Over2You: Wednesday 30th April 2008

Well, you know what's been on my mind recently, now tell me what's on yours. It's over to you...

News Roundup: Tuesday 29th April 2008

BBC News: Austrian Police have revealed that DNA evidence has backed up the claims that an Autsrian man fathered 7 children with his own daughter.

Commentary: My viewpoint on this is already posted here, but I note the considerable international interest in this story. Most newspaper commentary on this has been predicatbly horrified, whether the paper is politically on the left or the right. The more horrifying thing to me, is not so much that it happened, more that it actually went undetected or untraced for so many years. I find it difficult to believe he handled this entirely on his own. I also find it difficult to believe that his wife knew nothing about it. I hate to say this, but I'm sure there is more to come in this story, and it will not make nice reading.

BBC News: New reseach suggests about half of all Polish and Eastern European migrants who have come to the UK since 2004 have returned home.

Commentary: In a related story, BBC News also reports that a farmer near Peterborough takes on lots of Eastern European migrants to pick fruit and veg at a wage of £7-an-hour. Locals didn't want the job with one person quoted as saying, "...I'd prefer to sign-on than do that." This is what gets me riled up. Some of these lazy people would rather do nothing for a week and earn just £60.50, rather than do 30 hours work, and earn over 3 times as much, before deductions. It's shameful that people are not willing to work for more money than most retail workers get.

MSNBC: US presidential candidate Barack Obama has denounced his former pastor over public comments Reverend Jeremiah Wright has made recently.

Commentary: As the race for the Democratic nomination stretches on towards the convention, you have to wonder if the current situation is hurting the Democrats or the Republicans more. Sure, John McCain may have the Republican nomination sewn up, but the Democratic candidates are dominating the headlines and as the old saying goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

When does kinky porn become Illegal?

BBC News has an article about the fine line between porn that is kinky and porn that is illegal under a new law, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, that will get its final reading this week.

The new law defines extreme pornography, which will be declared illegal under the new law as...

• An act which threatens or appears to threaten a person's life
• An act which results in or appears to result in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals
• An act which involves or appears to involve sexual interference with a human corpse
• A person performing or appearing to perform an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal

This law has been drafted in a hurry, rushed through, not properly considered, and an overreaction. This law makes criminals out of consumers, rather than producers, which still applies by the way in the 1959 Obscene Publications Act.

There is no way that any government should be interfereing in people's private lives. Censorship is a no-no.

Ronaldo in Transvestite sex scandal

BBC News is reporting that Brazillian football star Ronaldo has been caught up in a sex scandal with three cross-dressing prostitutes.

I must be one of the few people who finds this obsession with famous people and sex scnadals boring. What people do in their private time and away from their jobs is not public business, and we should just let them live their lives.

Austrian man kidnapped daughter then fathered her children.

BBC News is reporting the quite horrific story of an Austrian man, who is now 73 years old, who kidnapped his daughter some 24 years ago, and then fathered children with her.

Quite honestly, I think the whole story is shocking, and needs no hyping at all. Though I do imagine the tabloids will overhype it as they usually do.

Viewpoint Extra: Chanelle Hayes Sex Tape - Real or Viral Advertising?

Well, now we know the truth, and whilst I was partialy right in terms of the intent behind the video, the actual thing it was promoting was quite different to what I imagined it to be. Who would have imagined that Chanelle's partner in the video, was a furry puppet!



Incidentally, this is being reported by the Daily Star and other newspapers as showing that Chanelle is game for a laugh and happy to poke fun at the celebrity lifestyle, including her own.

My take on that is much more cynical, I'm afraid. It proves to me that Chanelle and her team knew all to well, that the timing would make great promotional capital for her reality TV show and her first single, the video I posted previously. I feel that Chanelle is much more saavy than other so called D-listers, and perhaps, just perhaps, she might just make the C-list yet. It'll take time, but she seems to be putting the work in. We'll see if she fades from view when the new housemates come into view, or whether she has more staying power than some others.

Chanelle Hayes Sex Tape - Real or Viral Advertising?

Once again, I touch on a territory that I don't tend to deal in. This time, it's the world of celebrity sex tapes, which seems to be quite a popular line in the tabloids. But this one... well, you tell me.

Chanelle Hayes, who was a contestant in Big Brother 8 in the UK, has a new reality TV series airing in the UK and Ireland on VH1 called "Chanelle: Wannabe Popstar". Her debut single, I Want It, is released on 18 May. But the video is already doing the rounds on the music TV channels.



