Right back where we started...

I've noticed something about "new" widescreen TVs.  (Just try and find a "new" TV with 4:3 aspect ratio.)

Once upon a time when all people had was 4:3 TV screens and movies were broadcast or shown on VHS, the films were cropped. The left and right extremes of the picture would be lopped off.  Later as more care was taken (which inevitably happened more and more as time went on and afficionados took more interest in preserving the intention of the film makers, and eventually this became the domain of the film makers - or their designates - efforts were made to use the most important portion of the image, not just the centre.  This would even mean shifting the portion of the screen that was used.  This could be anywhere from extreme left to extreme right, anywhere in between, or could even move (once technology allowed) within an edit.  This technique was known as pan and scan, and was what you got when you purchased a DVD or VHS that was labelled as "Full Screen."
Somewhere along the line snobs (Like myself, though I wasn't at all vocal about it and had no effect on the shift.) began to complain about the fact that they weren't getting the full picture, and the cry was heard.  I recall watching my widescreen VHS of Star Wars (a film I was intimately familiar with from a truly absurd number of repeated viewings) for the first time and seeing to both edges of Lucas's intended frame for the first time in years and seeing details (stormtroopers and other back ground extras mostly) I had forgotten had existed.  I was immediately sold on Widescreen.  I didn't throw any Full Screen formats I had out, but I never bought another new one.
I have little doubt that the popularity of Widescreen presentation (with those letter-boxing bands at the top and bottom of the picture) directly impacted upon the shift to 16:9 screens as HD came into the mix for regular consumers.  I expect it likely would have happened anyway, but the fact that over the course of a decade (or so?) that widescreen sales became the preference for the majority of movie purchasers (Even the rubes who initially complained about "those black bars" and how they were getting "ripped off 'cause the whole screen wasn't being used" eventually saw the percieved benefit of the fashionably vogue opportunity to see the entire picture that you would see in the theatres.) influenced the shift to widescreen hardware.
Well, guess what is happening now?  You may have noticed this yourself.
Old TV shows, presented in 4:3 originally are now being cropped (losing a portion of the top and/or bottom) to fill the entirety of a 16:9 screen.  BAH!  Would it be so bad if we just pillar-boxed them and (god forbid) GAVE US THE WHOLE PICTURE AS IT WAS INTENDED TO BE SHOWN?!!!?

I Never Thought I'd Tag an Entry with both 'Hitler' and 'Sitcom'

A sitcom about a happily married Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in a typical 'Pleasantville'-esque American 50's suburbia... except apparently it's England. Though only Neville Chamberlain speaks with a British accent.

"Heil, Honey, I'm Home!"

(and the 2nd half, if you are truly so inclined)

No. Really.

Not a joke. I mean that in every way. It wasn't funny. I don't even mean that it was too taseless to be funny. It really isn't funny. It was cancelled after one episode. It was a real (attempt at a) sitcom, when it might have been funny as a one-time-only SNL sketch.

Apparently, (and this may be retrodicting) it was intended to be a parody of bad-sitcoms. The thing abour parodying something bad is that you can't afford to be bad yourself.

Whoever created this series should be forced to sit and watch it, Clockwork Orange-style until they promise to never do it again.

Pilots Go the Way of the Dodo

This came up in this morning's Cynopsis and I thought it might be interesting to people outside of the industry.

-----
So much for "pilot" season at NBC. Jeff Zucker announced yesterday the network would no longer order up pilots as a matter of course each year leading into the upfront season, thereby saving the network tens of millions of dollars, reports The NY Times. Typically each year, NBC and the other broadcast networks order up a series of pilots for shows in development, choose a handful of them as potential primetime series in the upcoming season, and show the pilots to advertisers during the upfront season. No more, says Zucker. Rather, the network would order perhaps one or two pilots each season. Zucker says the reason for this decision is pure economics in light of the current WGA strike and due to the current US economy.
-----

It certainly implies that the change is permanent, but I haven't gone straight to the source (not that that would definitively clear it up) so it could just be a 'this season' thing courtesy of the writer's strike.

Little Mosque, Better Fare

Okay, so I'm glad to be eating most of my words.

Episodes two and three of Little Mosque on the Prairie have now aired and gosh if they weren't pretty funny.

The pro-am acting has largely been dialled back and a few of the actors really shine - Sitara Hewitt springs to mind, who is not only funny and real as an actor, but gorgeous as well.
Additionally the bad word play has practically disappeared. (Allah, be praised!)
The characters are developing nicely. Still a bit surface in some cases, but hey, it's only been three episodes! The range of characters is quite pleasing. Varying levels of devotion to Islam - even within single families - and plenty of universal virtues and foibles.

