Category: Media

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

Mel Gibson is a drunk, speeding driver

~ Inquisitor

Not so holy now, are you?

The Oscar-winner, 50, was stopped after driving at 87mph in a 45mph zone in Malibu, California.

He failed a breath test, was charged with drink-driving and freed on bail.

Speeding and drink driving. Wow. Definite entrant into my “scumbags” category, especially since he only paid $5000 for his bail (probably because he’s a ‘sleb, or maybe… nah, not in 2006).

In case you’re wondering about my hatred of Mel Gibson: he’s a decentish actor who’s appeared in some decent films (the Mad Max series and Chicken Run) and he should stick to bloody acting instead of inflicting overwrought epics on us. Plus Braveheart comfortably takes the title of my least favourite movie of all time, followed up by Passion of the Christ, a 127-minute long torture scene with majorly uncomfortable homophobic overtones (in the Herod Agrippa sequences) and even more uncomfortable graphic torture (only made bearable with the addition of the Benny Hill music, a bit of a surprise in itself). I have seen Japanese movies which are much more bearable than Passion, despite being more graphic, because it’s obvious that the film-maker isn’t actually enjoying the depiction or (in the case of Takashi Miike), at least, is trying to make a point with it.

So Mel’s been in a lot of stuff I hate and, what’s more, was completely responsible for it, so anything that takes him down a peg is fine by me.

Plus, let’s face it, driving drunk is lame.

UPDATE: Gibson apparently made anti-Semitic remarks:

“The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: ‘F*****g Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.’ Gibson then asked the deputy, ‘Are you a Jew?'”

Definite scumbag. See Orac for a decent historical discussion.

Good news, everybody!

~ Inquisitor

Years have passed and millions of DVD box sets have been sold, and Futurama has remained cancelled. Family Guy has been revived (and is still very much OK) but us Futurama fans have been left unsatiated.

Until, according to the New York Post and John DiMaggio, now.

A 13-episode series.

Sweet Zombie Jesus! Fox have finally done something right for a change, even if it is just selling the show to Comedy Central. Should at least mean it'll come out on DVD, though.

Goodbye, “Top Of The Pops”, we knew ye too much

~ Inquisitor

It's been a shadow of itself for over ten years now and, finally, the BBC have axed it. About time too, as far as I can see – there's enough music channels showing nonstop crap that there really is no need for any more of it on the national airwaves. Shame that it'll reduce the amount of live music on TV, but since that's from near-zero to nearer-zero it isn't so much of a problem.

TOTP has been destroyed basically because it was the kind of format that the Theakstons and Coxes that dominate the BBC light entertainment department don't understand – they tacked on "interview" segments and added in lame "celebrity" hosts and it really didn't work. In its heyday, it was presented by Radio 1 DJs – at the time, as far from appearing in Heat magazine as you could get, and better for it (you certainly wouldn't get a John Peel-type figure presenting a primetime music show nowadays.) It has been killed by people who think that "celebrity", rather than skill or knowledge or a sense of fun, is the be all and end all for producing a "kids" TV programme.

It's also been killed by the music it's been showing; it's been rather incongrous watching the BBC2 variant of the show and seeing an archive clip of Bowie or whomever strutting their stuff and having that followed up by Yet Another Generic R&B Song (or something much, much worse). It just confuses people; who is such a show for?

If relaunched properly – no Andi Peters producing, no celebrity input, more artists in the studio (if not actually performing live, allow them to perform live), a presenter who actually likes music and has a sense of humour – TOTP could actually have worked. But it was never going to happen, and it's too late now for it – let's put the show out of its misery.

At least we still have 6music, for now; the station that Radio 1 should be, but isn't. And we've got Radio 2's specialist DJs, most of whom are wonderful. Shame about everything else, really…

Who’s the biggest wanker?

