Elizabeth May 26th, 2010
I loved the finale, but then I never expected it to give me the answers to all the questions it created in six long, brilliant years.
My new favourite hobby is watching nerds get really mad about that.
Elizabeth January 24th, 2010
“Leno” is a dirty word in this household, after the events of the past couple of weeks. If you’ve been following the messy tale of the NBC late-night talk show lineup you’ll know what I’m talking about.
If not, Pee-wee Herman explained it briefly a few nights ago on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien – a show which ended on Friday.
Tim and I have been downloading his shows like crazy since it all blew up a couple of weeks ago. It has been almost exactly 3 years since we both sat in the audience for his “Late Night” show in New York City, and last night we took a break from packing boxes to watch his last ever show on NBC.
Is this not the classiest man in show business? Who’d have thought that he could somehow wrap up the whole situation with such grace.
I won’t attempt a deep autopsy of this situation, especially as most Australians are largely unaware of Conan and the long history with NBC that ended last week. But if you do happen to know his show, you really need to see this clip from 1998.
Sad, right?
I can’t wait to see him back on the air a year from now, kicking NBC’s butt from another network the way that Letterman did…
Elizabeth September 27th, 2009
I love Lee Lin Ching. She’s probably the most intense newsreader you’ll ever see, and she rocks colourful glasses like nobody else on Earth.
But, uh… what’s this all about?
I know we’re in a drought, but are we all expected to have rain catchment devices installed on our clothing? Did she lose a bet with Mugatu?
Or are they wings?
Is she really a Transformer, who has malfunctioned mid-show?
I have run out of questions. It is time for answers, Lee Lin Ching.
Elizabeth July 3rd, 2009
Publicity images have finally emerged from the much anticipated Alice in Wonderland. I can’t even begin to explain how much I am looking forward to seeing what Tim Burton will do with this!
I didn’t think it was possible, but the images have probably doubled my excitement about this movie.
We already know that Burton, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter and Danny Elfman are the perfect team, but they’re also perfectly cast for this movie. I guess when you’re Tim Burton, you go looking for a movie that will work with your assets, rather than the other way around.
There are more images at USA Today. Go get excited for March 5, 2010!
Elizabeth January 18th, 2009
I know this has been doing the rounds over the past few days, but I thought I’d share it here in case anyone has missed it. The commercial below was filmed last week at Liverpool St Station, using hidden TV cameras to capture dancing flash mobbers. It must have been incredible to see this in person!
This is one of those times when the high-res version is a must, so head to YouTube and click the “watch in high quality” link below the video.
Elizabeth January 18th, 2009
Part of my 101 Things in 1001 Days challenge.
A few weeks ago I was sent an email inviting me to a taping of Australia’s Got Talent. I don’t know where the email came from, but suspect I’m on some sort of list after attending a TV pilot last year. (That show never aired, incidentally, so I never felt comfortable crossing this item off my list!)
So last night Tim and I went to the National Theatre in St Kilda to see what it was all about. Neither of us had ever seen the show, but we had a pretty good idea of the format from the stuff we’d seen on youtube. I was pretty certain that it was going to be lame, but hey – it’s not every day you see what happens behind the cameras! At the very least it would be one more completed item on my list, and anything else was a bonus.
I’m glad that I didn’t go in with high hopes, because I might have been disappointed. Last night’s taping was for one of the preliminary auditions (although they had clearly been pre-auditioned and shipped in from interstate) so the quality wasn’t terribly high. Also, it took about 3 hours to tape eight or nine 3-minute acts, due to the lengthy breaks they needed between contestants for technical reasons. I am now truly grateful for the magic of editing!
I don’t mean to say that it wasn’t fun, I am really glad I went. It was interesting to note the order in which they taped segments for the show, and to watch the black-shirted crew running around the place doing their jobs. It will be even more interesting to watch when it airs in a few weeks, so that I can compare the tv product to the live experience. Being in the audience gave me a new appreciation for all of the work that goes into this type of program.
(Plus, an old TAFE student of mine was one of the competitors. That was a bit of a surprise!)
I can now confidently say that after attending Talent and a taping of Rove a couple of years ago, the “just because” factor won’t be enough to get me to another taping. I’d like to do this again in the future, but will wait for a show that I’m genuinely interested in before signing up.
Anyway, it remains to be seen whether Australia’s got talent… but I can confirm that Dannii Minogue does. And it looked incredible in that dress!
