#jeremy spends his entire time on screen fighting for what he believes in. and it's GOING to kill him. one day. it's not a matter of 'if'.

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

i feel like more people would be able to appreciate And When You Fall for what it really is if they dissected the lyrics as they would poetry. despite the fact that it only plays during a fraction of the endings, to me it has to be intentional that it shares the same motif with the main menu, pause screen, and epilogue showcase.

considering you only get it as a credits song during either of the bad endings in the Jeremy Only route, it seems obvious to imagine that the song is tethered to jeremy. i like to consider And When You Fall as an ode to him, from either megan, jenny, or a combination of the two of them.

the first two verses alone are what really fucking gut me, if only because they encapsulate the themes of the entire rest of the game beautifully. "and when you fall; please let me down gently".

as long as jeremy is alive, there isn't a moment where he isn't pushing back against the perceived injustices around him. it could be advance, it could be disrupt, it could be channel one. jeremy is a potent blend of stubborn and moralistic, and that combination is dangerous. it's dangerous for others, and- more importantly in the contexts of when the song is played- it's dangerous for him.

i love the resignation in the word choice used here. "when you fall". not if. it's inevitable. anyone who knows jeremy knows that he's going to kick and scream and fight until he can't anymore. these endings just highlight the sorts of things that force him to stop, be it death at the hands of betterment, or torture so all-consuming that jeremy as we knew him might as well be dead.

ultimately, i pick up a lot of jenny's language in the first two verses alone, when considering who the words are meant to be referring to.

"i can't ask you not to kill yourself for the sake of a better world. i can't ask you not to die. we both know you're going to do that inevitably. just don't break my heart when you do it. please."

[ancientroyals]

Torshan Story Segment Four

More Than Meets The Eye

No Trigger Warnings

You click on the ANCAM application and a new window appears, filling the entirety of your primary monitor. The user interface is fairly mundane and spartan. The only few splotches of color on your screen come from the logos of various social media and messaging apps on the left side of your screen. The right side has a bank of editable information such as IP address, physical address, name, phone number, MAC address, and a plethora of other technical information. In between the two sides, right in the middle was a gray, blank slate. The top of the screen had a simple ribbon of options such as “File”, “Options”, and “Identities”.

Tomas leans forward to better look at your screens.

“Ah, ANCAM. It stands for Anonymous Networking, Calling, And Messaging. It’s like a virtual private network, but much more customizable. You can spoof your phone number, location, device information, and even generate believable web browser history and advertisement data if you want to get that in depth. We use it to talk with informants a lot and to interact online without people knowing who we are. Because, let’s be honest, people aren’t always eager to talk with cops. Especially not Xenos.” 

Poking about the interface, you find you’re able to automatically generate new identities and devices to spoof, then save them for future use to maintain consistency. From there you’d be able to use that generated information to create an account on Facebook as Jeremy Brewster, a carpenter living in Ronkonkoma, New York. Then you could just as easily create an entirely new identity as Mei Zhao, a journalist living in Hong Kong. From there you’d be able to send messages over a plethora of different apps and websites. While you poked around, you thought it’d be a good idea to pick Tomas’ brain a bit about the goings ons here on the island.

“What’s the current situation with the locals and Xenos?��� you ask.

Tomas nodded his head, as if approving of your question. He thought for a moment longer before answering.

“It’s complicated, like everything else,” he scoffed. “Some Xenos integrated pretty well. They’ve got jobs and play nicely in society. Others… well, they ain’t so interested in playing nice. We have a serious gang problem with Xenos. The only reason we haven’t devolved back into a warzone is because some Xeno gangs want to keep the peace. Some of the locals see them as like comic book superheroes come to life.” Tomas shook his head, and rolled his eyes.

“The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Remember that,” he warned.

You pause for a moment, letting his words marinate in your mind. 

“Well, what’s the day to day like here? Is there constant fighting going on?” you ask. From what you could tell from the flight in, the island wasn’t quite on fire yet.

“No, no,” Tomas shook his head, “we get into some serious skirmishes from time to time but it’s not every day. Most days it’s just like any other city: except you might sit next to a beast from hell on your bus ride to work in the morning, order food from a vendor that looks like the fish it's selling. In a way, that's the worst part of it all. It all seems so normal until one day, out of the blue, we're all reminded of what these things are capable of." He exhaled deeply, and laid a hand on your shoulder. 

"That's why we're doing what we're doing. With your help, we might be able to find a better way to keep Torshan's population safe." With the same hand, he pointed to the screen.

“ANCAM’ll be an important part of that.”

You looked back at the screen and the multitude of options and no clear indication of where you should start.

“What channels of communication do we have for the locals and Xenos?” you ask, gesturing to the left side of the screen containing all of the possible messaging apps and social networking sites one could ever want. You could spend days trudging through it all and still be searching in all the wrong spots.

“Where should I be looking?” you added.

“Well, locals tend to keep to what they know. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram. Those are the places to go if you want to talk with the more… above board people. You’ll get a good amount of Xenos on those platforms too, especially the ones with a professional presence. It’s a good place to get started. Join groups with a decent mix of human and Xeno members and make some friends. If you want to poke around in the seedier side of things, it’s pretty much exclusively done on peer-to-peer encrypted messaging apps. The one popular with Xenos is an app called Semaphore. The only way to get into any of the groups is an explicit invitation by the person who made the group so it’s a notoriously hard nut to crack. If you can get close enough with a Xeno to get into one of these groups, you can get a lot of sensitive information. Though, the crux of the issue is that Xenos don’t tend to be friendly towards known OXEN agents, especially the Xenos that are up to no good. That’s why if you want to be effective here, you’ll need to be discreet.”

You looked back to the screen, at your fake name and phony facebook account, and thought of the stories of undercover agents that came before you. What would you uncover? What would you find? Would you even have what it takes to do what needed to be done?

There's definitely more to look at on the computer, or you could dive right in and start trying to make connections. You can also look at the Xenoform database for more information on some of the big players.

PREV | NEXT

[akegatacchi]

Sense8 AU!aftg

In the honor of absolutlynothing I’ve decided to put out there one of the many au I have on my phone and archive it there

Big shout out to @a-m-peengoo and @bluesuederose for participating in this mess with genius lines and always be there to bear my 36 ideas per hour. We did a masterpiece girls.

Here we go it’s gonna be long

The cluster:

Kevin: Nomi. He’s just a fuckin hacker who’s running away from his family (riko). When he’s bored, he spends nights crashing the Pentagon system for fun, and makes every screen in the White House play Best Exy Actions Compilation (the longest and hardest part is choosing one compilation to play).

Dan: Will. One of them have to keep them under control. Plus, Dan with a gun i can’t even-

Matt: Riley. Soft, blue strand of hair, a heart of gold, maternal. As a DJ. Yes. SO SOFT (he still knows how to box)

Allison: Capheus. Listen. Imagine Allison in high heels, skin tight leather pants, driving a bus. Also, a F1 pilot champion who can drive anything (even if it’s the first time)

Andrew: Wolfgang. Duh. Do I need to explain myself. Just think abt him saying “This is Berlin. Those are my people. And we go to our knees for no one”.Boy he does NOT like this situation, at all. Will keep the others out with sheer willpower and no blockers. The cluster’s deadliest weapon. PLUS HELLO???? ANDREW IN A PASTEL PINK BOMBER SHOOTING ON A HELICOPTER WITH A BAZOOKA????

Aaron: Felix? Sorta? not a senseate but a great doctor. Senses bullshit and when someone is in Andrew’s body real quick  (Andrew: says more than 2 sentences and is pleasant. Aaron:.....who’s that bitch where is my brother) . Later helps to manufacture blockers.

Neil: Kala. A pharmacist that uses his skill for arson and may or may not be running away from mafia/family matter and currently hiding in India. Him saying “Bring it, bitch” to Riko is my sexuality and Andrew’s. Can create explosives from a Fanta can and spices I mean it’s already canon in aftg. (plus andreil would work even better bc technically Neil can’t even touch Andrew for real)

Nicky: Lito. The drama, the sass. Also the scene where he discovers the Twinyard in Germany are his cousins would be hilarious. The scene where Lito seduces the nurse but with Nicky (“engaging into heterosexual activity? me????”) or the scene where Lito screams in the museum but with Nicky

Erik as Hernando. That’s it that’s the post.

Renee: Sun. I mean, a korean fighter lady in prison trying to be a better person and had a silent bffs relationship with a german gangster? Come on. Also. Allison in a bus and Renee doing art martials stuff. 

Riko: whispers i guess he can eat Allison’s high heels

Now the ~scenes~ (it’s just shitposting):

Aaron, on the verge on several break downs: wait so you have like … DJ Blue Matt and F1 pilot Allison Reynolds in your head? since when? ANDREW SINCE WHE-

*

Neil: what’s a better use of a multiple thousands dollars education than precise arson?????

*

Aaron: why does your boyfriend always end up burning things up?

Andrew: he lits up my heart as well

Aaron: FOR FUCK SAKE

*

Kevin, shocked and betrayed: is there a better sport than exy?

Aaron and Allison: YEAH A REALLY GOOD CAR RACE

*

Allison: you’re - you’re like the spirit of Lucy Liu. In Charlie’s Angels. I watch it once a day. Renee:.....that’s sweet actually :) 

*

Neil: does a molotov cocktail

Matt: I tHoUgHt yOu wErE a PhArMaCiSt

Neil: Yes? That’s PHYSICS

Matt: no that’s ARSON NEIL

Alternative:

Kevin: breaks into the Pentagon virtually

Neil: breaks into the Pentagon physically

Matt, again: i thought you were a PHARMACIST!!!! Neil: Yes I am??? That’s irrelevant

*

A senseate sibling, escaping, grabbing a vehicle at random: someone knows how to drive that?

Allison, in stilettos : no, but I sure will soon

*

Just Allison driving Renee around to fight people

*

Everytime someone mocks a senseate sibling Neil or Nicky shows up to roast them. Sometimes they do it both at the same time. It’s apocalyptic. The sass. The drama. 

They can also bullshit their way out of any situation. Neil is such a smooth liar and Nicky is just ridiculous. The FBI agent charged to arrest them somehow ends up crying abt childhood trauma while hugging a teddy bear.

Neil, caught in the act of making a string of explosives by the FBI guy: uuuuuuh….Nicky?

Nicky, currently dealing with a white mom in retail: somehow convince the FBI to buy christmas lights

(Yes Nicky works in retail bc his family cut ties with him but he hopes to be an actor.ON BROADWAY)

(From retail to actor to cluster negotiator real quick)

A  fuckin moron to Allison: a hottie like you driving a bus? what is this, hooker on wheels?

Neil: please let me have this one

Allison: seats back and enjoys Neil roasting him

Nicky: brings the popcorn

Nicky, to the FBI guy: You can’t arrest me Daryl I’m your long lost little brother

The FBI guy, a white man: My name is not Daryl Neil: THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO BELIEVE

The FBI guy, texting Neil (don’t ask): I guess I’m still in love with my ex

Nicky: aaaaaw we have to help this sweetheart

Neil: do you want me to burn his current boyfriend’s car, buddy?

(Nicky: DON’T REMIND HIM THAT HE’S SUPPOSED TO ARREST US)

*

A fuckin homophobe: ready to get your ass kicked, faggot?

Andrew: appears through Nicky

Nicky, smiling: fuck yeah, baby 

*

Andrew, between two bazooka shot, to Neil:  we’re nothing

*

Nicky, through Andrew, all cheery: Hi!!!! :D

(Aaron jumps like a scared cat)

*

Andrew: ready to kill ppl for mafia business

All the senseate siblings in the back minus Renee, eating popcorn and enjoying the show: Kick ass, Drew!

*

Andrew, on the hospital bed: has an emotional moment with Aaron

Aaron: sir or ma'am, idk who you are but it’s family only, I will ask you, as his doctor, to leave my brother’s body

*

Aaron: Andrew is2g if you’re making psychic love to that fuckin red hair rn i will-

*

Andrew each time a senseate is hurt: Aaron it’s for you

(Just Aaron doing med tutorials for a whole cluster while Andrew repeats it with a bored tone to everyone)

(Aaron, sighs: it is Neil again? Just let him bleed for a few minutes)

*

Neil, making bomb with kitchen stuff: If it means losing you then no

Andrew, falling in love: oh

*

Bad guy: You have no weapon, blondie!

Allison, with Renee and Dan behind her: Think again, sweetheart

*

They made a little “honorary cluster member” badge to Aaron (he does not cry STFU NEIL)

*

Dan and Neil both knows by heart the laws of different countries…..for very different reasons.

