Speaking of how music is everything for dramatic video, it also (combined with a no-shots-last-more-than-a-second editing philosophy) can turn regular police officers into cool cop heroes.
*My horrible transcription skills combined with horrible grammar had the headline originally as “168 fonctions différents.” My apologies to the French language, though I still think it’s stupid of you to assign gender to inanimate objects and concepts.
By now you’ve probably heard about the Mike Ward OMGSCANDAL. Basically he made an off-colour joke about Cédrika Provencher in a bit about Revenu Québec. (There was a video on YouTube, but it’s been pulled because of that minor pesky copyright thing that bloggers think doesn’t apply to videos posted on YouTube.)
Today… (err, yesterday), Ward posted a video on his website responding to the OMGontroversy (via The Domster). There, he lambasts people who haven’t seen his show for suddenly having a problem with it a month later, and talks about how he’s being judged by random people on the street, getting death threats and is too afraid to start his car.
Now’s about a good time to remind people what the limits are on free speech:
Leave Mike Ward alone. Comedians don’t change based on criticism, they change based on people not laughing at their jokes and not paying attention to them.
(P.S. Speaking about criticizing criticisms, Claude Poirier totally goes ape-shit on Bazzo (from Mike Ward’s blog))
If fonts were people (via Gizmodo via some bimbo)
(But really, Comic Sans is not a hero)
Does anyone else find the music attached to this video unnecessarily menacing?
Is it that they want people to hate them, or do they think this is going to become some sort of armed conflict and The One True Way will prevail gloriously?
I’ll could also point out the irony of uploading a Parti indépendantiste video that’s militantly anti-English to a website that doesn’t have a French (or at least Québécois) version.
Thanks to the magic of the Internets, I’ve been introduced to a curious little made-for-web TV miniseries, called Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. It stars Neil Patrick Harris (above), who plays the misunderstood evil genius who’s just trying to get some from a pretty girl.
What I like most about this is that the three main actors represent a broad range of geek cred. Harris, of course, brings along the middle-age Doogie crowd and is no doubt the most mainstream-recognizable actor here.
Nathan Fillion, of Firefly fame (and just about every other series that Joss Whedon has been involved with), brings along the Whedonites. Not that this is necessary, mind you, since Whedon directs this project.
Felicia Day, meanwhile (the aforementioned pretty girl, as you can see) brings along the ubergeek web crowd who totally recognize her from this other show she does.
BTW Felicia, that marriage proposal is still open. Just, you know, putting it out there.
Some back story on this whole thing from the L.A. Times.
(Oh, did I mention it’s a musical?)
UPDATE (July 21): Too late. Now you have to buy it on iTunes ($6) if you want to see it. Either that or find a low-quality pirated version somewhere.
I’ve been asked (along with other bloggers, local media and left-wing conspiracy rags) to write about this video, in which an anonymous person in sunglasses and a tie rants about being “fair gamed” by the Church of Scientology and its minions (in the same way that someone rants about her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend).
I guess I’m just supposed to assume that everything this person said actually happened, and for the reasons given.
All I know for sure is that the anti-Scientologists seem just as weird as the people they’re protesting against.
UPDATE (July 17): I knew from the moment I posted this It’d get undue attention, and comments like this:
Title: Fagstein is gay | URL: http://fagsteinsuckscock | email: fagsteinisafag@fag.fag
Read about Scientology before you take a shit on the internet you dumb fuck
Fagstein is gay
La Presse unveiled its Beijing Olympics blog, noting that it’s sending a team of reporters, including columnist Pierre Foglia, to China next month. (Ten years ago, a newspaper sending reporters to the Olympics wouldn’t be news, but with the industry suffocating and cutting back, every plane ticket and hotel room has to be justified as a Newspaper Reporting Event.)
The Star, meanwhile, is putting links to its Olympics website on every page, including a logo next to its flag. Sadly, the website from Canada’s largest newspaper has about the same design finesse you’d expect from a YMCA bulletin board.
The Gazette’s Dave Stubbs, meanwhile, is still milking the Chinese news sources for weird stories relating to the Games on his Five-Ring Circus blog, which contrasts with Canwest’s matter-of-fact topic page.
The Globe and Mail hilariously has its Olympics coverage in a section called “Others“. Their Olympics blog is better, at least, though I’m not sure what “Wb” stands for in the URL.
The best Canadian Olympics news website unsurprisingly goes to the CBC, which not only has a general Olympics website, but has separate related sites for each major sport at the Games, each filled with stories. These will be the last Olympics the CBC has broadcast rights for.
And for completeness sake, Quebecor’s Canoe portal has yawnable websites in French and English for the Games with stories from its newspapers and wire services.
But even that’s better than CTV’s Olympics website, which doesn’t exist. (CTV has rights to 2010 and beyond, so you’d think they’d take advantage of the opportunity to get some practice online)
In case you don’t feel your life is boring enough this summer, Andy Nulman is twittering as he prepares for the Just for Laughs galas, with matter-of-fact posts like “just got off the phone with Kathy Griffin”
With Canadiens development camp open to the public, we’re getting our first taste of amateur video of some of these new prospects, including 6’8″ goaltender Jason Missiaen, seen above looking like King Kong in front of the net.
Some skater shooting drill highlights, courtesy of a very dedicated fan:
UPDATE (July 14): Some video of the team drills, showing how even the young unproven players can totally pwn the rest of us at hockey.
