Wednesday 23 May 2018

captain-america-so-you-got-detention-meme_marvel-cropped-brightened

extra money never was this easy

captain-america-so-you-got-detention-meme_marvel-cropped-brightened

In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) gets a detention, during which the students are shown a video of Captain America (Chris Evans) sitting in a backwards chair (that’s the cool way) and affecting a friendly mentor tone, saying, “So, you got detention.” You can watch the full scene here. Earlier this month, the scene inspired a meme with some especially creative variations on the phrase, all starting with “So…” such as the example above, which made us imagine replacing the clapping in the song with snapping (should’ve aimed for the head).

The first example was posted on Twitter on May 11th, when @inkopolis captioned the picture of Captain America with “So. You got cucked.” (Oh, Internet. Never stop being poisoned by irony.) It took a few days for the next example to show up, but then things really got rolling. Now there are enough funny examples that we’d be remiss to ignore them.

Some of the jokes went far back to 1930s references:

Marvel

Other ones might require Steve Rogers to add some media to his watchlist:

And some of them have no chill:

Here are some more to cheer you up after those previous two:

(Hat tip to Know Your Meme)

extra money never was this easy



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Tuesday 22 May 2018

solo

nobody knows I'm unemployed because I've got so much money

solo

LUCASFILM

By now you’ve read all about the behind-the-scenes drama that plagued Solo: A Star Wars Story: original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were fired, Ron Howard stepped in, there were reshoots and talk of acting coaches, etc. It seemed like the only good Solo news was Lando news, which, to be honest, is the best news. But the (Tatooine) dust has settled, the movie is completed, and it’s finally coming out this Thursday, May 24. Solo has even already broken a Star Wars record: it’s reportedly the most expensive film in the franchise.

With mere weeks left on the shooting schedule, producer Kathleen Kennedy fired directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and hired veteran Ron Howard to right the ship. Suddenly, the [director] was tasked with the daunting job of overhauling the embattled franchise spinoff. Howard shot about 70% of Solo, thus earning him sole director credit on the movie, with Lord and Miller receiving executive producer acknowledgments. With the reshoots, the movie wound up costing more than $250 million. (Via)

The previous record-holder is The Force Awakens with $245 million, followed by Rogue One and The Last Jedi (both of which are somewhere in the $200-$219 million range), The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones ($115 million), Revenge of the Sith ($113 million), Return of the Jedi (an estimated $32.5-42.7 million), The Empire Strikes Back ($18-33 million), and Star Wars ($11 million). If you adjust that $11 million for inflation, the number rises all the way to… $45 million, or approximately Solo‘s cape budget.

For much more on Solo: A Star Wars Story, check out our interviews with screenwriters Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan and Paul Bettany.

(Via Variety)

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FirstReformed-Feater

extra money never was this easy

FirstReformed-Feater

A24

Paul Schrader has long been credited for helping to create some of the defining films of the 70s and 80s — through his screenwriting work on Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Last Temptation of Christ, among othersLately though, it’s felt like his relevance might be forever stuck there. In 2013 he directed Bret Easton Ellis’ script for The Canyons, a dull, failed noir that was as drab as it was boring. Then there was a nutty movie starring Nic Cage as a CIA agent with dementia (Dying of the Light, 2014), and most recently, he returned with Dog Eat Dog, an unrelentingly ugly piece of work that might be the worst movie I’ve ever sat through in a theater.

The kind of “provocations for provocations'” sake artiness Schrader helped popularize was no longer all that provocative, and it seemed as if he might not know how to do anything else. At its best, Schrader’s latest, First Reformed, starring Ethan Hawke as an alcoholic reverend in the midst of a crisis, reminds you of what we miss from the artist-driven auteur age in which Schrader cut his teeth. First Reformed is bleak and bone dry, a little self-indulgent, and it screams neither “fun” nor “production values.” It is the opposite of a “romp.” But damned if it doesn’t stay with you, provoking thought using nothing but a priest and a suicidal environmentalist sitting across from each other talking. It’s devoutly art first, entertainment second, and it’s legitimately challenging, which will be refreshing for the handful of people who still want that from a movie.

Hawke plays Toller, a former military chaplain turned reverend at a “tourist church where no one attends sermons” in snowy, grey Albany, New York, looking like America’s Stalingrad. One of his few parishioners, Mary (Amanda Seyfried), asks if he can come talk to her husband, Michael (Philip Ettinger), who seems to be spiraling. Toller takes the drive to Mary and Michael’s, and one of the refreshing things about Schrader’s style is that he still uses a lot of medium and long shots. You can actually see the actors’ feet when Toller walks in the door, which is almost unheard of nowadays. Michael, an environmental activist, is convinced that bringing a child into the world would be cruel, citing all of the ways in which humanity is doomed because of pollution. “Sea levels are set to rise two feet by 2050. This society isn’t built to handle multiple crises.”