*

Luther: humiliates Nicky once again

Renee: calmly breaks his hand at dinner while smiling like an angel, all the while stopping Andrew from killing him with the other hand

*

Neil, a pharmacist: blowing shit up and arson

Aaron, a doctor, watching him: yk what hold my beer I know several ways to stop a man’s heart

*

The whole “You don’t know how to use a gun” “No, but you do” with andreil or matt and dan

*

Just Drew and Renee kicking some mafia asses together as buddies

(While Neil blows some shit up in the background and Allison/Nicky cheer)

*

Matt has the perfect ear too

Him and Kevin are the remote operation/communication team but one day all the fighters/criminals of the cluster are busy so they both start to fight as well and fuck they are good at it

Nicky: I expected this from Biceps Matt but Kevin??? You can land a kick like that???

Kevin, outraged: I WENT TO THE EXY OLYMPICS WHEN I WAS 16

*

Speaking of Kevin, they all call him “nerd” or ���einstein”

Allison: so the nerd can fight uh

*

Aaron, counting down on his fingers: so you have F1 Pilot Superstar Allison Reynolds, former gold medalist and tech genius Kevin Day, a human diapason, a multilingual arsonist, World no.1 Taekwondo Champion Renee Walker, a cop, an actor…..what are you there for??

Andrew, literally a mafia king:....ice cream and crime?

*

Neil to Andrew, after the whole debacle with his father is out: You did know there were mafia out of Germany too, right?

Andrew: I can’t even have that for myself fuck this family

*

Dan, every time before each “mission”: okay guys I know we need to do it but I’d like to remind ALL of you *looks pointly at Neil and Andrew* it’s STILL illegal and morally dubious

Neil: …….like I said to Nicky, irrelevant *without missing a beat blows up the entire building and puts on stolen Gucci shades*

Alternative:

Neil: ok saint theresa why were you the one to suggest we explode Riko’s brain off then

Dan: ...don’t turn the conversation around me it’s about you

*

Allison “guess we’re detourning a place next” Reynolds and Kevin “It’s not that hard to pilot” Day

(Kevin: But why are you on a plane to Russia? I thought you were in India last time?

Neil:....don’t ask)

*

Aaron to Andrew, where they are trapped and betrayed: your boyfriend wouldn’t happen to know how to poison a whole room with gaz?

Neil: I was born for this moment

(Andrew: just bc you’re my brother doesn’t mean you have the right to dirty talk my boyfriend)

*

Andrew: be gay, do crime and eat ice cream

Nicky: AND BLOW NEIL’S D-

*

(before they know abt Neil’s past, when Andrew is angsty bc he caught feelings)

Andrew: You  shouldn’t get close to me, it’s dangerous, i’m mafia

Neil: oh haven’t you heard-

*

Jeremy, bouncing out of nowhere: Hey Kev ! Love how you BI-nary code ahah have you heard of the ARCHIPELAGO 

*

Neil, sipping tea: so my father is the Butcher

Matt:  okokokok coolcoolcoolcool yk what arson doesn’t sound like a bad idea after all

*

(this one is not funny sorry) but Neil taking over each time someone is hurt bc he is used to deal with it

“Give the pain to me”

*

Andrew and Aaron like to fuck around a lot with the whole sensate stuff (since only one of them is a sensate)

Bad guy: only one of you is a sensate, which one is it?

Twinyard, in a perfect and flat tone: try to guess

A bad guy is spying on Andrew and waiting to kill him in Germany, via a cam, thinking he’s safe BUT SUPRISE MOTHERFUCKER it was aaron dressed as Andrew in a mafia meeting and now you have to deal with a 5 feet tall mafia boy

*

For real tho they are a little protective of the normal doctor who heal them every time (yes even Neil but don’t tell him) so you bet something like that happens one day:

Aaron: comes home from work angry

Andrew, cleaning up blood or counting money: whassup shithead?

Aaron: There’s this older doctor he’s great and all but he’s a fuckin asshole to me he belittles me everyday bc i’m young and we lost a patient today bc he rathers humiliate me than let me save him 

Andrew, a dangerous glint in his eyes and a whole cluster behind him: oh?

Kevin, opens his computer and digs up dirt on him: give me a sec

Allison: I can roll over him with my truck

Neil: there is so many ways to mix two meds and kills him ON ACCIDENT

Dan: let’s see how he deals in prison

Nicky: oh this is going to be fun

Kevin, reciting facts like he’s reading a grocery list: so yeah he smuggles meds from the hospital so local drug dealers, illegally sells meds for himself on the black market, does tax evasion, is friend with a local senator and both of them are involved with minors….i have already several reservation at X hotel btw and cases of work harassment on nurses and interns, threats to others older doctors in serve, and OH. OH. We have a spanking kink on our hands too.

Every members of the cluster, turning to Nicky and Neil:....go wild

Nicky, giggling: not that’s it’s a shame when it’s consensual but not here so - let’s start with the spanking :D

Neil: Can I make him cry

No violence is used but the doctor is found on the floor drowning in his own tears after a few minutes and after an hour he’s resigned and leaving the country

Andrew was dressed as Aaron for that (that being: smuggling Neil and Nicky into the hospital to meet the doctor through him)  and sends him a selfie of a 5 feet surgeon and the man crying on the floor 

It’s their best memory as a family (Aaron hates Neil a little less after that)

Neil to Nicky: why did you stop me from pushing towards suicide??? He’s gonna do that in another country

(Kevin: no if I can help it)

Nicky: bc we don’t do that to people!

Neil, Andrew, Aaron, Allison:...........right

Neil: killing even indirectly is no good but destroying their life and humiliating them publically is good?

Nicky: YES!

Matt and Dan: WAIT NO

(Allison: don’t brother Neil you’ll just hurt your head)

(Neil, close to tears: but...but...but arson?? Andrew, with knives out: alright fuckers who broke his heart?)

*

Matt and Dan bc they’re fuckin weak to Neil: ITS OK BUDDY ARSON IS GOOD

*

I have to end on this note:

Storyline wise, Neil would have make the perfect Wolfgang too….if Wolfgang was a twink.

[kartiavelino]

