Category: Media

TV, Internet news, Web 2.0 and anything that doesn’t fit into the other categories.

Just stop it

~ Inquisitor ~ 1 Comment

Every time you get a school shooting in the States that makes big news you get the Jack Thompson and worse “media experts” coming out of their swamps to opine on how video games/violent movies/role-playing games/comic books/the Internet/Satan caused the incident instead of the guy that fired the gun. This always seems to me to be a bit of an overreaction.

The current blame target in development is Chan-Wook Park’s brilliant “Oldboy“, a Korean thriller that won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes a few years ago and remains one of the best films I’ve seen at a film festival. Apparently since one of the photographs in said guy’s dossier resembles a promotional image for the film, that means the film must be responsible – never mind that he apparently doesn’t mention it anywhere else. This is on the AP newswire. This has been referred to by the New York Times.

And they haven’t seen the damned movie. The entire point of “Oldboy” is that violence doesn’t help anyone – it simply screws both the perpetrator and victim, which is demonstrated throughout the film. It is not a Steven Seagal movie for the arthouse crowd, it’s much more than that. But because most people seem to think that a film with subtitles isn’t worth watching for themselves, they’ll believe whatever their media outlets tell them about it, which is why they should actually be responsible. However, with outlets like Fox out there, that doesn’t seem to be very likely:

Fox News - as subtle as ever

Not a Photoshop. Real. Including the bit about how he was probably possessed by the devil. Wow, that’s really responsible reporting right there, although I think Fox is aiming at the wrong target – we all know from Mark Kermode (a truly reliable source) that the only thing that actually is possessed by the devil is Marlon Wayans’ Little Man.

No. Just stop it. Surely we can’t be that thick. Surely. Happily, most of the commenters on Fark are shredding the “Oldboy did it” crapola with relish – if only we can say the same for the rest of the population.

This had better be an April fool

~ Inquisitor

Because otherwise, it’s both deeply worrying and deeply ignorant:

Official: BBC is too upmarket (The Observer, 1st April 2007)

…Lower-income families, particularly those in the north of England and Scotland, are less likely to watch digital channels such as BBC3, which is aimed at a sophisticated twentysomething audience, or tune in to BBC4’s high-brow output. By contrast, many higher-income groups make good use of a wide range of services, including Radio 4 and News24, and are better placed to take advantage of new ones – listening to podcasts or downloading programmes over the internet…

How patronising is that? Apparently, “lower-income families” (and how godawful a term is that?) only want to watch shit, and only “higher-income groups” want to listen to Radio 4. The BBC is apparently only serving the upper classes by providing programmes which aren’t shit. Therefore, the Observer concludes, the BBC should be making more awful Test the Nation, hiring more shock-jock Moyles wannabes and putting yet more controversy in EastEnders.

What absolute bollocks. Never mind that someone who doesn’t earn much might, honest to God, actually like listening to Humphreys et al – it’s every stupid class assumption crammed into a single statement. Quality television should, of course, be for everyone, but generally it is for everyone – subscription channels in the UK have pretty much always been lowest common denominator. The BBC already makes a lot of downmarket rip-off TV; Greg Dyke recently admitted that he was wrong to commission Fame Academy, for example. It does not need more.

[A possible April Fool-sign, however, is the mention of the BBC making shows like Dancing on Ice – which was of course ITV’s rink-based Strictly Come Dancing ripoff – but that just might be a missed subbing.]

The mention of BBC3 as being a quality channel is worthy of a laugh, however; its attempts at comedy are miserable and it’s filled with repeats of Two Pints of Lager (a downmarket programme if there actually is such a thing.) It’s either too arch or too downmarket and that’s where it goes wrong. And EastEnders is doing badly because right now it’s unrelentingly grim when compared to Coronation Street, which is able to mix dark and funny storylines correctly and smartly; adding another controversial character is just going to continue the decline. And Today gets almost as many listeners as Chris Moyles, and Wogan gets more than either (just under 8m listeners on the latest Rajar, compared to 6.2m for Today and 6.8m for Moyles.)

Of course, what the BBC does very well is TV that appeals to a wide range of the population. Would Doctor Who be as good or successful right now if it wasn’t aimed at the public as a whole? Would Top Gear be liked by people like me if it wasn’t funny? No and no. Yet this article suggests changing what doesn’t really need to be changed; what needs to be changed is the perception of things like BBC Four, not actually dumbing anything down. (If anything, some of the corporation needs to be smartened up – especially the people who recommission Test the Nation.)

There’s a place for elitism just as there is a place for EastEnders – both types of programming obviously appeal to different people – and the lowest common denominator is always a bad place to be. And yet if this article is true, the BBC could be making serious decisions based on the findings of a review which seems to be taking the idea that the BBC needs to go even further downmarket than it already is – and, let me remind you, there’s a police-based Casualty spinoff in the offing. Oh dear.

