The British Slant on the Mac v. PC Ads

in Apple, Television | April 28th, 2008

Across the pond, Apple is run­ning a series of ads fash­ioned after the “Mac v. PC” com­mer­cials that have run so suc­cess­ful­ly in the States. Although the vocab­u­lary and accent are nat­u­ral­ly dif­fer­ent, the gist of the British ads is essen­tial­ly the same. Yes, Apple’s schtick trans­lates well, and I’m declar­ing the third one my favorite. (See the series of com­mer­cials below.)

As our read­ers from Lon­don will know (fact: we have more read­ers from Lon­don than any oth­er one city), the actors in Apple’s ads are hard­ly unfa­mil­iar. The two — David Mitchell (PC) and Robert Webb (Mac) — star in the award-win­ning Eng­lish sit­com, Peep Show, which is just about to begin a new sea­son. (Watch sec­ond clip below. Note that it fea­tures adult lan­guage and themes.)

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50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time

in Comedy, Television | April 9th, 2008

Nerve and IFC have pulled togeth­er a fun list that counts down the 50 fun­ni­est sketch­es in tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. Hap­pi­ly, the list fea­tures many video clips, and this inspired us to post one of our own. Here we have John Belushi, appear­ing on Sat­ur­day Night Live in the late 1970s, per­form­ing a clas­sic bit called “Samu­rai Del­i­cat­assen.” Check out the full list of 50 here, and find many more SNL skits on Hulu.com here (if you’re liv­ing in the US).

via Boing­Bo­ing

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In Search of TV 2.0

in Film, Media, Television, Video - Arts & Culture, Web/Tech | April 3rd, 2008

One of the things they promised us in the hey­day of the 1990s Inter­net boom was the end of tele­vi­sion and a brave new world of high qual­i­ty video online, on demand. Well, we’re still wait­ing. Youtube is great for short clips, but not designed for the tech­ni­cal (or legal) chal­lenge of serv­ing up whole TV shows or movies.

How­ev­er, things are get­ting bet­ter. You can pay for rea­son­ably good enter­tain­ment, and you can even watch some things for free on net­work web­sites (not to men­tion the many uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er groups putting video online). But nobody has come quite as close to the orig­i­nal promise as Hulu.com. This promis­ing new site seems to strike a decent bal­ance between com­mer­cials and con­tent. They have entire sea­sons of sev­er­al decent tele­vi­sion shows and a small library of movies–all avail­able for free. So is Hulu the future of Hol­ly­wood online? Check it out and let us know what you think.

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On Hanukkah

in Comedy, Television | December 4th, 2007

For the first night of Hanukkah, we bring you a clas­sic bit from Sat­ur­day Night Live (1989) star­ring Jon Lovitz called “Hanukkah Har­ry Saves Christ­mas.” You can watch the video direct­ly on NBC’s site along with oth­er vin­tage SNL videos. (Sor­ry, I could­n’t find an embed for this one.)

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Not The Daily Show

in Television, Video - Politics/Society | November 18th, 2007

As the weeks go on, more and more of us are start­ing to notice that Hol­ly­wood’s writ­ers are on strike. One by one new tele­vi­sion shows are run­ning out of fresh mate­r­i­al. But if you’re a fan of The Dai­ly Show, (and, well, we are) you were hit prac­ti­cal­ly on day one, since the top­i­cal news spoofs put on by Jon Stew­art and his mer­ry band are writ­ten on a short sched­ule.

So while the rest of us find alter­nate means of enter­tain­ing our­selves, the writ­ers are out there pick­et­ing in New York and L.A. What hap­pens when you leave a bunch of bored writ­ers with a side­walk and a griev­ance? Not The Dai­ly Show:

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The Nine Minute Sopranos

in Television | November 4th, 2007

The pop­u­lar inter­net video, The Sev­en Minute Sopra­nos, has now been updat­ed to include the last sea­son of the hit HBO series. This means that you can get all six sea­sons (or 86 episodes) sum­ma­rized in a speedy nine min­utes. Watch below.

(P.S. HBO has just pub­lished The Sopra­nos: The Com­plete Book. Fans will want to take a look.)

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The Complete Beatles in One Hour (and The Sopranos in Seven Minutes)

in Music, Television | October 10th, 2007

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog has no short­age of good mp3s for music fans. This one is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent: Here, in a clip called Run For Your Life, all of The Bea­t­les’ UK albums are com­pressed at 800% into a one-hour MP3. It’s rather unlis­ten­able, but nonethe­less con­cep­tu­al­ly inter­est­ing. As for speed sum­maries, the one I like most is the video called The Sev­en Minute Sopra­nos. It gives you the first six sea­sons of the HBO series in sev­en snap­py min­utes. Watch below.

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The War: New Ken Burns’ Documentary Starts Sunday

in History, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | September 22nd, 2007

wwiiburns.jpgMark this on your cal­en­dar. Ken Burns, who has pro­duced some of Amer­i­ca’s most acclaimed his­tor­i­cal doc­u­men­taries, will air his lat­est film start­ing Sun­day night on PBS. The War is a sev­en-part, 15-hour doc­u­men­tary that “tells the sto­ry of the Sec­ond World War through the per­son­al accounts of a hand­ful of men and women from four quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Amer­i­can towns. The series explores the most inti­mate human dimen­sions of the great­est cat­a­clysm in his­to­ry — a world­wide cat­a­stro­phe that touched the lives of every fam­i­ly on every street in every town in Amer­i­ca — and demon­strates that in extra­or­di­nary times, there are no ordi­nary lives.”

You can get more infor­ma­tion on the doc­u­men­tary from the PBS web site and this accom­pa­ny­ing “View­er’s Guide (PDF).” You may also want to watch this series of video out­takes from the film, plus (see below) the trail­er that pre­views Burn’s ambi­tious project.

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