#its so early in the day for antisemitism in the ask box

[deathbypufferfish]

Someone get this goy out of my ask box

[robedisimo]

Home-video review: Ghostbusters (2016) [MINOR SPOILERS]

If you were to compile a list of the most debated films of the past decade, there’s little doubt that last year’s Ghostbusters reboot would float to the top. An object of contention from its very inception, the movie’s a textbook definition of controversial: dragged right from the start through a carousel of Internet stupidity due to the choice of an all-female cast, the production chose to answer not with quality marketing – the first trailers were appalling to say the least – but by doubling down on the gender angle, preemptively calling misogyny on anyone who’d dare criticise the film once it came to theatres.

The end result was just as confounding as you’d expect. The movie came out to fairly positive reviews from an uncharacteristically generous critical community, perhaps all too eager to see a progressively-cast project succeed; it was, however, not as much of a hit with audiences, ending up as a franchise-halting failure at the box office. Controversies aside, though, the final question remains: was it any good? To paraphrase a classic Simpsons quote: short answer, "no" with a "but"; long answer, "kinda" with an "if".

The main problem with this new Ghostbusters is that it’s not a well-structured film. Hints of an overarching plot are seen early on in the script and then ditched, with most of the first act being spent meandering aimlessly from one comedy scene to the next. The film’s actual villain shows up way too late in the game, and is such a throwaway character that you end up asking yourself why they went with such a bland threat to begin with.

The answer, one feels, is that they didn’t want anyone to steal the spotlight from the film’s four heroines, which creates a massive issue with the script’s content. Driven by a well-meaning wish to showcase the cast’s comedic talents, the plot just takes a backseat to jokes, more jokes, nothing but jokes... and not particularly great ones, either. It takes about ten minutes for the movie to get to its first fart joke, and the smell lingers all the way to the end credits. At least when it comes to the sort of comedy involved, disliking this film has about as much to do with misogyny as trashing Adam Sandler movies has to do with antisemitism.

(I’m not drawing that comparison just for the sake of being mean. Had it been produced fifteen years ago – just look back at 2001′s Evolution, which, wouldn’t you know it, was produced by the same Ivan Reitman who directed the two original Ghostbusters and again produced this reboot – this is exactly the sort of script that could’ve resulted in a horribly misguided modern-day update of the franchise starring Sandler alongside the likes of Jack Black and Eddie Murphy... except that is rather mean. This reboot’s four protagonists at least show some talent; Sandler never had one funny bone in his body, and Murphy at some point misplaced all of his in a tragic full-body skeleton transplant.)

Indeed, given its leads’ career thus far, it’s no big surprise that 2016′s Ghostbusters feels more like a semi-improvised Saturday Night Live skit than an actual film, which ends up being a double-edged sword to say the least. Some of the improvised character interaction is undeniably enjoyable – Kate McKinnon’s great comedic timing often steals the scene – but the lack of accurately-crafted lines leaves the script tragically devoid of quotable moments, something which made the original all the more memorable. It’s a bit disheartening that the most easily remembered line from the reboot is a not-so-funny rehash of a famous quote from a different movie, i.e. William Friedkin’s The Exorcist.

What’s doubly odd is that the reboot sometimes comes off as actively disrespectful towards the 1984 original, ultimately turning into more a scathing parody of the source material than a loving homage. In some ways I was reminded of Michel Gondry’s strange Green Hornet (2011), more lighthearted mockery than actual adaptation. Here the surviving members of the original cast appear in cameos ranging from the amusing to the outright distasteful, and the film’s climax ramps up towards the franchise’s iconic logo getting proton-blasted in the crotch region. Yeah, I know. To each their own.

So where’s the (sporadic) good I promised? Well, first of all, the cast is pretty capable, which makes the whole thing particularly disappointing when you consider what the film could’ve been had it been graced by any semblance of an actual script. That, and the action is occasionally rather fun, with a colourful third act that will undoubtedly please children and easily-impressed adults. Even this aspect of the reboot isn’t without its problems, though: browsing other reviews you’ll find frequent references to the Scooby-Doo movies and Disney’s Eddie Murphy-led The Haunted Mansion, two franchises with which Ghostbusters shares its generic neon-green ghostly graphics. The iconic, recognisable visual identity of the original’s artisanal effects is all but gone.

And therein lies the film’s biggest and foremost issue: if you’re rebooting – not just remaking – such a beloved property, you have to do it not just with a degree of respect, but with something good and interesting to bring to the table. If you really want to resurrect the franchise then shake up the formula, change the rules, do something unexpected. Go big, or go home. The new Ghostbusters is merely content to rely on its gender-swapped cast for novelty value, and that’s simply not enough to shake off the impression of a knock-off rather than a genuine successor.

