Five things on Friday #96

Things of note for the week ending October 31st, 2014.

Things of note for the week ending October 31st, 2014.

Halloween Yo

1.Twitter does Video (or how to predict the future).
Two Five Things ago – aka ‘Five things on Friday #94‘ – I told you all about the new Audio Twitter Cards from Twitter.

I ended the bit saying:

Reminds me a lot of how the YouTube app works on Android which in turn says to me that you could expect Twitter’s video cards to follow a similar set up in the very near future. Maybe.

Well, low and behold, it has happened!

picture-in-twitter-screenshots

That’s right, in the exact same way that you can listen to audio tracks in Twitter and then continue to scroll through Twitter, video content now acts in the same way.

The interesting thing about this is that the content is actually playing through a Twitter Player card. That’s right, Twitter’s own native video upload – NOT YouTube. This is the first sign of a trend, ladies and gents.

Josh Constine, pictured (and author of the TechCrunch article where I first read the news), spotted an even better idea. Especially when you start taking the above feature into tablets…

The bigger opportunity might be in long-form video. Imagine following along with a docked video of a sports match or awards show as you read and post tweets about the event. Twitter’s long been seen as a companion to TV. But by ditching the television set and subsuming its video content, Twitter could be the only screen you need to step up to the global watercooler.

Now you can see the future too.

2. Polyamory is boring.
Apparently.

3. The Grand Canyon. From space.
I don’t know when the first ‘let’s stick a camera on a weather balloon and do something cool with the footage’ video first appeared but I really am nowhere near getting tired of them (yet). The next one is always better than the last…

John Flaig is the man behind ‘the next one’, and yet again I am not disappointed.

Grand Canyon, from space

Not only are the photos amazing but the video is pretty darn cool too.

Yeah.

4. The Realisation
Another Five Things, another Leo Babauta post. But this one is super worth it. Promise.

The Realization

It is a great read. If you only click on one link this week, make it this one.

5. NASA does Volcanos
This is excellent –

“A fortuitous orbit of the International Space Station allowed the astronauts this striking view of Sarychev Volcano (Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan) in an early stage of eruption on June 12, 2009. Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, and it is located on the northwestern end of Matua Island. Prior to June 12, the last explosive eruption occurred in 1989, with eruptions in 1986, 1976, 1954, and 1946 also producing lava flows. Ash from the multi-day eruption has been detected 2,407 kilometers east-southeast and 926 kilometers west-northwest of the volcano, and commercial airline flights are being diverted away from the region to minimize the danger of engine failures from ash intake.”

There’s a video of the eruption on the website. But it was too big and I didn’t want to upload it so I made it into a gif for you.

space

Email me and say thanks or something.

____________

Bonuses this week are all HALLOWEEN-themed:

Until next week.

Have a great weekend everybody.

giphy

 

 

Five things on Friday #95

Things of note for the week ending October 24th, 2014.

Things of note for the week ending October 24th, 2014.

FIVE THINGS

1. I like this

Clark

This Superman art wasn’t originally going to be one of my Five things of the week but I wanted to share it with you because a) it feels like the week that I’ve just had and b) it’s just so darn awesome (via SuperPunch).

Onwards!

2. Orange Juice: you’re doing it wrong
Planning on pouring yourself some juice this weekend? Don’t glug, pour.

And do it like this:

Juice Juice

Yeah, probably the best gif I’ve seen all week.

(via Lifehacker)

3. Michael Ironside
Great actor. You’ve seen him in a ton of stuff.

You definitely know him.

This guy:

IRONSIDE

See?

You recognise him from films such as Top Gun to Total Recall to Starship Troopers and everything in-between. He did an AMA on Reddit recently and it was superb.

Here’s one example response [re Highlander 2]:

There’s a scene in the movie where my character comes to earth, and literally lands by going through the city streets and through the roof of a subway car, and lands on the subway. My stunt double had never been anywhere in the world where cocaine was so cheap. And he got absolutely hammered out of his mind for a week, and ended up running through the streets naked in Buenos Aires, and was arrested the morning of that sequence. So I had to do the stunt, because we had nobody in that part of the world who looked anything like me. So I had to hang on the roof of the subway car, and land on the floor, without any pads, and it was about a 12 foot drop, straight down, and in costume as the character. In the actual movie, you’ll see me slowly get up, and the character checks both his knees as he’s standing, he checks his back, his arms, and then throws his head back with a joyous scream knowing that he hadn’t broken anything.
That was not acting. That was me. Because i realized I had done it, and I didn’t have to do it again! From that moment, we just walked forward with the scene. It’s one of my favorite sequences of that film, because it’s where real life and acting come together in such a joyous moment, and it’s captured.

