Archive for the 'Screen' Category

Goodbye Charlie

Published by Si at 6 January, 2009 in Photos and Screen. 0 Comments

I was shocked to hear over the Christmas break that one of the hosts of Top Gear Australia had quit and would be replaced by James Morrison. The news reports confirm that Charlie Cox has indeed left the show.

“Although reluctant to be leaving, Cox said he was quitting the program due to lack of time.

As a director of 10 British and Australian companies, as well as a broadcaster for the BBC for the last decade, Cox admitted his professional priority isn’t Top Gear Australia.”

He was fun. But you know, I think James Morrison will be so much better! All reports say the man has serious motoring passion. Bring it on!

On another spinoff related note, I was excited to discover that Sabine Schmitz was one of the hosts of the German Top Gear equivalent (called D Motor). She rocks!

The Green Rambo Rabbit

Published by Si at 9 November, 2008 in Games and Screen. 0 Comments

There is one Christmas I will always remember. It was the year my parents caved after plenty of persistent pleading and finally bought me the full version of Epic Games’ Jazz Jackrabbit - complete with the Christmas levels. In the subsequent months I spent countless hours immersed in this game, which at the time was the best platformer I had ever seen. And not least because of the catchy music, some of which is still in my MP3 collection today.

Now it’s been a while since I played Jazz Jackrabbit but all the nostalgia came flooding back when Good Game recently interviewed the game’s creator Cliff Bleszinski for their History of Epic Games segment. I had always read the names in the opening credits with a sense of wonder, like “Hmm, I wonder who those Arjan Brussee and Cliff Bleszinski guys really are. They sure do make a swell game.” So I always had a great deal of respect for these faceless names. When I watched the interview I was gobsmacked to discover that Bleszinski was only 18 when Jazz was released! I can safely say that he now sits along side Peter Molyneux in my “Heroes of the Games Industry” category. Speaking of which, I should really play Fable 2 now that I have it.

Oh and here’s a video of Jazz Jackrabbit.

Financial Crisis got you down?

Published by Si at 1 November, 2008 in Humour and Screen. 0 Comments

Not to worry. Dr. Rudi and Sigourney have a rather ingenious solution to your money troubles.

Top Gear Australia test track

Published by Si at 27 October, 2008 in Screen. 0 Comments

If you’ve visited the excellent Wikipedia page about Top Gear Australia, you’ll know the test track is actually located at Camden Airport, about an hour’s drive from Sydney. In tonight’s episode, Steve mentioned that there was a map of the Top Gear Australia test track on the SBS website. He was correct, and here it is reproduced in a non-flash PNG format.

But I couldn’t just leave it there. Here’s a nice big PNG of the track from Google Earth. Enjoy.

Sorry, I couldn’t be stuffed overlaying the actual diagram but you get the idea.

Review: Cloverfield

Published by Si at 26 October, 2008 in Screen. 0 Comments

Saying I like my Apocalypse movies is probably an understatement. If there’s an Apocalypse movie I haven’t seen, then I either don’t know about it yet, or its sitting somewhere in my house, waiting for me to watch it. Cloverfield fits into a specific sub-genre that we are seeing a lot more of since September 11. It’s a genre I like to call Apocalypse of America. Now “apocalypse” may seem like an incorrect term when it’s just America or a subset of it that’s being destroyed (as opposed to the whole world). I leave it in there because for the majority of its inhabitants, America IS their world. If you destroy America you might as well have destroyed the whole world. Let’s face it, America is going to do whatever it has to in order to come to terms with that event. It’s just my luck that making gripping thriller movies happens to be a part of that.

Recently, while yawning disappointingly at the utterly unscary plastic zombies in I Am Legend, I had time to reflect on the fact that being an Apocalypse movie alone is not enough to entertain. After such a let down I was sceptical about Cloverfield, as I’m sure were others. I recently saw the film and it greatly exceeded my expectations. In fact it’s the first time in a long while that I have watched, jaw dropped with amazement. This film has raised the bar for production values, delivering a degree of realism seldom seen in this genre.

I should start by saying that the idea of the film is not very original. *cough* Godzilla *cough*. But are there really any truly original ideas left? It seems like everything has been done before in one way or another. So if you can put aside your expectation for an original and ground breaking plot, then you might just enjoy this film. After all, Heroes is just X-Men with a different name and I really enjoy that. So it is possible.

Luckily, I’m not fazed at all by handheld camera work. If you are, you might want to avoid this film (and possibly the rest of the review). But this is one film where the handheld shooting style actually works. Despite knowing in the back of my head that parts of it would be impossible to shoot on a handheld, it still adds an element of drama to the film. Somewhat voyeuristically, it gives the viewer a more direct portal through which to enter the movie world, while adding a good amount of “oh my god” factor. In truth, I was hard pressed to find any fault with the film’s visuals. I mean, I was expecting some scenes to look like obvious green screen or CGI composites, but it all looked really frickin’ REAL!

Now the characters. Most of them are nice looking but that alone doesn’t make us care about them. The relationships were pretty well constructed, with some back-story;  we get a glimpse of this through sporadic cuts to “footage previously on the tape”. The dialog and acting was slightly weak in some areas but overall not too distracting. The tipping point for me caring about the characters was a scene in the subway where our lead is confronted with a rather unpleasant responsibility, and that’s all I’m saying about that (it’s not what you think). The film’s entertainment value comes from imagining what it would be like for you to be in such a horrific situation. Second guessing the character’s decisions as if they were your own and empathising with their own tragedy.