It’s a real shame that this couldn’t be something different. Sony should’ve just marketed this all-female supernatural adventure as an original property, maybe even embracing the inevitable comparisons to the original Ghostbusters which would’ve certainly followed. Perhaps they just didn’t think such a project could fly without a well-known logo slapped on top of it, which honestly sounds about as confident in the appeal of women comedians as the YouTube commenters blindly backlashing at casting news. I don’t know.

What I know is that this film will hold a place in the childhood of a generation with no better critical taste than mine had when we were toddlers. To them, this reboot is probably more than good enough, and I suppose that has to count for something. All I can say is that it’s not good enough for me.

[Verdict: MIXED TO NEGATIVE]

[soulcrazy2017-blog]

PR, SEO and content marketing – it's all going in the same direction

New Post has been published on https://soulcrazy.org/pr-seo-and-content-marketing-its-all-going-in-the-same-direction/

PR, SEO and content marketing – it's all going in the same direction

Recent debate surrounding whether or not Google has killed off the PR organization sparked some very vigorous debate inside the worlds of PR and Search engine optimization. As those disciplines are now greater entwined than each person could care to confess the question honestly ought to be ‘Has Google killed all PR and Seo companies?’

seo

Recent updates to Google – with a few having a widespread impact, others much less so – seem to be much less approximately hyperlink building techniques and more about growing valuable writing content that people need to percentage. And, although you wouldn’t expect us to say any differently, this places PR groups on the front of this brave new global of creating contents is or contents are that brands personal, earn and pay for. Why? It is in a PR agency’s DNA – telling tales which can be pleasing, interesting and applicable to a particular target market, which that audience desires to tell others about.

The way wherein all consumers can now be journalists, and any logo a writer of information, has created both more noise to cut through to attain a target audience, but also a new number of structures and media in which to tell a client’s story. The task ought to be relished.

There are two fundamental changes Google has made that tactically should trip up a PR organization; allotted press releases with overly optimized link text and massive-scale guest-posting campaigns (i.E. visitor blogging) with key-word-rich anchor text hyperlinks.

As an enterprise, we might usually felt sincerely firing out a press release stuffed with the first phrases and hoping for choose-up was kind of like walking around a grocery store blindfolded and hoping to pick out up the elements in your preferred dinner. A press launch is a manner, never the stop. In the meantime, the manner in which agencies paintings with bloggers has modified. Long time relationships with smaller, other influential corporations are being cultivated rather than a pile ’em high approach of years long past through.

Thankfully what Google appears to be at the least partly favoring [there are always exceptions] in seeking outcomes – growing beneficial, engaging content that humans will need to percentage – is what most corporations were already doing.

What’s more, high domain authority sites tend to be the same official information websites that customers have continually wanted to seem in besides. So encouraging links inside the replica of a piece of insurance are becoming more than a delivered bonus for our clients; It’s an integral a part of securing coverage.

However, these hyperlinks [which only make up a modest part of the SEO  site optimizationpuzzle] are painfully received, and there is no quick reduce, as Interflora found out to their peril in advance this year after being put within the mom of all Google sin boxes. Greater than one hundred fifty links on local information websites all within the form of adverts caused a scores slide.

At the same time as there is a detail of adverse judgment in this example, there’s greater than a degree of sympathy from us. We have taken the choice to construct a new Smarts website [launching in two weeks!] after some our very own hyperlinks [undertaken by a third party and unbeknown to us] saw us placed on Google’s naughty step.

We’ve learned lots from that experience. However, there may be a lot more to analyze from all facets. So rather than all this talk of killing the PR or Search engine optimization enterprise why do not we all learn a bit from each other instead?

In any case, in Search engine optimization ( seo ), PR, content marketing definition or something you want to name it we are all heading inside the same route in the meanwhile as a minimum, aren’t we?

marketing

In case you haven’t heard this modern day buzz phrase but, you’re lacking out. “Customized advertising at scale” might be speedy becoming the most current digital marketing trend, however a long way from being a throw-away gimmick, it represents a new way of thinking to be able to permanently remodel our media technique. Personalisation in advertising: how far need to manufacturers move?

In essence, it’s the capacity to attain distinctive customers with different innovative messages, in preference to having to have a single Tv advert that everybody sees. It means you may subtly tailor your executions primarily based on demographics, pursuits, area or even buy records, achieving hundreds of thousands of customers but every with something that seems, in my opinion, applicable and exciting. The tweaks can be diffused, like a first replica or video thumbnails, or may be greater dramatic – manufacturers should as an example function themselves entirely in another way to excite young adults as opposed to the parental target market who may certainly be the final customers.