Brilliant.

Featuring anecdotes from almost his entire filmography, Ironside is a fantastic AMA participant and gives bloody brilliant answers. The Christian Bale one might make you feel a bit ill mind.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Michael Ironside – AMA

4. Game Theory and The Dark Knight
This dissection and analysis of all the games that are at play during The Dark Knight is a fantastic read. Good for both fans of Batman and Game Theory.

5. Supermovies: 2014 – 2020
Fan of awesome films? Fan of some of the best awesome films ever made? That means you probably like SUPER HERO films. Not only are they going through a huge resurgence but they’re also, in the main, turning out to be totally brilliant.

The whole thing is about shared universes. But whatever. The important thing is the future. And ladies and gentlemen, this is what your [known] superhero film future looks like –

CA_Supermovies2

Batsh*t crazy.

_____

Bonuses this week are all long form articles that I’ve picked up from other newsletters over the past six months and have only just got around to reading/finished:

  • Six Inches is a fairly NSFW short story from Charles Bukowski. Boy meets girl. Girl shrinks boy. Cue: dark hilarity.
  • Who wants to shoot an elephant? Horrible reading.
  • What [leading industrial designer] Frank Nuovo did next [after Nokia]

Walking the Thames Tunnel

From Wapping to Rotherhithe and back again.

From Rotherhite to Wapping and back again.

Back in May, my friend Robbie and I managed to bag a couple of [super rare] tickets to walk the original Thames Tunnel.

If you’ve never heard of the Thames Tunnel before, it’s the underwater tunnel that lives between Rotherhithe and Wapping. You’ll know it today as part of the London Overground network.

Thames Tunnel location

Hang on, let me look it up on Wikipedia:

The Thames Tunnel is an underwater tunnel, built beneath the River Thames in London, connecting Rotherhithe and Wapping. It measures 35 feet (11 m) wide by 20 feet (6 m) high and is 1,300 feet (396 m) long, running at a depth of 75 feet (23 m) below the river surface measured at high tide. It was the first tunnel known to have been constructed successfully underneath a navigable river, and was built between 1825 and 1843 using Marc Isambard Brunel’s and Thomas Cochrane’s newly invented tunnelling shield technology, by Brunel and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The tunnel was originally designed for, but never used by, horse-drawn carriages. It now forms part of the London Overground railway network.

On its opening day in 1843 it is said over fifty thousand people paid a single penny to walk through Brunel’s tunnel and within three months it is reported that over one million people had been through.

Amazing.

Some 170 years later, I paid 1800 pennies and descended into the tunnel myself but not via the stairs of Londoners old, instead by way of platform 2 at Rotherhithe station.

I don’t think there’ll be many of you that can say that they’ve walked on the tracks around London. It’s definitely worth doing (even if it is a little hairy when you first get down there).

Once the first part of ‘OMG! We’re on the frickin’ tracks!’ excitement subsided, we entered into the main event.

And we were not disappointed.

IT WAS SO AWESOME.

If you know me even slightly then you probably know that I’m a massive tube geek. I love this stuff. Be it snapping deserted underground stations in the name of #EmptyUnderground or even headed down to the disused tracks of Aldwych Station – if it’s to do with the London Underground, I’m all over it.

You could argue the Thames Tunnel was the first true ‘London Underground’ and even though it has found its home as part of the Overground network, I’ll never pass through it feeling the same way ever again.

I don’t know how often these walks are arranged (I’m guessing only a couple of times a year, maximum) but keep an eye out for them, they’re totally worth it, and all the money goes towards the upkeep of the Brunel museum nearby – so it’s helping a good cause too!

The guide we had was pretty awesome, told us about the huge dinner parties they used throw down there and the different uses that it had over the years. I could recount those stories here but you’d be better off just doing the tour yourself.

