and I’m always up for a debate. (Plus I’m more than happy to talk about how attracted I am to original David and Walter, because those well-written, well-portrayed characters always have me screaming). But until next time, your bookish blogger is out! 

[onelifemedia]

CINEMATOGRAPHY OSCAR NOMINEES ON AUTHENTICITY AND AVOIDING VFX https://ift.tt/2OZteQ0

The DoPs behind 1917, Joker, The Irishman, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood and The Lighthouse reflect on the bold choices they made to bring dynamic visions to the screen. 

Cinematographers are moving both forward and backward in technological terms this year, ironically in pursuit of the same goal: authenticity.

Avoiding VFX and instead opting to shoot reality has been a central theme. Robert Richardson used real Los Angeles backgrounds for the driving scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood. Roger Deakins contended with real explosions and fires in Sam Mendes’s 1917. 

Rigging equipment has also been a common talking point for DoPs in 2019. Deakins pushed the boundaries of stabilising devices to enable extended tracking shots for the continuous-take approach of 1917, while Papamichael explored the limits of large-format cameras, putting them in positions that would have been impossible a few years ago (on a low mounted arm attached to a racing car, in one case). Perhaps most complicated of all was Rodrigo Prieto’s “three-headed monster”, a three-camera set-up used to aid the CGI de-ageing process for Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman.

These and other top cinema­tographers no longer debate analogue versus digital, with plenty saying it is digital and film, rather than digital or film. This is in part due to rapid advances in camera technology by companies like Arri, with films including 1917 utilising a large-format digital camera that, according to Deakins, is as good as any film camera.

Mixing light sources has also been in vogue, with Lawrence Sher using harsh fluorescents and urban streetlamps to create the heightened eeriness of Joker and grittiness of the city.

Whether they are using old-school filmmaking techniques or the latest technology, these cinematographers are creating brave new worlds for audiences and their craft.

Lawrence Sher - Joker

SOURCE: NIKO TAVERNISE

LAWRENCE SHER ON THE ‘JOKER’ SET

Lawrence Sher has been known primarily for his work on comedies including Todd Phillips’ The Hangover trilogy, Paul, The Dictator and I Love You, Man, before he reunited with Phillips to create the dark, sinister world of Joker.

While Joaquin Phoenix’s performance threw up regular surprises during the shoot, Sher was a ready and willing partner for the award-winning actor, and says his own work plumbing the depths of the DC Comics arch villain — which won him Camerimage’s Golden Frog award in November — is not as big a departure as it initially appears.

What was the shooting schedule like for Joker?I read the script about a year before, did an early scout in March [2018] and then prepped for 10 weeks. The shoot lasted 60 days with one day of shooting lost due to issues with the LED lighting on the New York City subway sequence. 

What was your approach to Joker’s colour scheme?My main colour palette was drawn first and foremost from real lighting fixtures that exist in the city. I also looked at movies of that era in which the movie takes place [1981], the colour of the film stock at the time and how it would capture all of this mixed light. The colour palette is a mix of utilitarian light and uncorrected fluorescents — we kept their crappy look so it wouldn’t be clean.

We changed out some of the streetlights so they would be sodium vapour, as opposed to LED which many streetlights are now. When we shot at dusk, you have that blueish light that mixes with the sodium vapours and suddenly you have the colours that I think people associate with the movie: the blues, greens, oranges and greys. You can see the messiness of the city. 

How did you approach working with the actors to capture their performances?On set we maintain a certain rhythm for the actors. If they have to go back to trailer, even for 20 minutes, there is a momentum loss. So if I can shoot fast, they never have to leave the set. It helps everybody, especially the scene. 

Todd Phillips encouraged improvisation, for instance the bathroom scene where Joker starts to dance after killing the men in the subway. Did that approach affect the shooting?That shot was improvisational. He was going to come into the bathroom, hide the gun, wash off the make-up and stand in the mirror and laugh. But with Todd, the movie is constantly being rewritten so you are discovering it as you make it. All of the planning is there but he’s always flexible. With that scene, he wanted to try it non-verbally. He played a piece of music — he didn’t tell the camera operator what was going to happen — and we got that scene in one take. 

Was your approach to Joker different to your other films?My lighting approach is not any different. We are not servicing comedy [in Joker]. Some of the compositions come to the forefront perhaps, more than in my previous works. But my approach, particularly with Todd, is to allow for flexibility and freedom. A lot of it is co-ordination with production design and needing the freedom to be able to light a big space. To have the world lit as opposed to focused on a specific person on a mark. 

Which sequence was the most challenging to shoot?The subway scene where he kills three Wall Street guys. We shot on a stage and with LED panels. It was challenging because while we had more money than other independent films, it’s still a budget issue. Todd had always described it as a fever dream — this kind of escalating light show. We accomplished it with a very expensive row of LED lights on both sides, though not too many LEDs because we tried to keep to the light as they had it in the 1970s and ’80s. I was taking the New York subway all the time and shooting with my iPhone to figure out the lighting for that scene. 

How did you find working with Joaquin Phoenix?It was a transformative experience watching him act and getting to know him. I didn’t say anything to him during prep; he was a little bit intimidating. He apologised to me for acting weird and I said, “No man, do your thing.” We grew to have a good relationship, where we would challenge each other with the choices on set.

Rodrigo Prieto - The Irishman

SOURCE: NIKO TAVERNISE PICTURES

RODRIGO PRIETO WITH MARTIN SCORSESE ON THE SET OF ‘THE IRISHMAN’

Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto has worked alongside acclaimed directors including Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (21 Grams, Babel), Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) and Pedro Almodovar (Broken Embraces). The Irishman marks his third feature with Martin Scorsese, after The Wolf Of Wall Street and Silence.

Prieto describes the epic crime drama as one of his most challenging projects to date: an intensive 108-day shoot involving more than 300 set-ups, with the added challenge of managing a complicated CGI de-ageing process for the main actors, which incorporated a “three-headed monster” camera rig.

Although Martin Scorsese is an avid supporter of shooting on film, you had to use digital as well to achieve the de-ageing technique.Yes, 56% was shot on digital and 44% on film. The overall look I thought had to be based on film negative because of the memory aspect. Scorsese talked about home movies, this sensation of remembering the past through images, so I developed looks based on still photography, Koda­chrome and Ektachrome.

For the visual effects, it was necessary to shoot with digital cameras where the face had to be replaced with CGI. Visual-effects supervisor Pablo Helman from Industrial Light & Magic needed three cameras synched for every angle and the shutters had to all be in perfect sync. The challenge of getting three cameras to move in unison meant that using film cameras from a practical standpoint was nearly impossible.

Was it Pablo Helman who came up with the idea of using CGI to de-age the actors?Yes, when we were shooting Silence, Pablo said he thought there was a way to make actors look younger through computer-generated imagery. He came up with a three-headed rig where the central camera, the Red Helium, is capturing the shot and two witness cameras, Arri Alexa Minis, are sat on either side of the main camera to read the infrared map of the actors’ faces. We called it the “three-headed monster”.

Can you talk about the stages of the de-ageing process and how that was achieved?There are several different stages. Prosthetics were used to make the actors look older. Make-up could make the actors look younger, for example making a 70-year-old actor look like they were in their 50s. VFX and CGI de-ageing were used when the actors are close to the transition to make-up, and that was complicated as the ageing transition was subtle, say, only a few months in time rather than several years. The technical and make-up teams had to be sure the transition was smooth.

How did you map out the visual arc of a film that spans five decades over three-and-a-half hours?We did not want to make it over-stylised or flashy. Scorsese wanted the camera to reflect the way Frank Sheeran [played by Robert De Niro] approached his job, which was simple, methodical and repetitive. The audience sees the same shots with Frank — the camera pans around at the same angle. When we were with other characters, like crazy Joe Gallo, the camera behaves differently.

How did the fact the film was made to screen first and foremost on Netflix affect the way it was shot?For the most part it wasn’t a consideration. Scorsese designs his shots in a way that helps the story. The one thing we did change was the aspect ratio. Normally, Scorsese would use widescreen but in this case we thought we had better use 1.85 because it would fill up home screens. It also fit Frank’s personality more, as well as helping to show the height difference between the characters. Frank was a tall man so we made special shoes for De Niro and boxes with cushions where he sat. For accuracy, we also changed his eye colour to blue.

You were working on a tight schedule. Was there any room for improvisation during the shoot?When the actors want to try something different, Scorsese will almost always go for it. Near the end of the film, Frank is looking as his car is being washed and it’s a defining moment. We lit the scene for him standing and always looking at the car. Then De Niro said, “I always kind of imagined being inside the car.” So Marty said, “Oh, OK, let’s do that.” I had to set it up in three seconds. As soon as we shot it, I could see that his performance was there.

Jarin Blaschke - The Lighthouse

SOURCE: CHRIS REARDON

JARIN BLASCHKE ON THE SET OF ‘THE LIGHTHOUSE’

Born in the Los Angeles suburbs, Jarin Blaschke continues a collaboration with filmmaker Robert Eggers that began on the latter’s 2008 short The Tell-Tale Heart and encompassed his haunting 2015 feature debut The Witch. For The Lighthouse, the pair conjured up another strange and foreboding world: a mysterious New England island in the 1890s, inhabited by lighthouse keepers Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. Blaschke deployed innovative lighting and lensing solutions to take on not just the wilds of authentic Nova Scotia locations, but the demands of dark, cramped, wet settings.

How many years did it take to develop the concept of The Lighthouse?I didn’t have a script until a month or two before prep, but Rob first pitched this idea probably three years before that. With him, it starts with atmosphere, so my subconscious was working on the atmosphere at the same time that we were developing The Witch. We didn’t know which one would go [first] and then The Witch happened.

The Lighthouse was shot in black and white, with a 1.19:1 aspect ratio, on Kodak Double X 35mm film format, which dates from the 1950s. How much testing did you do?There was a battery of tests I put myself through, like testing real oil lamps to see how to do it with an electrical lamp. I had to know how to light differently: I bolstered the light levels by 15, sometimes 20 times, and the film stock had to be tested in rain, backlit to know where it looks like night but also doesn’t look overly lit.

What logistical challenges did you face shooting on location in Nova Scotia?The weather was bad and added about four days to our schedule. It could have been worse but we had a covered set. We couldn’t do a night scene one night because it was too windy and even with day scenes, you have frames where you need to bounce light back using a giant sail and it gets a little hairy. There was a lot of eating cold porridge in the dark in the morning and the breakfast tent was going to blow away. We had to build this hardcore tent just to have breakfast. It adds to the movie, I hope.

In exploring the space between reality and insanity in The Light­house, did you use special lenses for certain scenes?I went to Panavision. I know vintage lenses are really trendy right now. I had some experience with the usual suspects: Cooke Series 2s and Super Baltars [used in The Godfather and The Birds]. They put original Baltars in front of me and I fell in love with them. So we had old Baltars from the 1930s. We used the first high-speed portrait lens of the 19th century for special shots, like [Robert Pattinson] having sex with a mermaid, the hand going down the body. Stuff that was super heightened where we could get away with it.

How did your collaboration with Eggers inspire you for certain images?I’ve known Rob for 12 years so I knew there were going to be a lot of symmetrical two-shots. There is one direct reference to a Sascha Schneider painting. And the last scene in the film is in the lookbook. Those are the only two references, everything else I tried to create. I know Rob watched all kinds of crazy stuff, like videos with shark genitals.

You are also working on Eggers’ next film, The Northman. What can you say about it?Rob says very little. It’s a bigger movie than the others. I can say it’s a Viking revenge movie and we are shooting in Europe. I think he feels a responsibility to do a trilogy. It’s dark and unusually violent.

Robert Richardson - Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood

SOURCE: ANDREW COOPER

ROBERT RICHARDSON WITH QUENTIN TARANTINO

A nine-time Oscar nominee and three-time winner, Robert Richardson’s career has been closely associated with three filmmakers: Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. For Stone, he photographed 11 features in a little over a decade, winning the Oscar for JFK; two of his five collaborations with Scorsese brought him Oscar statuettes (The Aviator and Hugo); and he shared Camerimage’s director and cinematographer duo award with Tarantino for their work across six films including Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood. Richardson is known across the industry for pushing boundaries and doing whatever it takes to achieve a shot.