Yeah, I still with it were a bit edgier, but I think I'm going to have to relent on that matter. Edgier would appeal to a narrower audience - quite possibly even the Muslim audience that likely make up the shows core viewers - and would probably be the kiss of death to a show which is already pushing the boundaries of viewer expectations.

I can hardly wait for the curling episode!

A Television Classic

This is gold.

I was already too old to watch much Sesame Street by the time this aired, but I was getting close enough to the age where I was watching it again for nostalgia purposes. In fact, I think that it might have actually been this incident that got me watching on occassion again.

I am talking about the Death of Mr. Hooper.

I don't recall being terribly affected by it originally. Apparently it only ever aired once - on a Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. to ensure that the most families were home together so that kids could talk to their parents about it after watching, and possibly before (it was well known that what was going to happen on the episode.)

Here is some more info on it.

I recall reading somewhere about the taping of the actual bit. One take (with a multi-camera set-up). That was all anyone could handle, and it was really affecting the first time around. All the tears were real. You can really see the actors trying to hold it together - some more so than others, and those who have the most trouble are actually the most affecting... Bob stands out. David (particularly subtle and good when he talks about the store), Maria (who appears the most affected by the end) and Susan are also really good. Susan barely makes it through "Big Bird, Mr. Hooper's not coming back." and sets the tone. I'm going to make it through this despite how broken up I feel.

It was pretty tear-jerking to watch it now. What a brilliant moment in TV. Although I'm always amused by the theatrical convention of everyone sitting on one side of the table especially on TV when it's used mostly to facilitate a three camera set-up.

It also had the added effect of making me scour YouTube for old Sesame Street bits - mostly Muppet bits, that is of course what I started watching Sesame Street again for in my teens.

Little Mosque Scant Humour

Oh, poo.

I had high hopes for Little Mosque on the Prairie, CBC's apparently highly contentional new sitcom about, well, a little mosque on the prairie. When I first saw a preview for it on Christmas Eve - with a group of Muslims feverishly playing a shot in curling I laughed really hard.

I thought: Oh, wow. Here is CBC really putting itself out. This could be a real new dawn for Canadian programming.

Well, so much for that.

The show has no edge. Most of the humour is based on weak word-play, and what else there is is built upon the hackneyed notion that Muslims are all seen as terrorists. While I expect that the current worldwide obsession with terrorism was inevitable, it was dealt with in the most unimaginative and, frankly, gut-less of ways. A Muslim talking on the phone in an airport, using the words 'suicide' and 'bomb' in the most innocent ways justifiable is immediately detained. Wahoo! Barrel of laughs. A gag weakened even further, when a Muslim contractor's slogan - "We'll blow the competition away" - is taken out of context in the same fashion. Yawners.

To be fair, I did laugh out loud twice. Though I have since forgotten the jokes - yes, the jokes that stand out in memory are the ones that did so by being bad.

And the acting was at best, un-even. Some of the cast take a naturalistic approach - which seems to behoove the material better than the broad strokes of the majority.

It seems to me that this is a sad opportunity lost.

Remember the first season of 'The Newsroom?' There was a show with bite. 'Little Mosque...' could have taken a page from that show and been a truly socially relevant show with a voice that spoke to issues that remain sharp to the moment, rather than softballing at the dull side of the blade (eww - bad mixed metaphor). That doesn't mean that begin goofy is out - heck, curling Muslims was what captured my attention in the first place. But that's just it! I've never even thought that Muslims in Saskatchewan would fall in line with the rest of the community and do the only thing available to while away the winter months, while the humour exhibited in the pilot episode was tepid at best.

Here is my hope. 'Little Mosque...' recieves plenty of criticism along the lines of what I've just outlined, but also reaches a regular and devoted audience of Muslims who are pleased as punch that they're being represented on TV as something other than bad-guys on '24.' (Irony for those who watch both shows and get the inerent in joke in that sentence.) And hopefully a good number of those same devoted Muslim viewers agree that 'Little Mosque...' could serve itself, the audience, CBC and (God/Allah forbid.) Canada better by having a more socially caustic voice.

I'll keep watching for now. Perhaps the pilot wasn't representative of where the show went in full production. I'll definitely last until I get to see the curling Muslims again. It's a short season, so I might even make it all the way just out of combined respect for a good idea and encouragement to take it to the next level.

The Robfather - Why are we expected to give a shit?