Additional reading:

 

 

Genesis Crafty

Somebody sent baked goods to the office. This is what happened next.

Somebody sent me baked goods.

Genesis Crafty

I say ‘somebody’, what I actually mean is ‘some awesome people working with the six brothers behind Genesis Crafty‘.

In the above box of treats were:

  • One packet of four cheese scones.
  • One packet of mini sultana scones.
  • One packet of six standard pancakes.
  • One packet of chocolate chip pancakes.

First up, said package arrived at the office. Meaning the team wanted in. Obviously, being the kind-hearted chap that I am, I shared the wealth… on the proviso they agreed to writing mini-reviews of every bite.

Foolishly, I only thought of this condition after we’d opened the first and most appealing packet, the chocolate chip pancakes (they didn’t last long).

Hmm. Chocolate.

(seriously, this was breakfast and they were gone in a flash)

However, once I’d realised how famished the team were (and how much they enjoyed the first round) we made a pact to not open any more until our 10:30 coffee break.

AND THEN IT WAS 10:30 AND WE ATE LIKE KINGS AND QUEENS.

Chocolate Pancakes:
‘Toasting should be strongly advised. Dark chocolate chips were perfectly bitter-sweet, cutting through the comforting stodge of the pancake.’ – Will

Plain Pancakes:
‘Inferior to chocolate chip in every way. Would not eat again without toasting and adding maple syrup.’  – Will
‘Fluffy but with substance. Like an intellectual bunny rabbit.’ – Briony
‘They’re very slappable.’ – Anastasia

Scones:
‘Satisfyingly cheesy, but a little dry. The food equivalent of the Graham Norton show. Without the glitter.’ – Briony

B & A inspecting...

(Briony and Anastasia are inspecting.. something in the ingredients, I think)

All in all the baked goods from Genesis Crafty were mostly super yummy. They weren’t eaten with the best of accompaniments nor were they warmed up (as we think the pancakes should’ve been) but they were still quite excellent.

If anyone else would like me or my team to review any baked goods in future then please, by all means, get in touch.

Genesis Crafty baked goods are available pretty much everywhere you’d expect them to be.

Go get some.

 

 

 

 

 

a brief interlude

I could sit here all day. I probably will.

Sat in green. The air is cool. Four vehicles in view: two similar, two practical. The trees are cut purposefully into square arrangements. It is unclear why. Three squares of trees, four if you count that one twice, stand on hills. Their shared diagonal rooves sharing the same degree as the angle they’re growing upon.

There were hedgehogs here last night. Two of them, fattening up quickly before hibernating into the long winter months that lay ahead. 650 grams is the minimum weight required for a hedgehog to survive its seasonal sleep. The little lad finishing off the plates last night knows it and will keep returning until his internal body scales tell him it’s OK. I wish him well.

Back to those hills, rising up like the arched backs of sleeping giants, they surround us. Left, hills. Forward, hills. Right, hills. It is only the gravel track behind us that provides any route out of this deep maze and even that feels like driving through the bottom of a ravine. As a result, the wind barely comes down and it is a magnificent anomaly of nature. There is no wind to be felt, in this hole between hills, and yet the clouds above race by at an incredible speed.

My mind jumps briefly. From here, sat still in green, to there, racing past in white. And I wonder if it feels still up there. If the cloud looks down and marvels at how fast the world is turning below it. I wonder.

The cows are moving. Up high on the hill ahead, a heard of around 40 bovines have erupted into noise. They are being herded, slowly, up and over the crest. Their silhouettes atop the hill would make a beautiful photograph – perhaps I’ll try to draw it later.

The clouds part, hello sunshine.

I could sit here all day.

I probably will.

But first: coffee.

Fresh.

 

Five things on Friday #94

Things of note for the week ending October 17th, 2014.

Five things on Friday

1. Teens are NOT deserting Facebook (again)
Earlier this year, tired of all the ‘Oh no! Facebook is dying!’ trash that was flooding the news feeds, I wrote an article for The Drum entitled ‘Myths, Money, Mobile, and Teens: this is how we debunk the demise of Facebook‘. Eight months later and the counterpoints to the deafening waffle all still stand: Facebook isn’t going anywhere (and the kids aren’t either).

But that hasn’t stopped the headlines rolling in.