How would you typify your relationship with Quentin Tarantino?A relationship with a director is a marriage. I have been fortunate enough to forge a series of relationships with all of the directors I’ve worked with from the beginning. It’s the idea that you are linked together and begin to understand how the other speaks, what you like and don’t like. It’s so important. Collaboration at that level is why rock ‘n’ roll bands are the very best when they hold out and play together as the same team as long as they can. The Beatles wouldn’t have been who they were without John, Paul, George and Ringo.

What is your creative process like with Tarantino once you’ve read the script?Quentin was in the room when I first read the [Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood] script. It took me a substantial time to read it. After we had dinner, we made notes and then he played music: ‘Good Thing’ from Paul Revere & The Raiders, ‘Mrs Robinson’ from Simon & Garfunkel, ‘California Dreamin’ from Jose Feliciano. The soundtrack is like a character in the film; it leads you, it is continuously playing from a radio station. The music helped build on the emotion of the characters and the movement of the film.

What is Tarantino’s process for selecting shots?He only shoots on film, he only processes on film and he only watches dailies on film. He doesn’t see digital replication until he gets to the Avid in the editing room. Our process is to shoot a film chemically, process and print chemically, and that print is duplicated on a 35mm projector. You then project the film as well as the digital intermediate, and they need to replicate each other perfectly, otherwise Quentin doesn’t want to discuss it. It’s definitely challenging, but that’s how we get to be better artists.

And when filming, Tarantino always sits beside the camera?Quentin is a director not a selector. He sits beside the camera. There is no video village, there is no video replay. You don’t go back and look at something. He watches the actors and their performance. If he’s got it, it’s over. If there is an error, something happened or an actor needs a retake, he will listen to why, but he will always choose in the editorial process the very best performance. The film is golden in its use of warm, saturated colours. We wanted to make a film that was about California and sunshine. On my side, it’s a combination of film stock, lenses and light. For the golden exteriors, we used a combination of Panavision’s anamorphic lenses and golden lenses.

You are known for using myriad film stocks to achieve different looks. What did you use for this film?We shot 35mm anamorphic, except when shooting Rick Dalton’s western television series, then we were 35mm black and white, and we shot with spherical zooms mostly in 1.33. There were also two sequences at Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski’s home that we shot on Kodak Ektachrome, one in 16mm black and white and the other on Super8mm colour.

Roger Deakins - 1917

SOURCE: FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL/UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND DREAMWORKS PICTURES

ROGER DEAKINS ON THE SET OF ‘1917’

Winner of four Baftas and an Oscar (secured last year for Blade Runner 2049 on his 14th nomination), the prolific Deakins has been an influential figure in cinematography since he burst on to the scene with 1984. On that film he pioneered a bleach bypass process to achieve a washed-out look that went on to be used in films including Se7en and Saving Private Ryan. He has also been at the forefront of embracing digital filming methods, not least on Sam Mendes’s Skyfall.

He reunites with Mendes on 1917, which follows two soldiers on a mission to avert a strategic disaster during the First World War. Deakins and Mendes had to invent new ways to move the camera to create the impression that the narrative was unfolding in a single, continuous shot — an innovative feat that puts the audience on the frontline.

How did you achieve so much fluidity in single camera shooting?We used a lot of different rigs. Probably 60% of the film was shot on a stabilised remote head. Some shots are done on the Trinity [Arri stabiliser rig], some are done on the conventional Steadicam and there’s even a drone. But the majority of the film is done remotely with a stabilised head that’s either carried by the grips or a tracking vehicle on the end of a crane or on a wire.

How did you plan such incredible camera movement while keeping up the illusion of one continuous shot?Sometimes it’s put on to a wire and then moved, or it’s taken off the wire and then someone carries it or runs with it so it all becomes one shot. The reason was not only to sustain the scene but also that we didn’t want to cut in some of the obvious places.

Were you pushing the existing technology, or did you have to create new methods?We created some of our own. For instance, running with speed down a trench in front of two characters like we were, you can’t do that on Steadicam. So a Steadicam operator came up with the design of little mini-posts with gyros on them, and we put a very small remote head on top. He would run down the trench facing forward with the camera facing backwards over his shoulder, which I was remotely operating. Then he’d get to a corner in the trench and segue around so he started on a front shot.

How did you communicate with the operating team on the ground?I’d be operating remotely. I don’t like wearing earphones because I’m constantly running to and from the set talking to grips or whoever. James [Deakins’ wife and digital workflow consultant] would be on set wearing earphones and relaying messages to the crew. During a shot, she would say things to the operating team like “faster, faster” or “you are getting too close, a little to the left”. It helped because they couldn’t see what the camera was seeing.

How integral were the four months of rehearsals?The trick was for Sam and me to figure out what we wanted to do: where we wanted the camera and to finesse the camera moves relative to the actors. We tested specific rigs on specific kinds of shots. That was the big trick, really, practising with different pieces of equipment. We also went to Salisbury Plain and mapped out all the shots we wanted before anything was dug or built, such as the farmhouse.

How was the weather integral to the film?Being such an exterior movie, we were very dependent on the light and the weather. And we realised you can’t really light it. If you were running down a trench and turning around 360 degrees, there’s nowhere to put a light. Because we were shooting in story order, we had to shoot in cloud to get the continuity from scene to scene. Some mornings the sun would be out and we couldn’t shoot so we would rehearse instead.

The shooting in 1917 had to be in sync with the editing. How did that process work?Sam had to choose the take he wanted before we did the next shot because we had to match them, like the beginning of the B side had to match the end of the A side. That frame and the camera movement and the position of the actors had to match exactly. We would have the take on playback, and set up the incoming take and keep playing the beginning to match the end of the shot. That’s the great thing about video assist and being able to overlay the two images.

You were one of the early adopters of digital shooting. What won you over?

The Arri Alexa tipped the point for me between film and digital. I find it a bit of a non-argument. I think it’s what’s in the frame and where you point the camera.

[stoplookingup]

This is not silly redux

I originally posted this after seeing Wonder Woman, but in light of the Doctor Who casting announcement, it’s worth repeating. (Original posting here.)

____________________________

Some men are really pissed off about all the girl cooties that have been contaminating their action-genre movie and TV franchises lately. Granted, most men I know are not like that. Most want nothing to do with the bitter, disaffected minority of male fans who fill up online comment sections with vitriolic misogyny (and racism — which, not surprisingly, often comes with it). But those vocal yahoos are just a super-concentrated distillation of something bigger and more pervasive: the sense that women are, at best, guests in a man’s world.

To more "enlightened" men, we are welcome guests — but guests nevertheless. When they look at Fury Road, The Force Awakens, Rogue One, Wonder Woman, or Star Trek Discovery [editing to add Doctor Who featuring Jodie Whittaker] — not just women-led stories, but installments in beloved male-dominated franchises — and think, That’s nice, let the girls have some fun too, they are trivializing something that is, to me, Earth-shaking and paradigm-shifting. No doubt, they feel pretty good about their broad-minded acceptance of the female presence, oblivious to the fact that we had to break down the door with a battering ram to get in. What is petty to them is profound and validating to us. And the fact that, the moment I typed that, I felt silly — afraid that someone will accuse me of being melodramatic and overemotional — is actually what I want to talk about.

I am a child of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The coolest things on TV aimed at girls my age were The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, shows that incorporated pop music and fashion, but basically just slapped a fresh coat of groovy paint on the same old gender roles. Moms nurture, dads work. Boys play sports, girls do art. Boys sing lead, girls sing backup. And anyway, I was a tomboy, with little use for domestic stories about family, friends, and dating. I wanted action, adventure, and excitement. I wanted courageous feats of derring-do performed in pursuit of noble goals like honor, exploration, and justice. I wanted bravery, brains, and heroism.

I wanted Star Trek.

I fell in love with Star Trek when I was about ten, and in no time at all, I had hooked my best friend, Rifka. Soon, all of our playtime was spent pretending to be the characters we admired in the fiction we loved. I was Kirk, she was Spock (I’ve written about this before, here.) While Star Trek was our main gig, we play-acted other stories as well: Bonanza (I was Little Joe, she was Adam); The Hardy Boys (from the books — the TV show was still several years away; I was Joe, she was Frank); Lost in Space (I was John Robinson, she was Don West); Hawaii Five-O (I was Steve McGarrett, she was Danno Williams); Batman (though rarely, because neither of us wanted to be Robin). Always men.

Though there were women in some of these stories, we never pretended to be them. Of course, now, with adult hindsight, I can appreciate characters like Uhura, who pushed the boundaries not only of gender, but of race as well. (Whoopi Goldberg was famously inspired to ask Gene Roddenberry for a role on Star Trek: The Next Generation after having been profoundly affected by Uhura as a child — so much so that, the first time she saw Uhura on TV, she excitedly told her mother, "There's a black lady on television, and she ain't no maid!") But at the time, with a child’s eyes, I wasn’t interested in gray areas, fine distinctions, and historical context. The women were never the bravest, the toughest, or the most important. And we saw ourselves as the bravest, the toughest, and the most important. Period.

Then one day, everything changed. Or more accurately, a gradual change that had been percolating in the background came to a head. We must have been about 12 or 13, an age when we still played pretend, but were vaguely embarrassed about the childishness of it. Whereas we used to play openly during recess and after school with large groups of friends, now it was just the two of us — our little secret. But I was growing more and more uneasy, torn between my love of being in the stories and my sense that I was getting too old for this kind of thing. And something else; something I couldn’t put my finger on, but that made me feel kind of squeamish.

As it happened, we were playing Hardy Boys that day. It was all going as usual; we’d agreed on some mystery to investigate, and we were making up the details as we went along — until I called time out. That’s when I dropped what I was about to realize was a bombshell.

“I want to be a girl.”

I can still see the look on my friend's face. It was as if I’d said I wanted to be Robin. No, worse. A villain. No, even worse. A lamppost.

“But you can’t be a girl,” she said. “Joe is a boy.”

I saw my mistake too late and tried in vain to make it right.

“I’ll be exactly like Joe, but a girl. I’ll do all the same things. Only my name won’t be Joe. I’ll pick a girl’s name.”

Eventually, Rifka reluctantly agreed, and we gave it a shot. But basically, that was it — the end of our pretending. We may have made a few more half-hearted attempts to get up a good game of Star Trek after that, but I’d pretty much put the nails in the coffin and handed out the hammers. It was the end of an era.

Looking back, it’s easy for me to see exactly what was happening. That little voice of heterosexual puberty had entered my head — the one that whispered, “If you want boys to like you, you need to be a girl. A real girl.” I guess Rifka hadn’t quite gotten there yet, but I suspect she did eventually (I would love to ask her, but alas, to my great sorrow, I can’t, as she is no longer with us). I also know exactly what Rifka heard the moment I said, “I want to be a girl.” It was, “I renounce and betray all our shared values. I settle for second best. I give up my hopes and dreams. I strike a bargain with the devil.”

Yes, it was really that stark and simple. Black and white. Girls didn’t fight the good fight, or any fight at all. They didn’t get the grand missions to save humanity, explore new frontiers, or pursue truth and justice. Ever. There was nothing in our world, real or fictional, that said they did. Girls weren’t heroes.

“I want to be a girl” meant “I don’t want to be a hero.” I understand completely now the look of betrayal on Rifka’s face. To be honest, I understood it then, too. I just didn’t know how to find another way.

I am 55 years old now. When I sit in a darkened movie theater or tucked up in bed watching Furiosa, Rey, Jyn, Wonder Woman, Melinda May, Peggy Carter, Natasha Romanoff, Buffy Summers, Kathryn Janeway, Aeryn Sun, Dana Scully, River Song, Zoe Washburne — such a long list now, I can’t even name them all! — I’m sometimes overwhelmed by the magnitude of it, knowing what those characters would have meant to me if they’d existed half a century ago. I am downright giddy at the thought of a new series in the Star Trek franchise promoted with a trailer that features two female characters as the unambiguous leads — a trailer that opens with the words, “Ten years before Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise….”. [Adding: and a new Doctor played by a woman!]

I believe that, because of all these fictional women — heroes — when my daughters say, “I want to be a girl,” it won’t mean, “I surrender.” It will mean only whatever they want it to mean. And if there are men out there who think that’s silly, I will try hard not to care, because this isn’t about them.

[himitsusentaiblog]

looking at the two page spread you recently posted and I noticed that a lot of these toku heroes are from the 70's and seem to be relatively unknown but were there more unknown toku heroes during 80's and 90's and which would you recommend?

Ok, for the realtively obscure tokusatsu heroes of the 1970s I can’t say much about the ones on the list as I have yet to see any of their series.  I will say I have seen the recent Denjin Zaborgar movie (Karate Robot Zaborgar is the American Title) and it’s pretty fun.  

I know it takes some liberties but fans I have talked to say it’s not too far off from the tone of the original if a little more risque and over the top.

There is a relatively obscure 1970′s Tokusatsu I will recommend and that’s Dengeki Strada 5.

This is a 1974 series about an elite group made up of members of the International Police who fight against the evil Big Nova organization headed by the freakish Asmodeus.  Big Nova seeks to conquer Japan and they will stop at nothing to accomplish their goal.  This series came out the year before Himitsu Sentai Goranger and they bear a few similarities.  There is a five man team made up of elite members of a government organization.  There are four men and one woman. They take their orders from a non-suited commander and they are fighting a shadowy, evil organization responsible for killing some of their friends and colleagues. The difference is that Strada 5 doesn’t seem to have any actual powers, just weapons and their uniforms are, well, uniform as opposed to differently colored.  Their helmets also have no masks, leaving their faces exposed in combat.  I have only seen two episodes but what I have seen is VERY good.

As for little known series of the 1980s, there were a few that come to mind. One is Nebula Mask Machine Man.

I have not personally seen this one yet but I have heard good things about it from someone who has.

The other is a show from 1985 called Brother Fist Bycrosser.

This one I have seen and tells the tale of two brothers given powers by aliens in order to battle the evil forces of Destar who seek to torment children in order for their cries and scream to make and evil statue produce diamonds.  The show has some very goofy moments:

But in my opinion that just makes it all the more fun to watch.  I highly recommend it!  Heck, it has one of the best finishing moves of all time!

Yes, he is carrying his brother on a motorcycle and firing it like a bazooka.

There is also the entirety of the Toei Fushigi Comedy Series, which began in 1981 and ended in 1993.  I have only seen a few scattered episodes but I do recommend La Belle Fille Masquée Poitrine.  It’s a live-action magical girl series that has a great deal of comedy and a fun main character.

When you get to the 1990s, there are a few obscure shows like Shichisei Tōshin Guyferd:

Kamen Tenshi Rosetta and Millenium Saber Vanny Knights

I can’t really recommend any of those though because I have not seen them.  That’s the problem with a lot of the more obscure tokusatsu works that aren’t part of a franchise, they don’t get as much attention from the fansubbing community as the big name series.  That’s not to say they never do because one relatively obscure 1990s show is being fansubbed and that’s 1996′s Chouko Senshi Changerion.

The series is about a not so great private detective who, through an accident, is imbued with the powers of a crystalline hero to do battle against evil, extradimensional forces.  It has a lot of comedy but the action scenes are also pretty good.  It was also Toei’s very first series entirely shot on video as opposed to film.  I’ve only seen about a dozen episodes but I can say it’s a blast to watch.

I hope this helps answer your question!

[onlyfools-fall-foryou]

So I wrote for the school magazine but this was never published because we ran out of time. Long story. Just gonna post this here.

Lina’s Completely Self-Indulgent To-do List for You and Me

Most of these listed items are pretty mature. By that, I mean high school and older.

Upcoming Movies: Dunkirk Why don’t we just watch all of Christopher Nolan’s movies while we’re at it? Dunkirk is, yes, another WWII movie on the side of the Allies, but it’s a Nolan film, so I’m not complaining. Nobody’s complaining. Like Nolan films, it’s incredibly star-studded, with his usual Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy etc. Nolan really hasn’t given away anything by his short and simple trailers, other than what people already know about the Battle of Dunkirk. (Spoilers, they get rescued.) Release Date: July 21, USA

Spider-man: Homecoming Can I just say, I am loving new spidey. That guy is ador(k)able. Marvel is finally giving us the sassy teenage Peter that we didn’t know we needed. Release Date: July 5, Finland

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Luc Besson, director of /Leon, Nikita, and The Fifth Element/ decided to turn the futuristic sci-fi time-traveling comic series, /Valerian and Laureline,/ into a movie starring Dane DeHaan and the beautiful, beautiful Cara Delevingne. (I was slightly obsessed with Cara Delevingne in 2016.) Let’s just hope that Cara is better at acting here than she was in /Paper Towns/. Release Date: July 21, USA

Detroit From the only female director who has won the Academy Award for Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow, director of /The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty,/ comes another possibly scarring, possibly life-changing movie based on modern historical events. (By modern, I mean 50 years ago.) This time, it’s about the Algiers Motel Incident, taken place during the 1967 12th Street Riot that left three black males dead and two white females and seven black males brutally beaten by the police. Remember when I said this would be scarring? It stars John Boyega and many other beauties. Release Date: August 4, USA

The Dark Tower This is the beginning of a possible movie franchise adapted from Stephen King’s novel series of the same name. Starring Idris Elba as our formidable hero and Matthew McConaughey as our mysterious villain. If you’ve read any Stephen King or seen any adaptations, notably I’ve seen /The Mist,/ you know they’re chilling and terrifying and scarring. Watch with caution. Release Date: August 4, USA

Movies If you’re a nerd who likes to spend most of their life in a screen like me, just invest in a Netflix account (unfortunately, I get nothing out of this promo). And, all the Netflix original shows are top notch because Netflix goes all out on their shows. (Edit: DON’T TRUST NETFLIX. THEY MIGHT CANCEL YOUR FAVOURITE SHOW.)

Patriots Day (2016) It’s about the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Apparently watching it the first time around is the best, according to my brother who watched it twice. For the first 20 minutes or so, you’re so tense because it’s just people getting ready for the marathon and you know what’s about to happen. That was interesting, because the movie did try to tense us up, but it didn’t try that hard. It was mostly our knowledge of the bombings that did most of the work. Most of the characters are real people, except for the main character played by Mark Wahlberg, who is fictional. It leaves you sweating from your pores (and tear ducts) at the end of the movie so drink some water before starting.

Moulin Rouge! (2001) If you’re into music, beautiful people dancing and singing, renditions of pop songs like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Like a Virgin,” you should watch this sort of rom-com/rom-tragedy starring Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman. Go read my other article on page * for some extra info.

Inglourious Basterds (2009) Glorious cinematography. Glorious deaths. Glorious acting. The opening scene is pure gold. It’s one of those scenes you get completely lost in. It also gets you sweating from your pores. Everything from the cinematography and the acting and the set and music and everything is just so well done. Everyone who has seen this scene knows what I’m talking about. And of course, Mélanie Laurent is (one of) the main character(s) so that’s a lot of, em, eye cleansing.

Twilight (2008) Just kidding.

TV The Get Down Go read my other article on page *. Tl;dr: About the origin of hip hop in 1977 Bronx told around beautiful brown young adults with voices of angels.

Lost You have probably head of /Lost/, whether it’s something good or bad. Lost is infamous for its bad ending, which, I don’t think is that bad, but who cares about an ending when everything else is good? The premise is, a bunch of people were on a plane going from Sydney to LA but it crashes on an island. For the first couple episodes, you might think it’s just another survival show, but boy you are wrong. The episodes vary from present to flashback, the centric-character changing every episode. Try not to cringe too hard as Daniel Dae Kim completely ruins the Korean language. Lost is one of the shows I only watch when I have a lot of time because it and its soundtrack completely emotionally ruins me.

Books Sorry, this list may be shorter than the others because I shamefully admit, I don’t read as much as I watch. (Stop judging me, I know my brain cells are dying.)

Harry Potter Need I say more? If you haven’t read Harry Potter, where have you been and where is your integrity?

13 Reasons Why I read this book in the summer of 2015 and it was one of those books I couldn’t put down, not because it was so fun to read, but because my stomach was shaking with uncomfortable angst and I had to get it over with in order for my life to move on. It’s about a teenage boy who gets a mysterious tape one day. On the tape is a recording that a sort-of-friend/ex-crush, Hannah, made before she killed herself. The thirteen reasons are, yes, why she killed herself and are directed at 12 people in total (it goes to a person twice). It deals with some pretty mature content like sex, sexual assault, and obviously suicide. I think I was a little young to understand the book to its full potential, because the book is heavily about the relationship of Hannah and everyone around her and I didn’t realize relationships were so hard at the time.

Percy Jackson Yes, I can hear you snickering about how big of a nerd I am. I admit, I was obsessed with Percy Jackson, still low-key am, but to be fair, so was my mom! Whenever we would get a new book, my mom, brother, and I would pass it around none too patiently. Percy Jackson is definitely more for younger kids, i.e. middle school, because the level of darkness and death sort of stays the same throughout, unlike Harry Potter that matures along with us, becoming darker and darker. If you don’t know who Percy Jackson is, he’s the son of a mortal and Poseidon. He then struggles to save the world every book. The series really educates you in a fun way on Greek (and later, Roman, Egyptian, Norse, and who knows what next) mythology and it’s fun to see how the writer portrayed his Godly characters. It’s just a really, really fun read. Another perk is Rick Riordan seems to keep writing books, so the series doesn’t seem to ever end.

Music

Hamilton If you’re into American history, people of color, hip-hop, bromance, and death, listen to this amazing cast album of Hamilton: An American Musical (or watch the bootleg). Basically the story of Alexander Hamilton’s life, through childhood in the Caribbeans, coming to New York where dreams are made of, the American Revolution, trying to set up a government and finally his death. Will you become a non-functioning human for a couple days while you finish it? Yes. Will you start violently sobbing when you hear the name John Laurens? Yes. Will you start breaking into song and rap when you know you can’t sing or rap? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.

Harry Styles Following the classic tradition of naming your debut album after yourself, Harry Styles comes back to the music industry with this album that is completely different from One Direction (before they started writing their own songs, so this album more like MITAM). After a year (and a half) of being in the new Nolan movie (life goals right there mm mm.) and chilling in the Caribbeans, he randomly dropped news of his single “Sign of the Times” and the rest of his album in April. The album is like a time capsule from the 2007s with a mix of the 1970-80s, giving off rock god and sappy indie breakup band vibes at the same time. I’m actually listening to it as I’m writing this right now, and gosh it is good. It’s Harry doing everything he couldn’t do in a band, every song has him straining his vocal cords and (*wipes away proud tear*) you can just imagine him jumping around stage and having the time of his life.

Other

Duolingo.com (Like I said, I get 0 money out of this.) Duolingo is a website for, you may have guessed it from “duo” and “lingo,” learning languages. It’s completely free, these people don’t even require you to “upgrade your account” to do all the languages. There are most of the European languages, some Asian languages like Vietnamese (Japanese and Korean etc are in progress), Swahili, and Klingon (in progress). You can choose how seriously you want to learn and set your daily XP goal. It sends you an email and application notification so you don’t forget (but of course you can turn it off) and there’s an app too. If you do it intensively (really intensively, like a couple hundred XPs a day), I think finishing a language course during the summer is possible. It’s such a good and wholeful website/app. I’m currently learning Norwegian so if anyone wants to join, halla at me!

Learn How to Box Finally, a non-nerd item on this list! More broadly, get in the habit of working out. Whatever we’re going to do in the future, we need the stamina for it, even if you’re just going to sit at a desk all day. I’m only putting boxing up there as an example because it’s fun and it makes you feel powerful. Not that I’m an expert or anything, I did like four months and quit (lol) but I still work out in various ways. Grab a friend and convince them to go with you. Working up a sweat, even for a short time, generally makes you happy. I don’t know how much this applies to other people, but personally, I spend my workout minutes giggling most of the time. When I’m doing something really challenging, I start manically laughing. This is also an excuse for you to get your mom to let you out of the horrible cycle of hagwons and tutors!

[lefishe]

"Re-Post": "A burning branch into a bucket of kerosene"

If you read the post I made 10 minutes before this one, well goddamn it means you are reading this new post, and have just realized that I finally posted more than once every millennia. Jokes aside, here's a piece I wrote for my grade 12 AP comparative politics class on the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979. I think Iran is possibly my favourite country to study in political science because of it's uncommon government and theocracy, and because of its conflicts with the United States, the hostage crisis being one of them. I do lot's of introduction in this piece so hopefully, you get a good perspective of the crisis even if you know nothing about Iran. The end of the piece also makes reference to the movie Argo, which is about this crisis, and is a movie you should totally watch. The piece isn't perfect, and has lots of grammar mistakes and yet, I won't change any of them. Ok thanks, God bless, and thanks for reading this.

