Occasionally, there’s a commercial spot so good that you don’t mind having your show interrupted even if you don’t need to go to the bathroom or refill your coffee. I think Saab’s latest is one of those. Great “spot the Scandinavian design icons” concept, and wonderful music in the form of Nina Kinert’s “Through Your Eyes”.
Though I have to say the Swedish captions were a bit better, along the lines of “Form is nothing without function” (a bit simpler than the international version)Â and “Introducing a new design movement”.
Tags: Commercials, Music, Saab, tv, video
September 2, 2007 at 11:39 pm · Filed under General, Movies & TV
Not only is George Clooney an excellent actor and the kind of guy who might make me consider switching teams if he’d turn out to be gay, he also does great things on the other side of the camera – but this latest piece of news nearly made me fall off my seat: Along with Sci-Fi Channel he is producing a mini series based on Neal Stephenson’s ingenious The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. It is one of my favorite novels (as are all other Stephenson novels I have read), and if it turns out half as good as the book it will be well worth watching.
Tags: George Clooney, Neal Stephenson, sci-fi, The Diamond Age, tv
January 17, 2007 at 12:08 am · Filed under Books, Entertainment & Culture, Movies & TV
CBS will promote their fall lineup with 35 million eggs. Eggs that have been laser-etched with show logos and “eggsiting” slogans, that is. I like the concept. Could use it for some art project.
Tags: ads, links, tv
July 18, 2006 at 10:34 pm · Filed under Asides
Seems Penn & Teller: Bullshit! managed to make it’s way to Swedish television now. Better sooner than later, I guess. Brilliant show.
Tags: tv
June 27, 2006 at 8:33 am · Filed under Asides
I must admit that when I finally caught up with Firefly (when it got to Sweden it was on a channel I didn’t have, so I had to wait to get hold of DVD material), I watched the whole series with much gusto – and after wrapping it up with Serenity I was even left with a feeling of sadness that there was nothing more of the brilliantly entertaining setting that Joss Whedon dreamt up.
Now it seems fans have decided to take matters into their own hands, and started Browncoats Rise Again, a campaign to raise enough funds to finance a new series. I don’t know if it’s possible to raise the kind of money such a project requires – and I’m personally not sure about giving money to a website that lacks any information about who’s behind the initiative, but hopefully that’s just information lost in the burst of enthusiasm that created the project.
But it did get me thinking about how far off using the web as a medium for productions of that size is – to simply produce a series and sell the episodes online. Something like Firefly, that already has a dedicated fan base, may be a good starting project. If people pay $29.95 a month to get access to naked ladies doing naked things, maybe it isn’t impossible to find a large enough audience that is willing to subscribe to something with the quality of a tv-series. And since I guess that many Firefly fans are in the more tech-savvy demographics, many probably have what is needed to take something from the net and comfortably watch it on a TV. (Personally I’ve never been really comfortable watching anything but short clips on my PC, I prefer to be more active when I’m in front of this screen.)
Tags: firefly, sci-fi, tv
January 17, 2006 at 1:43 am · Filed under Movies & TV
I was lazily staring at my TV, more specifically the Late Show (yes, we get all the social commentary from Letterman, Leno and O’Brien here as well – but with a week’s lag), and they had a “holiday shopping in New York quiz” – one of those things with two logical options and one comical. There was one showing a woman eating, and asking if she had stopped to get:
- a) Hot cocoa
- b) Soup and a sandwich
- c) Reindeer kabobs
…and it took me a few seconds to realize what the joke was supposed to be, because around here eating reindeer is nothing strange. Here in the northern parts, it’s probably a standard item on many people’s julbord as well (and yes, the traditional Swedish christmas meal comes in the form of a smörgÃ¥sbord)
So, how do people who have grown up with an image of reindeer only as the (sometimes) red-nosed animals in front of Santa’s sleigh feel about the tought of eating one? Say, compared to a cat? If there’s one thing I’d never eat, it’s cat… no matter what the Chinese say…
By the way, how would you feel about (someone) having sex with a reindeer? Compared to, for example, having sex with a horse? How does one do it with a horse, by the way? Do you need something to stand on, or is it a matter of taking a steady hold of the sattle and sort of hang over the beast’s butt? Or do people engaged in that sort of things prefer to hook up with small ponies? Is my conception of the horse’s.. uhm.. glory hole.. being somewhere at chest level wrong? Are perhaps stallions preferred, so it’s a matter of getting beneath the animal? Wouldn’t it be more practical to have sex with a reindeer, or is bigger better when it comes to animals? Many are the questions…
Sorry, I’m just horsing around – it turns out that the year’s most read online article in Seattle Times was about a guy who died after doing it, or rather being done, horsy style (I can’t figure out any other way it could lead to a perforated colon…) And Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing suggests articles about sweet equine luving as a way to increase traffic… so well, I’m getting on the horse-humping bandwagon as well. Be sure about that.