UK Eurovision 2007 – “Making Your Mind Up” time

~ Inquisitor ~ 6 Comments

[If you’re coming here looking for blogging for the actual Eurovision 2007 contest, go here to my Twitter page.] 

Eurovision is always a seriously guilty pleasure. There’s so many things wrong with it: the format, the style, the idea, the songs. And yet because of its capability to surprise and, often, the very fact it is so terrible, it’s compulsively watchable.

The UK, however, has been entering terrible songs into Eurovision for as long as I can remember, and not terrible in a fun way either. Partially it’s because we don’t take it seriously – many countries in Europe enter major names and popular songwriters, whereas we enter people no-one’s ever heard of. If Robbie Williams was to enter, he’d probably win; he’s certainly very popular in much of Europe, but instead we enter Daz Sampson and Jemini.

At least we get a choice, but generally it isn’t a very good one. I haven’t heard any of the entrants this year, although at the very least I have heard of some of them. This is therefore going to be a very interesting evening, liveblogged after the break.

Update: It’s 9:28. It’s time for the results! Will it be anything good?

Second update: No.

Continue reading “UK Eurovision 2007 – “Making Your Mind Up” time” →

Coming up on The Hard Sell: a blog event

~ Inquisitor

Yes! Tonight, to make up for the lack of blog content over the last month, I will be bringing you British Eurovision liveblogging in which I give opinions on our possible entrants in everyone’s favourite naff music contest. I will also finally take those XBMC screenshots and put up the article on that, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, however, I’m going to watch the last half of England/Wales. All I have to say about that is: Irish fans will probably be feeling a bit hard done by right now.

The best news I’ve heard for a while

~ Inquisitor

ITV Play has been axed. YES!

Now if all the other quiz channels will go the same way, maybe we can have some decent late-night TV for the first time since every single commercial channel decided that they would be better off conning their viewers instead. We’ve already had music videos on the Hits and TMF after midnight, which is a great improvement (especially on TMF, which has otherwise turned itself into the Ally McBeal-and-Cribs channel) – now, hopefully that’ll become permanent.

See, the threat of Ofcom is good for something after all; things will be even better if they slap down Sky over their DTT subscription scheme and the Virgin Media fracas. Here’s hoping.

Sugababes vs. Girls Aloud – a match made in hell

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

It may be for charity, but it’s just wrong. I’m no Aerosmith or Run-DMC fan, but the original “Walk This Way” retooling worked, in its own way, because of the massive differential between the two bands’ styles. Sugababes and Girls Aloud are basically the same, so it doesn’t work at all; it’s lacking in both musical talent and enthusiasm, and the lack of enthusiasm is the real killer. This simply should not be allowed to exist.

I’m reserving opinion on the Kaiser Chiefs album for now; it’s getting terrible reviews from those who’ve heard the leak, “Ruby” is annoying and below-par, and worse than that it got a glowing X&Y type review from Q magazine, but that doesn’t make a difference until I’ve actually heard the thing. Song titles like “Love Is Not A Competition (But I’m Winning)” do not make me hopeful.

The Brit Awards 2007: how do we fix it?

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

Why should I even bother going after the Brit awards? After all, they’ve always been out of step, out of taste and completely irrelevant throughout all the years they have existed, even back when they were the BPI awards.

Well, mainly because a lot of the awards are voted for by the general public, and those that aren’t show a depressing lack of talent. For instance, the Best British Male this year is James Morrison, one of the many Blunt clones that are starting to pollute the charts, and amongst those nominated was Lemar who, let me remind you, came third in his “reality” show for a reason. The two decent nominees, Jarvis Cocker and Thom Yorke, both of whom released excellent solo albums last year, of course had no chance of winning.

Best International Breakthrough Artist, voted for by “MTV viewers”, gave us the pathetic, forgettable Orson over the musically interesting Gnarls Barkley. Best British Single had a truly terrible selection of nominees, all to a man (and they were only men) soft-rock garbage – depressingly including the resurrected Take That, who won, and probably deserved to over that lot. Best International Album was the Killers’ seriously inferior “Sam’s Town”, over Bob Dylan; the Killers also took Best International Artist over Bob, which on the basis of “Modern Times” is somewhat of a travesty.

What I don’t get about the Brits is that the BPI could, if it wanted to, award music that didn’t suck. It would be as easy as getting the right jury in. For instance, the best award by far is the one given out by Radio 2 listeners, Muse as best British live act (which they undoubtedly are right now); previous pleasant surprises by public vote have included the famous 1999 Belle and Sebastian “Best British Newcomer” win, rigged by their fanbase and ironically given out after their third album. So the Brits really needs better targeted public voting, and a better nominations stage – if Radio 2 and/or 6music listeners could nominate an “alternative Brit” award, for example, things would be a lot more interesting on stage.