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Approximately 36 years ago, the beginning of a new era of complications in Iranian and American relations was set aflame. In a continuation of the United States self-purpose of world influence in its own protective interests, for once, its touch went too far. In the beginning of an Iranian revolution, the introduction of the British and American hand meddling with an outside country only caused what is now know as a 444-day mistake. In short, this analysis piece is meant to place perspective and shed light upon this tragically historical event.

To truly get perspective upon the crisis at hand, a backtrack of almost 30 years prior to the event must be entailed. Within the context of the cold war, the United States lived under a time period of the need for the extermination of communism. Under the same values, the Shah of Iran formed a bond with the United States in their common interest of the “extermination” of communism. In the early 1950’s, under the new election of Mohamed Mossadegh as prime minister, the Shah fled the country. Through his new acquirement of power, the resentful prime minister nationalized the oil industry in a fight against the controlling hand of Britain and the United States in their oil industry. In an effort to drive the new prime minister out, the Shah with the help of the United States and the CIA initiated operation AJAX in a common effort to reinstate the Shah in power and to re-establish US and Iranian relations. This constant struggle to reinstate the Shah as a leader of Iran in constant close quarters to the United States is where the resentment for the Shah and the all mighty power began.

Up until the 1970’s, with the reinstatement of the Shah into power, the country began to melt its hope for better times. Under constant resentment from the population, the Shah continued to match the democratized and economically liberal society of the United States through modernization of his own broken country. Dubbed the “White Revolution” his plan of action involved initiatives in the military and the economy. Although some of these plans like the right to vote for women were good, he was sapping the resources of an already damaged country, turning his own people against his actions. In the worst possible attempt to replicate the institutions of the United States, the Shah created the SAVAK, in inspiration of the CIA, which was a covert police force meant to torture and control any resentment and opposition to the actions of the higher power.  This was the final straw for the Shah as starting in 1978, opposition to his dictator-like actions began to devolve into demonstrations from the people. In this new time period, the context of the Iranian revolution is obtained.

In this new era of revolution, the people of Iran, led by Ayatollah Khomeini in exile from the country, fueled an overthrow of the Shah. Through continuous demonstrations, the people rallied in all major cities in the effort to revolutionize their own country. The first step in achieving a “better” Iran started when a group of soldiers managed to get past all security around the Shah on December 10th 1978. In a time of a collapsing regime, the Shah finally fled Iran on January 14 1979 where after some time of travelling, was invited to receive cancer treatment in the United States. From their perspective, the United States invited the Shah as a manner of humanity and alliance, but in reality, it turned out to be the tossing of “A burning branch into a bucket of kerosene.”

With an understanding of the tensions in Iran in this time frame, it is now clearer to see how an event like the Iranian Hostage Crisis did occur. In a brief understanding of the events of occurred, on November 4th 1979, a group of militant student demonstrators rallied outside the US embassy in the name of the Ayatollah, who supported the intolerability of US interference in Iran. Their demonstrations took a very rapid shift upon the entering of students into the embassy, where the people inside frantically tried to burn any sort of highly confidential files. Upon entering the embassy, the students captured almost all Americans inside, leaving them now hostages to these militants. In total, 66 hostages were kept inside the embassy, while 6 Americans managed to escape to reside in the Canadian embassy, this story being the main focus of the movie Argo. The demands of the Iranian people were quite simple in this event, and that was to return the Shah to Iran to make him face trials for what his people had suffered under his leadership.

From a future outside perspective, it is now clear to tell how this event did occur. In modern times, with perspectives from hostages and militants, it is clear that this entire 444-day event was in sorts a misunderstanding. As one militant student mentioned in an interview “We believed the United States was against the revolution and that it was preparing another coup.” In short, under the influence of the Ayatollah, the people were actually being “brainwashed” into believing that the US was planning retaliation. Very simply, the Ayatollah’s main goal in the revolution was to fire up his people. In an attempt to grow this fire, he intently portrayed the United States as an enemy for holding back the Shah. In reality, the Ayatollah wanted the Shah back into the country not for the trial he would endure, but rather to fuel his population with energy once more. Overall, the introduction of the Ayatollah and his views into the country of Iran forced the people to despise the United States. From both sides, the Iranians feared the fundamentalism and imperialism placed by America for they seemed to place their hand in every global conflict. The Iranian hostage crisis was an answer to this fear and it resulted in a much fought out diplomatic war.

Overall, the 444 days in which Americans were held hostage were a torturing period of time for the entire western world. In attempts at humiliation, the militant students used the hostages as puppets, showing their perspectives on the hellish nature of the United States. Throughout this massive time period, the media in the United States focused on the number of days ever single night on the news, fueling the counter hatred felt by Americans at home. One of the most influential leaders in this entire diplomatic war was the United States President Carter. As tensions grew at home, tensions felt by the American people revolved around the involvement of the President in this event. As the United States has always believed in, their goal is never to negotiate with terrorists. In an event like the hostage crisis, this value could not have been held any tighter. In failing attempts at diplomatic solution making, Carter was losing popularity very quickly.

On April 25th 1980 a Delta Force sent by the United States was engaged in hope of freeing the hostages with force. Upon the entering of Iran, the team dissolved as the mission was aborted. On the way back, men were killed when two of the helicopters crashed, worsening the grip of tension in the United States population. The bodies of the men in this mission were upheld in demonstrations, showing the true conflict at hand. Upon this failure, a period of wait was to be engaged in the hope of releasing the hostages. In a portrayal of Carter’s failures, the media continued to highlight his “incompetence” in dealing with such important matters. In a long period of wait and failed diplomacy, resolutions to the hostage crisis were set forth upon the day of President Reagan's inauguration.

The end of the hostage crisis arrived for a multitude of reasons. In such a weak state, Iran had held the hostages long enough and suffered enough trade bans to a point in which their own country was in need of resources. As Iranian assets were frozen by the United States, the end of the crisis was to be negotiated with the major power in order to resolve their weakening country. Also, with the death of the Shah in July 1980 in Egypt, and the spark of a new conflict between Iran and Iraq, Iran was left to let go of their 444-day problem for the rise of new ones. Through Algerian intermediaries, the United States promised to release 8 billion dollars worth of frozen Iranian assets in order for the hostages to be released. As this brought an end to the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the event also brought the end to the Carter era. As his efforts during the crisis were deemed incompetent and weak by the American people, a loss of trust in him was entailed, leading to a path with the new President Reagan, who promised to take firm action in the reoccurrence of such events. As for the 6 escaped men and women from the embassy, their “Canadian Caper” mission led them to safety on January 27th 1980 where as portrayed in the movie Argo, boarded a flight in the fleeing of Iran. This small group of people rescued from the crisis gave hope to the rest of the world, as all hoped to help the rest of the hostages. Although these 444 days were gruelling, they will never be forgotten as they have taught valuable lessons about the world we live in.

In lessons to be learned from the crisis, one of the most personal observed ones comes from depictions in the movie Argo. As seen in the movie, on the morning of the invasion into the embassy, with incredible riots and chaos outside the doors, no one seemed to worry about intrusion. It was very peculiar to see that with such imminent danger outside a US diplomatic building, there seemed to be any lack of concern. Upon further research, it seemed as if the hostage crisis could have been averted through more preparation. For example, in the transfer of the Shah to the care of the United States, it was recorded that the embassy did release concern about repercussions upon their institutions. Through these warnings, it would have seemed logical for the US government to be more concerned about its own hold inside the country of Iran. Although preparation may not have been enough to resist the beginning of the hostage crisis, a lack of communication and planning was evident upon the United States first negotiations and conflicts with radical militants in Iran.

Another lesson to be learned from this crisis is the ideas of misinterpretation and assumption and how they lead to conflict. As mentioned before, from the perspective of the militants, they were convinced “that if we didn't attack the embassy, they could attack us. We thought we needed two or three days to see all the documents. If there was a plan [for a coup], we would find something” as a militant student said. On the other hand, as a hostage mentioned, “They thought we were all James Bond” assuming that an embassy was to be filled with CIA and “a nest of spies.” From an outside perspective, it is clear to see that a major lesson to be learned from this event derives from the ideas of misinterpretations and how far these can lead an ignorant people. Under the leading of the Ayatollah, the militants were now soldiers of his will, instating any requirement. In a time of hatred for Americans, the ignorant militants decided to attack an embassy full of innocent people not for a purpose but rather by misinterpretation. Under a complete lack of diplomacy discussions and preparations, this event spiralled out of control more than it should have, for mere assumptions and the brainwashing of a fired up, militant people.

In conclusion, although the Iranian Hostage Crisis was a long undesirable entrance into the new era of Iranian and US relations, its importance will reign true forever. In new times of militant conflict after the fact, the hostage crisis will go down as the defining moment of the start of conflict with terrorism. Although misinterpretation and lack of preparations led to this disastrous event, a root of ignorance still lies in the feet of the Iranian people. In light of their celebrations of the return of the Ayatollah, the majority of the fired up people forgot that in such a dysfunctional state, a leader with great power can radically change a country. No matter the honesty of the person, power changes someone, as it always has in Iran. Its not because you buy a new banana to replace the old one, that this banana wont also take in the oxygen of power to itself become corrupted. Power changes leaders, and leaders influence countries infinitely.

[alliance-recruitment-agency-blog]

Headhunters Nyc - Popular Ice Hockey Bar In Manhattan And New York City

Applying for fashion jobs huh? You're finally reading this. You are near your computer getting in order to start submitting resumes and waiting around for interview call buttocks. But wait! Don't do one thing else if you read pertaining to of clues about and issue into google that you've the dedication required to try for and work in vogue. There are several crucial anyone must know before attempting to get fashion perform. Sure the movie "The Devil Wears Prada" shows us several of the craziness of the fashion industry but let's just discuss this injury is a bit as well as give you some realistic expectations a person begin decide to proceed. 

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Nyc Headhunters - The Ultimate Secret Of Nyc 

If an individual might be willing to the change that you need to see the actual world world, you will need to to look a little out belonging to the ordinary. To your seem a little off-center. Wind up be called crazy.

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Headhunters In Nyc - The Secrets To Nyc   

Stay & Play New Year's Eve Package For anyone wishing to remain overnight, Presque Isle Downs & Casino is offering a special Stay & Play package that any one night stay during a nearby hotel (Courtyard by Marriott or Hilton Garden Inn), $7 free slot play per person, free shuttle service between the resort and the casino plus hot breakfast for two on New Year's Afternoon.

Video Source:

Headhunters For Nyc - The Secrets To Finding World Class Tools For Your Nyc Quickly  

Listening to Music - For me the music needs to stop barking with a light tempo that is conducive for reflection. Truly like my show tunes nevertheless i can't for you to "You Can't Stop the Beat from Hairspray" without taping my toes and singing. Chopin's piano music would work well for me. What would work for you? 

Hire Headhunters Nyc -  13 Secret Things You Didn't Know About Nyc

When researching terrorism, Experienced the opportunity examine close up and even touch C-4 explosive. Automobile demonstrated by drawing a line around a 3 in x 3 in section and told me that has been created enough to blow up a whole city obstruction. As I recall, the C-4 explosives were the proportions a brick and slightest gray colored and the feel of professional molding clay.

The job didn't last - regarding a month or so, as i decided we was more appropriate behind a receptionist desk instead associated with kitchen. I Headhunters Nyc didn't touch the wok for years, but later when i found myself out of college, along with a hectic jobs in nyc and often no period for cook, the stir-fry became my messiah. 

14 years later Discovered myself still fascinated in this particular industry as the young engineer. It is overwhelming. Most of time I will not clue what i am . There are a great deal of codes, circumstances, and Headhunters In Nyc owners preferences to understand exactly to be able to do in every situation. Is actually a saying in the industry sector that together with time whining everything and can be good and your job, it is time to retire. My pops has visited the sell for 30 years more than I have and he still doesn't know everything he needs to know. He is however not bad at his job when he knows what mistakes could be made because he has seen it all happen. Exactly how can I be finest without 30 years of experience?