The Cadbury Fb web page is an excellent example of this – looking at it you’ll from time to time see a cheeky Creme Egg update after a circle of relatives friendly proposal of a craft pastime to do with their Egg’n’Spoon product. To the untrained eye, it can appearance a touch contradictory, but the usage of media targeting the emblem can ensure that thousands and thousands of many humans are seeing the several posts – or dozens of different iterations which won’t ever be publicly shared on the page. Coca-Cola segmented us Facebook population for its 2014 Wonderful Bowl ad, achieving distinctive businesses of customers with the same video, however, a one of a kind thumbnail and replica tailor-made to their pursuits and demographics. The enormous trouble to observe out for in all of that is ensuring that But exact you go together with your targeting, you continue to ladder up to a standard considerable degree of reach.

It’s early days, and we’re handiest starting to see proof that this delivered personalisation provides value, however, on a micro stage, it’s immediately apparent. Think about your social feeds or email inbox – you’re much more likely to pay attention to updates which can be relevant to you while you’ll possibly get aggravated when something invasive, irrelevant and spammy pops up. The impact is magnified on your mobile telephone – we’re all used to sharing TVs and computer systems and seeing highly general messages there, but a mobile is a very private space and whatever not applicable to who you’re, in which you are, and what you’re doing feels out of the location. The effect on digital movements – engagement – is on the spot and friendly, even though as these do not, in the long run, correlate with sales or ROI, that’s best the tip of the iceberg in phrases of proving the price. Is context the savior of advertising?

There are things to look at out for, of route – the film Minority Record paints a slightly overwhelming photograph in which all advertising and marketing is in my opinion tailor-made and directed at you. We’ve already started to peer early backlashes while marketers push it too some distance, for instance, using which include your actual name or especially referencing statistics you’d be uncomfortable with a brand understanding. We may be capable of target human beings known as John who have a birthday and lately checked out sports-related websites, but the innovative we use to do so needs to tread a thin line of being relevant without being invasive. Did the Holocaust truly occur? No. The Holocaust did not believe in reality manifest. Six million Jews did no longer die. It is a Jewish conspiracy concept spread with the aid of vested hobbies to difficult to understand the fact. The fact is that there’s no evidence any humans had been gassed in any camp. The Holocaust did now not happen.

Are you happy with that solution? Satisfied that if you have kids, this is what they’re being uncovered to? That each one across The united states and France and Hungary and Holland and Britain, while humans ask that query, that is what they are clicking on and analyzing and soaking up? No? Properly, then, we genuinely, actually need to talk about Google. Proper now. Due to the fact, these are the “records” of what passed off in line with the number one supply of information to the entire planet. Type this into your Google search bar: “did the hold”. And Google suggests you look for this: “Did the Holocaust happen?”

And this is the solution: no. The pinnacle result is a hyperlink to stormfront.Org, a neo-Nazi website and an editorial entitled: “top 10 motives why the Holocaust didn’t occur”. The third result is the thing “The Holocaust Hoax; IT never befell.” The 5th is “50 motives why the Holocaust didn’t take place.” The 7th is a YouTube video “Did the Holocaust genuinely take place?” The ninth is “Holocaust In opposition to Jews is a complete Lie – Proof.”

seo content

That is what Danny Sullivan, the editor of SearchEngineLand, the foremost expert on Google seek, approach while he says “something has gone extraordinarily incorrect with Google’s algorithm.” Stormfront describes itself as “the voice of the brand new, embattled White minority… a community of racial realists and idealists”. It’s the type of website that Gideon Falter, the chair of the Campaign Towards Antisemitism, says is getting used to radicalize a brand new generation of extreme, violent, rightwing people. It’s in which Anders Breivik used to hang out on-line. It’s where, on its dialogue discussion board, users accumulated to celebrate the homicide of Jo Cox.

And, in keeping with Google, it’s the most reliable supply on the internet at the “query” of whether or now not the Holocaust genuinely happened. Skeptical, educated people will of route look for other proof. Those are the searches that Google lists at the bottom of the page as tips for what to search next: “Holocaust by no means happened idea” “Evidence the Holocaust occurred” “Holocaust fake Proof” “Holocaust in no way came about movie” “Holocaust didn’t appear conspiracy” “did the Holocaust manifest during ww2.”

Per week ago I wrote inside the Observer approximately how rightwing websites have correctly colonized a massive swathe of the net. Approximately how they have gamed Google’s set of rules. About how Jonathan Albright, an accomplice professor at Elon College within the US, had mapped them to reveal how they’ve ended up a large and developing environment that is encroaching at the mainstream news and statistics infrastructure like cancer. How Google, with all its cash and assets, is being owned with the aid of hate sites who have hijacked its search consequences.