Why Game of Thrones’ Final Season Was Always Destined to Disappoint

Endings are hard. Any writer will tell you that, but none will mean it more than the creator of a TV series when they are talking about their series finale, the culmination of their work that will largely dictate the entire show’s legacy. The Sopranos ended in 2007 and fans still argue over hits controversial ending. Lost caused online riots with its 2010 series finale. Dexter‘s ending is basically a punchline.  But no show’s ending has caused a stir quite like Game of Thrones, with the HBO fantasy hit bringing its epic saga to a controversial end on Sunday night, something its showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have long been preparing for. (Read our recap, but know this article is long and full of spoilers.) “We’ll be in an undisclosed location, turning off our phones and opening various bottles,” Weiss told Entertainment Weekly of the duo’s plans for the big night. “At some point, if and when it’s safe to come out again, somebody like [HBO’s Thrones publicist Mara Mikialian] will give us a breakdown of what was out there without us having to actually experience it.” It’s likely Benioff and Weiss, who brought George R.R. Martin‘s Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire to life in 2011, turning the epic book series into the world’s most popular TV show, have been keeping their phones off as of late, as the highly anticipated final season, which took two years to make before finally premiering in April, has been, to put it bluntly, a massive disappointment to a majority of the fanbase. So much so that some disgruntled viewers are petitioning for a remake of the eighth season “with competent writers,” according to a petition started on change.org. At the time this article was published, it had well over 1 million signatures (aka the viewership of a CW show, so small but still kind of mighty).  Game of Thrones‘ fall from grace has been swift and near-unprecedented, though it’s not unheard of for fans to not like how their favorite show ended; it’s the norm.  Still, the final six episodes of Game of Thrones just highlighted the obvious: the show was kind of screwed once it caught up to and surpassed the books, as Martin is still chugging away on those last books, despite telling Weiss and Benioff years ago he’d probably be finished by the time they were.  “I can give them the broad strokes of what I intend to write, but the details aren’t there yet,” he once told Vanity Fair. “I’m hopeful that I cannot let them catch up with me.” Oops.  There was definitely a shift once the TV series surpassed the books in season six. The dialogue sounded a little more modern, with the word “man-bun” even finding its way into the script. There were less intimate conversations, more battles and bloodshed. The pacing picked up, and we mean really picked up, going from zero to light-speed. Still, Game of Thrones was appointment television, possible the last vestige of it in the new world of streaming services dropping entire seasons of a show all at once. And it was still one of the best shows on television, with the jampacked trophy case to prove it.  But then the final season premiered, delivering disappointment after disappointment, leaving fans to cry “Where is my show?!” like Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) crying “Where are my dragons?!” in season two, a far simpler time. It’s not just the fans expressing their befuddlement over what the hell happened to the show that delivered defining and iconic moments like Ned Stark’s (leading man Sean Bean) death in season one and the Red Wedding, which has lived on as one of the best devastating scenes in TV history. Even the actors have become more vocal about their conflicted feelings about the direction the show had gone in in its final two seasons. (And that’s not including the Internet’s new trend of looking back on interview the cast did leading up to the final season and reexamining their now questionable answers and facial expressions.)  Conleth Hill, who played Varys, the always-plotting eunuch, spymaster and Master of Whispers that finally met his end when Dany learned of his treason, was still emotional about his exit on the show when talking to Entertainment Weekly, opening up about his frustrations with his character’s role on the show in the back-half of its run.  “That’s been my feeling the last couple seasons, that my character became more peripheral, that they concentrated on others more,” he said. “That’s fine. It’s the nature of a multi-character show. It was kind of frustrating. As a whole it’s been overwhelmingly positive and brilliant but I suppose the last couple seasons weren’t my favorite.” He then pointed to what he believed to be GOT‘s big shift, which of course was when the show caught up and surpassed Martin’s text.  “In a way, that was lost when we got past [the narrative in George R.R. Martin’s] books. That special niche interest in weirdos wasn’t as effective as it had been. Last season and this season there were great scenes and then I’d come in and kind of give a weather report at the end of them—’film at 11,'” Hill explained. “So I thought he was losing his knowledge. If he was such an intelligent man and he had such resources, how come he didn’t know about things? That added to my dismay. It’s now being rectified with getting a great and noble ending. But that was frustrating for a couple seasons.” Even the actors who have remained right in the middle of all the action have opened up about their struggle to adjust to the fast and furious pacing of seasons seven and eight in comparison to the slow and steady nature of the earlier seasons.  “We’re used to having a whole season to get to a point,” Nikolaj Coster-Waldau told Vanity Fair. “Now suddenly, a lot of things happen very quickly.” One of those things was his character Jaime Lannister’s Gossip Girl-reminiscent love triangle in episode four of the final season.  In one episode, Jaime, who had left Cersei to fight for the living and knighted Brienne, slept with Brienne, chose to stay in Winterfell, but then changed his mind and left to go back to Cersei in King’s Landing. This came after a seven-season redemption arc, featuring hard lessons of growth and countless moral struggles and the loss of his sword hand, which he longed to believe the very best thing about him and defined his own self-worth for so long. Like Jaime, we slowly discovered who the man was underneath the Kingslayer bravado.  We don’t see him struggle with this internal battle, continuing Jaime’s long-standing inner-conflict between the man he wants to be, the Kingslayer the realm has long believed he is and who he really is. Instead, we got a long, unnecessary and unrewarding final battle between him and Euron, the steampunk pirate bedding Cersei, before he finally reunited with his twin sister and true love, with the couple ultimately dying in am embrace as the world crumbles atop them, fulfilling the line Jaime told Bronn (Jeremy Flynn) about wanting to die in the arms of the woman he loves. Full-circle? Sure. Satisfying? Meh.  “Trying to connect the dots between the scenes was a little complicated because you invest so much time, so many years in these characters, so when suddenly you find out that Jaime comes back and his son has committed suicide,” Coster-Waldau said. “There’s so many things that obviously you can’t go through, on-screen, all of these moments, but you have to still walk through them in your mind, if you’re an actor, at least talk about them. There was a lot of those connecting the dots throughout.” The off-screen connecting of dots is a double-edged sword in the TV world: While viewers want to see character learn new revelations and react accordingly, there’s only so ways to share information the audience already knows without it starting to sound like a Wikipedia entry or an exposition dump that wastes precious minutes of what little time the show has left.  It’s a task writer and co-executive producer Bryan Cogman, who penned season eight’s second episode (the most celebrated of the final season episodes), “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” which featured a lot of characters reuniting after years apart and many highly anticipated moments fans had been looking forward to for quite some time.  “This was the most difficult script of the 11 I’ve written for Game of Thrones,” he told Entertainment Weekly of writing the episode, which he compared to penning a play. “The big challenge was not writing a Wikipedia page. In fact, my first draft was a Wikipedia page. The way it works is the showrunners return a Final Draft document with notes written in red in the margins. They returned my first script with a sea of red.” The hour proved to be a necessary respite from the breakneck pace and epic battle scenes that Game of Thrones seemed to have preferred since passing the books, and it was a welcome break for Cogman especially heading into the CGI-filled carnage that was to follow.  “There was such a breakneck pace to season seven that I was delighted when the [showrunners] proposed an episode of just spending time with characters in this space,” he said.  And yet, despite the character-driven episode, so many major moments—including one the entire story has centered on—have happened off-screen. How did Arya and Sansa react when they learned Jon’s true identity? Your guess is as good as ours. So Euron just knew where Missandei was going to be after his fleet destroyed their ships and that she happened to be one of Dany’s most trusted friends and advisers? Sure! Did you know that Arya had to strike that fatal blow to the Night King in that exact spot to truly kill him? You wouldn’t unless you watched Weiss and Benioff’s “Inside the Episode” featurette after your Xanax kicked in following the battle of Winterfell.  For a show that used to happily live in the delicious tension between characters attempting to read each other as information proved to be the ultimate weapon, Game of Thrones‘ new strategy of kill first, don’t even bother offering explanations or answers to anything has angered many viewers, none more so than the handling of the end of the Night King’s storyline and Daenerys ultimately becoming the Queen of Ashes. Let’s start with the Night King, who was a creation of the show and has been teased to be the ultimate big bad of the story since the very first scene of the show. His shadow has loomed over the political machinations of the characters for years, with most of the characters deciding to put their differences aside and unite to win the Great War, minus Cersei because…duh.   So expectations going into episode’s three massive battle were higher than the Wall the Night King brought down in the season seven finale. Winter wasn’t coming; it was here, and fans were poised to said goodbye to many beloved characters and possibly see the gang take a serious “L” as the Night King seemed to be unbeatable.  But by the end of the 82-minute episode, the Night King was taken out with a single blow. A. Single. Blow. While we have no issues with who wielded the dagger (Arya becoming the unlikely Kingslayer was an inspired and fitting narrative choice), we take issue with how it went down. All of this build up for…that? For the first time in pop culture history, we were hoping for that ridiculous moment where the villain holds off on killing the hero to give us their entire backstory and provide answers. We got nada. So eight seasons of build-up and mythology was dealt with, with the show ready to wash its hands of its fantasy elements completely, an especially maddening choice when we’ve been lead to believe that Bran was going to be an integral part of the story, not just a plot device to lure the Night King. (Also, remember when prophecies were supposed to matter?)   Another crucial misstep made by the showrunners was their pimping out of “The Long Night,” which they teased would feature the battle sequence to end all battle sequences. (OK, we’ll admit, the media played a large part in this, too, hyping episode three like our jobs depended on it. Which they sort of did, so forgive us our sins.)  When the PR blitz for the final season first began, the big focus was on how the battle sequence in episode three was going to be something that has never been done on television before, even bigger than the iconic 40-minute long sequence in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, their inspiration and benchmark. GOT‘s version? Basically double that sequence, with 82-minutes of all-out war helmed by Miguel Sapochnik, the award-winning director responsible for “Battle of the Bastards” and “Hardhomme.”  750 people working on the episode. 55 consecutive nights. 11 weeks. Three locations.  “What we have asked the production team and crew to do this year truly has never been done in television or in a movie,” Cogman told EW. “This final face-off between the Army of the Dead and the army of the living is completely unprecedented and relentless and a mixture of genres even within the battle. There are sequences built within sequences built within sequences. It’s been exhausting but I think it will blow everybody away.” With this kind of hype and hyperbole, the pressure was on for GOT to deliver. And it did. Sort of.  The episode, the longest in GOT‘s history, was intense and high-pressure, never getting the audience a chance to settle in. That is if they could see what was happening on-screen.  As “The Long Night” was airing, many viewers complained on social media that they couldn’t see anything happening as it was just too dark. While some think it added to the horror and felt in-line with how the characters likely felt during the chaotic battle, others were just annoyed. Either way, it’s a valid and fair criticism, especially when HBO is subscription based. For cinematographer Fabian Wagner, the man responsible for lighting the episode, this was a non-issue. “I know it wasn’t too dark because I shot it,” he simple told TMZ.  OK then. “A lot of the problem is that a lot of people don’t know how to tune their TVs properly,” Wagner later told Wired in an interview. “A lot of people also unfortunately watch it on small iPads, which in no way can do justice to a show like that anyway.”  “Game of Thrones is a cinematic show and therefore you have to watch it like you’re at a cinema: in a darkened room,” he continued. “If you watch a night scene in a brightly-lit room then that won’t help you see the image properly.”  HBO And besides, it wasn’t about the deaths (mostly secondary characters) or destruction, even if we’d been lead to believe that it what this episode was supposed to be about.  “Personally I don’t have to always see what’s going on because it’s more about the emotional impact,” said Wagner.  Here’s the problem with that: they keep telling us that, but not really showing it. The final season seems to be almost all spectacle, intentionally so. Just look at what Benioff told EW of their initial pitch to HBO for Game of Thrones, how they sort of used the relationships as a Trojan Horse to sneak in their plans for the epic battles to come down the kingsroad.  “The lie we told is the show is contained and it’s about the characters,” he said. “The worlds get so big, the battles get so massive.” So massive that HBO would eventually increase their already staggering $5 million (per episode) budget to more than $15 million an episode for the final season. And they were willing to spend even more on Game of Thrones, one of their most commercially and critically successful series ever. (It averaged 30 million viewers per episode and has a record number of Emmy wins, not to mention the global merchandising market.)  “[HBO] said, ‘We’ll give you the resources to make this what it needs to be,'” Weiss told EW, Benioff added, “HBO would have been happy for the show to keep going, to have more episodes in the final season.” It was Benioff and Weiss’ decision to end the series, and to do so with two shortened final seasons, even with HBO offering them anything they wanted, which makes their choice to give themselves such a small amount of time to bring such a massive and epic story to a close in a way that respects the characters and its dedicated audience all the more frustrating. “We always believed it was about 73 hours, and it will be roughly that,” Benioff said of their decision. (They also once envisioned a two-hour wrap-up movie that would have a theatrical run, which in hindsight, was a very good call for HBO to nix.) Given how successful Game of Thrones is, possibly the most successful TV series of all-time, it makes sense Benioff and Weiss, who learned the broad strokes of Martin’s intended ending back in season four, would want to go out on a high note, not a whimper like so many once-beloved series before it.  “We want to stop where we—the people working on it, and the people watching it—both wish it went a little bit longer,” Benioff explained. “There’s the old adage of ‘Always leave them wanting more,’ But also things start to fall apart when you stop wanting to be there. You don’t want to f–k it up.” Of course, they did sort of f–ki it up, largely because of the limited amount of time to get their massive laundry-list of s–t done in a realistic way that doesn’t undo or ret-con eight seasons worth of their iconic characters’ journeys, decisions and motivations. (Remember when Tyrion was the savviest and smartest person in the game? Those were the days.) While there’s been many storytelling casualties in this truncated approach to the series’ end, there’s been no greater victim that Daenerys Targaryen, with the Mother of Dragons actively choosing to murder thousands of innocent people in “The Bells,” despite the fact that the city and its troops had surrendered. Like Usher, Dany and Drogon chose to let it burn, going on a complete rampage that devastated the city she once vowed to save (never mind that the only part of King’s Landing she chooses not to bring fire down upon is the Red Keep, where her ultimate target Cersei was hanging out, ripe for a long-awaited confrontation).  A lot of people, including those who’ve named pets and even children after Dany after her many badass moments over the series, were upset over this turn for their chosen queen.  The thing is the seeds for this eventual turn by Dany to embrace her House’s words “Fire and Blood” and succumb to the long-standing belief that all Targaryens have the potential to go mad with power (Shout out to her dad, King Aerys II Targaryen aka the Mad King) have been planted, so it wasn’t a total shock that she went the Mad Queen root. Again, like with the Night King, it’s not what they chose to do but how they chose to do it. After watching Dany fight tooth and nail for the weak and innocent throughout the series run (even showing off her affinity for somewhat alarming vengeance in just straight-up burning her enemies), her transition from the Mother of Dragon to the Queen of the Ashes happened so quick it felt like we had whiplash; it also didn’t feel earned, nor did the sudden distrust of Dany by her advisers and other characters after they championed her for seasons.  Yes, she’s made questionable and eyebrow raising decisions (murdering Lord Tarly and Dickon Tarly was not a good look), but she’s also saved their asses. Without Dany, her dragons and her loyal army made up of the Dothraki and Unsullied, the North would’ve been massacred by the Army of the Undead. No questions asked.  While it would make sense that the loss of two of her most beloved and trusted advisers, Jorah (Iain Glen) and Missandei, along with one of her dragons (RIP Rhaegal), combined with the betrayals of Jon, Tyrion and Varys would no doubt lead to Dany’s emotional stability being tested, the character we’ve watched evolve over eight seasons would not just murder thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of innocent people because she was having a bad day. She just wouldn’t. (The choice to not show a close-up of Dany at all once she decides to ignore the bells and give into her rage was a baffling choice as well, though Clarke did extremely compelling work in the short scene in which she chooses revenge over mercy.)  She went from complicated hero to cardboard cut-out villain in an instant, and she deserved better—so did the viewers. We wanted her descent into madness to feel earned, not rushed and cheap, actually lessing the impact of her death at the hand of her love, nephew and possible usurper, Jon Snow.  Imagine if we had an entire season of watching Daenerys actually rule, discovering that her dream of the Iron Throne may not have been all it was cracked up to be, slowly giving in to her paranoia and fury. The explanation offered by Benioff and Weiss for Dany’s decision during the “Inside the Episode” featurette following “The Bells” was frustrating, to say the least. (Never forget when they reasoned that Rhaegal died because Dany “kind of forgot” about Euron and the Iron Fleet!) “There is something chilling about the way Dany has responded to the death of her enemies,” Benioff said, citing her reaction to her brother Viserys’ death in season one.  Of the crucial moment Dany chooses violence, Weiss explained, “I don’t think she decided ahead of time that she was going to do what she did. And then she sees the Red Keep, which to her is the home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago. It’s in that moment…when she’s looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her when she makes the decision to make this personal.”  And that is why Daeneyrs decided to ruin everything she had been working toward her entire life, because she saw the Red Keep, which again, she didn’t just attack to take out Cersei, instead of destroying the entire city. Instead, the show has now given the rest of the characters all the validation they needed to turn on her, making her downright evil and unworthy of being a ruler without the one redeeming quality a woman seemingly needs to still inspire some level of loyalty or shred of hope: being a mother, which brings us to Cersei. As portrayed by the extraordinary Headey, Cersei has always been one of the most complicated, complex and ruthlessly strategic characters on the show, willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power. This is a woman who literally blew up the Great Sept of Baelor, much to her delight as almost every member of House Tyrell died (Justice for Olenna and Margaery) along with many civilians.  If Dany is the Mother of Dragons, Cersei is the Mother of Monsters, well at least one, as she’s directly responsible for the human atrocity that was King Joffrey (Gone too late). She’s also threatened to kill basically everyone on the show—including her younger brother Tyrion, who has somehow become her greatest champion and defender?!—and Cersei is not a woman in the business of making idle threats. And yet throughout the final season, the common refrain has been Cersei still can be redeemed and/or trusted because she’s pregnant, and if there’s one thing to know about Cersei it’s that she loves her children.  Quick recap: All three of Cersei’s children are dead because of her: 1. Joffrey just sucked and she did nothing to tame him. 2. Her daughter Myrcella was murdered as an act of revenge against Cersei. 3. Tommen poor, sweet Tommen, committed suicide after her saw what his mother had done to the Sept.  Still, the show has replaced all of Cersei’s defining characteristics—ruthless convictions and cunning gameplay—with the fact that she’s a mother. They didn’t help matters by keeping her framed in a tower window all season, flanked by characters straight out of a late-in-the-episode Saturday Night Live sketch: a mute monster (The Mountain), a mad scientist (Qyburn) and the steampunk pirate paramour whose name must not be mentioned. When you look back, Cersei really didn’t do anything all season; making her a passive bystander in her own life. If “The Bells” taught us anything it’s just women are just too emotional to rule, even if they are making moves—controversial as they may be—that men in this cutthroat world have made for thousands of years.  Add in the fan outrage over Ser Brienne of Tarth being reduced to crying in a bathrobe after Jaime leaves her just after she was finally (and deservedly) knighted (not to mention that her final solo scene of the series was documenting Jaime’s merits!) and Missandei, the one woman of color on the show, ultimately serving as a device to move the plot forward, and it’s not surprising that many viewers feel that the female representation on the show is lacking.  But the biggest issue came in episode two, when Sansa’s rape, which caused possibly the show’s biggest controversy when it aired in 2015, was brought up again during her reunion with the Hound.  Jessica Chastain, Turner’s Dark Phoenix co-star, took to Twitter after the episode aired to slam the scene which Sansa inferred the horrors she has endured over the course of the series, including the Ramsay Bolton assault, had turned her into a stronger person.  “Rape is not a tool to make a character stronger. A woman doesn’t need to be victimized in order to become a butterfly,” Chastain tweeted. “The #littlebird was always a Phoenix. Her prevailing strength is solely because of her. And her alone.” Chastain was far from the only person to call out the show for this exchange, with fans and critics alike blasting the scene.  After the rape scene aired in season five, Weiss and Benioff defended their decision to include it in the show in an interview with Time.  “It’s still the same basic power dynamic between men and women in this medieval world,” Benioff said. “This is what we believed was going to happen.” It is a medieval world, but it’s also the biggest TV show in the world airing in 2019; you should know better. The criticism of the way the female characters storylines are playing out on screen could very well be because of the lack of female voices behind the scenes. Benioff and Weiss have written a majority of the series’ episodes, with the list of directors is equally as small and mostly male.  Just over five percent of GOT‘s 73 episodes were female-directed, and it was the same director, Breaking Bad‘s Michelle MacLaren, who directed two episodes in seasons three and four. Similarly, just a few women have written on the show, with celebrated writer Jane Espenson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Once Upon a Time and Battlestar Galactica, to name a few) receiving a sole teleplay credit for a season one episode, and said in 2011 that she “loved loved loved” her experience working on the show She added she would do another episode “in an instant” if asked to return. For its final season, Weiss and Benioff’s assistant Gursimran Sandhu was promoted to staff writer, while Vanessa Taylor was the show’s sole female producer when she worked on the show in 2012-13, also writing a few episodes during that time. Maybe if Espenson or Taylor came back around they could’ve noted it’s not a good look to say that the two powerful women who actually want the Iron Throne are just too damn emotionally unstable to rule, and that a white man who didn’t want power truly deserved to be king, with another white dude who didn’t want the position ultimately becoming king in the end.  In an e-mail interview ahead of the series finale, Benioff and Weiss, who directed the series finale, admitted they avoid social media. “It’s gratifying to have people care enough about what you’re doing to feel like they need to comment on it in real time,” Weiss and Benioff, who are set to head over to the Star Wars franchise, told Rolling Stone. “Social media has been central to the way the show has been watched by many people. That said, we don’t engage with it all that much, mainly because of the time and energy required to do so. The show itself is a full-time job and then some. We’ll make the best show we know how to make, and we’ll hope that people like it. Knowing full well they won’t be shy about it if they don’t.” No, no they were not. But sometimes it’s worth it to read your feed.  Don’t miss E! News every weeknight at 7, only on E! https://www.eonline.com/news/1042391/why-game-of-thrones-final-season-was-always-destined-to-disappoint?cmpid=rss-000000-rssfeed-365-topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories The post Why Game of Thrones’ Final Season Was Always Destined to Disappoint appeared first on Top Of The World. https://kartiavelino.com/why-game-of-thrones-final-season-was-always-destined-to-disappoint/

