Sex And The City Film Review – An uneasy feeling (good, but not great)
A review of the Sex And The City by one of the only men in the audience.
The ladies were all excited, egging each other on, feeling liberated when they came into the cinema. They were still excited when they left, but perhaps a little less. They seemed to be thinking about it, and contemplating what they'd say when asked. They liked it, they enjoyed it. They thought it was good. They laughed, they cried, but there was also something else: they couldn't quite put their finger on it.
If you are a Sex and the city fan, you're going to see the movie anyway, whatever reviewers say. You've been watching the TV show for years and you feel part of the family. The good news is that you'll feel that it was worth your while. It ticks boxes, it has clever scripting, there are highs and lows and emotional moments. There are fashion in-jokes, and nod-nod-wink-wink back-references (including a Cynthia Nixon scene with a lesbian gag).
Some things you may notice while watching the Sex And the City movie:
- There's a lot of product placement.
- Gravity seems to have done some bad things to Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Smith (Jason Lewis) who both look like they've aged a lot and lost their glamour. Steve (David Eigenberg) is ten times scruffier than before, while in contrast Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) all stayed as hot as they were to begin with and, at times, hotter.
- If you're a man (or a woman who's not greatly into fashion), you'll feel that there's too much of 'let's put our heroines in as many outfits as possible and show you lots of brand fashion' - although Sex And the City was always big on fashion, it was never so pronounced, prolonged and in your face. Too prolonged for non-fashionistas. Even though, as a man, I did actually like the TV show, the film told me to my face that I blatantly wasn't the target audience.
The verdict: I enjoyed a lot of it, but got a sense that many in the audience expected an uplifting experience and instead got a bit of an uneasy undertone in the plot. It was almost as if the bitter message was wrapped in the feelgood and cleverness, and therefore wasn't easy to detect - but underneath the surface it bubbled, and nagged you as you watched. In the Sex And The City series, even when bad things happened to the characters, there was always a thread of optimistic 'we're not taking ourselves all that seriously' woven in at the right places. Hard lessons ended in comparisons to shoes and Fendi bags. The movie, in contrast, felt like it was bearing the brunt of the responsibility to be a proper feature. The finality was not feel-good, it was more of a "thank-god it ended well, but actually, is this ending a good one?".
Hey, but you'll go anyway... And if you drag your heterosexual boyfriends with you, be sure they know it isn't meant for them, and that you'll reward them handsomely for going: a nice drill set would do.
Official Sex and The City Movie Trailer:
New York, Exploding? (Wall Street Journal, 28 May 2008)
It might just be linguistic sensitivity, or the difference between American and UK English (?), but the following struck me as an odd way to word a real estate ad, and specifically in a post 9/11 New York:
[The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, May 28, 2008, page 29]
Exploding area? In New York?
Or is it just me?
Jane Smith (jane85smith@gmail.com) is giving you free love and you should be ashamed of yourself!
If you're asking yourself: "who is Jane Smith?" then you must have received an email from her, coming from the email address jane85smith@gmail.com. She also writes from live.com and various other addresses.
Don't respond, don't worry, hit delete. Forget about it. She's not worth it: she's spam.
It's the oldest trick in the book, but still works every time.
The same power was at play here that made the "I love you" virus so effective - playing on people's basic need to be loved and the instant suspension of any rational thinking. The "I love you" virus arrived as a love letter attachment to an email which bore the same title. These three words caused millions to open it, and get infected.
And now Jane writes to you: She's hoping to meet new friends. She came across your profile, or your picture. She liked what she saw. Maybe you two can be friends...
Of course she saw your picture. Get over it.
Delete Delete Delete! If you still want to get involved with a lady - you could consider the Ashley Madison way...
‘Network and multi-channel are the key in smaller markets’ (Petar Pavic)
Petar Pavic, Head of R&D at Europapress Holding, Croatia
New Media Conference & Expo 2008 - Bucharest (live blogging from the event)
Some highlights:
* apologies to Petar, there was so much in his excellent presentation, that I can only summarise some key points here. If it is posted online, I will link to it.