‘Teens are officially over Facebook’ states the headline from The Washington Post, with an almost deliberate yet understated finality. The source? A ‘dramatic new report’ from investment bank/research house, Piper Jaffray.

The article states:

“Between fall 2014 and spring 2014, when Piper Jaffray last conducted this survey, Facebook use among teenagers aged 13 to 19 plummeted from 72 percent to 45 percent. In other words, less than half of the teenagers surveyed said “yes” when asked if they use Facebook.”

And they’ve got this killer chart to back them up.

Stupid American Facebook 'Chart'

So it must be right, right?

WRONG.

The Washington Post fails to mention two key factors that make this report fairly meaningless.

Key Factor One: Only 7,200 US teens were surveyed.
Seven thousand two hundred teenagers. There are 1.19billion Facebook users, total. But let’s be fair, only 728million of those users visit the service every day. So basically, if you’re worried about the opinion of a potential 0.0001% of Facebook’s daily active users then you’re doing it wrong. To say that this is not representative data would be the understatement of the century.

Key Factor Two: Only 7,200 US teens were surveyed.
This is absolutely not the first time a US publication has cited US data as a global trend. But surely, what with Facebook having been founded in the good ol’ US of A, must obviously have the lion’s share of its users on its home turf, right? WRONG.

On Facebook’s very own company info page the following data point can be found:

“Approximately 81.7% of our daily active users are outside the US and Canada”

That’s an incredible stat. Less than 19% of all Facebook users reside in North America.

I ask you: how can a subset of a subset of a subset be anywhere near passing for the norm?

Here endeth the lesson.

2. Newsletters
A short one now. I like newsletters. This list of newsletters is a good list of newsletters to dive into if you like newsletters too. So y’know, go and like newsletter yourself nuts.

3. Bill the Billboard
Hand on heart, I saw (and loved) this work before I knew it was from Ogilvy. But seriously, this stuff is awesome. Ogilvy Nairobi decided to help Sprite launch a new kind of billboard. Bill the Billboard, in fact.

As Adweek put it:

If it’s more comedy you want from your billboard, Sprite is happy to oblige.
Ogilvy Kenya recently put up “Bill the Billboard” at a busy intersection in Nairobi, and programmed him to endlessly crack jokes. He’s sort of an outdoor version of the famous Pringles banner ad from 2009, offering seemingly stream-of-consciousness quips to keep viewers entertained.
The jokes aren’t exactly side-splitting, and the case study’s boast that Bill is the “first ad ever with mental issues” isn’t exactly P.C. But at least he’s a little different than your typical boring digital ad.

Bill the Billboard

The video is gold.

4. Super Mario Bros 2
If you grew up in the 80s (like me) then you might be familiar with the Nintendo game, Super Mario Bros 2. If you are one of these people then you’ll know how wildly different the game was to its original counter-part. This article, ‘Four things I learnt while writing about SMB2‘, is a really interesting read.

SMB2

If you’re not familiar with SMB2 it’s still, genuinely, a very good read.

Check it out.

5. Music Twitter Cards
They’re a thing.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

And they’re actually quite a good/nice/cool thing (David Guetta aside).

Screenshot_2014-10-17-09-18-58Screenshot_2014-10-17-09-19-04Screenshot_2014-10-17-09-19-08

You click on a (soundcloud) link, the music opens, starts streaming, and then can be ‘docked’ so you can continue to scroll through Twitter while the music plays.

Reminds me a lot of how the YouTube app works on Android which in turn says to me that you could expect Twitter’s video cards to follow a similar set up in the very near future.

Maybe.

_____

Bonuses this week:

 

 

Five things on Friday #93

Things of note for the week ending October 10th, 2014.

Five Things on Friday

1. This is Groot
Did you see Guardians of the Galaxy this past summer (this is worth sticking with even if it’s a ‘no’, by the way)? Did you fall in love with a walking talking tree named Groot? If not, why not? Seriously, he steals the entire movie!

Anyway, all that being said, I found this video this week. It’s of wood sculpture specialist, Griffon Ramsey (yeah, she uses a chainsaw), creating her very own Groot statue out of an actual tree.

I AM GROOT

Yes, of course the end product is awesome and yes, now you’ve seen his face you can probably skip over this bit and get to the next thing (spoiler: it’s David Fincher related) but before you get there just stop.