2002 - Marquesas

An obnoxious steeplejack from Boston became one of the most fascinating characters on a little South Pacific island. He was nasty and over-played his hand and dodged innumerable bullets before those around him had had enough. It was the season of Survivior where the pawns stood up and fought back and took the game into their own control for the first time, and while he wasn't part of that dramatic move, he gave the show the momentum it needed to get there. It was almost enough entertainment to propel that season past the point where Jesus won a million dollars.

The came Survivor All-Stars - at first I was delighted that Rob was back. But then he allied with one of the least interesting survivor players ever - Amber.
What did Amber have that made her 'All-Star' worthy? Well, she tagged along behind uber-witch Jerri in Australia long enough to make it deep into the jury. And, she was reasonably hot, and hot deserves some attention. But I feel pretty confident that if you were behind the doors where the decisions were made in selecting the cast, you would have heard Mark Burnett say something to the effect of:
"(Big sigh.) Well, too bad Mike Skupin, Brian Hedik, Christy Smith, and Jake Billingsley all said 'no.' I guess we'll have to go with... I dunno - Jon Dalton. Gawd I hate that guy. No forget it, let's add some cheesecake and go with... Hmmm... Erin? Heidi? Sarah? No too blatant. Too much boob. I guess we'll just have to make due with Amber."
And so, the personality-less one latched onto a shit-disturber again. And hot damn if Rob didn't pick up his game - helped immensely by possibly the stupidest move ever made by an otherwise brilliant player, Lex - and he bootstrapped the pair of them into a million dollars.
Well, technically, Amber won the million. But it was Rob who orchestrated it and as they were a couple by the finale (at which he proposed to her) it was all pretty much academic who won.
If there was anyone who wasn't thinking "I wonder if he'll propose at the finale?" they really weren't thinking at all. The fact that they were a couple totally removed all interest out of the finale - though it was nice that Rupert won a million essentially for being the kind of player that everyone thought would win the million if the game was what everyone naively thought it was before Rich Hatch offered up the Apple of Alliance in the original Survivor paradise. But that's another story.

Point being - Rob and Amber were collectively boring. And Rob managed to get a bit ugly. Even within the confines of the game. Ugly. But boring.

Proposing on TV - how calculated was that? It's not like she could say 'no.' (But fuck, would it have been phenomenal television if she did!)

Then they did the Amazing Race. They actually did fairly well - though it would be a stretch to say they came close to winning. And to give credit where credit is due, Rob pulled one of the best moves ever, by refusing to do a challenge that was so hard that it took longer to do it than to accept the penalty... which is to say nothing of the potentially detrimental effects of eating as much meat as would have been necessary to complete the challenge.

Then they got married - on TV. By now... they were getting pretty over exposed for a couple who were largely set apart by their odiousness and uninterestingness respectively.

Then this past week ANOTHER show about them - a series presumably. Morbid curiosity reeled me in ever so briefly.
After a quick run-down of their history (which I've already covered in more detail than the show did) we are told that they are going to Vegas to pursue a career in professional poker playing. Huh?

First we are subjected to a series of 'spontaneous' conversations where Rob tells Amber and she doesn't like it. So he packs his bags and goes and she calls Mummy and Daddy. I had already quit watching by this point - I let it run in the B.G. as I went to the toilet and put my laundry away. Rob had another totally contrived conversation with an acquaintance who knows his shit about poker. Rob explained how his Dad - or Grandfathah - or whoever, used to play poker and showed him the ropes.

HOLY FUCKING BORING!

It wasn't even worth playing as background noise.

And like I said... SO contrived.

I have yet to figure out how poker became a spectator sport in the first place - even with the advances in technology which 'add value' to the experience. And this show subjects us to this rather uninteresting couple with the Alpha-male and the woman who can't effectively stand up for herself as they make the 'spontaneous decision' to pursue a career in professional poker?

I didn't last seven minutes! I can only hope that they lose their shirts (which Amber has already done in a few magazines) and we never have to hear from them again!

This is exactly the sort of broadcast smeg-stain that give Reality TV a bad name.

I know that 'Reality TV' ought to be called 'Contrived Reality TV' - but fuck! At least the Osbornes really allowed us to watch what simply happened in their oddball lives - perhaps played up a bit, but not wholesale manufacture! And the 'reality' in Survivor and it's ilk is how people REALLY react when placed in an extreme situation. This has the virtue of... what exactly?

In the first 2 minutes of the show Rob declared that he can't possibly got back to a 9 to 5 after what he has been through in the past 5 years. One can only hope.

The snooze alarm on these two's fifteen minutes is broken and there is no reason for us to be subjected to them for one commercial break longer.