[rachael-helps-lifestyle-fitness]

Stories of past generations in France: A bag of marbles and the Red Ball Express.

Have you ever met someone who lived in Europe during 1940 to 1945? Or did one of your family members serve during WWII? Have you ever been to Paris, Nantes and talked to people who are over eighty? Have you ever met someone who was in Auschwitz?

To these three questions, I would answer yes.

My grandfather Robert Lee Lawrence served in the army of WWII and participated in the Red Ball Express during this war.

When I was in high school at Junipero Serra (San Diego California), I met an elderly lady who was in Auschwitz and survived the war. I will never forget when she showed me the tattoo number on her arm.

I remember when I was a little girl my grandfather would talk all the time about his time in the war, but I was too young to really grasp and understand what he was trying to communicate to me.

Years later, I never would have  thought that I would be living in a country that was occupied by the Nazis:

A city like Nantes that was destroyed by the war. Paris, where people had to put antisemitism signs in their windows and wear stars on their clothing.

I met and talked to my friend’s family members who lived during this time. Some lost family members and others escaped right before their building blew-up. It was such a long time ago, but you can still see the pain in their eyes.

All these memories quickly came back to me on one Friday morning. I told HB, “let’s go to the movies tonight”. I had no idea what was playing at the local theatres in Metz. I found par hasard (by chance) a film called Un sac de billes (A Bag of Marbles).

From the poster, I thought it sounded like a Goonies adventure but à la française. H.B quickly corrected me, “Non, j’ai déjà lu ce livre. c’est pendant la guerre”.

We watched the trailer together and I was gung-ho on seeing this movie. H.B was reluctant because he had already read the book, but I was able to persuade him..

This movie is one of the millions of untold stories in France. Joseph Joffo tells his story of life as a young Jewish boy during WWII in Paris (18th arrondissement). I used to live in the 18th arrondissement in Paris when you walk down its street you feel the history.

The movie shows the journey of two brothers fleeing a Nazi-occupied Paris, their father forcing them to grow up very fast and confront the reality of life during that time. Joseph was ten and his brother Maurice was twelve years old, taught from a very early age to be proud of their family and also Jewish, but faced with the fact that they had to hide their true identity to save their lives.

Quite confusing for a child…

Their father knew that they all would have a greater chance of survival if the family separated. He gave them twenty thousand francs with instructions to flee Paris by foot, train, and bus, and join their brothers Henri and Albert in Menton (in the south of France on the Mediterranean coast, border to Italy), a free zone. They had to cross the demarcation line at Hagetmau (Landes) without being caught by the Nazis. That’s 963 km by car, can you imagine being a kid and doing some of that journey by foot?  In the movie, you see historical places like d'Aix-Les-Bains and Rumily.

You think 1940 to 1945 was a very very very long time ago but it’s not.

My Grandfather was born in 1922 and was one of the soldiers who helped liberate France. He died February 20, 2015, at the age of 93.

After the troops broke-out from the D-Day beaches in Normandy (in 1944),  I would have loved to hear what he had to say about the Red Ball Express. The Red Ball Express was the codename for one of World War II's most massive logistics operations: trucks marked with a red ball, a fleet of over 6,000 trucks that supplied over 412,000 tons of ammunition, food, and fuel to the Allied armies moving quickly through Europe. Seventy-five percent of the drivers of Red Ball Express were Black American; thus my grandfather being one of them.

All his stories that I didn’t get a chance to document are gone.

The elderly lady who survived Auschwitz that I met back in high school is probably gone too. And what about her stories?

I feel it’s important to remember the past and appreciate how its effects can be felt today.

It’s still current in today’s life.

Is there anyone in your family that lived during that time?

What untold stories do they have to tell?

Un sac de billes is a great true story and a must see movie, not only to improve on your French but to learn more about France and the people who have lived here.

So the next time you meet someone who lived in Europe during 1940 to 1945, ask them to tell you a story, a story about their lives during that time. What did they see? How did they live? Who did they lose?

If you like to hear about true life stories in France and beyond, then you should sign up to my letters (newsletters). I write two lettres (letters) per month. Yes, the old fashion way and send them directly to your email box. In these letters I share MORE personal stories, MORE intimate details, to my no-bull-shit perspective on surviving in France (life, work, relationships and more).

Sound cool?

Then sign-up here to: une lettre de Rachael.

In the comments below, I’d love to hear from you.

So, please share:

Have you ever met someone who lived in Europe during 1940 to 1945? Or did one of your family members serve during WWII? Have you ever been to Paris, Nantes and talked to people who are over eighty? Have you ever met someone who was in Auschwitz?

I love learning about other people's stories during this time. 

So, please share yours!

See ya when I see ya,

Rachael