All 6 entries tagged Media

Reasons to love YouTube #24

The greatest song ever written soundtracking a video featuring the greatest invention of all time. For this alone, You Tube I love you:

I came across this video using the impressive I Love Music Video

: 26 Oct 2006 11:27 |  Tags: Cycling Media |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Frankie Boyle is a funny man

Frankie Boyle is a very funny man. One of the funniest on British television right now via his appearances on Mock the Week . Whenever I watch, and listen, to Frankie Boyle, I ache to be living back in Glasgow.

But before I over-romanticise living in Glasgow, here’s some choice words from Frankie, pinched from articles that are reproduced on his website:

On Rangers and Celtic:

Massive corporate entities leeching the soul out of their deprived communities. The area round Celtic Park is like Blade Runner without the special effects. In 1967 Celtic won the European Cup with a team where all the players were born within 20 miles of the stadium. If you tried to field a team from that area now you wouldn’t find 11 people who still had both legs. Both clubs have profited massively from sectarianism. Personally, I think everyone involved over the years has shown that they don’t have Northern Ireland’s best interests at heart and it should now be given to a third party, like Spain. Imagine how little the average Belfast citizen would care for the problems of religion if he could just get a nice bit of tapas on the Falls road. And it wasn’t fucking raining all the time. And he still had knees.

On personal grooming:

The average Glasgow guy now looks like he spends more time in front of the mirror than a pubescent girl. You know what? If you’re going to spend 2 hours on your appearance every day why not work out you fat fucks? If you’re going to have a haircut that makes you look like a moderately powerful Pokemon, try to make sure you’re body doesn’t look like something that’s just been fished out of a river.

: 20 Oct 2006 14:25 |  Tags: Humour Media |  Comments (8) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Reasons to love YouTube #17

It's a great showcase for experimental local talent. It's great to see your home city being represented in smart little movies. Two examples:

First up '2 Tone Poem – Coventry Calling'. Nice visual treatment. It's rough and ready and out there and here it gets an audience. Many Coventry locations. A guy with the balls to walk the streets reading his work, which is a hymn to the mighty Specials

Dreaming of brewing up pop music as the only bomb worth dropping

Secondly, 'Parkour 06'. I'm fascinated by parkour – free running – having quite recently met an amazingly diverse group of kids performing outstandingly acrobatic moves in Central Birmingham. They are like a bunch of troubadours, an old fashioned, mobile circus act but brought together through internet forums to teach each other their skills on the street.

'Parkour 06' is the first film by Annie D about Parkour runners in Coventry. Simple, stylish, watchable. Nice sound edits. Annie, well done. Keep up the good work.

: 25 Aug 2006 11:38 |  Tags: Coventry Media |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Reboot the Beeb

Writing about web page http://open.bbc.co.uk/reboot/gallery/2006/05/bbc_homepage.html

This is a site to get lost in full of signposts to a very near future. The brief for this competition to completely reimagine and re–design the BBC homepage was pretty much as follows:

We want to allow Internet users to go into their own BBC space containing all the content they're interested in, all the TV shows they like and all the things they've played with on the Web. We need to come up with a personalised BBC homepage that will provide users with a starting place for their journey through BBC content and beyond.

As a summary of what's working well and gaining ground on the web it's fascinating. Personalisation abounds. Widgets and aggregates. Embedded media players playing your selections gain more prominence. The spaces imagined allow users to feed external content of their choosing into the hallowed BBC internet foyer. The 'user' is in charge.

Are there any lessons in here for online learning spaces?

: 12 Jul 2006 23:02 |  Tags: BBC E-Learning Media Web Design |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Apprentice and Blair's Britain

Writing about web page http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1766121,00.html

Provocative, persuasive piece of analysis of The Apprentice as a cipher for Blair's Britain from Jonathan Freedland, one of The Guardian's most persistently reliable and interesting columnists. In the space of a column the analysis has a lot to say not only about television but about our socal and political cultures, about ethnic diversity, meritocracy and the potential irrelevance of a university business education. Freedland's big conclusion, however, is that The Apprentice teaches us that

deference is far from dead, it's just that now there is a new class to be deferred to – the aristocracy of wealth. And in this new nobility, Alan Sugar's blood is purest blue.

: 03 May 2006 12:23 |  Tags: Media Politics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Our shabby media culture

Writing about web page http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/comment/story/0,,1687932,00.html

I'm kicking this blog off by pointing to an excellent piece of writing by Polly Toynbee about the ways in which as a culture, and in our media, we treat politicians. In a very powerful paragraph, Toynbee writes:

A free press may be essential to democracy, but how grotesquely it exploits that necessity. Self-righteously we pontificate on politicians, free to damn ministers at whim, shameless about our own far worse venality and hypocrisy. Politicians try to get things done while we shoot them down from comfortable quarters. They come and go – but we stay on and on, never at risk of de-election from jobs no one elected us to. Instead we award one another prizes. We confront no dilemmas where there is no right answer; we always know the answer to everything.

Donald Dewar, Scotland's first First Minister, wrote passionately about how our media create a grotesque picture of our politicians and politics which is not good for voter engagement and turnout and so on. The treatment of Ruth Kelly at the hands of baying journos this week is only the most recent in a long line of similar, shallow but dangerous ventures masquerading as investigative journalism.

: 19 Jan 2006 13:44 |  Tags: Education Media Politics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem