All posts by Armand

Media & Marketing, Miscellany, Television

The commercialisation of the British institution

Parky’s moving to ITV. No static links yet, but the Broadcastnow reports that Parkinson is moving away from the home he’s had at the BBC for the last 33 years.

First the Boat Race, now Michael Parkinson. What next? What’s the BBC to do?

It’s particularly interesting in the light of recent fuss over the Beeb’s funding and over distributing license fees between commercial and non-commercial ventures (i.e. ITV and C4 could be getting some of our license fee payments). Ofcom is stretching its arm.

It’s fascinating, really. The broadcast National Identity of the UK is redefining itself, and the BBC seems to be struggling to keep up.

[Listening to: Erasure – A Little Respect (03:33)]
Film, Media & Marketing

Passionately pointless

I finally watched The Passion of the Christ. No moral outrage, oddly enough: I see what the fuss was about, and am glad to have seen the film for that reason, but on calm reflection found nothing morally objectionable about the film. I do, on the other hand, have some slight artistic outrage at the limited aesthetic values of the film.

What were Mel’s motivations? He claims to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit – of course I think that’s less than likely. It seemed more likely that Mel was making a personal effort to stir up Christianity as a whole; which I don’t find laudable, but certainly don’t think should be beyond his rights (although I don’t doubt that Mel believes that the Holy Spirit directed the film…).

The film, though, isn’t one with a good story: which is tragic, given that most of the stories about Jesus, whether you’re a Christian or not, are fascinating. The story of the big JC’s final hours is diminished by emphasizing the brutal torture rather than making an attempt at cohesive, coherent narrative flow. The torture/flashback sequences get, for want of a better word, somewhat tortured after about 30 minutes, and I found it remarkably difficult to empathize with Jesus’ reticence; which was just irritating.

I think most of the cries of “anti-semite” were overstated. It is true that Pilate’s role in Jesus’ torture and crucifixion is played down; but, in fact, the performance of Pilate was superb, and it was an interesting perspective, if one without massive historical evidence. But the Jews were hardly made out to be vicious psychopaths – only Caiaphas, really, and his motivation would be clear to anyone with any inkling of the story. Mob psychology is clearly the order of the day.

In short, furore aside, you’d be better off watching the 1973 Jesus Christ Superstar. It has a better grasp of the themes of Jesus’ life, the tragedy of Jesus’ death and a coherent flow from one to the other, not to mention some very funky tunes. The Passion seems more like a manic snuff film than anything else; but I guess, if that’s your thing, then go for it.

[Listening to: The Look Of Love – Diana Krall – Live In Paris (05:00)]
Miscellany, Personal

On the interpretation of dreams

Last night, I had the strangest dream (apologies to Art & Paul). I stole a Bentley from a guy called Olly, drove it off a cliff, helped Olly recover it and then stole it again.

(a) I don’t like or aspire to Bentley-ownership (no, really: I aspire towards Mercedes ownership, that’s my poncey dream-car – specifically a 1993 SL320, in black)
(b) I don’t know or have any particular angst towards anyone called Olly
(c) The Bentley was manual transmission. I don’t think Bentley do that.

It was weird. It was very Bonnie-and-Clyde (without a Bonnie, sadly), and very high adrenaline. Weird.

[Listening to: In the Jailhouse Now – Soggy Bottom Boys – O Brother, Where Art Thou? (03:36)]
Technology

A9 exercise in brand extension

Amazon have launched an interesting new search service, powered by Google but with the ability to keep histories of your searches online, to search within the pages of books, and a number of other interesting features. I’m going to try it out for a few days and post an opinion soon, but its definitely an interesting idea.

[Listening to: AC/DC – For Those About To Rock (05:45)]
Technology

Gmail or bust

Gmail sounded like a good thing to me when I heard about it, and as usual, from Google, the technology and implementation sound great. Check out this review.

Microsoft tried a similar thing with regard to grouping emails as conversations in Outlook 2003, but with this there are memory management issues if you leave all your emails in your inbox. Obviously, when this happens on a remote server, it is less of a problem, if one at all.

Now if they could only sort out the fuss about their privacy issues.

via the Guardian’s blogwatch.