So, with all this happening in her life, what do you think gets uploaded to YouTube? A Paris Hilton-style, night vision-esque production of a 'sex tape'.



It's not that we're not used to seeing her with very few clothes on in provocative poses. She's practically a contract babe for the Daily Star, she seems to be in the paper most days in some pose or another wearing very little. It's either very cynically timed by her management to coincide with her music and relaity TV projects and garner more publicity, or it's very cynically timed by some ex-boyfriend out to destroy her. I know which one I believe.

On the YouTube page,the video is titled "Who Is That?", and the "user" who uploaded this is called "ohnoshedidnt90". They only joined on April 18th 2008, the day the video was released and exactly a month before the single is released. I don't know about you guys, but I smell a rat, or should I say, a viral.

This looks like nothing more than an attempt at viral advertising for her single. After all, the girl in the sex tape wears exactly the same outfit that Chanelle does in the bedroom scenes of her music video. The bedroom also looks very similar, although it appears to have been shot from a different angle. I'd go so far as to say this is a piece of viral advertising shot on one of the sets that her video was shot on. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am here.

Citroen think we don't know our Europeans!

I rarely get involved writing about the latest advertising campaign for such and such a product or service. For a start, there are simply too many of them, I'd never to talk about anything else. But one campaign recently has drawn my attention, and indeed, drawn my contempt too.

It's the campaign for the new Citroen C5, under the tagline, "Unmistakably German".

*Sigh* How stupid do they think we are? The word "Citroen" is a French word, and Citroen has always been a French-owned company!

Citroen is about as German as Hamburgers!

The ads, and the making of them are at the website for the Citroen C5. It re-inforces just how out of touch the advertising industry is with real people. They think they have to be clever and try to mentally outwit us in order that we don't think we're being sold to. Let me tell you, I work and have worked for a long time in the retail industry, and I find that the opposite works best. If you're upfront, honest and straight forward, it tends to work better than trying to outwit them.

Time for a reality check, methinks.

Scarlett Johannson and Natalie Portman to direct!

MegaStar reports that actresses Scarlett Johannson and Natalie Portman, who recently teamed up on "The Other Boelyn Sister" and apparently became best friends there, are both to make their directorial debuts in a new film, called "New York, I Love You", which is a collection of short stories based in the city of New York.

Now, I like watching these two on screen, but it will be interesting to see how their directorial debuts will be recieved. It's obvious that both are planning for a future behind the camera after they feel they've done what they can in front of it, so good on them.

Over2You - Friday 11th April 2008

What's happened in the world today that makes you want to vent your spleen? It's over to you...

The Incredible Hulk Movie Trailer

I thought it was about time I brought this one onto here. It's the movie that I am most interested in this summer. Edward Norton stars as Dr Bruce Banner alongside Liv Tyler and Tim Roth in The Incredible Hulk. Here's the trailer.



Plus, a little something extra...



This widget not only contains the trailer, but also a special behind the scenes video which tells you more about how the filmakers decided to pitch this film version of the Hulk.

They're hoping this will launch a possible Hulk film series in a way that the 2003 Ang Lee movie couldn't. There was nothing wrong with the Ang Lee movie in terms of staying true to the comics and the character, but since most people who'd had any experience with the Hulk had come across him in the 1970s live action TV show which had starred Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, the fact that it was so far removed from that whole surrounding meant that whatever fan base the TV show had built up, wasn't transferred to the Ang Lee film.

With this film being re-imagined more along the lines of the old TV show, with some comic-book elements kept in, they're hoping to combine the best of both worlds in one film, and it'll either be a great success cos it will put it off spectacularly well, or it will be a big flop because it will have failed miserably. It's not easy to combine two worlds into one like that, and I hope they've done it right.

Over2You - Thursday 10th April 2008

What have you spotted on the net that deserves highlighting? What's got your blood boiling? These posts are designed for you to tell me about anything that is on your mind. So, over to you.

Politically biased musical butchery!

Do you remember the old 1983 song from the Weather Girls, It's Raining Men? Released in the UK in August 1983, it reached the dizzying height of Number 73, before being re-relased in March 1984 and reaching Number 2!

I say this because of a video that is on You Tube. I will link to it, rather than embedding it, because it is SO crap that it makes the people Simon Cowell insults on American Idol and other so-called 'talent' shows look like pros!

Out of tune, out of sync with each other, discordant, and that's just the good points!