Toller responds with a fatalistic, let-go-and-let-God attitude, saying “reason provides no answers,” that hope and despair will always battle for supremacy in the heart of man, that faith requires courage.

The dry scene — no music and few camera angles, like much of the rest of the movie — is surprisingly resonant. Toller leaves thinking he’s affected Michael in some way, but the reverse is true. Toller is shaken, and so are we.

The conflict becomes whether men of faith like Toller need to sound the alarm to protect God’s creation, or whether they should throw their hands up and just assume it’s all going according to God’s Plan. Representing the latter viewpoint is Cedric Kyles, played by Cedric the Entertainer, doing some of the best acting work of his career as the head reverend at the megachurch that underwrites Toller’s tiny tourist trap, who preaches a kind of prosperity doctrine-adjacent faith in which “fretting is an abomination.”

To Cedric, worrying is tantamount to questioning the will of God, and when he sees Toller spiraling into anguished uncertainty over humanity’s plight, he tells him, “You’re always in the garden. Even Jesus wasn’t always in the garden. He was preaching, on the mount. He was in the temples, he was in the marketplace.”

Cedric is certainly in the marketplace, affording most of the church’s budget thanks to the donations of energy magnate Edward Balq (Michael Gaston), who’s responsible for a nearby superfund site in addition to Toller’s church’s new organ.

The conflict Schrader sets up, between caring for God’s creation vs. eternally trusting in His wisdom, is, surprisingly, more relevant than his old contemporary Martin Scorsese’s similar faith exploration in the interminable 17th century slog Silence.

Of course, Scorsese also has a big budget and a flair for spectacle that Schrader can’t match (not to mention a much greater developed sense of “fun”). And for as much as First Reformed‘s setup reminds you of all the great things about 70s’ soul-searching cinema, First Reformed‘s resolution reminds you of all its failings. Just as with most of the titans of late 20th century letters — your Philips Roth, your Johns Updike — the longer they ponder the universe and the meaning of existence, the more likely it is that their spiritual journey will lead them right back to their own dicks. Such is true in First Reformed, which goes there even after you breathe a sigh of relief thinking it won’t.

As Toller ponders faith’s place in the modern world, women are both his bane (in the form of Esther, played by Victoria Hill, a hectoring choir leader and Toller’s ex, whom he eventually tells “I despise you”), and his salvation (in the form of Seyfried, the angelic pregnant Madonna). After setting up such a relevant conflict, Toller first flirts with going full Taxi Driver (a heel turn that feels undersupported, but not uninteresting), First Reformed ends on this sour note, as if sex is somehow the answer to man’s place in the universe. A more skilled visual stylist might’ve made that work, but in the hands of stripped down storyteller like Schrader, there’s no poetry to hide behind.

It’s a disappointing ending after such a promising opening. But despite its flaws, First Reformed proves that Paul Schrader is still worth paying attention to.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. More reviews here.

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Paul Bettany

I always thought things that sounded too good to be true usually aren't told why discovered this!

Paul Bettany

Lucasfilm

In the last month, Paul Bettany will have co-starred in two of the biggest movies of the year and probably of all time, as Vision in Avengers: Infinity War and now as crime lord Dryden Voss in Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Bettany was a late addition to Solo, coming on board after the Phil Lord and Chris Miller filmmaking duo left the project and were replaced by Ron Howard. In Lord and Miller’s version, Dryden Voss was played by Michael K. Williams, who had described the character as “half lion.” Williams’ schedule wouldn’t allow him to be available for the reshoots, but by the time Bettany replaced him, the whole half lion had been dropped and now this galactic gangster, who Han Solo and company have to eventually answer to, has a more human appearance.

But how did Bettany get the role in the first place? Well, basically, Bettany sent a late night “U up?” text message to Ron Howard asking if he could be in a Star Wars movie and Howard responded with — and this is real — “LOL” before telling Bettany he’d see what he could do. So I guess the moral of this story is that sometimes random, out of the blue text messages asking for work can actually work.

What is your relationship with Star Wars? Were you a fan? Or was this just something that sounded fun?

