Movie Journal Quick Takes

I don’t really have a lot of time and none of these movies really deserves a full write-up so here are my consise thoughts on some movies I watched recently.

Birth: Not very good and almost completely lacking a third act. I don’t mean it simply could have been stronger, I mean it wasn’t there. Nicole Kidman’s performance would have been more convincing if we were being led to believe she had severe psychosis. Instead her character is just wildly inconsistent and obsessive to the point of not being able to lead a normal life of any sort.

Maria Full of Grace: This one was alright but didn’t really deliver on the expectations set for it by all the praise I had seen. The story of a young pregnant woman who takes to smuggling drugs in order to make money seems like it would have been a very cool half-hour short but really wasn’t sustainable for a full hour-forty five. Also, considering the name and the DVD cover art, I was expecting more Catholic overtones.

Super Troopers: Interestingly the best of this lot. I get the sense the members of Broken Lizard plotted out an actual movie and then figured out how to be funny within that structure instead of simply barely stringing together gags (cough/Team America/cough).

Blacklisting PR pros

There’s an ongoing meme about creating a blacklist of irresponsible PR folks, the gist of which is nicely summarized here by Shel Holtz. Basically some bloggers are beginning to complain that PR practitioners are sending out these horrendous blast emails that contain gushing prose, overembelashed copy and most importantly a lack of understanding as to what the blogger writes about.

It’s a legitimate complaint. There’s nothing worse than a useless email. I’m not exactly a household name in the PR or movie industry and yet I’ve gotten a few unsolicited pitches that have made me shake my head in wonder. Just what these people hope to accomplish with this kind of tactic is beyond me. Not only is the blog community too savvy for this kind of tactic the general audience is as well.

So here’s a little tip for pitching bloggers, take directly from the “Introduction to Blogs” white paper I wrote for Bacon’s Information:

1. Expose all potential conflicts of interest or corporate ties right off the bat. If these relationships are not admitted initially, the blogger will find them. By being upfront, you have inoculated yourself to some extent against a potential backlash that could cause negative publicity for your company.

2. Be familiar not only with the blog you are pitching but also with other blogs linked from that site that cover the same topic. Remember that blogs thrive on a sense of community. Bloggers want information to be shared and are not as concerned with exclusives as traditional media outlets.

3. Personalize your pitch. Don’t just include their email in a blast mailing of a press release. Bloggers like to feel special and a generic email is likely to fall on deaf ears.

4. Remember that blog writers, in order to stay relevant in the eyes of their readers, need to be honest above all else. They will publish their unvarnished opinion of a product – warts and all. Keep in mind that the risks associated with blogs need to be accepted along with their potential benefits.

5. Like traditional media outlets, the more popular blogs are the often the most
difficult to break into. Find a mid-tier blog for that first impression and let the story work its way out from there. Because there is a good deal of cross-linking among blogs within a niche, if one picks it up there is a good chance others will report on the story or do their own investigation. By incorporating some form of blog monitoring, you will be able to see how effectively this works and react
appropriately.

To that I’d now add your company or agency should make RSS feeds available for releases and other announcement. If a blog writer covers your industry they’ll subscribe to the feed and get the important information that way.

The editorial process

Tremendous piece here at Blogspotting on the differences in preparing a blog post versus a story for the print edition of BusinessWeek. Everyone – I mean everyone – who has ever written a blog sanctioned by a media outlet or tried to get a story into one should read this.

Google takes over the moon

Not really but this is pretty cool.

Movie Journal: Million Dollar Baby

Now this is more like it. Clint Eastwood has once again shown all current and future actors how to get to the emotional core of a character but done it in a way that all but openly mocks trends current fashions in the film industry. Instead of quick cuts that amount to little but glancing blows, he delivers long set pieces that deliver giant wallops. Instead of giving all the characters something inside that’s lovable he’s not afraid to make someone just appear to be a son-of-a-bitch.

Eastwood plays an aging boxing trainer who runs a gym with the help of Morgan Freeman, playing a boxer Eastwood trained and managed but who had to get out of the game after losing an eye in a fight. Eastwood has inwardly never forgiven himself for the accident and since then has been gun-shy with all his new talent to the point where, out of frustration, they leave him to persue better opportunities.

His fortunes seem to change, although not until after great reluctance on his part, when he meets Hillary Swank’s girl boxer. After initial protest he agrees to train her, taking her to the championship where her own fate awaits her. I’m not going to spoil the ending, but it is treated with dignity and respect. It is not, as some wingnuts put it (as they used it in their arsenal of rhetoric regarding Terri Shiavo) a $20 million snuff-film. It’s a thought-provoking film that explores just what it means to be a champion.

Movie Journal: Sky Captain & The World Of Tomorrow

Not as bad as Elektra but still far from a satisfying cinematic meal.

Again, there will be more on this later. I’m in the process of writing up my notes from taking a Movies on the Brain tour through these two.

Movie Journal: Elektra

I have to admit that I liked Daredevil, the movie of which this is a spin-off but this was just dreck. Jennifer Garner does what she can but really just shows how limited her ability is.

There’ll be more on this later.