- Croatia is small but there are 22m people in its market (former Yugoslavia area and neighbours).
- It follows that network and multi-channel are the key in smaller markets. Sell your network not just your brand. Don't sell page views - sell reach.
- In small markets it is very important to focus on industry specific clients.
- Also bear in mind project/campaign driven revenue.
- It works better if the publisher has an in-house development team.
- You should invest in getting the first digital case study for each business model absolutely right. This will be the template that will drive your success in future projects and with future clients.
- The key to success is a focus on the following revenue areas: DISPLAY, SEARCH, CLASSIFIED, DIRECT, PROJECT BASED
With the following emphasis in getting the adverting business environment right: COMMUNITY, BUSINESS MODELS, PUBLISHING STRATEGY, SALES WORKFLOW
Final motto:"SEARCH [for the right model] BUT DON'T WAIT, BECAUSE YOU WILL BE TOO LATE "
* Context and disclaimer: reports from the conference were captured in real-time. If anything is well expressed, it is to the credit of the presenter. If anything is not completely clear or could have been put better, it is probably down to me. I didn't try to capture everything, just some of the key soundbites. Anything that is my comment, will be qualified as such, under "DD:"
Yahoo! to launch Yahoo.ro for Romania
Speaker: Darren Patterson, Business Development Director, YAHOO! Europe
New Media Conference & Expo 2008 - Bucharest (live blogging from the event)
Some highlights:
- Yahoo is planning the launch of Yahoo Romania. It has an organically grown audience in Romania and it wants to build on it. Similar things are happening in Turkey, Poland and Russia.
In Eastern Europe Yahoo finds that advertisers just want to buy a set number of page views for their campaigns. Yahoo is planning to introduce more and better targeting to this market, and educate advertisers about better targeting.
Romanian users with a @yahoo.com email address will be given the option to change to a @yahoo.ro address.
More:
http://beatriceworld.com/yahoo-launch-yahooro-and-messenger-service-in-romanian.html
http://ghepardoo.blogspot.com/2008/05/yahoo-will-launch-its-romanian-portal.html
Younger generation gets news from community, not from news sites (Prof Dr Jo Groebel)
Speaker: Prof Dr Jo Groebel - Director, The German Media Institute
New Media Conference & Expo 2008 - Bucharest (live blogging from the event)
Some highlights:
- Research shows that the younger generation doesn't visit news online sites, they collect their news from their online community, and they trust it more.
- We not only show a change in the role of the media, but also in the role of journalists in the community and how they interact.
- We used to think in terms of demography, but many of the old demographic metrics no longer apply. People are more centred on information and situational needs.
- A lot of what we're discussing has been around for 40 years. The Internet has been around in some form since 1969. Most of the ideas that are now in the spotlight have already been discussed. Online community, for example, started in the 90's.
- People are primarily using media for information. We've done studies on what people remember from news items. Within five minutes people forget about 95% of what they read or consume in the news. A lot of information consumption is about the "kick" users get from consuming it.
- The online world increases emotional arousal and information kicks. The more you 'arouse' them, the more likely is your information to be successful. You also need to be aware that if you go beyond a certain level of emotional arousal, you lose the user as well.
- people are now focussing more on visual kicks. Levels of visual intelligence has increased significantly, and levels of verbal intelligence has decreased.
- Lots of media use is about excitement, mood. It is absolutely crucial to target this emotional area.
- Unlike TV, online and newspapers are high-attention media. Whereas TV may be on in the background (and the ratings show that you are watching although your attention may not be there, also for ads).
- Community - even in the world of user content creation, it is still the professionals who produce the quality content and are the catalysts/moderators of what happens in the community. This is not going to change.
- The most crucial change in the online world is that you don't need to care about demography, in quite the same way.
- Convergence has become a reality, a people expect to get everything on all platform, e.g. mobile.
- Immediacy has also become the expectation.