Bogan Pride

Published by Si at 21 October, 2008 in Humour and Screen. 1 Comment

I have to say that Australian TV has been pumping out some bloody decent satire lately. We’ve been blessed with such delights as Summer Heights High, The Librarians, Newstopia, Stupid Stupid Man and The Hollowmen.

But now there’s a new comedy currently in its third week on SBS that’s got me cacking myself sensless at its uncanny accuracy and hilarious one-liners. Bogan Pride is the brainchild of Rebel Wilson, who readers may recognise from The Wedge and Pizza. As well as writing the show, Wilson stars as the lead protagnist, Jenny Cragg, a less-than-popular high school student whom the Skanks lovingly refer to as a “fugly bush pig”.

A simplistic description of Bogan Pride would be Summer Heights High meets Kath & Kim meets that episode of Buffy where everyone bursts into song. Yes it’s a musical. Characters sing about the usual teenage stuff. You know, like how much they love hanging out in the library, or cramming for the Maths Olympiad. Or perhaps the local christian group called “God’s Love Society” performs an intervention on Jenny’s obese mother (my personal favourite, so far).

Most of the characters are exaggerated and borderline stereotypical. And yes, there are similarities with Summer Heights High and Kath & Kim, but the show still manages to stand out as original Aussie satire that definitely warrants interest. Wilson will be one to watch.

The entire show is an absolute crack up loaded with double entendre and subtle punch lines that could easily be missed by the complacent viewer. If you’re a fan of Aussie satire, this won’t dissapoint. I’ve uploaded the opening scene to Vimeo so check it out below.

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I’ll chuck some more clips up assuming they aren’t going to delete them on me.

No Frickin’ Ads.

Published by Si at 17 October, 2008 in Screen and Text. 0 Comments

The Problem

Commercial TV stations disregarding their programming schedule, causing missed PVR recordings and much frustration.

The Solution

A new PVR with minimal user interface, where users select the shows they watch from a list of what’s on, just like a regular PVR. Also provide a web interface similar to IceTV but with keyword and category support. For example, you could set it to record all action movies or record anything with “science” and “documentary” in the description or title.

Each PVR maintains a persistent connection to a server which provides semi-realtime programming corrections. The PVR starts recording the stream way before your show is scheduled to start (we’re talking hours here). When the corrected start time comes through, the PVR trims its recorded file at the timestamp (with a small margin for error, say 30 seconds) then trashes the pre-record safety buffer. It keeps recording until it recieves the corrected end time.

You could even go so far as to have, say 10 digital tuners in the one PVR, so that all streams are constantly recording. Think timeshift on steroids.

But how do we get the data for these programming corrections? That’s the easy part.

Get a few TVs, one set to each channel. Then stick an employee in front of each TV (on a nice comfy couch of course) and give them some big shiny buttons. Their job is to watch TV and click said big shiny buttons when each show starts and finishes. This data would go into the database and then be pushed out to all the PVRs. They would of course have to work in shifts but would be well looked after and fed etc. You may want some spare employees on hand to fill in during toilet breaks. The timecodes would then be reviewed by a second set of employees to ensure frame precision.

With this system in place, we could also have the employees push big shiny “Ad Break Start” and “Ad Break Stop” buttons. This data would also be pushed out to the PVRs who conveniently trim the ad breaks from recordings.

All the while in the background, toiling away in a datacentre, there is an A.I. learning from each employee’s button press. Feeding off those few precious frames, yearning to possess the inate ability that we humans so readily demonstrate while channel surfing: the ability to distinguish instantly between advertising and programming (it’s an evolutionary imperative).

The Future?

Would this finally see the death of TV advertising?  Or would advertisers start making ads that look more and more like TV programs to try and fool the A.I.? But the A.I. has a memory of every ad it’s ever seen, similar to humans. So this may work for the first airing, but not after that. Besides, the server could retrospectively push out timecodes for ads after they were identified, then the PVR would trim out those as well. Or would we just see more invasive pop-ups? To the point where we would have to write a new A.I. to remove pop-ups by interpolating the missing pixels?

Or would we just see an increased shift to watching TV on DVD, or downloading our shows?

Top Gear AU: Episode 2

Published by Si at 11 October, 2008 in Screen. 0 Comments

Charlie’s ad break allusory and Wazza’s boring cartoons were back *sigh* and I suspect will stay for the whole season. Steve is as geeky as ever. Credit to all of them for excelling at just being Aussie. Then there was Charlie’s little girlish squeal at the speed of the Ford GT. Absolutely classic. I LOL’d that’s for sure. Him saying the car was faster than the speed of light? Not so funny, but we’ll forgive him. I feel like I should take back all the not-so-nice things I said about Charlie in the last post. His cheekiness and wit are definitely growing on me.

Ford vs. Holden had the predictable and pointless outcome of “they’re both equally great” and “we are poonces for failing to committ to either one”. With only a drag race and braking test to speak of, what was supposedly a comparative segment lacked thoroughness and it all just seemed like a huge cop out. I think the point they were trying to make was valid, but also quite obvious. We love the Ford vs. Holden debate for what it is, a way for mates to argue themselves senseless. Oh yeah, and driving like hooligans to prove which one’s best.

Mining Pit Challenge was alright. Wazza got lost again. LOLs. The maths of deciding who won took the fun of the challenge, I thought. But the competitive spirit was plentiful, and that’s what I like about the challenges.

I hear the episode didn’t rate so well; down 250,000 or so from last week (no citation, google it). I just hope SBS can ride it out for the whole season.  I’ll be watching.

UPDATE: Here’s that link to the ratings.

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