No, I am a big fan. I was a big fan from six years old. I was in London in the ’70s and it was gray and miserable – as the ’70s were in London – and I was whisked away and transported to a different galaxy by A New Hope. And it was pretty instrumental in making me want to become an actor, I think, as a young kid.

With Solo, was it then a combination of you liking Star Wars and working with Ron Howard before?

Well, it was hearing that Ron was doing it and then I texted him asking to be in it, and he said, “Let me see what I can do.” And then he got back to me with a job. I was super thrilled when he came back and said, “Yeah, we’ve got something for you to do.”

So you text him, “I want to be in this,” and he comes back and says, “Turns out you can be the main bad guy”?

Yes.

That had to be more than you were expecting?

Yes.

Well, that’s pretty great…

Yeah, totally, and that’s exactly how it happened. And, in fact, I texted him exactly this. [Pulls out phone] I said, “Hey, Ron, have you ever spent long winter evenings like I have wondering why I’m not in the Star Wars franchise?”

What did write back?

Then he texted me back, “LOL. Let me get back to you.”

What if he had just written, “LOL,” without the “get back to you” part?

I would have been teary.

Would you have followed up? Like, “Hey, I’m serious.”

Totally. Totally, I wanted to be in the Star Wars series.

How long until he got back to you with something concrete?

I was flying in two weeks.

Wow.

I was flying to London to start shooting.

I don’t feel it normally happens this way.

No, it’s totally not normal.

So, two weeks after sending that text you’re on that flight. At what point onset are you like, “Oh, wow, I’m actually on a Star Wars set.” Or is it not that different than a Marvel movie?

No, it was pretty amazing. I walked down a spiral staircase on a starship and a R2 unit went by with champagne flutes on it.

I remember the scene.

And that was the first scene I shot and it was amazing. And, you know, you kind of go, “Holy shit, I’m in Star Wars.”

Dryden Voss seems like a reasonable villain, at least as far as crime lords go. Like when he asks people, “Give me a reason not to kill you,” he seems sincere.

Yeah, I think so. You know, I mean, he’s a crime boss, right? And he fucked up, so I’ve got to make him pay, right?

When Michael K. Williams was playing him before he had to leave he said this character was half lion. When did that change?

Yes, that was gone. I mean, and look, I think Michael K. Williams is a great actor. And the problem with being a great actor is you’re very much in demand. And by the time they came to do these re-shoots and all of this fiasco happened, Michael K. Williams was unfortunately already working. That is the danger of being an actor that in demand. [Laughs] I was unemployed…

Sending text messages to Ron Howard…

So, I’ve never taken the risk of being that talented.

Oh, come on…

But, anyway, one man’s misfortune is another man’s fortune and this time I got very lucky. But I think they took the opportunity to just rethink the whole notion of him being a CG motion capture animal and make him more human, which I think was helpful for this strange Han-Qi’ra-Dryden triangle that’s going on.

So you mentioned fiasco…

When I said fiasco, to clarify, I mean the mayhem that must have befallen the project. It doesn’t usually happen, and so right at the moment where the ship is being righted and there’s calm, suddenly you go, “Well, now we’ve done this and we have to reshoot these moments. Well, should we use this opportunity to rethink a few things?” And one of the things that they rethought was Dryden Vos and whether he should be an animal at all. And so, by the time I got called in, they had already made that decision.

So do you show up all refreshed like, “Hey let’s do a Star Wars!” and everyone else has been filming for months and months and probably are tired?.

No, it was not. It was really an incredibly happy set. I think that there was some real trauma and, for better or for worse, what had happened had happened. And Ron had come on and it was a brilliant piece of producing by Kathleen, because not only is Ron a brilliant director and an incredibly fast shooter, he’s also impossible to hate. I mean, I think it can empirically be proved that he is the most likable human being in the whole world, and that’s the person you need to come and take over the show. And everybody was really, really happy to be continuing and that we were in calm waters now.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

I paid off my student loans early



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vacation-photo-grid-uproxx.jpg

I paid off my student loans early

vacation-photo-grid-uproxx.jpg


Chris Young

We love travel — especially interviewing frequent travelers to get awesome suggestions about where to go and how to travel with ease. One of the biggest questions that we have for the nomads we meet is how they finance their wanderlust. After all, it’s not easy for most people to drop everything and head to Bali for a few weeks. In many cases, the adventurers we speak to leverage their online followings or talents to cover their vacations.

This week, we sought out an expert to explain the ins-and-outs of financing your trip by selling photos or videos. Chris Young has traveled to over 400 hotels in over 50 countries across six continents — providing creative content in exchange for accommodations and activities (even airfare on occasion). Hotel reviews, location guides, and gear guides all show up at his website, The Young Travelier, which provides meaningful, and up-to-date info to the would-be vagabond.