[mrmichaelchadler]

Jon Bernthal’s Incredible Work Gets Lost in the Second Season of Netflix’s The Punisher

Jon Bernthal is insanely good in “The Punisher.” A remarkable blend of skill, vulnerability, and the work of a great casting director have to coalesce for a performance like this to exist at all. Sometimes he moves, and it’s as though some sort of programming has kicked in for Frank Castle; his limbs carry him forward with incredible force and viciousness, but his face remains a mask of agony. At other times, his movement tells another story, and it’s as though Castle chooses to give over to some base instinct or primal drive, and he opens his mouth and bellows, allowing the beast to consume the man. Bernthal never forgets to check in on Castle’s adrenaline levels. Something happens—he’s startled, or frightened, or he kills or is wounded, and it lingers. The pulse takes a good long while to slow. This isn’t a man who makes jokes or acts affectionately with ease, and Bernthal shows us how hard it is for Castle to unclench the fist within. He is endlessly thoughtful. He plays Castle unsparingly, but with compassion. He gives him a soul, but does not let that soul off the hook. He is even, occasionally, funny.

It is not an exaggeration to call Bernthal’s performance in “The Punisher” one of TV’s best unsung turns, but existing as it does in the meandering, frustrating second season of the Netflix series, his excellent work is actually a bit of a double-edged sword. He’s so good that it underlines all the shortcomings of the writing. It becomes clear exactly how much shoddy storytelling he’s compensating for, because when the camera leaves him, it all falls to shit. It’s not that the other actors are bad. Far from it. They’re just not Jon Bernthal. When he can’t square the bad writing or fill in the gaps, it’s obvious the show has lost its way, because he’s been making it work, episode after episode, and even he can’t make this right. And his gripping performance adds one more layer of disappointment to the proceedings, because here’s the most unforgivable sin of the second season of “The Punisher”: You have a magnificent performance like this one at your disposal, and this is what you choose to do with it?

The action picks up well after the end of the first season, and Frank Castle has taken his get-out-of-jail-free card and hit the open road. The Punisher is dead, long live nice-guy drifter Pete Castiglione, the kind of regular Joe who stops at a roadside bar in Michigan just because the music sounds nice. A chance encounter gets him thinking about putting down roots, but then a smart-mouthed, wily teenager winds up in a jam with a whole lot of lethal force, and within minutes Pete’s gone and Frank’s back, covered in blood and aggravated by the bad guys and the scrappy teen alike. Amy (Giorgia Whigham) has suddenly become Castle’s responsibility, and that makes her a bloody pain in the ass. (She literally has to stitch up a wound in his ass.) The people chasing her don’t stop coming, so Frank doesn’t stop killing, and that’s the season—though of course, there’s a lot more to it than that.

And that’s all pretty good. Not all of it works—Frank ends up repeating himself a lot, and the appealing Whigham handles the scrappy, quippy stuff better than the heavy, haunted stuff—but it lives somewhere between “okay, let’s move along now” and “yes, Frank Castle and an unruly teenage daughter, more please, thanks.” But there’s another major arc to this season. It’s unwieldy to say the least, but one can fairly say that “The Punisher” is essentially split in half: There’s the “8 Simple Rules for Saving My Teenage Sidekick” storyline and all its component parts, and then there’s season one villain Billy Russo (Ben Barnes) and the mess that comes with him. The first half of the season essentially hinges on the idea that Billy may or may not remember what he did after leaving the military, up to and including the murder of Frank’s entire family—who, as Curtis Hoyle (Jason R. Moore) tells Amy, were pretty much also Billy’s family, making the betrayal that much more abhorrent. Dinah Madani (Amber Rose Revah), who basically haunts Russo’s hospital room, is certain he’s lying, and that he remembers it all. Krista Dumont (Floriana Lima), a psychologist with her own traumatic backstory, believes that he doesn’t, and is certain that he’s capable of and worthy of redemption. Russo is haunted nightly by dreams of a skull, says he misses his brothers-in-arms Frank and Curtis, and claims to have no idea who messed up his face. A very, very, very long time is spent on him remembering, and almost none in actually interrogating any of the ideas and themes found therein.

Barnes doesn’t lack abilities, and Revah (who flits, as Moore does, between both stories) fares about as well as anyone could within this stagnant, sour plot. Lima, terrific as Maggie Sawyer on “Supergirl,” gets the rawest of all raw deals—to say her storyline goes to every stale and empty place you think it will shouldn’t be a spoiler, but once you’ve seen one really bogus female psychologist storyline, you’ve seen them all. Still, she’s good. They all are. But there’s no helping this fact: By the time Billy Russo makes the same heavy-handed, joyless speech for the umpteenth time, it’s likely that viewers won’t be so much wishing that he’d get his memories back, as wishing that he’d forget more things, like his lines, or where he lives, or that he’d prefer to stay out of jail. It’s endless, it’s nowhere near as interesting as “The Punisher” thinks it is, and it has the disobliging habit of sucking all of the oxygen out of episodes that might not have been great, but could probably have been passable.

It’s too bad, because when the camera tears itself away from Billy Russo’s scarred-but-not-that-scarred face, it often lands on some pretty gripping fight scenes, and solid filmmaking in general. An early episode is particularly excellent, spending much of its runtime locked inside a police station with Castle, the kid, and a savvy Sheriff wary of both as they endure a ceaseless assault from outside forces, and that one in particular uses lots of the crayons in the violence Crayola box. Director Jeremy Webb shoots it at times like a tense, slow-moving western, at others a roomy thriller; he carefully frames shots so that the station feels at times like a safe haven, at others like an isolated death trap. When Castle finally leaves to deal with the problem, as you know he must, the camera stalks the woods as matter-of-factly as the man who kills his way through them. It’s a taut, thoughtful affair, quietly stylish, and brutal without glorying in its brutality.

Coincidentally, most of those descriptors are also words I’d apply to Bernthal (maybe not quietly stylish—the costumes, by Lorraine Z. Calvert, are terrific, but Castle’s not exactly a fashion plate). The best things about “The Punisher” in both its seasons are often reflected in his performance. But Bernthal plays Castle as a man who feels doomed to repeat the same brutal cycle over and over again, convinced that there’s only one thing he’s good for, and that, sadly, is also true of the second season of this series: repetitive, bleak, and unwilling to admit that it might be capable of doing anything new. 

Full season screened for review. 

from All Content http://bit.ly/2QV5Fpu

[seoprovider2110]

10 Epic Shifts that are Re-Writing the Rules of Marketing

By Mark Schaefer

I’m often asked: “What is the next big thing in marketing?”

This seems like a simple question, but I’m not sure I know any more. I started thinking about this and came up with at least 10 “big things” that will profoundly impact my career, and yours. I first posted this list on Facebook and it provoked some interesting comments. Here’s my take on the next big thing(s), with comments from some marketing friends.

1) The Spawn of Artificial Intelligence

What I mean by “spawn” is that AI is simply the mother technology for so many new innovations. In fact futurist Kevin Kelly stated in his wonderful book The Inevitable that nearly all innovation going forward means adding artificial intelligence to existing products. He thinks it will get to the point where we will be able to plug-in super intelligence to almost any software, service, or daily task.

There are SO many implications of adding computer intelligence to what we do, including the rise of chat bots, business intelligence, image recognition, marketing automation, and algorithmic writing, to name a few!

You may find it strange that I don’t include “Big Data” in this list of 10 trends. I see AI as the interface, the translator that makes Big Data accessible and real for marketers. Big Data won’t be a “thing” very soon. It will simply be the fuel for AI.

2) Virtual reality

While Artificial Intelligence toils silently in the background of our lives, I believe VR is THE game-changer for almost everything we do in marketing. Within three years many people will be wearing some sort of AR headset many hours each day for both work and play. It will replace much of the functionality of smartphones, computers, and televisions … basically any screen we use today.

AI will be the new way we connect, discover, learn, and entertain ourselves. I think the adoption of this technology will be meteoric because it is addictive. But that’s a story for another blog post!

VR will have a more profound impact on the world than the internet. The web will surround us like the air that we breathe.

Instead of fighting over keywords in a never-ending SEO/ad war, the new battleground will be creating the most fun and immersive experiences for our customers. This is our opportunity to invite people out of their filter bubbles and tempt them to spend some time with us and our very intoxicating VR thrill ride. I can see it now: “The Pampers Diaper Experience.” Ha!

3) Wearable tech

Wearable tech turns each of us into mobile data-generating machines. We’re streaming information about our life, bodies, consumption habits, friends, families, travels, relationships and more that will greatly please the Internet overlords.

Of course there is a tremendous upside as well as that stream of data produces goods and services that serve us precisely based on our DNA, our moods, our whims, and the personal needs, wants, and desires that companies will know better than our we know ourselves.

Douglas Karr, founder of the MarTech blog, said this data flow could mean “the death of mass media and rise of targeted, personalized marketing experiences through ABM and similar tools. We’ll see experience-based KPIs and experience analytics beyond simple sentiment and customer satisfaction.”

Marie-Clare Byard adds: “You won’t be going to the doctor’s anymore, you’ll be taking ECG’s with your mobile phone and your mirror will scan you every morning checking out all your vitals. Combined with wearables, technology is predicting illness quicker then humans.”

4) Media revolution

To look at the future of content marketing, we need to observe the bleeding edge of content disruption occurring with traditional media. We’re witnessing a decline in traditional news-gathering and reporting, desperate monetization struggles, a loss of control of the content as it is absorbed by social platforms, a loss of direct relationships to subscribers, and intense innovation in new content forms like interactive graphics/video.

The fragmentation of content channels that occurred with the internet (everyone is a publisher!) is less important now as powerful media gatekeepers re-assemble in the form of Facebook (they determine what we see), Google (they determine what we find), and Amazon/Apple (they determine how it is distributed). Most internet revenue is now generated from subscription models (over advertising) but ironically, most of the actual content creators aren’t benefitting from the gold rush.

5) Distribution revolution

The advent of drones and 3D printing will revolutionize marketing by creating entirely new business models. The goal of marketing is value creation and customer acquisition and perhaps there is no greater impact on this than the revolution in how we deliver products to customers.