Take six and a half minutes out of your day and watch the amazing making-of video that Ramsey made. It’s not only an awesome look at how such a beautiful thing is created but also a rather lovely bit of story-telling about what makes an artist tick.

Enjoy.

2. All of the Fincher things
If you read my website regularly (thanks) or follow me on Twitter (thanks again) you might already know that I saw Gone Girl last weekend and you might already know that I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT too. To say I have a massive hard on for all things David Fincher right now would be an understatement (yes, I was a fan already). So with that, here’s a selection of different Fincher things I’ve been reading this week (none of which hold any spoilers).

Have you seen it yet? What did you think? Let me know, yo!

3. Future of Copywriting
Written by the talented wordsmith, Rishi Dastidar, this piece over on Medium (actually entitled ‘continuous partial argument’) is/was an entry into a competition with the above name. Read as a lament for all that is wrong with the art of the written word the author comes through as passionate, driven, and yet ultimately bereft of hope for the future.

It is a fantastic read.

4. Amazon for a Fiver
The rather thoughtful Mr Terence Eden has put together this Tumblr of things you can buy from Amazon for under a fiver. Christmas is coming so I thought this might be useful. Bookmark it. Put it in your diary for pay day. Whatever.

Cool Stuff for FIVE POUNDS

THIS IS IMPORTANT AND USEFUL FOR CHRISTMAS.

5.  Hello Willem
My friend, Willem van der Horst, is back in Europe and this makes me very happy indeed. He is a big thinker, a deep philosopher, and overall, the keeper of a big warm heart. We caught up last night and I’m hoping it’ll be the first of many drinks now that he’s back (ish) from Asia.

You can follow Willem on Twitter or catch up on his travels via his blog, Ice Cream for Everyone (I know, right?).

______________________

Bonuses this week are –

  • Over the past month or so I’ve given the same talk a few times to various groups of people all about Twitter Cards (aka ‘expandable Tweets’). The latest slides, used most recently at Social Media Week London, are now available to read/share/download over on my Slideshare account. If you do anything in social then you might them useful. Share and share alike etc.
  • Speaking of Social Media Week, The Guardian asked me about it recently. ‘What were your five key takeaways?’ they said. “Well,” I replied  “they are as follows…”
  • The Trailer for Disney’s new film, Tomorrowland, dropped just yesterday and it looks great.

 

Review: GONE GIRL

NO. SPOILERS.

NO. SPOILERS.

gone_girl_xlg

On the occasion of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne reports that his wife, Amy, has gone missing. Under pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick’s portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon his lies, deceits and strange behavior have everyone asking the same dark question: Did Nick Dunne kill his wife?

The last time I reviewed a Fincher film on this website of mine, it was the 2011 Aaron Sorkin scripted, Facebook-flick, The Social Network. Since then he’s directed [a re-make of] The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as well as a couple of episodes of [the rather fantastic] House of Cards.

GONE GIRL, the film of the book (no, I haven’t read it), is Fincher’s latest effort and boy, it is a doozy.

There are few directors that get me frothing at the mouth with every new production - Nolan, Tarantino, Aronofsky, to name but three. Fincher also sits in that list. I fell in love with his work when I saw Fight Club (mind-blowing) back in 1999.

After that I explored back through The Game (mind-f***) and Se7en (visceral) and then worked forward into Panic Room (meh) and then Zodiac (over-long, but good enough to forgive). I didn’t think Dragon Tattoo was superb. Serviceable, yes. Classic Fincher? Certainly not. Social Network was very good – and then House of Cards reminded me that I missed him in film. In short: to say I was looking forward to GONE GIRL would be an understatement.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsSo much so I’m just happily tweeting typos…

And I was not disappointed.

Let’s start with the cast: Ben Affleck, as husband-in-search-of-missing-wife, Nick Dunne is a masterclass on playing Mr Average.

Gone-Girl

Relationships are weird things and, in every relationship, people behave in different ways and in this, Affleck delivers (nothing about this film makes him a superhero, but the weight of the world that he carries throughout? He will indeed make a great Batman) – I like it a LOT when good actors remind you just how good they are.