This piece of pro-McCain idiocy not only butchers a perfectly good piece of music and turns into politically biased mush, but proves conclusively that the concepts of parody and satire are completely lost on conservatives. This comes across as a pure attack video with nothing redeeming about it.

If you think your ears can stand the pain for 2 minutes 35 seconds, then go ahead. Otherwise, save your sanity! And to be honest, would you defend any of these three at a Sanity Board hearing???

Oh and perhaps they ought to consider when they choose clothes for their next bluescreen bonanza, not selecting clothes that disappear in the chromakey!!!

If I could have rated it a minus score, I would have!

Strange Op-Ed in Jerusalem Post,

When an op-ed piece in a newspaper starts like this...

"It is apparently better to be a terrorist than a law abiding citizen."

...you do wonder where the hell the piece is going to go after a line like that. This line appears in an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post! It is a piece written by a former Palestinian terrorist, who was the subject of an article, also in the Jerusalem Post, which surprisingly claimed that this guy was a terrorist whose bombing history can't be found.

I will say little more, other than enlightening, and well worth the read.

Could it be the CBS Evening News without Katie Couric?

The Wall Street Journal Online is reporting that Katie Couric could be on the verge of departing from CBS. The Journal reports that CBS executives are under pressure to cut costs on the programme, and the biggest target there is Katie Couric with her contract reportedly worth $15 million a year.

If she were to leave, who should get the anchor duties? Well, Harry Smith, longtime CBS News anchor, but like Katie mostly for morning programmes, has proved himself a more than capable anchor when he has substituted for her. The only other feasible alternative from within CBS News is Russ Mitchell, who anchors the Sunday edition of the programme. Can't say I see any other reasonable alternatives from outside of CBS News.

TV Newser has more on this developing story.

Momentarily back to the 2006 Congressional Election

It was back in August 2006, on the eve of the Connecticut Primary to decide the Democratic Party candidate for Novermber 2006's upcoming Congressional Election, when Joe Lieberman's campaign announced that his site had suffered a "denial of service" attack and had been taken offline.

Lieberman blamed supporters of rival candidate Ned Lamont for organising the crash via denial of service attacks.

Well, Crooks & Liars reports today that the FBI office in New Haven, Connecticut has concluded that there was no denial of service attack, but that the server was "...overutilized and misconfigured..."

I doubt that Lieberman will remember any of this though. He's moved on to be "Chief Corrections Officer" on the John McCain Republican campaign!

Ident City is Back!

A couple of years ago, I was struggling to try and update a site that I had been trying to work on for the better part of 8 years. I'd had enough of spending hours coding a single page, only to spend a few more hours touching up that coding when things went wrong.

So I scrapped the site and started a blog. That blog was Viewpoint, which is what you are reading now. But now,I have relaunched Ident City as a blog. I will be posting on Ident City about UK television and any other television related news I find.

Stay tuned.

Inside Cable News is back!

Spud has brought back the Inside Cable News blog, rebranded as ICN 2.0. It's at a new address, which I have put in the links in place of the original.

I'll be keeping an eye on the RSS feed as usual, and if Spud is good on his word, he'll be probably getting regular links from this blog.

Welcome Back, Spud.

Breaking News: Zimbabwe Election may be over, soon.

BBC News is reporting that the election in Zimbabwe maybe over very soon. The US Embassy has confirmed that American, French and British Ambassadors in Harare have been summoned for a meeting, and there have been many reports throughout the day about possible talks going on between Zanu PF and the MDC, with South Africa thought to be involved as a mediator, although there have been flat out denials of this by some of the parties said to be involved.

All this information comes with the usual warnings, that because there is no independent media in Zimbabwe, and no foreign news agencies are allowed to report from there, there is no independent verification of these reports.

The US Embassy is also saying that President Mugabe is due to give a broadcast sometime between 1900 and 1930 GMT. As I write this, it is currrently 1823 GMT.

This could be a very interesting evening. We'll keep a close eye on this one, and keep you updated.

Capital Life closes

I turned on Capital Life earlier to listen to the music, and all I found was silence. The scrolling message on my DAB radio says, "We're sorry, but Capital Life has closed down. Thanks for listening to the station over the past few years."

So, just as Global buys GCap, Capital Life closes. I used to enjoy that station. Oh well, Capital Life's demise might be a good thing in the long term, but confidence in DAB is low. What with 4 Digital being put back until November, it seems that a lot will be on the shoulders of established stations. Is there no-one with the guts to try something new on Digital 1? I guess we'll see in time.