I'm pretty sure the aliens are trying to send us a message.
This National Film Board documentary about the state of Canadian radio (particularly CBC/Radio-Canada) in 1949 has some funny lines. My favourite is this one:
"Radio reads its fan mail and makes its listeners' surveys because radio has learned to trust the judgment of the listener. And in Canada, the listener gets what he asks for."
There's also some talk near the end about setting up a national television network and developing this new "frequency modulation" radio. And a clip of Oscar Peterson tickling the ivories.
I watched the special 50th anniversary broadcast of CFCF-12 last night. It was nice to watch for a local TV buff like me.
The anniversary special was preceded by a very short newscast. And since I made fun of a Global error the night before, I can't ignore the fancy camerawork on display during a broadcast that I'm sure many other people also had on their digital video recorders.
Wonky, indeed.
You might have missed it because you were on vacation or something, but the ad agency écorce put together a form of online advent calendar in December with ... let's call them interpretations of things that happened online in 2010.
It was kind of hit and miss, but there were a few gems among the videos that were done for this:
Une fille inoubliable, by Les Appendices. My favourite sketch comedy fivesome, the stars of the Télé-Québec show covered an awfully written and awfully-sung song from a video that was posted to YouTube but later taken down (fortunately, the Internet keeps copies of these things). Even though they use the same lyrics and roughly the same music, the Appendices version is actually pretty good. At the very least, it had a much higher budget.
Contrat d'lezz, by le Girly Show. You've seen Contrat d'gars, right? The show that goes so over the top with the testosterone you can't help but laugh. It's hard to parody something that already doesn't take itself seriously, so Le Girly Show just turns it on its head and has women playing the lead roles. It's not much funnier than the original, but it has the same magic.
L'Année 2010 selon Carole. Carole aide son prochain is a straight-faced comic web series that ... I'll be honest, it's kind of hit and miss, though I like the concept. In this video, she takes on that lots-of-celebrities-political-message asking for a moratorium on shale gas exploration with some simple but effective satiric criticisms.
The rest of the videos from this project are listed on this page, and lots of other non-video-related recaps are also worth exploring.
(Did I miss something awesome? Think one of these videos is stupid and uninteresting? Tell me off in the comments)
I think what worries me most about the weather, as I saw it on tonight's Téléjournal, isn't that major cities on the west side of the country are farther east than they should be, but that the wind there is so strong it is repeatedly pushing Calgary into Edmonton.
This parody of Céline Dion and Julie Snyder: Funniest segment of the night, or mean-spirited attack on Quebecor? In this case, funny is in the eye of your employer
It's tradition in Quebec media to review each year's end-of-year special from Radio-Canada, the Bye-Bye. It went a bit crazy two years ago when Véronique Cloutier and Louis Morissette decided to take their first crack at it. So much so that there wasn't one to end 2009.
So you can imagine how much everyone was anxious to see what would happen when Cloutier and Morissette decided they would throw themselves into the gauntlet again and host the Bye-Bye 2010.
I watched it, along with my family, on New Year's Eve, and followed the reaction live on Twitter. My first thoughts were that it was pretty impressive, that they weren't overcompensating by pulling their punches compared to 2008, and that it wasn't likely to offend anyone ... or at least, no one not working for Quebecor.
The consensus was that the production values were good (particularly makeup and prosthetics, which in some cases made the actors barely recognizable as themselves and instantly recognizable as their targets), the parodies were well done, and the music videos were great, but the jokes fell flat, which is kind of the most important part.
The first professional reviews came quickly afterward (Richard Therrien's was up in less than an hour). But many others waited because they were to go in newspapers, and many of them published neither on New Year's Day nor on Sundays. It would be more than 48 hours before some people would read anything about it.
I didn't catch this on Christmas Day (because, sadly, I was working), but CFCF aired a half-hour year-in-review special in place of its regular newscast. It featured some discussions with CTV staff, and little packaged bits from reporters about their favourite stories of the year.
Artist's conception of the new studio planned for CFCF's newscast
You can watch the whole thing on its website, but the highlight for local TV buffs is the final segment, which takes a look at their plans for a new studio (hinting that the newscast will be in HD in 2012), and finishes off with bloopers (the funniest ones involving Paul Karwatsky).
For CFCF's Barry Wilson, who hates it when people wish him a Happy Holidays:
Season's Greetings, Barry.
And a Merry Christmas to everyone.
(And thanks to hifichet, ladyjaye27, TVRetroQC, mtltv and others who are finding jems like these and putting them on YouTube so they can be enjoyed nostalgically by everyone.)
Making a joke about this would lessen its comedic value.
Those folks at CBC Montreal have taken to embarrassing themselves in front of the Internet to promote a holiday fundraiser for Dans la rue.
The Carolling Challenge will see personalities and listeners sing along in an effort to drum up donations. There's even a practice today at 1pm (in case you're not going to either the protest against the Journal de Montréal or the protest in memory of Mohamed Anas Bennis, which are both taking place at the same time), before they hit five locations between Monday and Wednesday. Send a picture of yourself at one and you could even win a bag!
After that, next Sunday, there's the annual Christmas Sing-In, a recording that will air on Christmas Day on the radio.
But if you just like seeing videos of CBC radio personalities singing Christmas songs (and if that's the case, there's something wrong with you), here's a bonus video of Sue Smith singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town:
Recent bookmarks