Laura Kessler believes this might be the most important trend in business today: “Through new distribution frameworks we will achieve high-speed drone delivery, duplication and replication engineering, that will change everything in business and society well beyond marketing.”

6) Dramatic changes in Martech

I was recently at a conference populated by dozens of marketing technology companies. I became frustrated that none of them seemed to be able to tell me how they were different from anybody else. Any point of differentiation seemed like a wafer-thin veneer of sales babble.

I think there will be a big change in this field in the next few years. There has to be a shakeout/consolidation that will probably be driven by integration with artificial intelligence. We will see exciting new functionality and the automation of many traditional marketing functions which will lead to …

7) Job loss

I don’t want to be your daily downer but I just don’t see how this technology revolution is going to result in a net increase of marketing jobs. Many economists predict massive knowledge worker job loss … and marketers are knowledge workers. Yes, there will be new job categories. But the economists have accounted for that and the future may be turbulent for we, the marketeers.

I think a lot of people are in denial about this, claiming that “we will always need humans to make the decisions.” No. We don’t. Most companies want to eliminate human error by removing human decision-making. This is happening, folks.

This point may receive push-back from my readers, but when I see the amazing stuff coming out of the field of cognitive computing, my reaction is “Dammit. That computer is doing what I do!” It isn’t going to happen overnight but the adoption of these new AI-driven technologies will probably be rapid, at least at large, progressive companies.

Jonathan Payne adds: “We’re about to see such an extreme tech and economic shift that I think is going to catch a lot of people off guard — people assume automation is only a threat to unskilled manufacturing jobs. And more significantly, this is going to require a fundamental psychological shift in our culture that I’m not too convinced most of us are ready to make.”

These job losses, especially at the middle levels, will throw our field into turmoil. What does this mean for careers, skills, and the imperative for personal branding/personal relevance?

8) The new branding imperative

Content is becoming commoditized and this will accelerate once algorithms start writing the blog posts and creating the infographics (which is already happening). We are deep into the first stages of Content Shock and the high level of content competition is weeding out the weakest links. Some companies simply won’t be able to keep up.

In my book The Content Code, I articulated the six possible strategies that can overcome Content Shock and at the top of the list is branding. Creating an emotional connection with customers that encourages them to seek us out amid all that noise is more important than ever.

9) Influence marketing

I just returned from a conference where I facilitated round table discussions among some of the nation’s top CMOs.  It seemed that no matter the topic, the discussion always turned back to influence marketing. We are moving inexorably toward an ad-free world. In that environment, what are we going to have left other than aligning ourselves with the advocacy of trusted internet stars?

This is a topic worth exploring in an entirely separate post (and I will) but I think that a well-executed influence marketing strategy may be a true source of competitive advantage. There are only so many influencers to go around.

Jeremy Bednarski said, “Those who want to take advantage of influence marketing need to do so quickly. There are only so many influencers and only so much content they will be able to endorse. Think of it as content shock specifically for influencers.”

10) The rise of the private networks

About a year ago I wrote a post about a milestone. For the first time in history the number of people active on private networks (like Messenger, WhatsApp and Snapchat) exceeded those using public social media platforms (like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). Social media use is still growing too, but the rise of these private networks represents a profound shift for marketers.

Why is this shift occurring? People are tired of social media scrutiny and bullying. They are concerned about their permanent social footprint. Why not take it behind a firewall and contain your messages to trusted friends? That private environment nurtures more trust, vulnerability and authenticity … perhaps that is what social media was supposed to be in the first place.

The bad news is, all that amazing data we could see on Twitter and Facebook is going dark. The good news is (maybe), Facebook owns Messenger and WhatsApp — will marketers have access to this goldmine of anonymized data some day? Our immediate challenge — how does a company add value in that private environment without being creepy?

So that is a bit of my current thinking. What’s your take on these trends?

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Book links are affiliate links.

Illustration courtesy Flickr CC and Thomas Quine

The post 10 Epic Shifts that are Re-Writing the Rules of Marketing appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2ldJVZp

[goldieseoservices]

10 Epic Shifts that are Re-Writing the Rules of Marketing

By Mark Schaefer

I’m often asked: “What is the next big thing in marketing?”

This seems like a simple question, but I’m not sure I know any more. I started thinking about this and came up with at least 10 “big things” that will profoundly impact my career, and yours. I first posted this list on Facebook and it provoked some interesting comments. Here’s my take on the next big thing(s), with comments from some marketing friends.

1) The Spawn of Artificial Intelligence

What I mean by “spawn” is that AI is simply the mother technology for so many new innovations. In fact futurist Kevin Kelly stated in his wonderful book The Inevitable that nearly all innovation going forward means adding artificial intelligence to existing products. He thinks it will get to the point where we will be able to plug-in super intelligence to almost any software, service, or daily task.

There are SO many implications of adding computer intelligence to what we do, including the rise of chat bots, business intelligence, image recognition, marketing automation, and algorithmic writing, to name a few!

You may find it strange that I don’t include “Big Data” in this list of 10 trends. I see AI as the interface, the translator that makes Big Data accessible and real for marketers. Big Data won’t be a “thing” very soon. It will simply be the fuel for AI.

2) Virtual reality

While Artificial Intelligence toils silently in the background of our lives, I believe VR is THE game-changer for almost everything we do in marketing. Within three years many people will be wearing some sort of AR headset many hours each day for both work and play. It will replace much of the functionality of smartphones, computers, and televisions … basically any screen we use today.

AI will be the new way we connect, discover, learn, and entertain ourselves. I think the adoption of this technology will be meteoric because it is addictive. But that’s a story for another blog post!

VR will have a more profound impact on the world than the internet. The web will surround us like the air that we breathe.

Instead of fighting over keywords in a never-ending SEO/ad war, the new battleground will be creating the most fun and immersive experiences for our customers. This is our opportunity to invite people out of their filter bubbles and tempt them to spend some time with us and our very intoxicating VR thrill ride. I can see it now: “The Pampers Diaper Experience.” Ha!

3) Wearable tech

Wearable tech turns each of us into mobile data-generating machines. We’re streaming information about our life, bodies, consumption habits, friends, families, travels, relationships and more that will greatly please the Internet overlords.

Of course there is a tremendous upside as well as that stream of data produces goods and services that serve us precisely based on our DNA, our moods, our whims, and the personal needs, wants, and desires that companies will know better than our we know ourselves.

Douglas Karr, founder of the MarTech blog, said this data flow could mean “the death of mass media and rise of targeted, personalized marketing experiences through ABM and similar tools. We’ll see experience-based KPIs and experience analytics beyond simple sentiment and customer satisfaction.”

Marie-Clare Byard adds: “You won’t be going to the doctor’s anymore, you’ll be taking ECG’s with your mobile phone and your mirror will scan you every morning checking out all your vitals. Combined with wearables, technology is predicting illness quicker then humans.”

4) Media revolution

To look at the future of content marketing, we need to observe the bleeding edge of content disruption occurring with traditional media. We’re witnessing a decline in traditional news-gathering and reporting, desperate monetization struggles, a loss of control of the content as it is absorbed by social platforms, a loss of direct relationships to subscribers, and intense innovation in new content forms like interactive graphics/video.

The fragmentation of content channels that occurred with the internet (everyone is a publisher!) is less important now as powerful media gatekeepers re-assemble in the form of Facebook (they determine what we see), Google (they determine what we find), and Amazon/Apple (they determine how it is distributed). Most internet revenue is now generated from subscription models (over advertising) but ironically, most of the actual content creators aren’t benefitting from the gold rush.

5) Distribution revolution

The advent of drones and 3D printing will revolutionize marketing by creating entirely new business models. The goal of marketing is value creation and customer acquisition and perhaps there is no greater impact on this than the revolution in how we deliver products to customers.

Laura Kessler believes this might be the most important trend in business today: “Through new distribution frameworks we will achieve high-speed drone delivery, duplication and replication engineering, that will change everything in business and society well beyond marketing.”

6) Dramatic changes in Martech

I was recently at a conference populated by dozens of marketing technology companies. I became frustrated that none of them seemed to be able to tell me how they were different from anybody else. Any point of differentiation seemed like a wafer-thin veneer of sales babble.

I think there will be a big change in this field in the next few years. There has to be a shakeout/consolidation that will probably be driven by integration with artificial intelligence. We will see exciting new functionality and the automation of many traditional marketing functions which will lead to …

7) Job loss

I don’t want to be your daily downer but I just don’t see how this technology revolution is going to result in a net increase of marketing jobs. Many economists predict massive knowledge worker job loss … and marketers are knowledge workers. Yes, there will be new job categories. But the economists have accounted for that and the future may be turbulent for we, the marketeers.

I think a lot of people are in denial about this, claiming that “we will always need humans to make the decisions.” No. We don’t. Most companies want to eliminate human error by removing human decision-making. This is happening, folks.

This point may receive push-back from my readers, but when I see the amazing stuff coming out of the field of cognitive computing, my reaction is “Dammit. That computer is doing what I do!” It isn’t going to happen overnight but the adoption of these new AI-driven technologies will probably be rapid, at least at large, progressive companies.

Jonathan Payne adds: “We’re about to see such an extreme tech and economic shift that I think is going to catch a lot of people off guard — people assume automation is only a threat to unskilled manufacturing jobs. And more significantly, this is going to require a fundamental psychological shift in our culture that I’m not too convinced most of us are ready to make.”

These job losses, especially at the middle levels, will throw our field into turmoil. What does this mean for careers, skills, and the imperative for personal branding/personal relevance?

8) The new branding imperative

Content is becoming commoditized and this will accelerate once algorithms start writing the blog posts and creating the infographics (which is already happening). We are deep into the first stages of Content Shock and the high level of content competition is weeding out the weakest links. Some companies simply won’t be able to keep up.

In my book The Content Code, I articulated the six possible strategies that can overcome Content Shock and at the top of the list is branding. Creating an emotional connection with customers that encourages them to seek us out amid all that noise is more important than ever.

9) Influence marketing

I just returned from a conference where I facilitated round table discussions among some of the nation’s top CMOs.  It seemed that no matter the topic, the discussion always turned back to influence marketing. We are moving inexorably toward an ad-free world. In that environment, what are we going to have left other than aligning ourselves with the advocacy of trusted internet stars?

This is a topic worth exploring in an entirely separate post (and I will) but I think that a well-executed influence marketing strategy may be a true source of competitive advantage. There are only so many influencers to go around.

Jeremy Bednarski said, “Those who want to take advantage of influence marketing need to do so quickly. There are only so many influencers and only so much content they will be able to endorse. Think of it as content shock specifically for influencers.”

10) The rise of the private networks

About a year ago I wrote a post about a milestone. For the first time in history the number of people active on private networks (like Messenger, WhatsApp and Snapchat) exceeded those using public social media platforms (like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). Social media use is still growing too, but the rise of these private networks represents a profound shift for marketers.

Why is this shift occurring? People are tired of social media scrutiny and bullying. They are concerned about their permanent social footprint. Why not take it behind a firewall and contain your messages to trusted friends? That private environment nurtures more trust, vulnerability and authenticity … perhaps that is what social media was supposed to be in the first place.

The bad news is, all that amazing data we could see on Twitter and Facebook is going dark. The good news is (maybe), Facebook owns Messenger and WhatsApp — will marketers have access to this goldmine of anonymized data some day? Our immediate challenge — how does a company add value in that private environment without being creepy?

So that is a bit of my current thinking. What’s your take on these trends?

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Book links are affiliate links.

Illustration courtesy Flickr CC and Thomas Quine

The post 10 Epic Shifts that are Re-Writing the Rules of Marketing appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2ldJVZp

[seo90210]

10 Epic Shifts that are Re-Writing the Rules of Marketing

By Mark Schaefer

I’m often asked: “What is the next big thing in marketing?”

This seems like a simple question, but I’m not sure I know any more. I started thinking about this and came up with at least 10 “big things” that will profoundly impact my career, and yours. I first posted this list on Facebook and it provoked some interesting comments. Here’s my take on the next big thing(s), with comments from some marketing friends.

1) The Spawn of Artificial Intelligence

What I mean by “spawn” is that AI is simply the mother technology for so many new innovations. In fact futurist Kevin Kelly stated in his wonderful book The Inevitable that nearly all innovation going forward means adding artificial intelligence to existing products. He thinks it will get to the point where we will be able to plug-in super intelligence to almost any software, service, or daily task.

There are SO many implications of adding computer intelligence to what we do, including the rise of chat bots, business intelligence, image recognition, marketing automation, and algorithmic writing, to name a few!

You may find it strange that I don’t include “Big Data” in this list of 10 trends. I see AI as the interface, the translator that makes Big Data accessible and real for marketers. Big Data won’t be a “thing” very soon. It will simply be the fuel for AI.

2) Virtual reality

While Artificial Intelligence toils silently in the background of our lives, I believe VR is THE game-changer for almost everything we do in marketing. Within three years many people will be wearing some sort of AR headset many hours each day for both work and play. It will replace much of the functionality of smartphones, computers, and televisions … basically any screen we use today.