- English has not become as prevalent online as many expected. People still use their local languages mostly online.
* Context and disclaimer: reports from the conference were captured in real-time. If anything is well expressed, it is to the credit of the presenter. If anything is not completely clear or could have been put better, it is probably down to me. I didn't try to capture everything, just some of the key soundbites. Anything that is my comment, will be qualified as such, under "DD:"
Cox Newspapers see audience aggregation as key strategy (Leon Levitt)
Leon Levitt - Vice President Digital Media, Cox Newspapers
New Media Conference & Expo 2008 - Bucharest (live blogging from the event)
Some highlights:
- Newspaper circulation is dropping.
- Cox Newspapers have been profitable in the digital space since 2004/2005.
- Cox wants to aggregate audiences in print and online. This is the key piece of their strategy.
- Thus, if you look at the combined print and digital audience, audiences are actually growing.
- The question we ask ourselves: how do we win in the face of the prevalent "lifestyle wind changes"?
== Discretionary time is precious and competition is for people's time.
== People get information from various sources.
== Barriers to local market protection are diminishing.
- It's all about the engagement of local audiences.
- And the need to re-engage youth and non-"newsies".
- And aligning our online and print business models.
- We learned we had to publish to digital first. This puts the news cycle in context, when the print edition comes out.
- One of our earlier mistakes was to take old print rules and try to apply them to new media. It is a new media, and therefore new rules apply.
- Our journalism is still a core part of our strategy, as well as any content that we can use to "sell around".
- We have adapted to how the media day has changed for our users: in the morning we are more news focussed, in the afternoon, it's more about user serendipity in finding content.
- Money: the key to our long term success is in the display revenue and targeted ad serving.
- We need to learn to manage our ad revenue in a smarter way, a bit like the airline model: if we're sold out, then we are probably selling inventory too cheaply.
- We need to assess ourselves against the digital marketplace, not the newspaper marketplace.
- "Not all pageviews are created equal", for example, slideshows are counted as pageviews, but they are not necessarily of the same value.
- We need to ensure that one-time visitors actually stay longer and give them more content and linking that engages them to stay.
- Need to be conscious of "The clutter issue" - where pages are too cluttered. This comes up in every usability site review, for any news site.
- Our sales strategy, done the right way is the key to success, with appropriate methods, tracking and management.
* Context and disclaimer: reports from the conference were captured in real-time. If anything is well expressed, it is to the credit of the presenter. If anything is not completely clear or could have been put better, it is probably down to me. I didn't try to capture everything, just some of the key soundbites. Anything that is my comment, will be qualified as such, under "DD:"
Mozilla brand is strong! Mozilo’s PR is whoops! (Did I really click “Reply All”?)
If you got here through a search engine in the past few hours, you are very likely to have typed "Realty Check: Who sparked Countrywide CEO Mozilla’s “disgusting” e-mail reply?"
Yep, this is one of those geeky entries, but it does suggest that search is a great reflection of social trends. Here's how:
When The Financial Chairman of US lender Countrywide, Angelo Mozilo, ignited an online furore in the US on Tuesday by describing a mortgage customer's plea for help as a "disgusting" example of form letters inundating his company, one unexpected effect was a testament to the growing popularity of the Mozilla brand, home to the Firefox browser.
Instead of searching for Mozilo, most US Google searches on this topic included the terms "ceo mozilla disgusting email".
This may be an indication of the growing popularity of the Firefox browser as an alternative to Internet Explorer, and it is clear that brand recognition of Mozilla, even if passive, is fairly high. This effect is obviously not assisted by the spell checker on Microsoft applications suggesting Mozilla for Mozilo, every time...
Good for Mozilla, I say. Maybe also good for Mozilo (they found a browser instead of him).
Geeky entry ends --
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For more on this story::
=> Countrywide CEO Mozilo criticizes customer e-mail - on CNBC.
=> Views on PR and Mozilo in light of this story on Steve Cody's RepMan's Blog.