The PR tool set

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. What tools should a public relations practitioner have at their fingertips? I’m not talking about basics like the ability to write. I’m talking about actual tools to use.

• The press release. I don’t care what Steve Rubel or others think, the press release – or at least the release format – is here for a while. What I think most people are missing when they get caught in this arguement is the distinction between the tool and the delivery method. Speaking of which…
• Multiple mechanisms for delivery. Editors, beat writers and now blog writers are increasingly savvy in terms of separating the wheat from the chaff. And they want to do that on their own terms. If someone prefers e-mails you should be able to deliver information via e-mail. If someone is really digging the functionality of RSS aggregators then you should be able to deliver information in an RSS feed.
• Audio/visual content. This is especially important for those products or services that look cool but are hard to explain. An online press room should be fully stocked with video of anything that translates well visually. As far as audio, podcasting is of course the latest trend in this area. It really doesn’t matter, though, if you’re producing regular installments of an audio program or just have a couple interviews with your CEO available online. As long as they are downloadable and not just streaming. Streaming audio/video ties the end user to their computer and eats into their valuable time. By allowing the files to downloaded and transferred to someones MP3 player you are respecting their busy schedules. It’s called time-shifting. Learn about it.
• Knowledge of a company’s operations. I’m not talking about strategic overviews and corporate philosophies. I mean the nitty-gritty of what goes on in the bowels of a company. Spend at least one day every other week or so listening in on phone calls with clients. Learn what sales people go through to close a sale. Learn what client services has to do to save a contract. If you don’t know what goes on in the trenches then the message you’re crafting will only represent the executive perspective and that’s about 5% of what a company actually is. Without people making and taking phone calls, driving out to massage the ego of a honked-off client or hearing what the people on a loading dock are saying about the company you’re missing out on points that could be useful.

There are more and I’ll get to them at a later date.

Movie Journal: Vera Drake

After the triple feature of Kinsey, The Woodsman and now Vera Drake I’m just about dramaed out. There’s only so much meditation on the nature of, the morality of or the criminal-nature of sex and sex-related activities I can take in a 36-hour period.

There’s no way I’m going to discuss this entire movie. There’s only on aspect of it, the one point that the movie hinges on and absolutely needed to be built around. That one thing is Imelda Staunton’s performance as the title character. Staunton turns in what can only be called a remarkable performance. I haven’t seen Million Dollar Baby yet, but how Staunton didn’t win for Best Leading Actress at this year’s Oscars is beyond me. She spends half the movie in a state of emotional meltdown, seeing her life fall down around her as her actions over the last 20 years come back to haunt her. It’s something lesser actresses wouldn’t have been able to pull off over such an extended period of time but there’s never a crack to be seen in Staunton’s performance. It’s just excellent.

One more thing – I’m glad the movie ended like it did. I’m not going to give away the ending but there are two scenes at the very end. Hollywood studios would likely have wanted the first of the two as the ending but the second and actual ending gives greater meaning to the movie and the decisions made by the characters in it. People who have seen the movie will know what I’m talking about.

–Chris

[Buy Vera Drake on DVD at Amazon.com and support the Madness.]

Great minds think alike

This past Monday’s edition of For Immediate Release included a comment by Sebastion Keil. Sebastian is a blogger/PR practitioner who was looking for input on launching a blog for a car rental agency he works for. The idea had been floated in a meeting of the CEO blogging as well as including posts from the cars. More accurately, an in-house writer would make up a story about where one of the agency’s cars had been and include pictures. Sebastian knew Shel and Neville had voiced strong opinions on character blogs in the past so was interested in their feedback.

Not only did he get their opinions but also thoughts from others, including yours truly. Here is my response in full which I left in the FIR comments section.

I had some thoughts on the story of the car rental agency that wanted to start a blog not only including CEO content but also stories from the cars. I think think there’s a nugget of a good idea here.

First, though, I completely agree that this should NOT be mixed within the CEO’s content. Two seperate things, two seperate blogs. Instead of being from the car, though, give customers cameras and allow them to start a travel blog. Then the company can take the photos and upload them to a photo gallery. Of course highlight what car was used on the trip and what office(s) the car was rented/returned from.

Doing this gives the customer some sort of control and begins a conversation. The customer then will say to their friends “Check out my blog! It’s at www.(name of the agency).com/myblog.” It seems this doesn’t cross the line into fictional content but instead gives the customers a cool point to start talking about the company.

Now what’s interesting about this, and Shel mentions this in today’s show, is that three or four other people dropped similar comments as well. They all focused around giving the customers a voice (and a photo gallery) and play up the viral/buzz effect this could have for the company. When you give people a modicum of control or a voice they will tell their friends about it.

Sebastian replied that while this was a great idea but his client was very conservative and would never consider giving customers any outlet to voice their opinions. Shel brings up the inherent possibilites of some customers not having great things to say about their experience and what that would mean in terms of cherry-picking which blogs would actually see the light of day and which would be resigned to the garbage heap.

So I leave it to you as a discussion question: Which is more important to you or your client – Offering customers an open forum for engagement or ensuring the corporate voice is the only voice of communication?