~ Inquisitor
  • eBay, for claiming that their real estate auction site is "not binding" when a buyer gets gazumped after putting in a $900,000 winning bid
  • The vendors, for gazumping the seller to sell a house to a backdoor bid
  • The buyer, for being willing to pay $900,000 for a house he's not going to live in because of somewhat dubious historical credentials.

When you realise that the gazumped buyer is Uri Geller, on the other hand – a man for whom the term "fraud" doesn't do enough justice – it becomes fairly easy to determine the answer to the question. Quoth the article:

"As the clock closed on the bidding [on] Sunday, I felt intuitively I got the price," Geller said.

"Suddenly the radio started playing an Elvis song. That was Elvis telling me we got the house."

[BBC News Online, "Elvis's home sold to Uri Geller", 16.05.2006]

What a load of utter bollocks.

Still, even though there's a bit of schadenfreude in seeing Geller get outmanoeuvred with no place to go, it doesn't say much for eBay's buyer protection for you and me, does it? So here's a few lessons we can take from this…

  • Don't buy a house on eBay
  • Don't be Uri Geller

That should do, I think.

Watch Eurovision. 8PM.

~ Inquisitor

Just you wait until you see Finland's entry. (That is, if you haven't already been spoiled by the news or Eurovision's website.) Just you wait…

Shame about ours, which is the first single of ours to actually deserve nul-points for a long time (and so, of course, will score big), but that's life.

Beyond obscenity

~ Inquisitor ~ 1 Comment

Fundamentalists! Worried about the 'blasphemy' of The Da Vinci Code? Wondering how best to beat up people who go and see Jerry Springer: The Opera? Now, how about putting your moronic talents towards something that actually deserves it?

Living TV, unfortunately popular home of various crappy psychic series, "woman centred" sexploitation programming (e.g. the appalling Extreme Makeover) and CSI repeats, is putting on another crappy psychic series in which various psychics attempt to "solve" famous murder cases by, get this, summoning the murder victims on air.

Yes. Really. Dear God. 

Now, it might just be me, but isn't that just the most tasteless thing you've ever heard of? It's exploitative, it's useless and it's just bloody wrong. I've seen Visitor Q and thought it was a decent satire, but this is just beyond the pale; what's worse is that there's more than enough viewers for this junk. Ugh.

The decline and fall of Western consumerism

~ Inquisitor

MTV is free for a month on Telewest Essential, and as a result I stumbled across "Pimp My Ride UK" (Sunday 5:30pm). God help me.

Basically, the point of this programme is that celebrities with supposedly "clapped out" cars get an OTT make-over by (Tim) Westwood and a bunch of blinged-out morons – in this case, the one I'm watching is making over a black cab owned by ex-Happy Mondays dancer (and Celebrity Big Brother winner) Bez, and turning it into a psychedelic nightmare.

These are people who think putting 42" plasma screens in the back of a black cab is a good idea; they make the interior of the car look like a 70s disco with leopardskin and garish red leather; they add eight power amps and twenty speakers in the rear (in reality, it'll sound like a bassed-out nightmare); they put a DJ booth in where the front passenger seat used to be (a cheap mixer and a HP laptop running NI Traktor) and to cap it all off they paint the cab purple. Purple. A bad purple, at that.

So now we've established that the design is frigging awful, defiling the classic London cab – pretty much deserving of Bez, to be honest – what do I think of the show? It's unbelievably awful – no-one actually needs a video camera in the rim unless you're James Bond, Westwood is as annoying as he is on the radio, and everyone talks in an obviously faked "wazzup?" lingo.

And that's not going into the implications of referring to something as being "pimped up"; especially since, unless you're really rich, you're going to have to sell your sister to be able to afford such a makeover. People think that doing something like this will make them admired, whereas in reality they'll just look like a prat. And their peers tell them to do it.

No, it's a stupid, stupid, stupid show. And like most stupid shows, it's watchable in an open-mouthed way. Happily it's blatant enough that everyone should see that Westwood's a fake prat and Bez is a prat and the car is a Bad Thing, and the craze will burn itself out. We can only hope.