All in all, you will discover several avenues one might pursue for autism treatment for adults. Only one of least difficult and easiest is providing them with an involving emotional customer support. In the end, treatment for adults with autism can encompass many different things, but finding friendship and emotional support won't be overlooked.

We have watched a roller coaster of an '08/'09 season that five weeks ago saw the Birds just about nailed shut in their coffin, swept away for the rest from the season almost as much ast they has become last year, and the entire year before that, and the season before which in turn. Then head coach Andy "Big Buddha" Reid benched quarterback Donovan McNabb, and also the team has literally risen like Lazarus from the dead. McNabb has been playing through his mind; grizzled defensive genius Jim Johnson has shaken the bones of his aging D-line until they rattled and shook. There's hope in metropolis of Philadelphia that this football-crazed town hasn't obtained in too long of some time. 

The main benefit which are then found in the region of Albany is the living financial impact. If a person wants to rent an area in Albany, then the rent it costs low as opposed to rent cost in the urban cities like Ny and several parts of the nation. A three bedroom house could be rented at a cost of $500 excluding the utility fees. Even with the utility bill the maximum rent can sum doing $700. Compared to a three bedroom house on the inside urban cities, the costs are low.

I remember riding the train from New Jersey to The big apple to my day piece of work. I was journaling in a notebook and that i thought,"Gosh, how am I going to try this?" I had bought into the mantra, "Build it and they will come," if I first started my business, I was struggling to obtain clients

Swayze plays James Dalton, a guru in the field of doorway security (bouncing). When he's hired due to his jobs in nyc, he's entrusted with the care of the most troublesome roadside bars to all of Mo. When not training other bouncers at the Double Deuce, failing for each other and fighting off a nasty local businessman, Dalton can be a cerebral threat who holds certain amount in Philosophy from NY 

However, Ralph Lauren's primary objective has remained to make the quintessential American look, together with clothing he designs. He created the costumes for a couple of major films in the 1970s: "The Great Gatsby" (1973), and "Annie Hall" (1978). Ralph Lauren's goal isn't generate "fashion" as such. Instead, his mission might be to create clothes that might described as "timeless classics." Such clothing doesn't go out-of-style from one fashion season to the subsequent. 

Jeff Slate: So I'm of course curious concerning story behind Long Wave, but I'm intrigued on your revisiting the ELO material too. As i listen to those new ELO recording just sound dazzling. They still retain that magic that they had when When i first heard them as a kid, nevertheless voice sounds phenomenal and it is also really well recorded, that this sounds maybe better as compared to old days, and it will do seem like from a producers standpoint that you've taken might help to prevent knew back when you made the original records and imbued the actual recordings with 30 years worth of expertise. So let's talk about the ELO record and good reason.

The announcement of Keflezighi, Abdirahman, and Ritzenhein provides race two members within the 2012 Oughout.S. Olympic men's marathon team and one member of their 10,000-meter team, respectively. Boosting the depth for this American roster are talented pros Jason Hartmann, Guor Marial, Janet Bawcom, Serena Burla, Maegan Krifchin, Adriana Nelson, Molly Pritz, Stephanie Rothstein Bruce, and Lindsey Scherf. 

Resources:Information to do this article comes from following the careers of artists listed, news stories, magazine articles, reading biographies and autobiographies, in addtition to talking to public opinion on a personal level. I verified data I remembered by visiting websites and at Wikepedia over the web.

Author Name:- Shreya Mehta

Address:- 104 Esplanade ave 120, 

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[rosiep66]

"HIDDEN FIGURES" (2016) Review

"HIDDEN FIGURES" (2016) Review In all my years of reading about the men and women who worked at NASA, whether in the air or on the ground, I have only come across two people who people of color. And both were astronauts. Not once did those articles ever reveal the numerous African-Americans who worked at NASA - including those women who worked as mathematicians (Human Computers) for NASA during the Space Race between the 1950s and 1970s. Imagine my surprise when I learned that 20th Century Fox Studios planned to distribute a movie based upon the 2016 non-fiction book, "Hidden Figures". Written by Margot Lee Shetterly, the book focused on three NASA mathematicians - Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. Even before the movie was finally released, a NBC series called "TIMELESS" aired an episode set during the Apollo 11 mission that featured one of the movie's main characters - Katherine Johnson. In the midst of all of this, I found myself anticipating the movie. As I had stated earlier, "HIDDEN FIGURES" began in early 1961 in which mathematicians Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughn, along with aspiring engineer Mary Jackson; are working at NASA's West Area Computers division of Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia with minimum satisfaction. Dorothy, who works as an unofficial supervisor of the black women who served as Human Computers, requests to be officially promoted to supervisor. Her request is rejected by her supervisor, Vivian Mitchell. Mary identifies a flaw in the experimental space capsule's heat shields. Space engineer Karl Zielinski encourages her to aggressively pursue a degree in engineering for a more substantial position at NASA. In order to attain a graduate degree in engineering, Mary would have to take the required courses in math and physics from a University of Virginia night program being taught at the all-white Hampton High School. After the Soviet Union manages to send a successful Russian satellite launch, pressure to send American astronauts into space increases. Vivian Mitchell assigns Katherine to assist Director Al Harrison's Space Task Group, due to her skills in analytic geometry. Katherine becomes the first African-American woman to work with the team and in the building. But her new colleagues are initially dismissive of her presence on the team, especially Paul Stafford, the Group's head engineer. The movie focuses on the three women's efforts to overcome bigoted attitudes and institutional racism to achieve their goals at NASA. "HIDDEN FIGURES", like any other historical drama I have ever seen or read, is mixture of fact and fiction. Some of the movie's characters are fictional. And Allison Schroeder and director Theodore Melfi may have mixed up the dates on some of the film's events. But as far as I am concerned, this did not harm the movie. More importantly, Schroeder and Melfi created a screenplay that maintained my interest in a way that some films with a similar topic have failed to do. In other words, "HIDDEN FIGURES" proved to be a subtle, yet captivating movie. The movie's subtle tone manifested in the racism encountered by the three women. Katherine Johnson dealt with the Space Task Group's quiet refusal to take her seriously via minor pranks and dismissive attitudes. She also has to deal with Paul Stafford's constant stream of complaints, skeptical comments and attempts to take credit for her work. Worst of all, Katherine is forced to walk (or run) several miles back to her old building in order to use the restroom, due to the Space Task Group's restrooms being off-limits to non-whites. Dorothy Vaughn is determined to become the official supervisor for the segregated West Area human computers. But due to her race, her supervisor - Vivian Mitchell - refuses to consider giving Dorothy a genuine promotion. The most subtle example of racism found in the movie manifested in Mary Jackson's desire to return to school and attain a graduate degree in engineering. The racism she faced seemed to be internal. Despite urgings from both her husband and Mr. Zielinski, Mary seemed reluctant to request permission from the Virginia courts to attend a segregated school in order to obtain a graduate Engineering degree. Subconsciously, she seemed to believe that her efforts would be wasted. The fascinating thing about the racism that the three women faced is that violence of any kind was not involved. The racism that they faced was subtle, insidious and nearly soul-crushing. But no violence was involved. The closest they came to encountering violence occurred when a law officer stopped to question them, while Dorothy's car was stranded at the side of the road in the movie's opening scene. The cop eventually escorted them to the Langley Research Center after learning they worked for NASA. Yet, I could not help but feel that the entire scene seemed to crackle with both humor, intimidation and a little terror, thanks to Theodore Melfi's direction. Despite my admiration of Melfi's direction of the above-mentioned scene, I have to admit that I would not regard it as one of the best things about "HIDDEN FIGURES". I am not stating that I found his direction lousy or mediocre. If I must be honest, I thought it was pretty solid, aside from that opening scene, which I found exceptional. "HIDDEN FIGURES" was his third feature-length film as a director . . . and it showed. I suspect that the movie benefited more from its subject matter, screenplay and its cast. I certainly had no problems with the movie's production values. Despite the movie being set in Northern Virginia, it was shot in Georgia. And Mandy Walker's sharp and colorful photography certainly took advantage of the location. And thanks to Wynn Thomas' production designs, Missy Parker's set decorations, and Jeremy Woolsey's art direction, I felt as if I had been transported back to Hampton, Virginia, circa 1961. I can also say the same about Renee Ehrlich Kalfus' costumes, which I felt had accurately reflected the characters' personalities and social class, as shown in the images below:

Only one cast member from "HIDDEN FIGURES" had received any acting nominations. Octavia Spencer received both an Academy Award nomination and Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Personally, she deserved it. I thought Spencer gave a very subtle, yet commanding performance as the group's aspiring supervisor, Dorothy Vaughn. I was also impressed by Janelle Monáe, who not only gave a very entertaining performance as the extroverted and witty Mary Jackson, but also did an impressive job in conveying her character's self-doubts about pursuing an Engineering graduate's degree. I am surprised that Taraji P. Henson did not received any major acting nominations for her performance as NASA mathematician Katherine Goble (later Johnson). Personally, I find that baffling. I was very impressed by her quiet and subtle performance as the widowed mathematician, who not only struggled to endure the dismissive attitude of her Space Group Task Force colleagues, but also found love again after spending a few years as a widow. Personally, I thought Henson's performance deserved at least an award nomination or two. "HIDDEN FIGURES" also featured top notch performances from the supporting cast. Kevin Costner gave a very colorful performances as the Space Group Task Force director Al Harrison. The movie's other colorful performance came from Glen Powell, who portrayed astronaut and future U.S. senator John Glennn. Jim Parsons was just as subtle as Henson in his portrayal of the racist, yet insecure head engineer Paul Stafford. Mahershala Ali gave a nice and charming performance as Katherine's second husband, Jim Johnson. But his performance did not strike as particularly memorable. Aldis Hodge, on the other hand, gave an intense and interesting performance as Mary's politically-inclined husband, Levi Jackson; who urges his wife to overcome her reluctance to pursue a graduate degree in Engineering. This movie seemed to be filled with subtle performance for Kirsten Dunst also gave one as the slightly racist Vivian Mitchell, supervisor of all the Human Computers. The movie turned out to be quite a surprise for me. Watching the trailer, I came away with the impression that it would be one of those nice, but mediocre live-action Disney films. And to be honest, there were moments when Theodore Melfi's direction gave that impression. He does not strike me as a particularly memorable director. But that opening sequence featuring the three protagonists and a cop seemed to hint Melfi's potential to become a first-rate director. In the end, the movie's superb Oscar-nominated screenplay and the excellent performances of a cast led by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe made "HIDDEN FIGURES" one of my favorite movies of 2016.