AI will be the new way we connect, discover, learn, and entertain ourselves. I think the adoption of this technology will be meteoric because it is addictive. But that’s a story for another blog post!

VR will have a more profound impact on the world than the internet. The web will surround us like the air that we breathe.

Instead of fighting over keywords in a never-ending SEO/ad war, the new battleground will be creating the most fun and immersive experiences for our customers. This is our opportunity to invite people out of their filter bubbles and tempt them to spend some time with us and our very intoxicating VR thrill ride. I can see it now: “The Pampers Diaper Experience.” Ha!

3) Wearable tech

Wearable tech turns each of us into mobile data-generating machines. We’re streaming information about our life, bodies, consumption habits, friends, families, travels, relationships and more that will greatly please the Internet overlords.

Of course there is a tremendous upside as well as that stream of data produces goods and services that serve us precisely based on our DNA, our moods, our whims, and the personal needs, wants, and desires that companies will know better than our we know ourselves.

Douglas Karr, founder of the MarTech blog, said this data flow could mean “the death of mass media and rise of targeted, personalized marketing experiences through ABM and similar tools. We’ll see experience-based KPIs and experience analytics beyond simple sentiment and customer satisfaction.”

Marie-Clare Byard adds: “You won’t be going to the doctor’s anymore, you’ll be taking ECG’s with your mobile phone and your mirror will scan you every morning checking out all your vitals. Combined with wearables, technology is predicting illness quicker then humans.”

4) Media revolution

To look at the future of content marketing, we need to observe the bleeding edge of content disruption occurring with traditional media. We’re witnessing a decline in traditional news-gathering and reporting, desperate monetization struggles, a loss of control of the content as it is absorbed by social platforms, a loss of direct relationships to subscribers, and intense innovation in new content forms like interactive graphics/video.

The fragmentation of content channels that occurred with the internet (everyone is a publisher!) is less important now as powerful media gatekeepers re-assemble in the form of Facebook (they determine what we see), Google (they determine what we find), and Amazon/Apple (they determine how it is distributed). Most internet revenue is now generated from subscription models (over advertising) but ironically, most of the actual content creators aren’t benefitting from the gold rush.

5) Distribution revolution

The advent of drones and 3D printing will revolutionize marketing by creating entirely new business models. The goal of marketing is value creation and customer acquisition and perhaps there is no greater impact on this than the revolution in how we deliver products to customers.

Laura Kessler believes this might be the most important trend in business today: “Through new distribution frameworks we will achieve high-speed drone delivery, duplication and replication engineering, that will change everything in business and society well beyond marketing.”

6) Dramatic changes in Martech

I was recently at a conference populated by dozens of marketing technology companies. I became frustrated that none of them seemed to be able to tell me how they were different from anybody else. Any point of differentiation seemed like a wafer-thin veneer of sales babble.

I think there will be a big change in this field in the next few years. There has to be a shakeout/consolidation that will probably be driven by integration with artificial intelligence. We will see exciting new functionality and the automation of many traditional marketing functions which will lead to …

7) Job loss

I don’t want to be your daily downer but I just don’t see how this technology revolution is going to result in a net increase of marketing jobs. Many economists predict massive knowledge worker job loss … and marketers are knowledge workers. Yes, there will be new job categories. But the economists have accounted for that and the future may be turbulent for we, the marketeers.

I think a lot of people are in denial about this, claiming that “we will always need humans to make the decisions.” No. We don’t. Most companies want to eliminate human error by removing human decision-making. This is happening, folks.

This point may receive push-back from my readers, but when I see the amazing stuff coming out of the field of cognitive computing, my reaction is “Dammit. That computer is doing what I do!” It isn’t going to happen overnight but the adoption of these new AI-driven technologies will probably be rapid, at least at large, progressive companies.

Jonathan Payne adds: “We’re about to see such an extreme tech and economic shift that I think is going to catch a lot of people off guard — people assume automation is only a threat to unskilled manufacturing jobs. And more significantly, this is going to require a fundamental psychological shift in our culture that I’m not too convinced most of us are ready to make.”

These job losses, especially at the middle levels, will throw our field into turmoil. What does this mean for careers, skills, and the imperative for personal branding/personal relevance?

8) The new branding imperative

Content is becoming commoditized and this will accelerate once algorithms start writing the blog posts and creating the infographics (which is already happening). We are deep into the first stages of Content Shock and the high level of content competition is weeding out the weakest links. Some companies simply won’t be able to keep up.

In my book The Content Code, I articulated the six possible strategies that can overcome Content Shock and at the top of the list is branding. Creating an emotional connection with customers that encourages them to seek us out amid all that noise is more important than ever.

9) Influence marketing

I just returned from a conference where I facilitated round table discussions among some of the nation’s top CMOs.  It seemed that no matter the topic, the discussion always turned back to influence marketing. We are moving inexorably toward an ad-free world. In that environment, what are we going to have left other than aligning ourselves with the advocacy of trusted internet stars?

This is a topic worth exploring in an entirely separate post (and I will) but I think that a well-executed influence marketing strategy may be a true source of competitive advantage. There are only so many influencers to go around.

Jeremy Bednarski said, “Those who want to take advantage of influence marketing need to do so quickly. There are only so many influencers and only so much content they will be able to endorse. Think of it as content shock specifically for influencers.”

10) The rise of the private networks

About a year ago I wrote a post about a milestone. For the first time in history the number of people active on private networks (like Messenger, WhatsApp and Snapchat) exceeded those using public social media platforms (like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). Social media use is still growing too, but the rise of these private networks represents a profound shift for marketers.

Why is this shift occurring? People are tired of social media scrutiny and bullying. They are concerned about their permanent social footprint. Why not take it behind a firewall and contain your messages to trusted friends? That private environment nurtures more trust, vulnerability and authenticity … perhaps that is what social media was supposed to be in the first place.

The bad news is, all that amazing data we could see on Twitter and Facebook is going dark. The good news is (maybe), Facebook owns Messenger and WhatsApp — will marketers have access to this goldmine of anonymized data some day? Our immediate challenge — how does a company add value in that private environment without being creepy?

So that is a bit of my current thinking. What’s your take on these trends?

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Book links are affiliate links.

Illustration courtesy Flickr CC and Thomas Quine

The post 10 Epic Shifts that are Re-Writing the Rules of Marketing appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2ldJVZp

[seo53703]

10 Epic Shifts that are Re-Writing the Rules of Marketing

By Mark Schaefer

I’m often asked: “What is the next big thing in marketing?”

This seems like a simple question, but I’m not sure I know any more. I started thinking about this and came up with at least 10 “big things” that will profoundly impact my career, and yours. I first posted this list on Facebook and it provoked some interesting comments. Here’s my take on the next big thing(s), with comments from some marketing friends.

1) The Spawn of Artificial Intelligence

What I mean by “spawn” is that AI is simply the mother technology for so many new innovations. In fact futurist Kevin Kelly stated in his wonderful book The Inevitable that nearly all innovation going forward means adding artificial intelligence to existing products. He thinks it will get to the point where we will be able to plug-in super intelligence to almost any software, service, or daily task.

There are SO many implications of adding computer intelligence to what we do, including the rise of chat bots, business intelligence, image recognition, marketing automation, and algorithmic writing, to name a few!

You may find it strange that I don’t include “Big Data” in this list of 10 trends. I see AI as the interface, the translator that makes Big Data accessible and real for marketers. Big Data won’t be a “thing” very soon. It will simply be the fuel for AI.

2) Virtual reality

While Artificial Intelligence toils silently in the background of our lives, I believe VR is THE game-changer for almost everything we do in marketing. Within three years many people will be wearing some sort of AR headset many hours each day for both work and play. It will replace much of the functionality of smartphones, computers, and televisions … basically any screen we use today.

AI will be the new way we connect, discover, learn, and entertain ourselves. I think the adoption of this technology will be meteoric because it is addictive. But that’s a story for another blog post!

VR will have a more profound impact on the world than the internet. The web will surround us like the air that we breathe.

Instead of fighting over keywords in a never-ending SEO/ad war, the new battleground will be creating the most fun and immersive experiences for our customers. This is our opportunity to invite people out of their filter bubbles and tempt them to spend some time with us and our very intoxicating VR thrill ride. I can see it now: “The Pampers Diaper Experience.” Ha!

3) Wearable tech

Wearable tech turns each of us into mobile data-generating machines. We’re streaming information about our life, bodies, consumption habits, friends, families, travels, relationships and more that will greatly please the Internet overlords.

Of course there is a tremendous upside as well as that stream of data produces goods and services that serve us precisely based on our DNA, our moods, our whims, and the personal needs, wants, and desires that companies will know better than our we know ourselves.

Douglas Karr, founder of the MarTech blog, said this data flow could mean “the death of mass media and rise of targeted, personalized marketing experiences through ABM and similar tools. We’ll see experience-based KPIs and experience analytics beyond simple sentiment and customer satisfaction.”

Marie-Clare Byard adds: “You won’t be going to the doctor’s anymore, you’ll be taking ECG’s with your mobile phone and your mirror will scan you every morning checking out all your vitals. Combined with wearables, technology is predicting illness quicker then humans.”

4) Media revolution

To look at the future of content marketing, we need to observe the bleeding edge of content disruption occurring with traditional media. We’re witnessing a decline in traditional news-gathering and reporting, desperate monetization struggles, a loss of control of the content as it is absorbed by social platforms, a loss of direct relationships to subscribers, and intense innovation in new content forms like interactive graphics/video.

The fragmentation of content channels that occurred with the internet (everyone is a publisher!) is less important now as powerful media gatekeepers re-assemble in the form of Facebook (they determine what we see), Google (they determine what we find), and Amazon/Apple (they determine how it is distributed). Most internet revenue is now generated from subscription models (over advertising) but ironically, most of the actual content creators aren’t benefitting from the gold rush.

5) Distribution revolution

The advent of drones and 3D printing will revolutionize marketing by creating entirely new business models. The goal of marketing is value creation and customer acquisition and perhaps there is no greater impact on this than the revolution in how we deliver products to customers.

Laura Kessler believes this might be the most important trend in business today: “Through new distribution frameworks we will achieve high-speed drone delivery, duplication and replication engineering, that will change everything in business and society well beyond marketing.”

6) Dramatic changes in Martech

I was recently at a conference populated by dozens of marketing technology companies. I became frustrated that none of them seemed to be able to tell me how they were different from anybody else. Any point of differentiation seemed like a wafer-thin veneer of sales babble.

I think there will be a big change in this field in the next few years. There has to be a shakeout/consolidation that will probably be driven by integration with artificial intelligence. We will see exciting new functionality and the automation of many traditional marketing functions which will lead to …

7) Job loss

I don’t want to be your daily downer but I just don’t see how this technology revolution is going to result in a net increase of marketing jobs. Many economists predict massive knowledge worker job loss … and marketers are knowledge workers. Yes, there will be new job categories. But the economists have accounted for that and the future may be turbulent for we, the marketeers.

I think a lot of people are in denial about this, claiming that “we will always need humans to make the decisions.” No. We don’t. Most companies want to eliminate human error by removing human decision-making. This is happening, folks.

This point may receive push-back from my readers, but when I see the amazing stuff coming out of the field of cognitive computing, my reaction is “Dammit. That computer is doing what I do!” It isn’t going to happen overnight but the adoption of these new AI-driven technologies will probably be rapid, at least at large, progressive companies.

Jonathan Payne adds: “We’re about to see such an extreme tech and economic shift that I think is going to catch a lot of people off guard — people assume automation is only a threat to unskilled manufacturing jobs. And more significantly, this is going to require a fundamental psychological shift in our culture that I’m not too convinced most of us are ready to make.”

These job losses, especially at the middle levels, will throw our field into turmoil. What does this mean for careers, skills, and the imperative for personal branding/personal relevance?

8) The new branding imperative

Content is becoming commoditized and this will accelerate once algorithms start writing the blog posts and creating the infographics (which is already happening). We are deep into the first stages of Content Shock and the high level of content competition is weeding out the weakest links. Some companies simply won’t be able to keep up.

In my book The Content Code, I articulated the six possible strategies that can overcome Content Shock and at the top of the list is branding. Creating an emotional connection with customers that encourages them to seek us out amid all that noise is more important than ever.

9) Influence marketing

I just returned from a conference where I facilitated round table discussions among some of the nation’s top CMOs.  It seemed that no matter the topic, the discussion always turned back to influence marketing. We are moving inexorably toward an ad-free world. In that environment, what are we going to have left other than aligning ourselves with the advocacy of trusted internet stars?

This is a topic worth exploring in an entirely separate post (and I will) but I think that a well-executed influence marketing strategy may be a true source of competitive advantage. There are only so many influencers to go around.