Elizabeth March 31st, 2008
Saw this ad at [ embodiment ], along with some great commentary about the devices they used to make it such a successful commercial. It definitely sucked me in!
Elizabeth February 26th, 2008
Remember a few weeks ago, when Sarah Silverman was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel’s show? She used the opportunity to announce that she was cheating on him with Matt Damon, and the resulting video became hugely popular on YouTube.
Here’s the clip, in case you missed it:
Jimmy finally responded on his post-Oscars show last night. Some of the cameos in this video are awesome, but I think Brad Pitt and McLovin probably top the list.
As soon as a non-bleeped version appears on YouTube I’ll update this post, but until then it’s mostly “safe for work”.
Elizabeth February 15th, 2008
Part of my 101 Things in 1001 Days challenge.
Last night I treated Tim to a movie at The Rooftop Cinema for Valentines Day. I managed to keep the whole thing a secret right up until we got to the door, which made it extra fun!
The cinema is on the roof of a 6-storey building, and the view was awesome. It was just high enough to make the passing trams look little, but small enough to give us a great view into surrounding skyscrapers. It was the perfect perspective for two people still getting to know their city.
One leg of the L-shaped venue was a small but well-stocked bar (shown in the photo immediately above), and when we arrived it was full of people having their post-work drinks. Many had sprawled into the cinema area around the corner to take advantage of the sunshine and synthetic grass, and there was awesome chilled-out music playing the whole time.
At around 8pm staff herded people away from the screen so that they could begin setting up deck chairs, and by 8:30pm anyone who hadn’t bought a ticket for the movie was sent back to the bar.
We managed to grab terrific seats, and when we sat down we saw that a menu had been clipped to the chair in front of us! The text read:
Howdy. Left your credit card with the bar? If not, go hand it over so you can run a tab during the film and simply text us the seat number, your surname, colour of your card and what you want. And then we bring it to you.
PS: If it’s a crying moment of the film, we might wait until that scene is over and we’ve wiped our eyes.
The menu contained a great selection of drinks, and four food options from the award-winning restaurant/bar Cookie downstairs. Tim had chicken yakitori skewers, and I tried the tofu burger (as part of my new resolve to “try new things”). The price was very reasonable ($8.50 each), and they warmed us up.
The movie began a little after 9pm. We saw Raising Victor Vargas, a movie that I knew absolutely nothing about but seemed to rate really well on Rotten Tomatoes. We both really enjoyed it, and I think I like it even better today than I did last night. It got some horrible reviews on imdb, but whatever. Worth seeing.
Overall, I had a great time and thoroughly recommend this place. Be warned, the cinema only operates from late November until the end of March each year – so check it out soon if you can!
Location: Level 6, 252 Swanston St
Tickets: $18 + BF
Elizabeth February 2nd, 2008
For those who don’t know, Hamish & Andy are comedians and radio personalities, with a regular spot on Rove.
Last year Rove did a Mothers Day special, in which all the mothers of the cast filled in for them during the show with hilarious results. My favourite part of the show was when Hamish & Andy hooked their mothers up to earpieces and concealed microphones, and sent them out into the street to do as they were told…
And since I’m in a Youtube mood, everybody really needs to see this fantastic Sarah Silverman clip from her interview with Jimmy Kimmel this week. Since we don’t get his show here in Australia, here’s a bit of background from Wikipedia:
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel often says: “Our apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time” near the end of his ABC television show Jimmy Kimmel Live, a gag lampooning instances where shows cannot feature their last guest due to time constraints. On September 12, 2006, after a segment highlighting the running gag and a lengthy introduction by Kimmel, Damon finally appeared on the show, only for Kimmel to apologetically cut his interview and head to credits, as Damon cursed him.
Got all that? Anyway, Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman have been together for years, and when she went on his show this week she presented him with this surprise:
Elizabeth January 13th, 2008
Part of my 101 Things in 1001 Days challenge.
(A big thank you to Josh Holloway for making this task so easy to complete!)
So. Halfway through November 2007 I had never seen a single episode of Lost. I’m not much of a TV person anyway, but I’m sure it didn’t help that when the show began I was working afternoons and nights. By the time I realised that it was a popular show, and that all the praise was really justified, I guess I felt like I’d missed the boat.
As the writers’ strike dragged on and on, Tim decided it would be a good time to catch me up on what I had missed. I never (ever!) expected that I would be able to watch 71 episodes of anything in 6 weeks – but we did! It was especially easy to watch the show on Blu-Ray, since hitting the pause button gave such incredible detail. There were a few times when we were able to spot a clue that would have told us nothing in standard definition.