[nougatbit]

on copyright and the internet

i cannot believe how every single mep that has to deal with digital issues is more corrupt than the ones before them. they literally spend all their time meeting with lobbyists and condescending to people that actually know how the internet works, they don’t listen to independent experts because their personal oppinions about who deserves to make money or have freedom of speech are obviously much better. they all hate the internet and “young“ people because we threaten the big players they’re used to. it’s like they want to go back in time to the good old days when there was tv and radio and the local newspaper and the media were the only ones that could publish a political opinion.

and like on the point of copyright....in it’s current form it is stupid and meaningless. there has always been copyright infringement, always and there will also always be copyright infringement and in general it doesn’t harm the copyright holders imo.

because if i lend my friend a book they don’t need to buy it but they still get to read it, same goes for a movie or music or whatever. but today you can get a perfect AND permanent copy of any piece of media from the internet or even just a friends computer or phone which makes ripping easier than it used to be and also more accesible..but at least in my experience most people that “steal“ copyrighted materials don’t actually inflict monetary harm on the copyright holder simply because if they hadn’t had the opportunity to get the thing for free they wouldn’t have gotten it at all so there’s no money lost in the infringement.

if i illegally stream a movie that is not available in my country nobody lost any money because there was no other way for me to do this my only other choice would’ve been to not watch it. if a song isn’t on youtube or spotify and doesn’t play on the radio i won’t buy the album without knowing if it is any good to satsify my curiosity i’ll listen to a rip first. nobody lost any money... either i’ll rip the song or if i can’t i won’t buy it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .    

i buy things from small creators i want to support or things that i love and i won’t buy things that are ok but that i don’t really care or know about. the latter i might stream somewhere but if not then i don’t care and i still won’t buy it. and i think that’s what most people do and this hurts nobody because a big company doesn’t get money they wouldn’t have gotten anyways but it’s illegal because the law treats a digital copy like a physical one.

this is false. a physical copy only exists in a limited amount and has a material worth, a copy of a physical objects is always worse in quality which somewhat limits the amount of copies of an original you can make the process is also usually not really worth the effort. for the time and resources it’d take me to copy a book i could also just buy the book.

but a digital copy doesn’t have a material worth because there is no work or resources involved in making one and an infinite amount can be made without any loss of quality. the only material effort goes into the original every other unit is simply copied with one click. digital copies only have the worth of the intellectual property but how much is something worth if there is an infinite amount of perfect copies?

i wouldn’t steal a cd because even if the mp3 on it has basically no monetary worth, the disc does but if i “steal“ an mp3 then i stole something that has no monetary worth because infinite supply meets a finite demand.

and ironically the music industry makes a large part of it’s money not with the music it sells but with the licensing fee that customers pay for every cd, dvd or flash drive they buy.

because in the recent past politicians and the copyright holders as well as publishers agreed that you couldn’t make all these things illegal but that a general fee could be used to reimburse them for possible infringements that could potentially be commited with these technologies.

but today the traditional big players are apparently not in favour of such compromises any more. as the new eu copyright reform shows.

they fear for their position and income because their products like newspapers or classic tv programming are not doing as well as they used to and the big publishers no longer have monopolies. the reasons for this are obviously varried and a little too much to go into but the main issue is that because of this ongoing loss of influence and income these companies and the institutions they are connected with on a bureaucratic level hate new forms of media and their creators and are very willing to throw small independent creators of their own contend under the bus to maintain their economic position.

since publishers and large copyright holders do not have any interest in developing new forms of media but instead fight to regress into a time when they had absolute power their lobbying can be assumed not to be in favour of any media industry that has emerged or started to be successful in the last 25 years. and since the responsible eu politicians are more or less bought by these interest groups it is clear what goals their legislation strives to achieve.

obviously there are big problems with google, facebook, youtube an co. from a number of standpoints and their monopoly positions in regard to the services they provide on the internet is deeply troublesome but since they are currently the only platforms for small, indeoendent creators to publish their work, work which is only protected by copyright in theory since these creators are self published and as such do not have a  big publisher with the resoucres to deal with possible copyright infringement.

the new copyright law is designed to further the financial gain of very few european publishers even more so than the actual creators and copyright holders represented by those publishers at the expense of every single person not represented by those publishing houses.

since the law puts the responsibility for any occuring infringement on the site it was commited on and not on the person that commited it the law forces sites like youtube and facebook to screen all content for infringement. for already existing contend this is probably going to be similar to the events of youtube’s adpocalypse or tumblr’s adult contend ban which is bad but with possible room for case by case review after the original blocking of the contend in question.

however in the case of new uploads it can be expected that the sites will employ automated filters to screen all content very harshly BEFORE it is posted to escape any legal repercussions since they are now liable for all content on their site. this is extremely problematic.

as we know automatic filters are many things but they are far from accurate. since this will all take place before posting it is unlikely that a manual review will be possible since a failed srceening will result in a deleted draft/ no post being made and a nonexistent post cannot be reviewed by a real person.

the filters will therefore be overly strict to begin with so that the sites can be sure nothing slips past and block additional legal content because there is no technical way to make a filter that actually works well since it is nearly impossible to spot the difference between allowed/forbidden use of copyrighted materials  e.g. parody or pastiche. this will make fair use cases defacto illegal and uphold the classic entertainment industy at the cost of independent artists and reviewers and the freedom of speech.

since blocking of contend in fair use cases now rests on the goodwill and tolerance of the rights holder especially in case of already published material but also if something makes it past the filter and is uploaded. because no site will stand up for a post that garners a manual complaint by the rights holder if the site is liable for a possible infringement and the original author won’t be powerfull enough or have enough money to afford going to court ofer this issue. as the law is very impercise this could also mean that sceninc shots that contain any copyrighted materials in the background could also be affected.

all of this means that the ability to speak about any copyrighted materials or to speak in the presence of copyrighted materials is solely dependent on the rights holder and an imprecise technology. one is assumed guilty unless proven otherwise.

link tax, another big change of this reform forces any site that displays a link to copyrighted materials that contains any part of said material to pay a fee to be allowed to do so. this mainly impacts links to newspaper articles and limits access to information in the hopes of saving the newspaper industry but esspecially to improve the income of the Axel Springer publishing house which wants to protect it’s place as the biggest digital publisher in europe.

the last problematic part deals more with the relationship between publisher and author and allowes publishers to keep more money to themselves that they were previously required to give to the original author unless explictely agreed upon differently by the author. this gives the publishers even more power.

it is unclear how this regional law will be implemented to be compatible with the constitution or the global nature of the internet. and it will severly limit access to information and opinions or criminalize the people that work around these limitations e.g by using a proxy server.

and it has the potential to render europe completely meanigless on the internet by blocking innovating concepts and technologies from being able to be developed.

but hey the 1970 were great and i’m sure nobody minds going back in time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[a-breton]

3 Life and Marketing Success Resolutions for 2019



This text and the accompanying 30-minute video comes from my Content Marketing World 2018 keynote presentation. On Dec. 31, 2017, I “retired” from marketing and took a sabbatical for 2018 (which, as of this publishing, I’m still happily on).

I’ve given over 400 keynote speeches in 18 countries, but this one was the most personal. The team at CMI is nice enough to publish this so the entire CMI audience can watch and read it. I hope there is something here that will help you in your life or your marketing (hopefully both).

Yours in Content,  

Joe

Hello Cleveland. It’s fantastic to be back here at Content Marketing World. Some of you may not know this, but I’ve been on a sabbatical for the last nine glorious months since leaving CMI.

In January, I spent 30 days electronics free. In February, I took my father to Sicily to see 60 cousins we’ve never met before, and the last six months, I’ve literally spent more time with my two boys than in the previous six years.

Disclaimer

The Pulizzi family is notorious for using disclaimers. So for this speech, here’s my disclaimer. I’ll cover some marketing, but this is much more about you and your success. I care about each of you way too much to just give you marketing advice … I want to give you more. That said, you may not like it. I’m willing to live with that. So here goes.

Tabula rasa

I first came across the term “tabula rasa” in 1995 while studying rhetoric at Penn State University. Tabula rasa or “clean slate” is found in the writings of Aristotle, and is the belief that we are each born with a blank slate and everything we learn … our habits … our behaviors … comes from our experiences.

What if, right here and now, you had a clean slate? You could do or be anything you wanted. Nothing in this world could hold you back from your accomplishments.

Now I want you to fast forward exactly one year to this time in 2019. What’s different? What did you accomplish in the last 365 days?

What about five years from now?

Are you rich?

Did you get the guy or the girl you wanted?

Did you have another child?

Did you travel the world?

Did you prevent your kids from growing up to be idiots?

Would you consider yourself a success? Have you made a positive impact on the world?

I’ve been studying success and successful people as long as I can remember … easily 30 years. As a young adult I kept a journal with me of all the things I wanted to do and accomplish, and listened to success audio tapes from Brian Tracy and Zig Zigler.

Even as I’ve been on this year-long sabbatical, I’ve kept this obsession about success.

Here’s the question: Why are some people successful and others are not? Is there a formula for success that put the odds in your favor?

What I’ve found is that most of us have conditioned our brains and have formed habits that preclude us from success. That means if we don’t change what we are doing, right now, the things you want to accomplish in 2019 or 2023 and beyond, both marketing and personal goals, will never happen.

Most of us have conditioned our brains & formed habits that preclude us from success, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

Three Re’s

Record

Repeat

Remove

Not just me, but the most successful people in the world use this formula as well … which is, sadly, a very small percentage of people.

Record. Repeat. Remove. That’s the success formula for personal & professional success, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

And here’s the bonus … the same actions and behaviors that will make your personal dreams come true, will also define your success in marketing.

Record

What does record mean? This means you document your desire. Depending on what research study you look at, less than 10% of all people write down and record their goals. And, those that do, accomplish more in their lives than the other 90% combined.

Let’s say you were going to build a house. If we treated building this house like we do building our lives, we would just call the contractors, the electrician, the plumber, the concrete guy, the drywall team, the roofers … have them get in a huddle and figure it out.

Can you imagine the chaos to building a house without a plan? But that’s what we do. We don’t plan for our desires to come true.

Our mental houses are falling down. Over the past 20 years I’ve asked hundreds of people what their success plan is. How they are going to get what they want out of life? Most people do not have any idea what they really want. And if they do, they certainly don’t write it down or believe they can achieve it.

Bruce Lee case study

In January of 1969, very few people ever heard of a man named Bruce Lee. Today, Bruce Lee is probably the most famous martial arts movie star who ever existed. Bruce had some major ambitions … and he penned this letter to himself:

My Definite Chief Aim

I, Bruce Lee, will be the first highest paid Oriental super star in the United States. In return I will give the most exciting performances and render the best of quality in the capacity of an actor. Starting 1970 I will achieve world fame and from then onward till the end of 1980 I will have in my possession $10,000,000. I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness.

Bruce Lee – Jan. 1969

Unfortunately, Bruce passed away just four years later, but not before accomplishing everything and more from this letter. Every day Bruce got out of his bed and had a crystal image of what success was to him, and what he needed to do that day to move the needle forward.

Think and Grow Rich case study

When I was in college, I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. In the 1930s, Mr. Hill interviewed 500 high achievers like Ford, Roosevelt, and Carnegie to find out why they were so successful. He found, actually, that the key similarity for these high achievers was incredibly simple. They wrote down their desires.

The common thread among high achievers? They write down their desires, says Napoleon Hill & @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

But what kind of goals and desires?

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says, “If you are going to try to bat 1,000%, you won’t accomplish many things of importance. If you’re willing to strike out a few times, you can change the world.”

So I’m not talking about small goals here … we are talking about I’m Gonna Change the World goals.

We do this remembering three components. Let’s look at Bruce Lee’s desire. First, it’s totally unreasonable. This is a Big Big Goal. No person had ever brought martial arts to the mainstream.

Second, we need specifics. He wants to make $10 million by 1980. He had a specific amount and a specific year.

And the best goals ALSO serve others. He wanted to thrill audiences with his performances. And in exchange for delivering this value, he became a superstar.

Well, would you know that the exact same things hold true for your content marketing plan?

Big – If you take your content marketing plan into your CMO and they approve it the first time around … guest what? It’s not big enough. You need to go in there and make their heads spin. It needs to be big!

Unreasonable – No other company should have this goal. This is what I call your content tilt or differentiation point. Are you building something for your audience that has never been done like this before?

Other-serving – What’s in it for the audience? Are you first and foremost helping them get better jobs and live better lives or is your goal about you getting more leads or money?

If your CMO approves your #contentmarketing plan the first time, it’s not big enough, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: This Goal-Setting Activity That Made All the Difference

Repeat

What do we mean by repeat?

Every day in the morning, and every night in the evening, we are going to review this goal. We are going to take about 1% of our day – less than 15 minutes a day – to review our desires. The plan for our mental house.

In a 2009 study published by Dr. Phillipa Lally in the European Journal of Psychology, 96 people over a 12-week period were analyzed about changing behavior and habits. Each chose one new habit and reported each day on whether or not they did the behavior … and … when the behavior became automatic.

Some people chose simple habits like “drinking three bottles of water a day” or “no desserts.” Others chose more difficult tasks like “exercising for 15 minutes before dinner.” At the end of the 12 weeks, the researchers analyzed the data to determine how long it took each person to go from starting a new behavior to automatically doing it.

On average, it took 66 days before a new behavior became automatic. The range was 18 to 254 days.

This is exactly why you have to review your success goal every day over a long period of time. You have to condition your mind to believe that the goal is attainable. Remember … tabula rasa, clean slate … we have to reprogram our mind to accept that our goal is possible.

And here’s the big idea most people just don’t get: The MOST important thing to accomplishing your goal is to BELIEVE that it is possible. You don’t need more money, or skills, or abilities, or a better job or Robert Rose. The most important thing – as George Michael knew so well – is having faith.