Spot the error in this marketing video for airlines about Kronos employee management systems, produced by Montreal-based marketing firm Definite Image.
UPDATE: As usual, my minions are nothing if not sleuths:
These images were rather obviously taken at Central Station, which is a train station and not an airport. (Notice the very recognizable schedule board at the top – which doesn’t list delays or cancellations, forcing them to superimpose actual flight schedule information – and the rather visual level crossing sign in the bottom one).
From Improv Everywhere’s new blog Urban Prankster.
I can’t imagine any Montreal driver having such patience. Or, for that matter, stopping at the crosswalk in the first place.
The NDP has apparently chosen its candidate for its next most likely by-election pickup in Quebec: the downtown riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie. No, it’s not the guy in the above video (though he sounds like he’d be awesome), it’s CBC Radio Noon host Anne Lagacé Dowson:
(Note: May not be exactly as pictured)
I worked with Anne during my very brief stint at CBC Radio. Considering how incompetent I was, she seemed like a pretty nice person. The fact that she’s running for office under the NDP banner is hardly surprising (though I doubt she and Jack Layton agree on every issue)
Now the NDP seems to think that after their stunning win in Outremont, getting a broadcast journalist on board is the magic ticket to a second win in Quebec.
Unfortunately, it’s no guarantee. Just look at Peter Kent, former Global National anchor who lost for the Conservatives in Toronto (he’s trying his luck again in a much more affluent York riding). And he was at least on TV. (Get Mutsumi Takahashi or Nancy Wood to run and we’ll talk)
Even worse, her opponent is another star candidate (albeit another failed one), former astronaut Marc Garneau.
The riding, which mainly covers Westmount and western downtown (plus a bit of eastern NDG) could be hard to predict, with a mix of rich anglo Westmounters and poor hippie Concordia students. But the federal riding covering Westmount has been Liberal since 1962, and that’s a lot of history to overcome for a party that hasn’t done better than third with 15% of the vote.
Due to a conflict of interest, Lagacé Dowson has taken a leave of absence from CBC Radio, and the latter immediately scrubbed all mention of her from its website.
UPDATE (July 7): It’s “confirmed” apparently (as if there was doubt). Lagacé Dowson is, as usual, humble:
“I am not falling on my sword in Westmount,” she told a handful of supporters. “This liberal tradition isn’t serving us very well, and we don’t like what the Conservatives are doing to us. I am not running to make a good showing; I am running to win. If Barack Obama against all odds can capture the leadership of the Democratic party in the United States, who says a woman can’t capture the hearts and minds of Westmount for the NDP?”
I’m not quite sure how this relates to Barack Obama, nor being a woman (especially since the riding’s former MP, Lucienne Robillard, has two X chromosomes last time I checked), but don’t let that interfere with the historicness.
Meanwhile, the other parties have filled out their candidates. Just to show how confident the Bloc Québécois is at winning a seat in Westmount, they’ve nominated Charles Larivée, who according to Google is the president of the McGill Political Science Students Association.
I’m seeing these ads on TV for HD Vision Wraparound sunglasses, which are designed to allow people who wear prescription glasses to have the awesome HD technology that only HD Vision sunglasses can allow. Thankfully, their top scientists and fashion designers have come up with this new product that people can wear over their existing glasses that will not only make them look cool with their “modern European style,” but will also enhance people’s vision by bringing them to full 1080p high definition.
This is something I’ve been seeking for a long time. Much like watching Heroes on my 13-inch standard definition TV, I’ve become annoyed at having to watch the world in daylight with my tiny standard-definition eyes.
Thanks HD Vision.
Well, not exactly. The Journal’s union has a website. Hot off the success of union websites from such outlets ad the Journal de Québec, TQS and The Gazette, workers at the Journal de Montréal concerned about the possibility of a lockout have started their own website called Journal du Journal (cute).
Well, actually the archives suggest the site’s been up for more than a year, but it’s the first I’ve seen of it (which is its first problem), so let’s pretend it’s new.
Recently laid off as the tech columnist and tech blogger for TQS, Jean-Michel Vanasse showed up on TVA’s Salut bonjour week-end, where he’s their new resident web geek. But he’s also pulled a Dominic Arpin and started his own solo thing online. He’s started a new online-only weekly tech show at the aptly-named jeanmichelvanasse.tv, that focuses on gaming, tech news and popular videos online.
The show is presented in high definition, which seems kind of unnecessary for a tech show that takes half its clips from YouTube and the rest from a handicam mounted on a tripod in front of the host (at 1280×628, it’s too large to even fit my screen). Trying to watch the 13-minute, 52MB video on his website, my computer could manage only about a frame every two seconds, making it completely unwatchable. Only after plenty of hacking sleuthing could I uncover this standard-definition version. Note to Jean-Michel: at least give people the option.
Otherwise, the show is what you’d expect from a tech show: a guy talking about games and videos in front of a Matrix-like display of floating ones and zeroes.
The website is still sparse. One thing it badly needs is a list of links attached to each episode. I’d like to see that video of Darth Vader doing the Thriller dance, and it shouldn’t be difficult for me to find it. A blog couldn’t hurt either.
Otherwise, it’s a decent effort for a first show. The only question is whether it will attract an audience large enough to pay for itself.
The show comes out every Friday.