Jeremy Bednarski said, “Those who want to take advantage of influence marketing need to do so quickly. There are only so many influencers and only so much content they will be able to endorse. Think of it as content shock specifically for influencers.”

10) The rise of the private networks

About a year ago I wrote a post about a milestone. For the first time in history the number of people active on private networks (like Messenger, WhatsApp and Snapchat) exceeded those using public social media platforms (like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). Social media use is still growing too, but the rise of these private networks represents a profound shift for marketers.

Why is this shift occurring? People are tired of social media scrutiny and bullying. They are concerned about their permanent social footprint. Why not take it behind a firewall and contain your messages to trusted friends? That private environment nurtures more trust, vulnerability and authenticity … perhaps that is what social media was supposed to be in the first place.

The bad news is, all that amazing data we could see on Twitter and Facebook is going dark. The good news is (maybe), Facebook owns Messenger and WhatsApp — will marketers have access to this goldmine of anonymized data some day? Our immediate challenge — how does a company add value in that private environment without being creepy?

So that is a bit of my current thinking. What’s your take on these trends?

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Book links are affiliate links.

Illustration courtesy Flickr CC and Thomas Quine

The post 10 Epic Shifts that are Re-Writing the Rules of Marketing appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2ldJVZp

[seo78580]

10 Epic Shifts that are Re-Writing the Rules of Marketing

By Mark Schaefer

I’m often asked: “What is the next big thing in marketing?”

This seems like a simple question, but I’m not sure I know any more. I started thinking about this and came up with at least 10 “big things” that will profoundly impact my career, and yours. I first posted this list on Facebook and it provoked some interesting comments. Here’s my take on the next big thing(s), with comments from some marketing friends.

1) The Spawn of Artificial Intelligence

What I mean by “spawn” is that AI is simply the mother technology for so many new innovations. In fact futurist Kevin Kelly stated in his wonderful book The Inevitable that nearly all innovation going forward means adding artificial intelligence to existing products. He thinks it will get to the point where we will be able to plug-in super intelligence to almost any software, service, or daily task.

There are SO many implications of adding computer intelligence to what we do, including the rise of chat bots, business intelligence, image recognition, marketing automation, and algorithmic writing, to name a few!

You may find it strange that I don’t include “Big Data” in this list of 10 trends. I see AI as the interface, the translator that makes Big Data accessible and real for marketers. Big Data won’t be a “thing” very soon. It will simply be the fuel for AI.

2) Virtual reality

While Artificial Intelligence toils silently in the background of our lives, I believe VR is THE game-changer for almost everything we do in marketing. Within three years many people will be wearing some sort of AR headset many hours each day for both work and play. It will replace much of the functionality of smartphones, computers, and televisions … basically any screen we use today.

AI will be the new way we connect, discover, learn, and entertain ourselves. I think the adoption of this technology will be meteoric because it is addictive. But that’s a story for another blog post!

VR will have a more profound impact on the world than the internet. The web will surround us like the air that we breathe.

Instead of fighting over keywords in a never-ending SEO/ad war, the new battleground will be creating the most fun and immersive experiences for our customers. This is our opportunity to invite people out of their filter bubbles and tempt them to spend some time with us and our very intoxicating VR thrill ride. I can see it now: “The Pampers Diaper Experience.” Ha!

3) Wearable tech

Wearable tech turns each of us into mobile data-generating machines. We’re streaming information about our life, bodies, consumption habits, friends, families, travels, relationships and more that will greatly please the Internet overlords.

Of course there is a tremendous upside as well as that stream of data produces goods and services that serve us precisely based on our DNA, our moods, our whims, and the personal needs, wants, and desires that companies will know better than our we know ourselves.

Douglas Karr, founder of the MarTech blog, said this data flow could mean “the death of mass media and rise of targeted, personalized marketing experiences through ABM and similar tools. We’ll see experience-based KPIs and experience analytics beyond simple sentiment and customer satisfaction.”

Marie-Clare Byard adds: “You won’t be going to the doctor’s anymore, you’ll be taking ECG’s with your mobile phone and your mirror will scan you every morning checking out all your vitals. Combined with wearables, technology is predicting illness quicker then humans.”

4) Media revolution

To look at the future of content marketing, we need to observe the bleeding edge of content disruption occurring with traditional media. We’re witnessing a decline in traditional news-gathering and reporting, desperate monetization struggles, a loss of control of the content as it is absorbed by social platforms, a loss of direct relationships to subscribers, and intense innovation in new content forms like interactive graphics/video.

The fragmentation of content channels that occurred with the internet (everyone is a publisher!) is less important now as powerful media gatekeepers re-assemble in the form of Facebook (they determine what we see), Google (they determine what we find), and Amazon/Apple (they determine how it is distributed). Most internet revenue is now generated from subscription models (over advertising) but ironically, most of the actual content creators aren’t benefitting from the gold rush.

5) Distribution revolution

The advent of drones and 3D printing will revolutionize marketing by creating entirely new business models. The goal of marketing is value creation and customer acquisition and perhaps there is no greater impact on this than the revolution in how we deliver products to customers.

Laura Kessler believes this might be the most important trend in business today: “Through new distribution frameworks we will achieve high-speed drone delivery, duplication and replication engineering, that will change everything in business and society well beyond marketing.”

6) Dramatic changes in Martech

I was recently at a conference populated by dozens of marketing technology companies. I became frustrated that none of them seemed to be able to tell me how they were different from anybody else. Any point of differentiation seemed like a wafer-thin veneer of sales babble.

I think there will be a big change in this field in the next few years. There has to be a shakeout/consolidation that will probably be driven by integration with artificial intelligence. We will see exciting new functionality and the automation of many traditional marketing functions which will lead to …

7) Job loss

I don’t want to be your daily downer but I just don’t see how this technology revolution is going to result in a net increase of marketing jobs. Many economists predict massive knowledge worker job loss … and marketers are knowledge workers. Yes, there will be new job categories. But the economists have accounted for that and the future may be turbulent for we, the marketeers.

I think a lot of people are in denial about this, claiming that “we will always need humans to make the decisions.” No. We don’t. Most companies want to eliminate human error by removing human decision-making. This is happening, folks.

This point may receive push-back from my readers, but when I see the amazing stuff coming out of the field of cognitive computing, my reaction is “Dammit. That computer is doing what I do!” It isn’t going to happen overnight but the adoption of these new AI-driven technologies will probably be rapid, at least at large, progressive companies.

Jonathan Payne adds: “We’re about to see such an extreme tech and economic shift that I think is going to catch a lot of people off guard — people assume automation is only a threat to unskilled manufacturing jobs. And more significantly, this is going to require a fundamental psychological shift in our culture that I’m not too convinced most of us are ready to make.”

These job losses, especially at the middle levels, will throw our field into turmoil. What does this mean for careers, skills, and the imperative for personal branding/personal relevance?

8) The new branding imperative

Content is becoming commoditized and this will accelerate once algorithms start writing the blog posts and creating the infographics (which is already happening). We are deep into the first stages of Content Shock and the high level of content competition is weeding out the weakest links. Some companies simply won’t be able to keep up.

In my book The Content Code, I articulated the six possible strategies that can overcome Content Shock and at the top of the list is branding. Creating an emotional connection with customers that encourages them to seek us out amid all that noise is more important than ever.

9) Influence marketing

I just returned from a conference where I facilitated round table discussions among some of the nation’s top CMOs.  It seemed that no matter the topic, the discussion always turned back to influence marketing. We are moving inexorably toward an ad-free world. In that environment, what are we going to have left other than aligning ourselves with the advocacy of trusted internet stars?

This is a topic worth exploring in an entirely separate post (and I will) but I think that a well-executed influence marketing strategy may be a true source of competitive advantage. There are only so many influencers to go around.

Jeremy Bednarski said, “Those who want to take advantage of influence marketing need to do so quickly. There are only so many influencers and only so much content they will be able to endorse. Think of it as content shock specifically for influencers.”

10) The rise of the private networks

About a year ago I wrote a post about a milestone. For the first time in history the number of people active on private networks (like Messenger, WhatsApp and Snapchat) exceeded those using public social media platforms (like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). Social media use is still growing too, but the rise of these private networks represents a profound shift for marketers.

Why is this shift occurring? People are tired of social media scrutiny and bullying. They are concerned about their permanent social footprint. Why not take it behind a firewall and contain your messages to trusted friends? That private environment nurtures more trust, vulnerability and authenticity … perhaps that is what social media was supposed to be in the first place.

The bad news is, all that amazing data we could see on Twitter and Facebook is going dark. The good news is (maybe), Facebook owns Messenger and WhatsApp — will marketers have access to this goldmine of anonymized data some day? Our immediate challenge — how does a company add value in that private environment without being creepy?

So that is a bit of my current thinking. What’s your take on these trends?

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world.  Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Book links are affiliate links.

Illustration courtesy Flickr CC and Thomas Quine

The post 10 Epic Shifts that are Re-Writing the Rules of Marketing appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

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[yamijay357]

Top 10 Movies of 2016

Another year has passed and another Top 10 movie list must follow. I found this year to be a tad weaker than 2015, with many of my picks for this list not coming to theaters until November or December. This year started to show, quality wise at least, the blockbuster fatigue that constant releases in expanded universes (superheroes, especially) can evoke. Fortunately, once I narrowed down my list along with a few honorable mentions, it became very difficult to put them in order, which is usually a sign of some great films. I believe that every movie listed here will be a great addition to one of your movie night queues. So, without further ado...

Honorable Mentions

Deadpool

Superhero movies have flooded our theaters to the point that we’ll soon be getting over half a dozen in a single year. This year they ranged from the painfully mediocre (Batman v. Superman, Doctor Strange) to just bad (Suicide Squad). Deadpool was a nice breath of fresh air as Ryan Reynolds brought the much loved Merc with a Mouth to the screen. Deadpool is funny, lampooning everything from the superhero genre as a whole to the questionable decisions made regarding both previous appearances of Deadpool and the career of Reynolds himself. If only all comic book movies could be this faithful to the spirit of the character.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Another year, another Star Wars movie. This installment was a landmark film for the franchise in that it was the first major release not to focus on the main narrative following the Skywalker family. Instead, we were given the story of how Princess Leia ended up with the Death Star plans she had at the beginning of A New Hope. We get a look at a different side of the universe not particularly focused on magic space wizards but instead on real people fighting the threat of the Empire. Felicity Jones leads a great cast in a solid movie that has one of the best third acts of the franchise. Alan Tudyk stands out as a reprogrammed Imperial droid that is loyal to the Rebellion but throws shade like no other. While not all characters were developed fully, in the end, Rogue One stands as the best blockbuster of 2016.

The Top Ten

10. Manchester by the Sea

Grief is often the hardest thing to sell on screen, so making such a deep theme the focus of your movie is a bit of a risk. However, Kenneth Lonergan deftly writes and directs a unique view of grief for a unique family dynamic. Casey Affleck plays Lee Chandler, a handyman who resides in Boston away from his home of Manchester following a family tragedy. The death of his brother brings him home where he discovers that he is now the guardian of his nephew Patrick, played by Lucas Hedges. The film follows both of the men as they deal with death and all of the complications that come from it. However, their story is both painful and funny, as the movie makes for several reactions that seem all too real to those of us that have lost someone close. While the ending leaves several elements uncertain, Affleck and Hedges give strong performances that give us one of the truest depictions of loss ever set to film.

9. Pete’s Dragon

I hate the original Pete’s Dragon. When I found out a remake was being made the chances of me seeing it were slim. However, when it received several good reviews, I fit it into a four-movie day at the theater, mostly because I was curious. I didn’t expect to walk away with such a satisfied feeling. All of the awkward elements of the original (Animation that stood out in a bad way, sub par musical numbers, and Mickey Rooney) are gone, leaving a wonderful modern fairy tale about an orphaned boy and his invisible dragon friend that hit in all of the right places. Bryce Dallas Howard leads a great cast including Karl Urban, Robert Redford, and promising newcomer Oakes Fegley as Pete. A great story, seamless effects, and an ending that will bring tears to your eyes allows this movie to soar above its predecessor and claim its place on this list.

8. Lion

This movie snuck into theaters near the end of the year and I saw it on New Year’s Eve. It was a pretty great way to end the year. Lion is the true story of Saroo Brierley, an five-year-old Indian boy who, while searching for work with his older brother, gets transported across India to a region that is entirely alien to him, including the language. After Saroo finds his way to an orphanage, he is adopted by a loving Australian couple. 25 years later, Saroo is obsessed with finding out what happened to the family he lost. This may be the most genuine, human film made this year, as the audience feels the panic and fear of a strange new place with young Saroo, and the hope and frustration plaguing his adult counterpart as he searches one of the most populated countries in the world for a single small village. Dev Patel gives his best performance yet as Saroo in a film that will take you on quite the feels trip when both you and Saroo reach the conclusion.