The MOST important thing to accomplishing your goal is to BELIEVE that it is possible, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

Once you can condition the mind to your goal, your day starts to shape itself.

Let me give you an example … email. How many people checked email this morning? Most people do. But if you had a totally unreasonable success goal that you reviewed this morning, the same goal you reviewed the night before, you might start to believe that digging into email first thing in the morning won’t at all help you accomplish your goal.

Now let’s go back to our marketing fundamentals again.

There are two main reasons why content marketing programs fail. The first, is that the goal isn’t truly big enough … it doesn’t really affect the lives of the audience in a unique way.

The second comes down to this idea of repetition. If it takes 66 days to change a personal behavior, how many times are you going to need to consistently deliver your content to your audience to change their behavior?

In researching for my book Content Inc., we found that minimum time from start to driving revenue for content marketing was nine months. The average was 18 months of consistent delivery. Why? Because it takes time to build an audience.

If you aren’t delivering consistently to your audience, you are not content marketing.

If you aren’t delivering consistently to your audience, you are not #contentmarketing, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

Remove

In high school I read the book Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, which still to this day is my favorite book. Toward the beginning of the book Valentine Michael Smith, who was born on Mars, is learning to understand humans. Three of his caretakers were women, and each was practicing kissing Mike. Every time any of them kissed Mike, they fainted, out cold.

Jubal Harshaw, Mike’s main caretaker, asked one of the women why she fainted. She said this to Jubal:

Mike gives a kiss his total attention. I’ve been kissed by men who did a very good job. But they can’t give kissing their whole attention. No matter how hard they try parts of their minds are on something else. Missing the last bus – or their chances of making the gal … maybe worry about a job, or money … but when Mike kisses you he isn’t doing anything else. You’re his whole universe … just kissing you. It’s overwhelming.

I must confess that as a young man in high school I tried this technique, but the results were inconclusive.

This is all about focus. Clearing away all the clutter and just being focused on accomplishing something.

In order for record and repeat to work, we have to clear away all the garbage that is stopping us from accomplishing our desires.

Clear away all the garbage that stops you from accomplishing your desires, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett

Microsoft founder Bill Gates didn’t really want to meet Warren Buffett. He didn’t think they’d have anything in common. But at the urging of Meg Greenfield, Washington Post editor, they met on July 5, 1991. Gates was nervous and he was dreading the meeting.

Greenfield gave both men a sheet of paper and asked each to write down the one word that is their key to success. Both, as it happened, wrote down the same word: Focus.

From that day, the two became best friends.

To be successful … we need focus, we need discipline … and we need to remove the distractions around us.

Put away your phone

A few months ago, someone asked me to take a coffee meeting with them. He said he had some very important business model questions for me and thought I could help. We met at Panera Bread on the west side of Cleveland.

I sat down, put my coffee on the table. He sat down, put his coffee on the table, and his phone just on his left side face up. Throughout our chat, he kept looking at his phone. Instagram, Twitter, Messenger … all kinds of notifications. Clearly, he was not paying attention to me.

Obviously, what I was saying wasn’t very important to this person. Whenever I see someone with a phone face up or face down next to them during a meeting, I already know they have a focus problem.

After a bit of back and forth he asked me “What’s the first thing I should do?” I told him to take his smartphone and throw it in the garbage.

Lack of time?

“I don’t have time to accomplish my goals.” I hear this all the time.

Did you know that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American still watches three hours of television per day?

That’s 1,100 hours watching TV per year. Let’s say you’re blessed enough to reach 80 years old and that was you. That means almost 10 years of total time, nonstop, is dedicated to watching TV.

That’s like turning the TV on when you’re 30 and never moving until you are 40. A lost decade.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t watch TV or YouTube videos or surf Facebook. I personally enjoy watching the Cleveland Browns lose most Sundays. But to be successful, you have to change your behavior and make time to do the great things.

I have one friend that says she doesn’t have time to do anything, and yet she hasn’t missed an episode of Big Brother in 20 years. If you’re curious, that’s 550 hours of watching time.

Now let’s go back to our marketing fundamentals again.

When Robert Rose and I go into consulting engagements, besides not having the BIG goal and delivering consistently, do you know what else we find? Content run amok.

Content is being created everywhere … blogs and podcasts and videos with no discernable strategy.

Great media and product brands that have loyal audiences start by doing one thing amazingly well to one audience … a newspaper, a podcast, a blog, a video series, Instagram, an email newsletter.

So you most likely need to go back and start killing some things and just do one thing amazingly well before you diversify into other content types. In this case, less is more.

Do one thing amazingly well before you diversify into other #content types, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

Record. Repeat. Remove – a simple formula that’s hard to execute. A marathon if you will … not a sprint.

This formula got me to this place, but I almost lost it all by not following it.

My story

In 2007 I left an executive job in media to start a business. I had this great vision of a content marketing matching service between agencies and brands, that we dubbed the eHarmony of content marketing.

Now don’t laugh … at the time I thought it was brilliant.

My written desire was to have 100 paying customers by the end of 2009.

Over the next two years, we were struggling … burning through cash to pay for programming and marketing, increasing our debt. I was having doubts. Late summer 2009 was critically important. That was the time when we were approaching agencies in our system to see if they would pay for another year.

Most agencies were not re-signing to the $5,000 annual fee, and one in particular, our best case study where we delivered a multimillion-dollar client, still hadn’t signed up yet.

So I called the CEO on the phone. Let’s call her Paula. I said, ”Hey, hey Paula … for some reason your auto renew isn’t turned on in our system. Just wanted to make sure there wasn’t a problem.”

She said, “Oh yeah, about that … we decided not to renew.”

I said, “really … why is that?”

She said, “Well, we can get better ROI by doing some other things.”

And I said, “You can get better than 1,000% ROI somewhere else? What is it and I’ll sign up.”

There was silence for a bit … and she just said, “Sorry Joe, we’re not going to renew.”

And that was that.

I hung up the phone, went into my backyard, and just lost it. I couldn’t even close our best customer. I felt completely sorry for myself. A complete failure.

I couldn’t believe I had left a great job for nothing. I had an amazing wife and two small boys that I couldn’t take care of.

It took me a couple weeks to pull myself together. Secretly I’d already been peeking around to see if any full-time jobs were available, which actually made me feel even worse.

And then I went back to the success formula. I then noticed that all my goals were around selling a small product to help just a few people. Actually, my goals were quite small. They were also very “me” centric. There was nothing about adding value to others. Honestly, who cares if we reached 100 customers by 2009? No one. It was a terrible primary goal and didn’t follow any of what we are talking about here.

My career goal actually came to me while I was reading feedback from our blog subscribers. The requests were all around “our group needs training,” “are there other content marketing pros I can meet,” and “my CMO needs convincing.”

And I finally got it. Our audience needs education, not a hookup.

So we set the goal to be the world’s leading educational resource for content marketing to solve those audience issues. And we wanted to do this by the end of 2013.

And then I worked the formula. Recorded it … read and reviewed that goal first thing in the morning and before I went to bed and stopped doing everything else to focus on that.

My friends and loved ones thought I was crazy before. Now they thought I needed to be committed. I mean, still no one even knew what content marketing was and I was going “all in” with it?

Content Marketing Institute was born exactly nine months later in May of 2010 and the most amazing people in the world helped to join this new cause. The first ever Content Marketing World took place in Cleveland at the Renaissance Hotel in September 2011. We were hoping for 100 people to show up. Maybe 150 if we were really lucky. That year, 660 attendees showed up.

And by 2012, we accomplished our big, unreasonable goal. And today, here we are at Content Marketing World with 4,000 attendees.

There was no logical reason that we should have succeeded. There were dozens of other companies that should have created Content Marketing World. But we set the goal and worked the formula … just like Bruce Lee, like Warren Buffett, like Oprah.

You will do amazing things. You will change the world. But it’s a choice, and there is a process for making it happen.

Too many talented people I know decide to just swim down. It’s easier, it’s safe, it’s comfortable, and it’s seductive. But it doesn’t make the world a better place.

And one final thought … this odd quote from Bull Durham sums everything up:

If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you are!

This means, whatever you believe you are doing for whatever reason is true.

And if you believe you are failing because of … your education, your skills, your job, your significant other, then you are!

But if we can reprogram our minds for success, we will be successful.

Tabula rasa … today you have a clean slate … and you can choose to reprogram your brain … your lives …or not.

Just like content marketing is a new muscle for most organizations, success planning is a muscle we have to build and work on every day.

So, in 2019 …

Document your desires.

Review them consistently every day.

Remove the clutter in your life so you can be successful.

Thank you!

Is your goal to become a better content marketer for your brand and your audience this year? Enroll in the winter semester of Content Marketing University and register for Content Marketing World 2019.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

from http://bit.ly/2Rpc2FU

[lucyariablog]

3 Life and Marketing Success Resolutions for 2019



This text and the accompanying 30-minute video comes from my Content Marketing World 2018 keynote presentation. On Dec. 31, 2017, I “retired” from marketing and took a sabbatical for 2018 (which, as of this publishing, I’m still happily on).

I’ve given over 400 keynote speeches in 18 countries, but this one was the most personal. The team at CMI is nice enough to publish this so the entire CMI audience can watch and read it. I hope there is something here that will help you in your life or your marketing (hopefully both).

Yours in Content,  

Joe

Hello Cleveland. It’s fantastic to be back here at Content Marketing World. Some of you may not know this, but I’ve been on a sabbatical for the last nine glorious months since leaving CMI.

In January, I spent 30 days electronics free. In February, I took my father to Sicily to see 60 cousins we’ve never met before, and the last six months, I’ve literally spent more time with my two boys than in the previous six years.

Disclaimer

The Pulizzi family is notorious for using disclaimers. So for this speech, here’s my disclaimer. I’ll cover some marketing, but this is much more about you and your success. I care about each of you way too much to just give you marketing advice … I want to give you more. That said, you may not like it. I’m willing to live with that. So here goes.

Tabula rasa

I first came across the term “tabula rasa” in 1995 while studying rhetoric at Penn State University. Tabula rasa or “clean slate” is found in the writings of Aristotle, and is the belief that we are each born with a blank slate and everything we learn … our habits … our behaviors … comes from our experiences.

What if, right here and now, you had a clean slate? You could do or be anything you wanted. Nothing in this world could hold you back from your accomplishments.

Now I want you to fast forward exactly one year to this time in 2019. What’s different? What did you accomplish in the last 365 days?

What about five years from now?

Are you rich?

Did you get the guy or the girl you wanted?

Did you have another child?

Did you travel the world?

Did you prevent your kids from growing up to be idiots?

Would you consider yourself a success? Have you made a positive impact on the world?

I’ve been studying success and successful people as long as I can remember … easily 30 years. As a young adult I kept a journal with me of all the things I wanted to do and accomplish, and listened to success audio tapes from Brian Tracy and Zig Zigler.

Even as I’ve been on this year-long sabbatical, I’ve kept this obsession about success.

Here’s the question: Why are some people successful and others are not? Is there a formula for success that put the odds in your favor?

What I’ve found is that most of us have conditioned our brains and have formed habits that preclude us from success. That means if we don’t change what we are doing, right now, the things you want to accomplish in 2019 or 2023 and beyond, both marketing and personal goals, will never happen.

Most of us have conditioned our brains & formed habits that preclude us from success, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

Three Re’s

Record

Repeat

Remove

Not just me, but the most successful people in the world use this formula as well … which is, sadly, a very small percentage of people.

Record. Repeat. Remove. That’s the success formula for personal & professional success, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

And here’s the bonus … the same actions and behaviors that will make your personal dreams come true, will also define your success in marketing.

Record

What does record mean? This means you document your desire. Depending on what research study you look at, less than 10% of all people write down and record their goals. And, those that do, accomplish more in their lives than the other 90% combined.

Let’s say you were going to build a house. If we treated building this house like we do building our lives, we would just call the contractors, the electrician, the plumber, the concrete guy, the drywall team, the roofers … have them get in a huddle and figure it out.

Can you imagine the chaos to building a house without a plan? But that’s what we do. We don’t plan for our desires to come true.

Our mental houses are falling down. Over the past 20 years I’ve asked hundreds of people what their success plan is. How they are going to get what they want out of life? Most people do not have any idea what they really want. And if they do, they certainly don’t write it down or believe they can achieve it.

