Emrhys Cooper Comedy-Drama ‘The Shuroo Retreat’ Gets U.K. Deal, Release Date (EXCLUSIVE)
Comedy drama “The Shuroo Process” has been snapped up by 4 Digital Media.
Co-written by and starring Emrhys Cooper (“Dreamcatcher”), the film also represents Cooper’s directorial debut. He wrote it with Donal Brophy, who also co-stars. The duo also produced the feature.
Rainey Qualley, Fiona Dourif, Tommy Dorfman, Olivia Sui, Hakeem Kae-Kazim,Jeff Hephner and Cornelia Guest round out the cast.
“The Shuroo Process” tells the story of New York journalist Parker Schafer (Dourif) who finds herself infatuated with a charismatic guru played by Brophy afyer becoming dissatisfied with both the state of her love life and the publishing world. Schafer begins a journey of self-improvement but will she remember to “beware of false prophets?”
Zachary Quinto and Jamie Moss exec produce for Idyllwild Pictures in association with Incline Productions. Glen Trotiner, Lynn Mancinelli and Benjamin J. Murray also produce.
“In my extensive research and personal experiences with New Age trends, I recognized the need to highlight the inherent drama of these scenarios; both the humor of the sometimes outlandish nature of the options available as well as the possible dangers of these ‘quick fix’ weekend retreats,” said Cooper. “The struggles of each character in the film are challenges the audience will easily relate to because, essentially, my message is that change is possible. I believe the self-help industry is a microcosm of what is happening on the worldwide stage: the media is manipulated by the powerful, truth and fact are perpetually blurred, and people unquestioningly follow whatever trend, however ludicrous, is most pedaled on social media.”
“4Digital Media are excited to announce the release of ‘The Shuroo Retreat’ in the United Kingdom and bring the film to the filmmakers’ home country!” 4 Digital Media said in a statement. “With a great cast and a very modern story that mirrors some of the current discussion around self-care and mental health awareness, we’re sure this one will connect with audiences on many levels!”
The film will be released on demand on July 25.
https://variety.com/2022/film/news/the-shuroo-process-uk-1235289509/?fbclid=IwAR164vvDvfF0qtJnFv9skAItgUZnJDpung3bGmBeCWtsN0TGZZhWy_1Els4
Brian’s 14 December post
Brian’s 27 March post
Remember… I believe the self-help industry is a microcosm of what is happening on the worldwide stage: the media is manipulated by the powerful, truth and fact are perpetually blurred, and people unquestioningly follow whatever trend, however ludicrous, is most pedalled on social media. — Emrhys Cooper
16 notes
·
View notes
Amazon's bestselling "bitter lemon" energy drink was bottled delivery driver piss
Today (Oct 20), I'm in Charleston, WV at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.
For a brief time this year, the bestselling "bitter lemon drink" on Amazon was "Release Energy," which consisted of the harvested urine of Amazon delivery drivers, rebottled for sale by Catfish UK prankster Oobah Butler in a stunt for a new Channel 4 doc, "The Great Amazon Heist":
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-amazon-heist
Collecting driver piss is surprisingly easy. Amazon, you see, puts its drivers on a quota that makes it impossible for them to drive safely, park conscientiously, or, indeed, fulfill their basic human biological needs. Amazon has long waged war on its employees' kidneys, marking down warehouse workers for "time off task" when they visit the toilets.
As tales of drivers pissing – and shitting! – in their vans multiplied, Amazon took decisive action. The company enacted a strict zero tolerance policy for drivers returning to the depot with bottles of piss in their vans.
That's where Butler comes in: the roads leading to Amazon delivery depots are lined with bottles of piss thrown out of delivery vans by drivers who don't want to lose their jobs, which made harvesting the raw material for "Release Energy" a straightforward matter.
Butler was worried that he wouldn't be able to list his product on Amazon because he didn't have the requisite "food and drinks licensing" certificates, so he listed his drink in Amazon's refillable pump dispenser category. But Amazon's systems detected the mismatch and automatically shifted the product into the drinks section.
Butler enlisted some confederates to place orders for his drink, and it quickly rocketed to the top of Amazon's listings for the category, which led to Amazon's recommendation engine pushing the item on people who weren't in on the gag. When these orders came in, Butler pulled the plug, but not before an Amazon rep telephoned him to pitch him turning packaging, shipping and fulfillment over to Amazon:
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-let-its-drivers-urine-be-sold-as-an-energy-drink/
The Release Energy prank was just one stunt Butler pulled for his doc; he also went undercover at an Amazon warehouse, during a period when Amazon hired an extra 1,000 workers for its warehouses in Coventry, UK, in a successful bid to dilute pro-union sentiment in his workforce in advance of a key union vote:
https://jacobin.com/2023/10/the-great-amazon-heist-oobah-butler-review
Butler's stint as an Amazon warehouse worker only lasted a couple of days, ending when Amazon recognized him and fired him.