Young has a lot of information to offer, which just may be the push some people need to start traveling and getting the costs covered.

Chris Young

RULE 1: Remember That Brands Need Your Work

Chris Young

I’ll start sort of with the reason it’s even possible nowadays. A lot of it is because brands — and brands could be anything from a hotel to a country and its tourism board — have a need to stock their social media accounts with lots of images or videos, a lot of content. And it’s expensive to produce all this content, so they are constantly looking for ways to crowdsource it.

It’s always a question of whether to hire a local professional or to cover the cost of someone coming in and doing this for them. And you’ve probably heard it before, but this is how a lot of Instagrammers, YouTubers, so-called social media darlings go about traveling for free. It’s a lot of quid pro quo.

RULE 2: Develop A Portfolio

Chris Young

If you’re someone that’s not already running social media accounts and you don’t have a ton of followers, that’s not necessarily the end of the road for being able to travel for free. If you can demonstrate via a portfolio of past work that you’re able to provide quality collateral for a potential client, then a lot of hotels, Airbnbs, and travel agencies, tour guides, et cetera will show interest. All these travel related industry people are willing to offer their service or whatever they have in exchange for your ability to create content for them.

I personally send them a link to my portfolio. Because I have a small social media presence, I’ll send them an Instagram link, I’ll send them a YouTube link, but I also have a link of my professional work on a video hosting site called Vimeo.

RULE 3: Expect To Reach Out

Chris Young

It’s actually going to be an active outreach on your part. So, the method that I use is to scope out an underserved hotel or maybe an Airbnb that looks like it needs new photos. Another option is a country that looks like it doesn’t have a huge presence online but could be a great place to travel or is developing in tourism.

Sri Lanka is one that I recently went over and shot. I stayed for free at almost every hotel there, including getting comped meals and activities. It was the same in Belize.

These are examples of countries that are not top of the line for a lot of people to travel to yet. But they have a growing tourism industry that’s really looking for people to come and spread knowledge about them. Usually, I reach out with a form email of some sort. It says that in exchange for content, I would like to have either a comped or reduced rate. The industry term is “media rate.” Sometimes, when you are beginning, you may not get a completely free vacation, but it can be a wonderful discount, as deep as 70 to 80 percent off a normal rate, somewhere. So, if not a free vacation, potentially, a very, very discounted one.

I contact the reservations department and ask for a marketing or media manager; they will relay that over. I’ll blanket a place. For example, sometimes there’s a particular place I want to go to and maybe I don’t know whether or not it’s underserved. For example, I went to Portugal a little while ago, and I contacted a bunch of hotels in Lagos. I didn’t know which ones were going to respond or not. So, after contacting six seven of them, one responded back with “Yeah, we’d love for you to come here and shoot for us.”

You definitely have to be prepared for people to say no or ignore you. No one’s been outright rude.

RULE 4: Don’t Anticipate Getting Everything Comped

Chris Young

I think you should go in not expecting or requesting that they comp you for free but asking what they could do. At the very least, if they do agree to work with you, you can get a discount, you might possibly get certain things, smaller things for free, that are really interesting. For example, I worked with a Four Seasons in Maui, and they weren’t willing to comp me, but they were willing to basically give me a bunch of free activities including a day at the spa and a review of some of their private dining experiences. It was probably worth about thousand dollars in freebies at the hotel.

You’re in charge of your own flight. But if you can shoot professional video, a lot of times they will also pay for your flight because on average a nice video that they can rebroadcast somewhere would cost, at a minimum, three to five thousand dollars or so to deliver.

It’s very much a value proposition for them. They’re gonna take a look at how much it’s gonna to cost them to do this locally, to locally source it, versus how much it costs to get you there and to do it.

It helps if you happen to have actors or actresses, as they call them. They are basically other people in the video for them because that’s an additional saving for them. You need a pretty face, a pretty body. Unfortunately, things are a little superficial.

RULE 5: The Time You Spend Taking Photos and Videos Will Vary

Chris Young

The time I spend on a trip taking photos is all over the place for me. There have been times where I was in Bali at the Ritz-Carlton Reserve, and I shot two out of the three days I was staying there. I had to make sure to showcase certain things that they want, that the manager wanted to showcase at the hotel: their unique spa, the fact that it was on the river, their local cuisine, locally sourced things, and some of it was the architecture. It was very atmospheric resort; it was built in the middle of the jungle on sacred grounds. So, there were certain things in their mind that they wanted to see.

