Virtual sets

Just saw the tackiest virtual set imaginable on ITV news. A word of explanation: because filming, or photography in general, is not allowed in British courtrooms, the media have to resort to all sorts of tricks to illustrate their stories: hand drawn portraits, footage of people going in and coming out of courtrooms, and now this.

So what was so bad about it? Well, it was ugly and worthless. The reporter walked in the virtual courtroom for just a couple of seconds to point out ”where the defendant stood”. Now, the room was a flashback to computer games of the early 1990s: a hastily assembled 3D model of a generic courtroomish flavour with blocky shapes of solid colour. And all this just to push totally noninteresting news.

Word 41: Assiduously

Tories and Labour members alike, they had swallowed the Blair line that following a vicious war […] the United Nations would be brought in to run a post-war Iraq and that a ”road map” to peace between Palestine and Israel would be followed assiduously.

assiduously (adv) : with care and persistence – source: New Statesman 21 April 2003, p. 21

Dubbing horrors + more

I’m watching Euro Trash (which admittedly never was the greatest of programs but still) and the dubbing is really unnerving. Now if you though that hearing something serious, say Gerhard Schröder’s speech dubbed by some BBC halfwit was bad, just imagine what the result is with these already dubious interviewees whose funny voices are dubbed into even zanier versions. The laughter is horrible. Nothing is subtitled here, not movies, not news, nothing. Terrible.

I’d already forgotten how much frontal nudity this show has. Oh, now there’s an insert of Eddie ’The Eagle’ Edwards and the guy still remembers the lyrics to his song. I’d hate to discredit my former employers, but when Euro Trash came to Jyväskyä to shoot an insert about Dr Ammondt, Keskisuomalainen gave the story one full page. And the show is on at 1 AM Wednesdays. Oh god, now they’re playing a story about German yodellers who about ’Pussy-Fixiert Fraulein’.

Two things about commercials. First: I bet that the people in I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! (I just love that name and wish they did other products as well, like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Dead Rat) are actually reacting to naked genitalia. Second: The ’Don’t You Love It When Things Just Work?’ Honda commercial is the single best one this millennium.

NYPD Blue & status quo

Do you still remember the time when the jerky camerawork in NYPD Blue was considered a novelty?

Easy steps

The magazine Men’s Health (no, I did not buy it, just leafed over it at Winnie’s) had an article called ”27 easy steps to health”. Now, if something has 27 steps, it is not easy.

Movie tonight

We’re going over to Winnie’s tonight to see Stephen Chow’s King of Comedy and I’m telling you this because I don’t have anything else to say.

Win-win situation

Yay! I bought a second-hand book from Amazon but turns out they don’t have the title so they refunded the purchase. The nice thing is that I paid 9,80 € but the refund was 9,86 €. Sheer profit!

What’s hot #1

Book: Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind A compelling account of New Hollywood, the highs and especially the lows. My only complaint is that it concentrates on a handful of directors and producers and almost completely ignores the actors and non-movie brat directors. Still, definitely worth buying.

CD: Version 2.0 by Garbage The sophomore album was a slight disappointment when it came out, and it took me all these years to take a second listen and realize how good it is. Here Garbage perfect the up-tempo pop song (Temptation waits, Push it, Sleep together) that was blossoming on their debut (I’m only happy when it rains, Stupid girl), do few mighty fine slow ones (The trick is to keep breathing, You look so fine), and don’t blunder as many times as they did before and after. Highly recommended.

DVD: The commentary track on the R2 release of The Man Who Wasn’t There by the Coen brothers Compared to, for example, the otherwise interesting comment track on Nightmare Before Christmas, the Coens and Thornton are a barrel of laughs, while still amazingly managing to talk about the movie as well. Any commentary that points out the protagonist’s erection has to be worthwhile.

Review: Hard Work

Hard Work is the story of Polly Toynbee, a journalist who is among other things a Guardian columnist, dropping her moderately comfortable (ie. more high than middle class) life for a while to try and live on minimum wage. The premise is wonderful: urgent, important, and substantial. Unfortunately same cannot be said for the entire book.

But let me assure you that the good moments do greatly outweigh the bad. Her background research is impressive, as it should be with any journalistic work. The descriptions of dispirited workplaces and council flat residents who have given up in all but name are accurate and powerful. But at times Toynbee drifts from describing the problems into proposing answers and that’s where the problems start. The thing I have most problems with isn’t connected to the factual writing but the ideological solutions she proposes. She claims that everybody has the right to cheer themselves up by shopping, that small companies ought to die out (yes, she has good reasons for it but still), and other views which don’t nicely fit mine. But then again that might be just me.

Ultimately I feel that Toynbee’s work has a certain mentality best articulated by Jarvis Cocker in Common People: ”You will never understand […] If you called your dad he could stop it all”. Toynbee is the first one to acknowledge this but in my opinion she doesn’t get away with it. The ending of the book with her thanking her lucky stars just emphasizes it. Incidentally the development of the theme bears some resemblance to Hornby’s How To Be Good where the middle-class protagonists try to alleviate their guilt over other’s suffering but ultimately they just fall back on their lives with nothing changed. And I know I’m just being terribly moralistic and naive but it doesn’t make me feel right.

Tesco innovates

Now I don’t know how uniform all the Tesco stores are, but I guess that there’s not that much variation between them. I also reckon that most of the minute details are laid down by the management, so there’s not much room for individual initiative. Annnnnyway.

Somebody at Tesco had noticed that the way they package the baguettes is suboptimal. See, the long piece of bread is stored in a flimsy plastic bag that a) sealed at only one end and b) is mere centimetres longer than the bread. This means that quite often the bloody French baton just drops out. But no more! Because now they had finally managed to tie a small knot to the up-to-now open end of the bag! A miracle! Sheer genius! Somebody promote the guy/gal who invented that!

In other news I also picked up three DVDs for £24 at Choices (Airplane!, Naked Gun, and Full Metal Jacket). I’m pretty pleased with myself right now.

A Heartbreaking ∞ of Staggering Genius

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