7. Jackie

We all know what happened November 22nd, 1963. But have you ever thought about what the person most affected by that day did in the week that followed? Natalie Portman plays Jackie Kennedy, who is interviewed the week after her husband President Kennedy was assassinated. The movie rests completely on her and she doesn’t disappoint. She completely becomes Kennedy as we see a world that is rocked by loss on both a personal and national level. Kennedy must face everything that comes in the aftermath from being moved out of the White House for the Johnson family to trying to explain to her children why their father won’t come home again. There are times that I forgot I was watching Natalie Portman as I fell into the world captured so perfectly by Pablo Larraín. This film speaks not only to the humanity of Jackie Kennedy, but also to her amazing contribution to the legacy JFK left behind.

6. Arrival

What would happen if we really were visited by alien lifeforms? A history of cheesy and often terrible movies (cough, Independence Day, cough) has built in the assumption that the aliens would be hostile and seek to destroy us. If aliens were to visit, I believe that Arrival shows us the most likely outcome compared to anything else. Amy Adams plays linguistics professor Louise Banks who is called in by the government to try to decipher the communications of alien visitors. Along with a brilliant physicist (Jeremy Renner), Banks must figure out the intentions of the visitors before other countries take hostile actions. This movie does an amazing job of displaying both our actual ignorance of other lifeforms and all of the possible directions we could take with it. In the midst of people not understanding each other, Arrival is a brilliantly made film that speaks to all people.

5. Moonlight

Similar in structure to Steve Jobs, Moonlight consists of three short films focusing on Chiron (aka Little), and his coming of age in a poor neighborhood that has no shortage of drug dealers. As a child, he finds a crack dealer named Juan (Mahershala Ali) who, along with his girlfriend, serve as loving parental figures in the place of his disinterested and drug-addicted mother. Juan helps Chiron trust people, which leads to him sharing an intimate moment with his high school friend Kevin. Circumstances lead to Kevin and Chiron separating but encountering each other as adults, leading to one of the most beautiful ending scenes of the year. Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes give stellar performances as each stage of Chiron’s life. Such a simple story gives way to profound emotions that will resonate with you well after the film is over.

4. Loving

Speaking of simple, there was probably no more simply put-together movie this year than Loving. And yet, it managed to be one of the most profound films of the year. Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga play Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple whose illegal interracial marriage led to the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case that ruled all marriage laws having to do with race unconstitutional. But that is not what the movie is really about. With limited dialogue and politics, Loving focuses almost solely on the relationship of the two main characters and the hardship they have to face from their home state. We learn about their dreams and the lengths they will go to in order to be together. The leads are absolutely fantastic and give you the entire weight of the story while spending only a few minutes of screen time in courtrooms. In a year where several films on this list took my heart, Loving is a true standout.

3. Zootopia

The reason that The Good Dinosaur didn’t succeed as much as everyone thought it would was because it failed to deliver on its premise of a world full of dinosaurs by showing us just a few dinosaurs. Zootopia doesn’t suffer from this problem, as the world of Judy Hopps (Gennifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) is a rich world of animals with different personalities, troubles, and ambitions. This movie would have succeeded as a fun movie on that alone. But Zootopia goes a step further and delivers one of the most profound messages of almost any animated film ever made. It not only highlights the obvious prejudices different groups of people feel toward each other, but also how we may not even be aware of our own unwarranted feelings of distrust and how they can affect people close to us. This was the movie that 2016 needed and that we’ll need for years to come. Also, who wants a full Gazelle album? (Raises hand)

2. La La Land

Earlier this year, when introducing one of my friends to my favorite movie, Singin’ in the Rain, I made the comment that “they don’t make this kind of movie anymore, and it’s sad.” Well, turns out that Damien Chazelle felt the same way and gave us an amazing film that serves as both an homage to the musical genre that preceded it and as a beautiful piece of art that will inspire future artists for years. Emma Stone plays Mia, a girl trying to pursue her acting dreams in LA, along with thousands of other people. She frequently runs into Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), an unemployed jazz musician who dreams of owning his own club. The two chase their dreams together to the tune of the best soundtrack of the year and delightful dance numbers and city backdrops. La La Land succeeds in every technical aspect as Los Angeles is turned into a magical, musical dreamland. Stone and Gosling go beyond their usual charm and give us amazing characters with surprisingly good singing voices that would make Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers proud. And then the ending. Well, if the ending sequence doesn’t fill you with emotion, then you’re probably a robot.

1. Hell or High Water

The biggest surprise of the year for me turned out to be my favorite movie of 2016. Hell or High Water is David Mackenzie’s neo-Western masterpiece that is perhaps the best possible step to take after the Cohen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men. The film shows Chris Pine and Ben Foster playing brothers Toby and Tanner Howard. When their mother dies and Tanner gets out of jail, the bank handling the loan for their mother’s farm seeks to seize the property. In order to pay off the bank that overcharged their mother for years, the brothers begin to pull off small robberies of the local branches. While authorities don’t see it as a priority, the crimes attract the attention of two Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham) and a chase across Texas begins. Every performance is incredible in this movie. Chris Pine shows his dramatic chops while giving the best performance of his career (so far) and Jeff Bridges is outstanding beyond even what you would expect. The cinematography shows off the gritty yet beautiful western landscapes yet never loses the scope of how the region has been hit by the advancement of modern times. But the true winner here is the best screenplay of the year as every character is able to draw you into a story that begs questions of morality and loyalty. While La La Land may walk away with all of the awards, Hell or High Water is my pick for Best Film of 2016.

[mrmichaelchadler]

Thumbnails 5/22/18

Thumbnails is a roundup of brief excerpts to introduce you to articles from other websites that we found interesting and exciting. We provide links to the original sources for you to read in their entirety.—Chaz Ebert

1. 

"Elisha Christian on 'Columbus' and 'Everything Sucks!'": The Spirit Award-nominated cinematographer chats with me about his acclaimed work on Kogonada's 2017 film and this year's acclaimed Netflix series.

“[Indie Outlook:] How did you and Kogonada develop the extraordinary shot of Jin (John Cho) and Eleanor (Parker Posey), framing them in a mirror in a way that gives us a sense of their history. We feel as if we are peering into a reflection of their past.’ [Christian:] ‘That scene took place in the same inn where Jin was staying. There were only four or five guest rooms in the whole inn, and we had our pick of which room we wanted to shoot in. That location is so visually interesting — you could shoot a whole movie there. When we saw the mirrors, we knew where we wanted to place the camera, though my AC couldn’t even stand next to it to pull focus. She had to sit underneath the camera while reaching up above her head to pull focus because the space was so slim. We even had to pull everything off the sides of the camera in order to fit in that tiny area without catching it in a reflection. We saw that if John walks out and stops at a certain point after Eleanor basically kicks him out, he could turn back to her and we’d be able to frame them both in an interesting way. It was definitely a dance. I remember that we were running behind that night. It took a while to set up the shot and get it ready, and we probably shot about 7 or 8 takes of it. We had two other shots planned in the scene, but when we got the take that Kogonada wanted, he said, ‘We don’t need the other shots.’ That’s a ballsy decision, considering the length of the scene. It’s decisions like these that made the movie better.’”

2. 

"Peak superhero? Not even close: How one movie genre became the guiding myth of neoliberalism": Brilliant commentary from Salon's Keith A. Spencer.

“Obversely, this is precisely how politics functions in neoliberalism: Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were presented as branded superheroes, who believed they knew what was best for us, and sought to install their elite wonks to enact their benevolent (to them) policies. There’s a relatively two-dimensional view of the world at work: there are good and bad people; they are generally born that way and seldom change. The state in neoliberalism and superhero movies is almost entirely devoted to oppression and surveillance. If the state overreaches, heroes must fix its excesses; if it fails to protect its citizenry, heroes must make up for its shortcomings. In either case, its social welfare function is invisible: because people are innately good or evil, there are no social workers or teachers or other welfare-state employees whose duties might prevent villainy (or supervillainy) through social work. Superheroes are, by definition, more powerful and more important than the state. More importantly, the superheroes’ work may save lives, but it never inherently changes the relationships of production: If the people are poor, they’re likely to stay poor. They don’t participate in redistributive politics except to attack the sort of universally detested social relationships about which there is broad consensus — for instance, slavery. Superheroes can’t and won’t save the middle class; many of them are rich anyway and stand to benefit from the kinds of inherent economic injustices that, say, Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn fight against.”

3.

"Turkey's Government Is Censoring the Movies, But the Istanbul Film Festival Is Soldiering On": According to Indiewire's Amy Nicholson.

“No one is sure what the moral rules are. The Ministry of Culture won’t write them down. At least the Hays Code in classic Hollywood had 11 clear don’ts. Specific rules can be subverted. But Turkey’s veto power is capricious and vague. Filmmakers, especially documentary filmmakers telling unflattering stories about modern Turkey, could spend years on a movie that can’t be shown. Unpredictability pressures artists to play it safe. Some hire lawyers to help them guess whether their work might be rejected, and if so, hunt for foreign producers willing to take a controlling stake as international films don’t require a certificate yet. But as Saudi Arabia opens its first movie theater in 30 years with a screening of ‘Black Panther’—imagine women who finally got the right to drive this year beholding the Dora Milaje—Turkish people are alarmed that their government, which just disrupted the last major dissenting newspaper chain, threatened people over their footage of Taksim Square, intermittently shut off YouTube and Twitter, and is poised to ban teaching evolution in schools, is making it hard to share their stories with the outside world. Over a bottle of wine, a director sighed as she pointed toward the west, ‘News comes one way.’ The impact was everywhere. ‘I can say that there are less political movies than before,’ said current festival director Kerem Ayan on a group boat trip circling the Bosporus River. ‘But cinema is very creative. Everybody finds a different way to express what they want.’”

4. 

"The Résumé: The Winding, Everlasting Career of William H. Macy": Another essential interview conducted by Sam Fragoso for The Ringer.

“I had never done anything that graphic or that sexual before ‘The Cooler.’ I’d taken my clothes off, but that’s different. And it was my adorable wife who finally said, ‘When you talk about it, it sounds like you’re planning to fail. If you don’t want to do these sex scenes, you should call the director and tell him you don’t want to do them. If you do want to do them, you better start thinking about how to make them great.’ It was a fabulous wake-up call. I married well. So I started to look at the sex scenes like any other scene—as an acting exercise. What’s different at the end of the scene than at the beginning? What happened? What’s the objective? What transpired? Where’s the moment where something changed the plot even though we’re just rolling around in bed? And to Wayne’s credit, I said, ‘I can’t understand the scene. I’m having trouble here. What happens here?’ And we talked about one or two scenes and he said, “You know what, you’re right. I can’t find it either.” And he cut them. He cut the scenes. Which is sort of the essence of art, I think: If you can cut it and still tell your story, then you have to cut it. I was shy but Maria didn’t care. She said, ‘I’m an old hippie. This is nothing.’”

5. 

"50 Years Ago, a White Woman Touching a Black Man on TV Caused a National Commotion": Petula Clark and Harry Belafonte chat with Vanity Fair's Donald Liebenson about the moment that erupted into an inadvertent scandal.

“For his part, Belafonte thought there had just been a technical glitch. He did not think the touch was problematic: ‘Quite the contrary,’ he says. ‘I was quite pleased. That song, if I remember, was the last thing we shot. There was an enormous sense of release that we had pulled this off without a hitch. It was one guy—Doyle Lott—who said we had to re-shoot what we had just done. We were nonplussed as to what was the problem.’ NBC, alerted to the controversy, called Binder to say the network would back him (‘That was a great phone call to get,’ he says). With that, Binder and Wolff rushed to the studio basement to confront the editor and order him to keep the take where Clark touched Belafonte’s arm—and to erase the others so they could not be used in the broadcast. Somehow—Binder doesn’t recall what did it—word of the controversy got out early, resulting in breathless pre-broadcast news coverage. ‘Incident at TV Taping Irks Belafonte,’ said a March 7 headline in ‘The New York Times.’ The article quoted a statement from White: ‘If there was any incident . . . it resulted solely from the reaction of a single individual and by no means reflects the Plymouth Division’s attitude or policy on such matters.’ Lott’s Detroit office also issued a statement: ‘I was tired. I over-reacted to the staging, not to any feeling of discrimination.’ Binder remembers hearing that Belafonte was about to tell America to boycott Plymouth on ‘The Tonight Show’; he called the singer to tell him it wasn’t the car company’s fault, and reminded Belafonte of his conversation with White. On March 10, the ‘Times’ reported that Lott had been ‘relieved of his responsibilities.’”

Image of the Day

Parallax View's Richard T. Jameson lists his favorite "moments out of time" from films he saw in 2017, including Bertrand Bonello's "Nocturama."

Video of the Day

Alexander Jeffrey's short film, "An Aria for Albrights," stars Laura Bretan, the astonishing young opera singer who became a 2016 finalist on "America's Got Talent." Click here to read my interview with her at Indie Outlook.

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