I wonder if Hollywood will see the possibilities in the subject? I mean, they did open the path for movies about sexually deviant cowboys this year.
Tags: news, thoughts, tv
December 31, 2005 at 2:01 am · Filed under Random ramblings & reflections
I was thinking… and it struck me that it would be kind of stupid to enter the sequence 4 8 15 16 23 42 into a lottery. Becuase then you’d end up being cursed like the people on Lost. No, that’s not it… but if you entered those numbers, and it actually happens that they are the winning numbers for the 100+ million jackpot – then you’ll feel really stupid when you realize that the jackpot will be split with the thousands of others who also used the same numbers.
Tags: lost, random, tv
December 29, 2005 at 11:52 pm · Filed under General, Random ramblings & reflections
I keep wondering what the reality show makers will come up with next. Why not just brush up something old? In Brats in Chopper County Paul Teutul Sr., his sons and employees at Orange County Choppers, known from Discovery Channel’s popular series American Chopper, will be assisted by eight girls who never have operated more advanced tools than a nail file – until they got their own credit cards and could hire people to do that too. Maybe could end up like this:
Summary of episode 3: The girs are making a slight progress in adjusting to their new environment, but still can’t be convinced into doing anything practical, except for Amanda’s ordeal with cleaning up the “contribution” her Chihuahua made to a seat cover in the last episode. There’s also seems to be a general reluctance towards interacting with the shop’s regular staff, although Michaela seems to find it amusing to convince Mikey to bring her things.
In a sudden burst of creativity Tiffany gets out her nailpolish and adds a red design to the tank for one of the bikes under construction, the other girls agree that it “looks like something that that kind of people would like”. Jennifer returns, having recovered most of her eyesight after having stared to long into a welding torch. Rick is still annoyed over her “my father is rich so don’t tell me what to do” attitude.
Paul Sr. gets into the worst fit of rage ever shown on television when punching a clueless Paulie in the face even before asking how he could come up with the idea of putting a blood splatter design on the “Stay Alive” bike they are building in honour of the troops in Iraq.
Now that’s good television, isn’t it…?
Tags: thoughts, tv
November 18, 2005 at 1:36 am · Filed under Random ramblings & reflections
Took a stroll to the store earlier. Fall is in the air, a bit cool but quite pleasant anyway. I find it somewhat hard to get used to it being dark at eight in the evening, living far enough north that a few hours of dusk-dawn is what passes for night in the summer.
Got back home, turned on the TV and watched The Scorpion King. That’s not a good movie. A bit like a bloated episode of that Hercules series. You sort of know it’s bad when the dialogue is worse than the acting of the wrestler doing his first lead role…
On to the important world news: A team at the University of Munich, Germany (in this case I probably have to say: where else?), has developed a hi-tech barmat able to report to the bar when the glass needs a refill. Finally, technology in service of the the common man! And, as we all know, the common man really needs electronical aids to get more drunk.
Tags: random, tech, thought, tv
September 30, 2005 at 10:15 pm · Filed under General