The contrast between Amazon's ability to detect an undercover reporter and its inability to spot bottles of piss being marketed as bitter lemon energy drink says it all, really. Corporations like Amazon hire vast armies of "threat intelligence" creeps who LARP at being CIA superspies, subjecting employees and activists to intense and often illegal surveillance.
But while Amazon's defensive might is laser-focused on the threat of labor organizers and documentarians, the company can't figure out that one of its bestselling products is bottles of its tormented drivers' own urine.
In the USA, the FTC is suing Amazon for its monopolistic tactics, arguing that the company has found ways to raise prices and reduce quality by trapping manufacturers and sellers with its logistics operation, taking $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar they earn and forcing them to raise prices at all retailers:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos
The Release Energy stunt shows where Amazon's priorities are. Not only did Release Energy get listed on Amazon without any quality checks, the company actually nudged it into a category where it was more likely to be consumed by a person. The only notice the company took of Release Energy was in its logistics and manufacturing department – the part of the business that extracts the monopoly rents at issue in the FTC case – which tracked Butler down in order to sell him these services.
The drivers whose piss Butler collected don't work directly for Amazon, they work for a Delivery Service Partner. These DSPs are victims of a pyramid scheme that Amazon set up. DSP operators lease vans and pay to have them skinned in Amazon livery and studded with Amazon sensors. They take out long-term leases on depots, and hire drivers who dress in Amazon uniforms. Their drivers are minutely monitored by Amazon, down to the movements of their eyeballs.
But none of this is "Amazon" – it's all run by an "entrepreneur," whom Amazon can cut loose without notice, leaving them with unfairly terminated employees, outstanding workers' comp claims, a fleet of Amazon-skinned vehicles and unbreakable facilities leases:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/
Speaking to Wired, Amazon denied that it forces its drivers to piss in bottles, but Butler clearly catches a DSP dispatcher telling drivers "If you pee in a bottle and leave it [in the vehicle], you will get a point for that" – that is, the part you get punished for isn't the peeing, it's the leaving.
Amazon's defense against the FTC is that it spares no effort to keep its marketplace safe. As Amazon spokesperson James Drummond says, they use "industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed." But the only industry-leading tools in evidence are tools to bust unions and screw suppliers.
In her landmark Yale Law Review paper, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," FTC Chair Lina Khan makes a brilliant argument that Amazon's alleged benefits to "consumers" are temporary at best, illusory at worst:
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox
In Butler's documentary, Khan's hypothesis is thoroughly validated: here's a company extracting hundreds of billions from merchants who raise prices to compensate, and those monopoly rents are "invested" in union-busting and countermeasures against investigative journalists, while the tools to keep you from accidentally getting a bottle of piss in the mail are laughably primitive.
Truly, Amazon is the apex predator of the platform era:
https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon
My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!
7K notes
·
View notes
[Start ID. A digital drawing of Gabriel and V1 from Ultrakill in super-saturated, pixellated colors. It seemingly takes place during phase two of his second fight, judging by Gabe's bright yellow-cyan wings and the consequent blush shining through his helmet. Gabriel is pictured on the left, facing the left side of the screen with his head turned to V1, preparing to strike them with the bloodied spear in his right hand. Small but frequent splatters of blood dot his armor and outstretched wings, fabrics torn through in places. V1 is on the right, aiming its piercer revolver at his face. Their arms are stacked in pairs on either side, idle Feedbacker and Knuckleblaster on the left and Whiplash tucked atop their default arm on the right. Both parties are stylized to resemble insects, Gabe with beetle wings and a halo in the shape of antennae, and V1 with the four wings, four arms, short antennae and bristles expected of a dragonfly. End ID]
woah.... happy 1 year anniversary to gay people
also a couple alts (background removed, just gabe, and just v1, respectively) in hopes it'll be a little easier to understand what's going on and all!
additionally once again: special thanks to @magnumopos and @muzzleroars , neither of which I have actually spoken to in my life but both of which are credited with partially inspiring this! (dedicated section under the readmore due to the fact I do not generally tag people at all ever and wasn't sure if I should, but thought it was worth mentioning!) The former for giving me the wonderful idea of dragonfly V1, the latter for drawing V1 like a strange little creature + for the feedbacker plate, I enjoy both your works :]
(retroactively, on march 27th of 2024, assigning them a full bingo with credit to deep-space-lines. ehehehehe)
835 notes
·
View notes