Playing the disappeared-wife, whose back story is told through diary entries along the way, Rosamund Pike excels. I’ll be honest, I’ve never really taken to her much in the stuff I’ve seen her in but in this, probably her best and yet most challenging work to date, Pike is on top form. It’s not an easy journey her character goes on and, at times, it’s a tough sell. I can’t imagine anyone else nailing it as well as she does.  

Neil Patrick Harris gets third billing but it’s Carrie Coon who really should be next on the list. Playing Ben Affleck’s ever-supportive / ever-present twin sister, Margot, Coon grounds the movie with emotion and brings the audiences questions to life without verging too much into exposition. That’s not to be mean to NPH, mind. His short but impactful performance is just the right side of sinister – and that’s all you need to know.

About all of it, in fact.

Yes, Trent Reznor’s scoring of the film is outstanding. And yes, the 149 minute run time keeps you gripped from start to finish. But to say any more would be giving hints as to where the film takes you and I’m telling now, going in ‘dark’, without knowing a thing, is probably the best way to see this film. GONE GIRL is a twisting, turning tale of the darkness that occurs in relationships. The stuff you don’t see, the stuff that both deny. The stuff that all of us have seen – or at least heard of.

It’ll push you to your limits of belief and it will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. It will thrill you, make you question those around you, and it will make you feel sick.

But it does it so well.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

I really did leave the cinema completely stunned by just how good it was. Writing this now, several hours later, and I’m still thinking about it. At times, it reminded me of Social Network, at others, Fight Club. The dark humour that spills through the celluloid during the film’s third act is to be enjoyed and revelled in.

GONE GIRL is a fantastically dark film.

GONE GIRL is Fincher at his best.

GONE GIRL is my film of 2014.

It might be yours too.

See it.

_______

Related post: ‘UK Cinema Release Dates for you Calendar‘

Five things on Friday #92

Things of note for the week ending October 3rd, 2014.

Things of note for the week ending October 3rd, 2014.

Happy Friday

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYBODY! Let’s do this…

1. Other Valleys
I love a good newsletter, me. So much so in fact that you can even get this wonderful post as a newsletter every week if you were so inclined (although about 200 of you already know that – hi fans!). But this item isn’t about me. No no. It’s about Anjali Ramachandran. Or more specifically, Anjali’s rather awesome new newsletter, ‘Other Valleys‘.

The pitch is simple:

A short list of creative/technology ideas, sent weekly, that are by and large NOT from the US/UK/EU. Inspiration can strike from many other places (the multiple Other Valleys spread across the world), and I like to know about them. Now you can too.

Go subscribe.

It might change your life.

2. Fashion Week
Yeah I’m a little late on this one and, truth be told, I’d completely forgotten about it. But I was cleaning out the Chrome tabs on my mobile the other day and I came across this absolute gem of an article: ‘I DRESSED LIKE AN IDIOT AT LONDON FASHION WEEK TO SEE HOW EASY IT IS TO GET STREET SNAPPED’.

IT. IS. GOLD.

This is just one amazing quote of about five million –

Anyone with a smartphone and a pair of socks can be a fashion blogger. Put some clothes on, take a photo of yourself, upload it to Instagram (tagged with #OOTD for easy clarification) and follow it up with a picture of some ladybird nail art or a bottle of aloe vera juice. There you go: you did it!

Go read it.

You never know, you might come away looking like this –

4

3. Legend of the Yokai
As part of the upcoming launch of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (and as seems part of a growing trend) an art exhibition has been put together celebrating the origins of the mythical mutants and it’s actually alright.

TMNT_LOTY_Honor_Matt_Taylor

TMNT_LOTY_JedHenry

TMNT_LOTY_Wisdom_JorgeCoelho

Things that are good:

  • The artwork. I’d say about 90% of it is really quite well done.
  • All of the images are downloadable direct from the website.

Things that are bad:

  • The website UI is painful (it’s like someone has read a book on a responsively designed websites but never actually seen or used one before).
  • The website also lacks any information on the actual exhibition – one assumes that this work will be on display somewhere at some point?

Anyway, if you like the Ninja Turtles, you might like this stuff.

Legend of the Yokai.

4. Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomororw

I can’t remember if I reviewed Edge of Tomorrow or not…

(edit: I didn’t. Short version of what I could write: it’s a good sci-fi epic that is strange as it seems to exist in a world where Groundhog Day never came out (or else Tom Cruise would be running around saying ‘Guys! This is just like Groundhog Day!’) but actually very good as the writing is snappy and the cast is eminently watchable)

…but the above poster is kind of awesome, which is why I’m sharing it.

via this expletive URL.

Oh and the film is out to buy in like, ten days. And it’s been renamed ‘Live. Die. Repeat.‘ – which is much better.

5. Gratify
We live in a world of instant gratification. Don’t know something? Google it. Post a photo? People LIKE it. Someone messages you? The outside of your thigh buzzes and sends a signal up to your brain. The dopamine hits, they’re addictive.

But too much of a good thing can be a very bad thing.

I talk about Leo Babuta on this list a fair bit. He’s probably one my favourite sources of good reading and inspiration. Today is no different. If you’re feeling addicted, then maybe it’s time to switch off. Unplug. Get over that craving of instant gratification and just relax. But I get it. You’re hooked. It’s not easy to just check your phone 200 times a day and then suddenly stop. You need help.

You need a guide on how to overcome instant gratification.

This one’s on me.

______________

Bonuses this week are all film director related.

  • First, PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood) has a new film. It’s called INHERENT VICE and the trailer has just been released. Watch it.
  • Second, DAVID FINCHER has a new film out this weekend. It’s called GONE GIRL (you might’ve heard about it – do you subscribe to my movie release date calendar? Maybe you should). I am so excited about this film it’s ridiculous. Seeing it tomorrow. Expect a review on this website at some point thereafter. Bonus Fincher quote? Oh go on then –
“People go to the movies to discover things. They want to see actors as they’ve never seen them before and to see them in situations you never imagined them in because hopefully you never imagined seeing yourself in that situation. I need that sense of discovery when I look at movies.”

via

  • Third: CLINT EASTWOOD also has a new film. It’s called AMERICAN SNIPER. It stars Bradley Cooper and it looks like it could be quite something; I watched the brand new trailer literally 10mins before I wrote these words. It gave me shivers.

Whatley out.

Five things on Friday #91

Things of note for the week ending September 26th, 2014.

Things of note for the week ending September 26th, 2014.

MALKOVICH

An image heavy week this week, kicking off with this utterly brilliant collection of mental photography featuring the one and only John Malkovich. Seriously.

Let’s dive in –

1. Audrey Hepburn

Audrey

Speaking of amazing photography sets, I came across this collection of ‘rare’ Hepburn photos earlier this week and, well, they’re absolutely gorgeous.

Thing I learnt from this post? Audrey Hepburn had a pet deer named Pippin.

Lovely.

2. On Geeks
‘Geeks. You are no longer victims. Get over it.’ is the title of this provocative debate piece in last week’s New York Times (you read it regulalrly, right?) –

Popular culture right now frequently appears to be a large-scale experiment in cognitive dissonance. By any rational measure, the geeks — fans of comic books, science fiction, video games and fantasy — are utterly triumphant. Economically, the genre in the media is dominant, earning billions of dollars a year. Critically, it is celebrated, getting sympathetic reviews in the stuffiest publications and winning national awards. In every meaningful sense, geeks are the overdogs.

Believe it or not, the comments are actually well worth reading

3. What is El Niño?

bad weather innit

Ever heard of El Niño? If you’re not in the US of A, it might be on the periphery of your weather-based awareness. If you’ve got a spare two minutes and seventeen seconds, you could increase your knowledge of the meteorological phenomenon right now by watching this video.

4. Zelda Art
If you’re a gamer of any shape or form, then you’ll probably agree that set of original Legend of Zelda this is unbelievably cool.

Screen Shot 2014-09-26 at 12.44.54 42 - Emj91

Beautiful.

5. Mark Ritson on Oreo
Mark Ritson is a professor of brand and one of the smartest people I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet. If you’ve known me for a while, I may’ve shared this with you before.

What with it being the end of Social Media Week, I thought it was a good time to share to again. This deconstruction of that Oreo Tweet is utterly fantastic. It’s 90mins long but I implore you – watch it, listen to it, put it on your Chromecast this weekend, or have it playing in the background while you work this afternoon.

Just consume it, and take it in.

Please.

No bonuses this week.

Whatley out.