Bruce Lee case study

In January of 1969, very few people ever heard of a man named Bruce Lee. Today, Bruce Lee is probably the most famous martial arts movie star who ever existed. Bruce had some major ambitions … and he penned this letter to himself:

My Definite Chief Aim

I, Bruce Lee, will be the first highest paid Oriental super star in the United States. In return I will give the most exciting performances and render the best of quality in the capacity of an actor. Starting 1970 I will achieve world fame and from then onward till the end of 1980 I will have in my possession $10,000,000. I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness.

Bruce Lee – Jan. 1969

Unfortunately, Bruce passed away just four years later, but not before accomplishing everything and more from this letter. Every day Bruce got out of his bed and had a crystal image of what success was to him, and what he needed to do that day to move the needle forward.

Think and Grow Rich case study

When I was in college, I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. In the 1930s, Mr. Hill interviewed 500 high achievers like Ford, Roosevelt, and Carnegie to find out why they were so successful. He found, actually, that the key similarity for these high achievers was incredibly simple. They wrote down their desires.

The common thread among high achievers? They write down their desires, says Napoleon Hill & @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

But what kind of goals and desires?

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says, “If you are going to try to bat 1,000%, you won’t accomplish many things of importance. If you’re willing to strike out a few times, you can change the world.”

So I’m not talking about small goals here … we are talking about I’m Gonna Change the World goals.

We do this remembering three components. Let’s look at Bruce Lee’s desire. First, it’s totally unreasonable. This is a Big Big Goal. No person had ever brought martial arts to the mainstream.

Second, we need specifics. He wants to make $10 million by 1980. He had a specific amount and a specific year.

And the best goals ALSO serve others. He wanted to thrill audiences with his performances. And in exchange for delivering this value, he became a superstar.

Well, would you know that the exact same things hold true for your content marketing plan?

Big – If you take your content marketing plan into your CMO and they approve it the first time around … guest what? It’s not big enough. You need to go in there and make their heads spin. It needs to be big!

Unreasonable – No other company should have this goal. This is what I call your content tilt or differentiation point. Are you building something for your audience that has never been done like this before?

Other-serving – What’s in it for the audience? Are you first and foremost helping them get better jobs and live better lives or is your goal about you getting more leads or money?

If your CMO approves your #contentmarketing plan the first time, it’s not big enough, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: This Goal-Setting Activity That Made All the Difference

Repeat

What do we mean by repeat?

Every day in the morning, and every night in the evening, we are going to review this goal. We are going to take about 1% of our day – less than 15 minutes a day – to review our desires. The plan for our mental house.

In a 2009 study published by Dr. Phillipa Lally in the European Journal of Psychology, 96 people over a 12-week period were analyzed about changing behavior and habits. Each chose one new habit and reported each day on whether or not they did the behavior … and … when the behavior became automatic.

Some people chose simple habits like “drinking three bottles of water a day” or “no desserts.” Others chose more difficult tasks like “exercising for 15 minutes before dinner.” At the end of the 12 weeks, the researchers analyzed the data to determine how long it took each person to go from starting a new behavior to automatically doing it.

On average, it took 66 days before a new behavior became automatic. The range was 18 to 254 days.

This is exactly why you have to review your success goal every day over a long period of time. You have to condition your mind to believe that the goal is attainable. Remember … tabula rasa, clean slate … we have to reprogram our mind to accept that our goal is possible.

And here’s the big idea most people just don’t get: The MOST important thing to accomplishing your goal is to BELIEVE that it is possible. You don’t need more money, or skills, or abilities, or a better job or Robert Rose. The most important thing – as George Michael knew so well – is having faith.

The MOST important thing to accomplishing your goal is to BELIEVE that it is possible, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

Once you can condition the mind to your goal, your day starts to shape itself.

Let me give you an example … email. How many people checked email this morning? Most people do. But if you had a totally unreasonable success goal that you reviewed this morning, the same goal you reviewed the night before, you might start to believe that digging into email first thing in the morning won’t at all help you accomplish your goal.

Now let’s go back to our marketing fundamentals again.

There are two main reasons why content marketing programs fail. The first, is that the goal isn’t truly big enough … it doesn’t really affect the lives of the audience in a unique way.

The second comes down to this idea of repetition. If it takes 66 days to change a personal behavior, how many times are you going to need to consistently deliver your content to your audience to change their behavior?

In researching for my book Content Inc., we found that minimum time from start to driving revenue for content marketing was nine months. The average was 18 months of consistent delivery. Why? Because it takes time to build an audience.

If you aren’t delivering consistently to your audience, you are not content marketing.

If you aren’t delivering consistently to your audience, you are not #contentmarketing, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

Remove

In high school I read the book Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, which still to this day is my favorite book. Toward the beginning of the book Valentine Michael Smith, who was born on Mars, is learning to understand humans. Three of his caretakers were women, and each was practicing kissing Mike. Every time any of them kissed Mike, they fainted, out cold.

Jubal Harshaw, Mike’s main caretaker, asked one of the women why she fainted. She said this to Jubal:

Mike gives a kiss his total attention. I’ve been kissed by men who did a very good job. But they can’t give kissing their whole attention. No matter how hard they try parts of their minds are on something else. Missing the last bus – or their chances of making the gal … maybe worry about a job, or money … but when Mike kisses you he isn’t doing anything else. You’re his whole universe … just kissing you. It’s overwhelming.

I must confess that as a young man in high school I tried this technique, but the results were inconclusive.

This is all about focus. Clearing away all the clutter and just being focused on accomplishing something.

In order for record and repeat to work, we have to clear away all the garbage that is stopping us from accomplishing our desires.

Clear away all the garbage that stops you from accomplishing your desires, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett

Microsoft founder Bill Gates didn’t really want to meet Warren Buffett. He didn’t think they’d have anything in common. But at the urging of Meg Greenfield, Washington Post editor, they met on July 5, 1991. Gates was nervous and he was dreading the meeting.

Greenfield gave both men a sheet of paper and asked each to write down the one word that is their key to success. Both, as it happened, wrote down the same word: Focus.

From that day, the two became best friends.

To be successful … we need focus, we need discipline … and we need to remove the distractions around us.

Put away your phone

A few months ago, someone asked me to take a coffee meeting with them. He said he had some very important business model questions for me and thought I could help. We met at Panera Bread on the west side of Cleveland.

I sat down, put my coffee on the table. He sat down, put his coffee on the table, and his phone just on his left side face up. Throughout our chat, he kept looking at his phone. Instagram, Twitter, Messenger … all kinds of notifications. Clearly, he was not paying attention to me.

Obviously, what I was saying wasn’t very important to this person. Whenever I see someone with a phone face up or face down next to them during a meeting, I already know they have a focus problem.

After a bit of back and forth he asked me “What’s the first thing I should do?” I told him to take his smartphone and throw it in the garbage.

Lack of time?

“I don’t have time to accomplish my goals.” I hear this all the time.

Did you know that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American still watches three hours of television per day?

That’s 1,100 hours watching TV per year. Let’s say you’re blessed enough to reach 80 years old and that was you. That means almost 10 years of total time, nonstop, is dedicated to watching TV.

That’s like turning the TV on when you’re 30 and never moving until you are 40. A lost decade.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t watch TV or YouTube videos or surf Facebook. I personally enjoy watching the Cleveland Browns lose most Sundays. But to be successful, you have to change your behavior and make time to do the great things.

I have one friend that says she doesn’t have time to do anything, and yet she hasn’t missed an episode of Big Brother in 20 years. If you’re curious, that’s 550 hours of watching time.

Now let’s go back to our marketing fundamentals again.

When Robert Rose and I go into consulting engagements, besides not having the BIG goal and delivering consistently, do you know what else we find? Content run amok.

Content is being created everywhere … blogs and podcasts and videos with no discernable strategy.

Great media and product brands that have loyal audiences start by doing one thing amazingly well to one audience … a newspaper, a podcast, a blog, a video series, Instagram, an email newsletter.

So you most likely need to go back and start killing some things and just do one thing amazingly well before you diversify into other content types. In this case, less is more.

Do one thing amazingly well before you diversify into other #content types, says @JoePulizzi. Click To Tweet

Record. Repeat. Remove – a simple formula that’s hard to execute. A marathon if you will … not a sprint.

This formula got me to this place, but I almost lost it all by not following it.

My story

In 2007 I left an executive job in media to start a business. I had this great vision of a content marketing matching service between agencies and brands, that we dubbed the eHarmony of content marketing.

Now don’t laugh … at the time I thought it was brilliant.

My written desire was to have 100 paying customers by the end of 2009.

Over the next two years, we were struggling … burning through cash to pay for programming and marketing, increasing our debt. I was having doubts. Late summer 2009 was critically important. That was the time when we were approaching agencies in our system to see if they would pay for another year.

Most agencies were not re-signing to the $5,000 annual fee, and one in particular, our best case study where we delivered a multimillion-dollar client, still hadn’t signed up yet.

So I called the CEO on the phone. Let’s call her Paula. I said, ”Hey, hey Paula … for some reason your auto renew isn’t turned on in our system. Just wanted to make sure there wasn’t a problem.”

She said, “Oh yeah, about that … we decided not to renew.”

I said, “really … why is that?”

She said, “Well, we can get better ROI by doing some other things.”

And I said, “You can get better than 1,000% ROI somewhere else? What is it and I’ll sign up.”

There was silence for a bit … and she just said, “Sorry Joe, we’re not going to renew.”

And that was that.

I hung up the phone, went into my backyard, and just lost it. I couldn’t even close our best customer. I felt completely sorry for myself. A complete failure.

I couldn’t believe I had left a great job for nothing. I had an amazing wife and two small boys that I couldn’t take care of.

It took me a couple weeks to pull myself together. Secretly I’d already been peeking around to see if any full-time jobs were available, which actually made me feel even worse.

And then I went back to the success formula. I then noticed that all my goals were around selling a small product to help just a few people. Actually, my goals were quite small. They were also very “me” centric. There was nothing about adding value to others. Honestly, who cares if we reached 100 customers by 2009? No one. It was a terrible primary goal and didn’t follow any of what we are talking about here.

My career goal actually came to me while I was reading feedback from our blog subscribers. The requests were all around “our group needs training,” “are there other content marketing pros I can meet,” and “my CMO needs convincing.”

And I finally got it. Our audience needs education, not a hookup.

So we set the goal to be the world’s leading educational resource for content marketing to solve those audience issues. And we wanted to do this by the end of 2013.

And then I worked the formula. Recorded it … read and reviewed that goal first thing in the morning and before I went to bed and stopped doing everything else to focus on that.

My friends and loved ones thought I was crazy before. Now they thought I needed to be committed. I mean, still no one even knew what content marketing was and I was going “all in” with it?

Content Marketing Institute was born exactly nine months later in May of 2010 and the most amazing people in the world helped to join this new cause. The first ever Content Marketing World took place in Cleveland at the Renaissance Hotel in September 2011. We were hoping for 100 people to show up. Maybe 150 if we were really lucky. That year, 660 attendees showed up.

And by 2012, we accomplished our big, unreasonable goal. And today, here we are at Content Marketing World with 4,000 attendees.

There was no logical reason that we should have succeeded. There were dozens of other companies that should have created Content Marketing World. But we set the goal and worked the formula … just like Bruce Lee, like Warren Buffett, like Oprah.

You will do amazing things. You will change the world. But it’s a choice, and there is a process for making it happen.

Too many talented people I know decide to just swim down. It’s easier, it’s safe, it’s comfortable, and it’s seductive. But it doesn’t make the world a better place.

And one final thought … this odd quote from Bull Durham sums everything up:

If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you are!

This means, whatever you believe you are doing for whatever reason is true.

And if you believe you are failing because of … your education, your skills, your job, your significant other, then you are!

But if we can reprogram our minds for success, we will be successful.

Tabula rasa … today you have a clean slate … and you can choose to reprogram your brain … your lives …or not.

Just like content marketing is a new muscle for most organizations, success planning is a muscle we have to build and work on every day.

So, in 2019 …

Document your desires.

Review them consistently every day.

Remove the clutter in your life so you can be successful.

Thank you!

Is your goal to become a better content marketer for your brand and your audience this year? Enroll in the winter semester of Content Marketing University and register for Content Marketing World 2019.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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