[Listening to: God Is A Dj – Pink – Try This-RETAIL (03:45)]
Technology

A positive development

“The development of Weblogging is a genuinely positive development in mass communication, and particularly in publishing and journalism. It is one of those developments – like easy Internet access – that one knows is possible but couldn’t quite imagine happening. And then it slowly dawns on you that although you were only aware of small steps being taken, a milestone has been reached, and something significant has been achieved.”

Says The Register’s Nico Macdonald in an interesting piece contemplating the future of blogging and its related fields, publishing and journalism. Some interesting thoughts; while I hardly consider myself as someone who’s changing the world with my thoughts (yet), there are some good perspectives in there. Worth a read for you ardent bloggers.

Oddly enough, and I’m not blind to the irony, the article also lambasts blogerati for their inward focus, lack of depth of research and failure to write on substantive topics – thus the supposed new new journalism fails to be anything of real relevance. But like all good memes, there will be proliferation, there will be replication, there will be discrimination, and only the best will ultimately matter.

[Listening to: Anyone Can Play Guitar – Radiohead – Pablo Honey (03:38)]
Technology

Search Strings

Sorry, Chris has been blogging about google search strings as well, and I find this quite funny.

Here’s the top ten (of ten) search strings for this site as of today:

Top 10 of 10 Total Search Strings
# Hits Search String
1 2 18.18% avril lavigne download free don’t tell me -lyrics
2 1 9.09% armand.co.uk
3 1 9.09% axl rose facelift
4 1 9.09% badass latin phrases
5 1 9.09% download badgers song by weebl
6 1 9.09% eragon download sites
7 1 9.09% qwghlm pronounciation
8 1 9.09% richie rich punjabi download song
9 1 9.09% waiting for my real life to begin download
10 1 9.09% zatoichi dvd cover download

Google has some trouble, evidently, with blogs. If ‘google weebl badgers find’  takes you to my site, then how will one ever find badgers? And WHO searches for ‘badass latin phrases’? I thought for sure that I’d be coining a phrase there…

To check out these, and other statistics for this site (yes, we track all visitors. I know who you are, where you’re sitting, and what you had for breakfast), go here.

[Listening to: No Woman No Cry (Live At The Roxy) (Previously Unreleased) – Bob Marley & The Wailers – Songs of Freedom (05:23)]
Film, Media & Marketing, Miscellany

Three films & some random bits

Alright, I’m knackered, it’s been a long weekend, and it was a ludicrously long week before that.

But, three films seen recently before I forget that I’ve seen them:

Mystic River – winning Academy Awards for Tim Robbins and Sean Penn, this was an entertaining and eminently watchable film. It tells the story of three childhood friends, separated by time and distanced by a traumatic incident in Tim Robbins’ character’s childhood, coming together when Sean Penn’s character’s daughter is brutally murdered.

House of Sand and Fog – a gruelling, yet beautiful and moving film, I felt I’d achieved something by the time I’d finished watching this. An administrative error leads to Kathy (the beautiful, beautiful Jennifer Connelly) losing her house to the state, who auction it to Masoud Behrani, a retired Iranian army Colonel immigrant played brilliantly by Ben Kingsley. The film tells the story of the confrontation of wills, and deals with issues of alienation, identity, self-worth and depression.

Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman – evidently the only cheerful film I’ve seen in a while, Bruce Wayne has to work out who a mysterious new vigilante is, at the same time dealing with the likes of the Penguin, Rupert Thorne, Mr Dusquene and Bane. A good story, well animated and acted, and with GREAT DVD Extras.

Now, to sleep, perhance to dream (superhero dreams)…

[Listening to: Stupid Thing – Aimee Mann – Waiting for My Rocket to Come (04:27)]
Film, Media & Marketing

Spirited Away

Finished watching it now. Very good. Very touching, very beautiful, very well animated, a good story well told. And the frog is brilliant, if incidental. Particularly good also are the very cute rat/baby and little vulture/bird

Go, watch it now.

[Listening to: Waiting for My Real Life to Begin – Colin James Hay – Going Somewhere (05:46)]