I was watching the new episode of “City Homicide”* and the photographer who is killed at the beginning of the show is using a Mac, which is not surprising for a creative type, but the cop uses one as well! I can tell you that I have absolutely no doubt that that is completely unlikely.

It now seems that every single show or movie I watch has macs in it** which makes it appear if makes are the only kinds of computers in the world.

I actually find this a little annoying and am wondering if all the movie and TV studios have tied up some kind of contract with Apple.

Notes:
* Which despite being obviously# set in Melbourne, seems to have signage for a ‘State Police” rather than Victoria Police, in some attempt to make the show cityless and stateless. this is either just petty Australian parochialism or an attempt to sell the show on the world market.
# to me
** Bones, they show that I watched last night also had Macs. the other interesting thing about Bones (another forensic pathologist show) is that it appears that forensic pathologist have little programs for providing nifty animations of almost any process they undertake in the lab.

It seems like you cannot go past a TV show or movie at the moment that they do not have Apple computers lying around the place. I was watching 30 Rock just before and when they went to check some Puerto Rican website, they of course wandered over to Jack Donaghy’s computer which looked like a 24″ iMac:

This is of course the same computer that I use:

I have heard that even hardcore geeks are into macs because it is Unix based and thus is essentially a Unix computer with a nice GUI, so all the linux geeks get into them.

He may not be long as the Doctor, but at least he has a sense of humour.

The Bill is one of those shows that I never watch but always feel familiar with, based on watching it in my formative years as a teenager.

There are actors who have been on the show for twenty years. The character Tony Stamp is one.

But mixed in with the old timers are also new actors, a couple of cute young women amongst them.

The latest crop includes two women who provide an interesting contrast in beauty, between the tall, blonde, blue-eyed woman and the short, green-eyed, dark-haired woman. The classical arrogant woman and the geeky fiesty woman.

Its good they have their stereotypes figured out.

SBS played an old science fiction movie, Outland on TV last night. This is a kind of space western staring Sean Connery.

The interesting thing that struck me while watching the show was the way future technology was presented in the film. While there were aspects that were obviously ‘futuristic’, such as the location on the moon Io and the space suits, there were aspects that were not so futuristic but rather quite ‘of the time’ (1981).

One was the very seventies LED style displays:

Also of its time was the green screen computer display:

The computer paper was also an interesting addition. This type of paper would hardly be recognised by young kids today, the dot matrix and daisy wheel printers it was used with have all but disappeared.

There would appear to be a couple of reasons were using this technology in the film, the most obvious one being the very technological constraints of the show. The production of futuristic buildings and environments is relatively simple through modelling and filming effects, the more specific technology is more difficult to reproduce. What does a futuristic computer look like, and in any case how do you create one?

The other reason is more cultural. At the time, certain technology was considered ‘cutting edge’ and ‘modern’, for example personal computers and LED time displays. For a movie trying to show its futuristic setting, it is actually easier to use contemporary technology that is familiar to the audience than trying to invent a futuristic that may be unrecognisable as such to the audience.

This also explains the computer paper. Nothing says future technology in 1981 more than computer paper, even if thought about logically it is unlikely to be used a hundred years in the future.

The new trailer for the movie Ironman is out. Watching the trailer, you don?t so much get a sense that they are giving you hints and teases of the movie, but rather that they are giving you a complete and succinct summary of the entire film, from the opening sequences to the final battle scene. Matthew Yglesias repeated a joke about this: “Wildly Popular Iron Man Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film.”

This new form of movie trailer is so exasperating. You get to see (and if you are sitting in a cinema its whether you like it or not) the entire plot fold out, leaving very little left for you to actually enjoying during the film. Christopher Orr at The New Republic also finds this annoying and decided to review a movie solely on the basis of the trailer before seeing the movie. His review is here. I won’t be surprising anyone to say that he gets it pretty right.

I can only assume that the blockbuster movie genre is becoming so generic that the plots in all these films are familiar to the public and that the studios think they are giving nothing away by revealing the plots. The reason that the public want to see the film is for the special effects and individual scenes and so by covering the entire scope of the film’s plot they get to show off all the juicy bits of the key scenes in the trailer.

In some ways this makes a lot of sense for the action films, which at their essence are a few minutes of multi-millions dollar computer generated special effects, with some poorly written linking scenes to drag it out to the need 80 minute film. I have always thought that there is an opportunity to for someone to create condensed versions of these films. A bit like the Reader’s Digest condensed novel, you could have a condensed film with just the 20 minutes of special effects, maybe with cut screens with the text “And then the fell in love and then the aliens landed” to bridge the missing parts.

I occasionally watch Today Tonight to see what stories are being told in the land of tabloid TV. On the show tonight there was the seemingly obligatory story in these shows about feuding neighbors (in this case two restauranteurs) and then there was a story about how the iconic 70′s shorts, “stubbies”, were making a comeback. This “news” story consisted of four component parts, replays of old 70s footage of people in stubbies, interviews with people on a beach about their recollection of stubbies (or young kids non-recollection), hot models wearing the stubbies, and a “expert” talking about the new comeback, who is revealed at the end as working for stubbies.

So there was no actual independent evidence, well no evidence at all, of this comeback for stubbies. The only assertions about this were put forward by a representative of stubbies. I am not clear at all how this can be considered news – “fashion business asserts its product is the New Thing”, and it came across to me as a giant advertorial. Note however that there was not any disclosure around the story, and when I had a look on the website, there was no disclosure there. So we have no evidence that there was any relationship between channel seven and stubbies, but if there was, then I think this is what their “news program” would look like. Where is media watch when you need them?

I was out shopping the other day and wanted to get a coffee, I was right next door to a Starbucks so I went in there. I have never been a really great fan of Starbucks, but I wasn’t after a cultural experience, I just wanted coffee.

I learnt my lesson.

I had to stand in line for what seemed like ten minutes to order the coffee. OK that is not the longest time in the world, but I never have to wait long to order a coffee, the process is usually pretty easy. Despite having a few staff, they seemed to have established a system that required the entire transaction to occur at one spot – coffee order, money paid, food – thus creating a bottleneck.

I asked for a regular late. But no, they do not sell regular coffees, the smallest seemed to be large, going up to something called a “grandee”. So the coffee was big and milky.

And they burnt it.

An oversized, milky, burnt coffee that cost more than anywhere else (because they do not have regular) and with bad service. I really do not know what niche this shop is filling (well I guess I do, it had lots of tables, chairs etc for uni students/young people to hang out in for hours – I guess the coffee is the lesser part of their offering).

PS I had a look at the Starbucks homepage and they were advertising a Pumpkin Spice Latte. I am not joking.

The new remake of Battlestar Galactica is one of the better shows coming out of the US at the moment, but I was pleased by this report that the series will end after the next season:

‘The upcoming fourth season of Sci Fi Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica” will be its final one after all…Ending “Battlestar” with the upcoming 22-episode fourth season was a creative decision made by the hit show’s executive producers Ronald Moore and David Eick…”This show was always meant to have a beginning, a middle and, finally, an end,” Eick and Moore said in a statement Thursday.’

One of the interesting contrast between a lot of US and UK series is the shorter more focussed runs of UK shows versus the long and ongoing runs of US series. The Office in the UK ran for two six-part series, while the US version is in its third 20-part series. This allows the UK series to be more tightly focussed and to end before the creative spirits of the writers dry up. The US style series can seem to go on forever, with plots going in ever tighter circles without really advancing the plot (I think Lost fits into the category).

In this context I think it is great that they are declaring an end to the series.