There have been other times where it’s taken all of a few hours out of four or five days somewhere. The client understands what they want for the most part, and you just cater to their need.

You should be prepared to work. Yes, this is definitely gonna be work. I’ve never had to just work the entire time. I feel like most of the time, it doesn’t feel like work because I’ll really want to go there in the first place. I want to document the experience, and it matters what my work looks like to me. So, I like to do a good job on the go there, even if it’s not necessarily for cash.

RULE 6: Consider Writing A Blog

Chris Young

I also happen to have a written blog, so I will sometimes write an article instead of shooting or in addition to collateral for them. Everyone’s different. If you’re just starting out, it might be a little bit different. But, as you progress, if you do want to do a written blog, if you want to have all these different types of social media channels, they always stack on top of each other as an added value to this potential client.

RULE 7: You Have To Deliver

Chris Young

I’ve had some of the properties actually email me or contact me on the spot for the work I have done. And, sometimes while I’m there, they ask me to deliver in lockstep during the stay, but I’ve also had other ones who have actually just trusted me. I would say the majority, 80 or 90 percent, just trust me to deliver to them by the time I leave or at some point in the future.

A lot of these chains are really trusting. Now, most of them will have your credit card for incidentals. So, I’ve never not delivered. But I would assume that if you don’t, they would probably have the right to charge you back, although they don’t make you sign contracts.

RULE 8 Share Your Work On Your Channels As Well

Chris Young

I think they often want you to share your work on your social media as well. So, I guess in my case because I have these social media channels, they actually prefer for me to share and are disappointed if I can’t. It’s just added eyes for them. I don’t know what would be the case without a following, but I would assume it wouldn’t be terrible for you to show off their country or city or hotel or tour — whatever it is that you’re creating content for.

To learn more and see more of Chris Young’s work, check out his Youtube and Instagram accounts.

Chris Young



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Chris Young

do you like going to work? Me neither! See how I got around that and got paid too!



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blackpanther.jpg

extra money never was this easy

blackpanther.jpg

Marvel/Disney

Black Panther has been an enormous success story. It racked up over $1.3 billion at the box office and is only now ceding screen space to other blockbusters despite being in theaters since mid-February. People have gone back again and again to see it. You’d think everyone had spotted absolutely everything about it, but it turns out, there’s one cameo we all missed. Light spoilers below, if for some reason you haven’t seen it yet.

As discussed by the AV Club, now that Black Panther has newly arrived on home video, fans spotted an interesting name at the end of the credits:

Yes, The Daily Show‘s own Trevor Noah is in the movie. Sort of. “Griot,” it turns out, is the name of the AI in the ship that Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) pilots at the end. What’s fun about it is that Noah didn’t spoil the surprise, despite repeated opportunities, chatting with multiple members of the cast on The Daily Show and discussing aspects of the production, like its use of Xhosa, which Noah nerd out about language a bit, since he’s fluent in seven different tongues. We suppose this proves it pays, especially in this era of stealthy cameos and unbroken casting streaks, to stick around and read the credits, as well as the post-credits bits. Just don’t pull any of that “They were there but they were really tiny and hard to see” stuff with us, Ant-Man And The Wasp. We’re onto you.

(via AV Club)

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IG-uproxx.jpg

nobody knows I'm unemployed because I've got so much money

IG-uproxx.jpg

UPROXX/Unsplash

One of the fundamental problems in social media etiquette is, frankly, managing the flood. This is especially true of Instagram, with its algorithm scrambling posts. If you’ve got acquaintances that are food photo firehoses, they can drown out the photos of your friends that you actually want to see. Fortunately, Instagram has finally introduced a way to curate what you see on your feed, without having to unfollow your coworkers.

It’s a mute feature on the app, and it’s actually fairly easy to use. It’ll also help you avoid awkward moments — because nobody is informed of a mute. Just click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner of a post from somebody you’d like to leave out of your feed. You can mute their posts, or both their posts and their stories. If you’d rather just mute their stories, you’ll have to go to their profile and do it from there. You can still view their posts from their profile, they just won’t turn up when you’re scrolling. At the time of writing, this feature hadn’t been added to the Android app or the website just yet, but it’s definitely coming.

It is nice to have the option to take a break from certain people and a more granular mute — with the story and post features — is a nice touch. Quieting a few noisy feeds is a good way to leave time for Uproxx Travel, #VanLifers, and those (also potentially mute-able) travel influencers.

(via Business Insider)

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