Posts by Russell Brown
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
A TTS function of the Kindle2 - supposing I had sold e-rights- wouldnt've garnered publisher or self anything either. And, as someone who is vbisually impaired, I find your comment, Russell, just a tad offensive.
I'm sorry, I meant no offence and my comments really weren't directed at you.
I just can't see the point of what the Authors' Guild has done. And as Sacha pointed out, even though the provision for talking books for the blind is there, actually getting the data for a particular title is often onerous. Here was a simple solution that would make things easier for everyone, and widen the range of books available to the blind, and the guild broke it.
Seriously, what has actually been gained by this move?
-
Okay, now we've firmed up the panels: the billing for this week's show:
Media7 this week examines two different but not unrelated topics -- The effect of Court suppression orders and other judicial directions to journalists and the behaviour of media towards sporting “heroes” when they fall from grace.
Russell Brown is joined by senior television journalist Cliff Joiner, who has worked for both TVNZ and TV3 as a reporter: Val Sim of the Law Commission and Warren Young, the author of a paper on the effect of judicial orders on media reporting.
The sports panel consists of Phil Kingsley-Jones (Johan Lomu’s manager); veteran sports journalist, author and commentator Richard Becht and NZ Herald sports columnist, Richard Boock.
They’ll be pondering how the media and advertisers assiduously work to create sports “super-heroes” and “role-models” but then casually destroy their own creations, when the young sportsmen fall from grace.
In many of these widely publicized cases the disgraced sports figures have sought and often gained name suppression from the courts.
-
Orwell would love this thread. All the snobby pigs looking down their noses at the dumb sheep. Poor fools sitting there so grimly when they could be out on their bikes, compulsory helmets on of course and tofu sammies in their backpacks.
Oh, whatever: people can do what they like.
But it's hardly unreasonable to remark on the fact that so few people appear to be having a good time.
I love the condescending pieties of the bourgoisie.
Always happy to provide a venue for your slightly self-conscious inverted snoobery, Bea. Up the workers!
-
Just watching Media7 - I got such a shock seeing Ken Douglas. I thought he must be sick but he's obviously all there. Just older. Jeez, I must be too...
Yup, he's still all there and definitely Ken Douglas.
-
As I recall it I saw him making a rather glum cellphone call after a show - maybe he'd been MCing a high school show I was in? - talking to someone about how he'd felt obliged to play along with the widespread mockery of Melody Rule that had spontaneously arisen.
It was Cringe Factor 5 from the beginning, because it was effectively the brainchild of a hired-in American sitcom-doctor, who allegedly brought with him the "formula" for successful sitcoms, which he passed on in workshops.
Excerpted from Jeff Stone's tremendous "review" on IMDB (which is much funnier than the show was):
As a Kiwi, I am shamed to admit that the worst sitcom in the history of the world hails from our clean green shores. I suppose that creating something this spine-shatteringly awful represents some kind of achievement, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who'll admit to that.
Back in 1993, NZ's third TV network was still a relative newcomer to the business and was keen to make its' mark in the ratings with its' own crop of original programming. 'Melody Rules' was something of a flagship show for TV3, and was accompanied by a considerable PR blitz prior to screening. The talent behind MR was, on the face of it, quite up to the task of making a half-hour sitcom, and locally produced comedy had always been received well despite its' faults. Thousands tuned in to watch the pilot...and when it was over, the sound of jaws dropping to the floor across the nation could be heard from space. Those thousands had witnessed something new: anti-comedy. Comedy utterly devoid of humour, pitched at the level of 4 year olds yet made for adults. The acting was terrible, too; someone should have realised that casting TV3 news anchor Belinda Todd, a woman who had (as far as anyone knew) never acted in any TV show before, as the show's lead was a bad mistake. But her dismally flat portrayal of single Mum Melody was basically the highlight amongst a cavalcade of amateurish and downright repulsive characterisations from the rest of the cast. These laughless grotesques were crammed into one tiny set for the entirety of the show's run. We occasionally saw the bedrooms of Melody and her family, but for 95% of the time they were crowded together in a lounge room set the size of a thimble that was so obviously fake it almost achieved Dadaist surrealism. And the comedy - oh dear Lord. TV3's laugh track machine had its' work cut out for it on this drossfest, as it gamely exploded with mirth at the hilarity-free banalities that tumbled from the lips of Melody and company. Most of the plots involved some stupid scheme to win a girl's love Melody's son had dreamed up, or the well-meaning silliness of Melody's chum (played by Alan Borough). The schemes were not humorous, the characters were not funny in themselves, and they *never left that damn lounge*. There was another character, a hideously filthy next door neighbour who had his own catchphrase. "Ya decent?!" he would bawl every week, entering the house Kramer-style with a load of fish or something equally vile-smelling. As signature phrases go, it makes 'Ohhhh Lucyyyyyyyyyy!' seem like a couplet by Ezra Pound.
-
And James has a good tske on this at Editing the Herald
Heh.
Actually, what I really like is his commentary on the David Garrett "just change the Bill of Rights, then" story:
The Liberal Party': The ACT party have a proud history of standing up for what they believe in - the great legacy of the giants of classical liberalism: John Stuart Mill, Thomas Paine, John Locke, and so on. Like that time when Richard Prebble changed his mind about government funding for the arts because the people in Wellington Central, where he was running for parliament, like going to the opera. Anyway, you may not be familiar with Paine's great work The Rights of Man - after all, you're not an ACT MP - but David Garrett is, so he should be. "We've got too hung up on people's rights," says Garrett, a claim that would possibly raise a few eyebrows in ACT HQ if they were actually 'The Liberal Party' and not a sorry collection of failures who should go and get into business if they love it so freaking much and who need National voters to give them a pity electorate vote even to get them into parliament...
Burn!
-
Wait, we're exploring the serious issues of a silly paper story on a silly column about something of no importance that someone said about... blah blah?
Is it Friday already? Where's my Hard News?
Suppose so.
It started as a way into some TV links, but it was the Herald that decided it was a front-page news story.
I just found it a bit bizarre that Shaw was in fact only "under fire" or getting a "bad review" -- the alleged basis of the story -- from the Herald on Sunday's not-exactly-revered gossip columnist.
It's just another chance for the Herald to have a pop at TVNZ. And as Craig noted, it's a bit rich for that paper to be revelling in TVNZ's cost-cutting given APN's problems.
Also:I felt like defending Go Girls.To declare that it is somehow of the order of Melody Rules is kind of cheap and silly.
-
Well, I'm sorry but I think this is one time the evil corporate should have grown a pair (and a spine) and told the Author's Guild to fuck off and come back when it had something approximately in the vicinity of a reality based argument.
Well, yes. At least authors and publishers still have to make a choice to break the thing, and deprive their readers of a harmless piece of functionality.
As Gaiman notes, there is no foreseeable future in which machine text-to-speech will approximate a human audiobook reader. Breaking T2S will reap authors exactly zero extra dollars. Visually-impaired readers can presumably go hang.
-
And one day, the Kindles may rise up and kill us all, so we might as well ban them before that happens.
I, for one, welcome our new Kindle overlords.
-
The Tizard thing is kind of an essay in the thinking that got us into this position.
Yeah, sadly.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 1690 1691 1692 1693 1694 … 2279 Older→ First