Five things on Friday #115

Things of note for the week ending Friday 13th March, 2015.

Things of note for the week ending Friday 13th March, 2015.

Five things weeeeee

1. THE RISE AND FALL OF HIPSTER RUNOFF
I have to admit, Hipster Runoff (HRO) completely passed me by back in ‘the day’. It was only via a recent conversation with a fellow nostalgia-wave content obsessive that HRO was uncovered and brought to my attention.

“HRO became a living document of a singular moment in internet history. A blip when a persistent weirdo, without the help of venture capital or a marketing firm, without getting swallowed by a media company, could simply blog his way into modest fame and profitability—and HRO did it while ruthlessly parodying the very readership, infrastructure, and culture that made the whole enterprise possible. It’s unlikely that anything quite like Hipster Runoff will happen again. And now it’s about to be pawned off to an Australian investor.”

FOR SALE: HRO

I know for some of you, HRO was the best thing ever and you’ll probably get a kick out the article I’m about to link to.  Those of you all fall out of that 2% of readers who know about HRO, you should read it too. Right, whatever.

The piece is entitled ‘The last Relevant Blogger‘ and it covers everything you need to know about HRO and its author, Carles.Buzz – it’s honestly one of the best things I’ve read all week.

Go read.

Oh, and when you’ve done that, go read Carles’ take on THE DRESS too.

I laughed, a lot.

2. SECRET CINEMA IS DOING STAR WARS
A bit of a divisive one this.

star-wars-secret-cinema

Some people be like:

But for others (myself included – but we’ll come back to that) the Secret Cinema experience has been tarnished one too many times. 

Take into account the 50% price increase on last year’s Back to the Future experience and, well, a fair few people aren’t biting.


From a personal perspective and after being dicked around a fair few times before, I swore that last year’s BTTF Experience would be probably be my last. The Brazil tickets my friends and I had got cancelled while we were on the train to the venue, Miller’s Crossing after that had incredibly rude staff/actors, and then, when Back to the Future came around, we had opening week tickets that also got cancelled and rescheduled.

In defence of Secret Cinema, the Brazil event was superb. As was Back to the Future. Once the tickets had been rescheduled, my friends and I ended up eventually having a good time at both. But for me, I’m done with the rollercoaster of just not knowing. Especially with this latest price hike.

I’m sure it’ll be a great experience for those that decide to go just as I’m also sure that something will complete mess up for them along the way.

But from now on: I’m out.

  • Tickets for the Secret Cinema event are available from 1pm. March 18th.
  • Tickets to the alternative Empire Strikes Back event I’m planning (100% not kidding – the feedback to the above tweet has been overwhelming!) will be available via this website nearer the time.

3. HOW TO PRONOUNCE ‘TRICKY’ BRAND NAMES
Business Insider put together this ‘handy’ video on how to pronounce tricky brand names. It’s fairly US-centric but still might be useful to those of you who never really know or want to ask how to pronounce certain brands…

 

4. SOME TV/FILM RELATED STUFF
This is a complete sham as I’ve got three things that are mildly related and I want to stick them under the umbrella of one thing. Deal with it.

First up: Netflix and Marvel have teamed up to create four exclusive series based upon the latter’s comic book properties. The first one out of the blocks it seems will be DAREDEVIL and the latest trailer dropped this past week and it looks AWESOME.

Second up: I recently returned home from a trip to Sydney (he types, from his hotel room in Austin, Texas – we’ll come back to that) and that 23hr long flight allowed me to catch up on a bunch of films that I’ve been meaning to watch for some time now. Of everything that I saw (and trust me, there was a lot) only two films really stood out for me and those two films I’m going to recommend to you now.

FILM 1:

Men, Women, and Children is a really good film that I’d heard about but not really paid that much attention to that follows the story of a group of high school teenagers and their parents as they attempt to navigate the many ways the internet has changed their relationships, their communication, their self-image, and their love lives.

As each of the main players has their relationships tested, you get to see the variety of roads those people choose – some tragic, some hopeful – along the way. I would say I enjoyed about 95% of this film. There were a few niggles for me (mainly around America and its nigh-puritanical expectations around certain sociological norms) but overall, my list of ‘watchable films that have Adam Sandler in them’ has grown to two.

FILM 2:

Finding Vivian Maier on the other hand is a film I’d heard SO much about and had made a mental note in my head to watch it as soon as I remembered to. But then I forgot. But then I found it on the plane home and all was well. IMDb says that FVM is ‘A documentary on the late Vivian Maier, a nanny whose previously unknown cache of 100,000 photographs earned her a posthumous reputation as one of the most accomplished street photographers.’

And it is correct. It is. Her photos are staggering (you can see some on the website of the film) and they really do take your breath away.

That being said, the process of finding the photos, developing the photos, and the photos becoming famous, only really takes up about the first 20mins of the film. The rest of the picture explores the person behind the camera; who was she, where was she from, what kind of person was she – and it is a wonderfully put together documentary.

Recommended.

5. AWESOME TREE APARTMENT IS AWESOME
I really couldn’t say ‘Tree House’ – it just wouldn’t do it justice.

Verde_03

What you see above is a five-storey apartment building in Turin, Italty. Apparently built to evade Turin’s homogeneous urban look and feel, it uses plant life and trees to bring the facade of the building to life.

More:

“The undulating structure creates a transition from outdoors to in, holding 150 trees that absorb close to 200,000 liters of carbon dioxide an hour. This natural absorption brings pollution protection to its residents, helping to eliminate harmful gasses caused by cars and harsh sounds from the bustling streets outside. The trees’ seasonal progression also creates the ideal microclimate inside the building, steadying temperature extremes during the cold and warmer months. The plants’ full foliage block rays of sun during the summer while letting in warm light during the winter.”

 

I love it.

Whatley out  x

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Bonuses this week are all fairly self-serving:

  • I got told off the other day for never really acknowledging being named as number six in this peer-voted top 50 list of influential people in social media marketing. That’s done then.
  • Promotion is actually official (we don’t talk about the picture).
  • I updated that millennial resource post again (aka ‘here’s a link to my blog’) now closing in on 20 different useful resources for anyone researching the hottest audience right now.

If you like anything you’ve read here today – do tell someone else about it and tell them where you got it from too. It’s nice to get new readers. Better yet, send them this link – http://eepurl.com/UtW8r – and they can sign up themselves…

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Author: James Whatley

Chief Strategy Officer in adland. I got ❤️ for writing, gaming, and figuring stuff out. I'm @whatleydude pretty much everywhere that matters. Nice to meet you x