And why isn’t there an award for hard rock and metal, anyway? Even the Grammys, boring as they are, give out awards for Best Metal Performance, which is often won by people like Tool. That would be a lot more fun than giving Oasis an award for outstanding contribution to British music (which obviously means, from the context, “ripping off other people’s riffs and being able to sustain it for two albums”.) Having an award with Iron Maiden competing is guaranteed to up the tempo a bit, although if it’s awarded the same way as the current system bloody Razorlight would probably win. They used to have Best Dance Act, awarded well to people like Massive Attack and the Prodigy; it became Best Urban Act, awarded to people like Joss Stone and Lemar, before dying this year.

The BPI are, of course, conservative and scared of controversy; the awards weren’t transmitted live between the 1989 Sam Fox disaster (although almost all of the problems with that were technical rather than personal) and now, and probably won’t be again for a while after they stupidly invited Russell Brand in. But controversy is all people ever remembers about the Brits – Sam Fox, the KLF and Extreme Noise Terror ‘dead sheep’ moment, Jarvis Cocker’s stage invasion, Chumbawumba and Prescott. They really shouldn’t be scared of it – a good award ceremony always has a few surprises in store, which is why moments like the Belle and Sebastian win are so memorable.

That appears to be, unfortunately, the way the British music industry works, so we probably won’t see it fixed for a while, if ever. Interestingly, the best British album award was given to the Overrated Bloody Arctic Monkeys, who won the Mercury prize a few months ago. The Mercurys are so much more credible than the Brits, aren’t they?

Nigel Humphries is an idiot

~ Inquisitor ~ 3 Comments

“In fact, it makes us feel a bit guilty that we haven’t campaigned hard enough on the legitimate front against the things that we oppose, to do with criminalising and bullying motorists, and because of our failure to campaign hard enough, somebody’s had to resort to this.”

[Nigel Humphries, Association of British Drivers. Quoted in BBC News Online, “Letter bomb injures DVLA worker“]

No-one’s “had to resort” to anything. Motorists aren’t a persecuted minority, they’re the majority; thankfully the true minority are pillocks like you who think that just because you’re in a car immediately absolves your responsibilities towards anything else, and scumbags like this letter bomber (whatever the aim may be.) The ABD, for example, campaigns against ANPR cameras – the entire aim of which is to make motorists safer by spotting uninsured and stolen cars and taking them off the road, since anyone who’s ever had their car stolen or been hit by a stolen or uninsured car will testify to the hell it is getting compensated.

Over 3000 people a year die in motoring related incidents, with the largest percentage being other car users. Honestly, it’s really depressingly like the US Christian Right’s claiming persecution by “liberal establishment” when they’ve got one of their own as President and Fox/CNN/et al; motorists already get far too little examination by the mainstream.

Google for their website and you’ll find global warming denial, doing the usual stupid quote mining. As an added bonus, they quote Kary Mullis, a creationist, astrology freak and HIV denier. Brilliant minds at work there. Honestly, why are they even getting airtime?

A “tribute” to Saddam Hussein

~ Inquisitor

“At night, he heard the sound of weeping from other parts of the building, and asked a guard what was going on. “Those are the Anfal prisoners,” the guard replied, “and they are leaving the prison.” Halabja, in other words, was not part of the Anfal operation. “Where are the Anfal prisoners being taken?” Faraj asked another guard the next morning. “That is none of your concern,” the man answered. “If you ask that question again, you will be sent off with them too, to be lost forever.”

[Human Rights Watch, “Genocide in Iraq: The Al-Anfal Campaign against the Kurds” (1993), ch. 8]

“…all persons captured in those villages shall be detained and interrogated by the security services and those between the ages of 15 and 70 shall be executed after any useful information has been obtained from them, of which we should be duly notified.”

[“Chemical” Ali al-Hassan Majid, Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Iraq Directive SF/4008, 20th June 1987]

Am I glad we’re rid of the bastard, the same way I was with Pinochet? Sadly, no.

This one is a bit harder than the Pinochet “tribute” because Saddam is a very different case, since we’ve killed him. Whilst the world is better off without him in power, this is only in that the world is better off with one less mass-murdering, genocidal despot. Unfortunately, we have managed to screw up so badly in Iraq that hundreds of murdering wannabe genocidal despots have taken his place, and this death will not change that one bit.

That report quoted above is 1993, describing actions that took place in 1987/1988, at a point in time where Western arms manufacturers were happily selling production capability for VX and mustard gas to Saddam’s Iraq (at the same time as surreptitiously selling arms to its main enemy at the time, Iran, perhaps purposefully in order to prolong the war.) We had a responsibility then to the world not to support Saddam, and we blew it big time. The Guardian’s obit makes clear the extent of his depravity throughout his career, all well known and televised; yet it was ignored until Kuwait made it impossible to ignore. The world should never let such a thing happen again, but it will.