We had a number of marathons that began over dinner and ran until after midnight. To be honest, now that I’m all caught up I’m looking forward to eating at our table again! Not to mention sleeping through the night without the crazy, all-consuming Lost-related dreams that have been breaking my brain. I’m expecting more of that tonight, but then I should be ok again.
So now I have to wait a few weeks to see what happens next, but at least it’s not the months that normal viewers have had to endure. I have a few ideas at this point, but first I’m looking forward to reading the massive amount of online material that I’ve been hiding from. Until tonight, I’ve had to get Tim to check Lostpedia for the answers to my questions so that I didn’t accidentally encounter spoilers.
I know, I know – I’m the last kid to show up at the party. But this was a fairly time-consuming project for me, so it’s nice to be able to check off another item on my list.
Elizabeth November 10th, 2007
Remember yesterday, when I was lamenting the changes to the Bonds underwear commercial? They replaced the original Bonde do Role song Marina Gasolina with a lyric-free remix, and it has turned my little world upside down. It doesn’t take much, I know.
Today I searched for a translation of the lyrics to see if there might have been an issue with them, and it turns out there is a reference to amphetamines. The translation was incomplete, but that’s probably all that was needed to get it off the air.
Is there a proven link between references to drugs in foreign languages, and drug experimentation in viewers? I doubt it.
Lame. You should watch this instead:
Elizabeth November 10th, 2007
In this house, conversation comes to a screeching halt when the latest Bonds underwear ad comes on TV. Conversation resumes mid-sentence 30 seconds later. I can’t explain it – I consider myself to be a healthy heterosexual girl. but there’s something completely mesmerising about this ad. If I think about it too much I might creep myself out.
Tim doesn’t have any conflicting feelings about the ad whatsoever.
I’m trying to find the original on Youtube to share with my international readers, but having no luck so far. In fact I suspect that there is some sort of issue with the song they chose – I notice that for the past few days they have been playing a lyric-less remix of the song. And while the song was apparently available for download on the Bonds website, there’s now no sign of it at all. In fact, the ad itself isn’t even on their Recent Ads page.
I figured the changes to the ad must have had something to do with the lyrics of the song, which I couldn’t really decipher. My google-fu turned this up:
GASOLINA – Bonde do Role
Marina anfetamina
Marina gasolina (oooooo orra)
Marina caipirinha
Bum tchá tchá tchi tchi tcháMeet me after school and i’ll beat you like gorilla
Bite you like piranha, vem brigar com a minha aranha
Oooooo orraEgüinha pocotó
Marina is on fire
Etc, etc. If the English lyrics are the problem, I’d be pretty surprised. And I have no idea what the rest means. It’s far more likely that the mention of “meet me after school” suggested that the girls in the ad were school-aged, and some cranky viewers thought they were sexualising little girls. It’s a stretch, but that’s the only thing I can come up with.
All I know is that the song is EMBEDDED IN MY BRAIN when I am trying to sleep and if I don’t find an mp3 of it sometime soon it might actually explode from frustration.
Meanwhile, I found out that Tim & I aren’t the only fans. This is a video made by the seniors of some school called McKinnon Secondary, in which they recreated the Bonds Kaleidoscope commercial (which uses the same music).
How they roped their teacher into doing this is beyond me – my teachers never displayed this level of commitment to our ideas. Maybe that’s because our best idea involved an elaborate plot to put the school up for sale.
If anybody has this song as an mp3, they should really let me know. Until then, at least I have the lyrics so that I can sing them over the remix every 15 mins on Ten!
EDIT: I found the mp3! Uploaded it to my little music player on the sidebar, if you want to have a listen.
Elizabeth November 3rd, 2007
I found today’s news about Ian Smith quitting Neighbours very distressing. In fact, I’m not even sure it’s legal. Surely once you’ve been on Australian TV screens for 30 years, you’re not allowed to stop without the unanimous consent of its citizens? Am I right? Of course I am.
I am appalled, and I feel betrayed. If Neighbours can go on without Harold, then what sort of a world are we living in? Can we even be certain that the sky is blue anymore, or is that just another elaborate hoax that we’ve been fed to distract us from the big issues?
I’m cranky, so just watch this damn video. It even contains the legendary Haaaaaa-roooooold Madge scene.
We’ll miss you, Harold. Ian Smith for PM.
| Completed: 73/101 | |||||||||
Keep track as I complete my 101 Things in 1001 Days challenge (commencing Jan 1st, 2008).
