Advertising

Posted on 26 August 2019 by pws

Maybe it’s just me, but one thing that really gets my goat is advertising. It seems to be taking over the world.

I know that the time per hour allowed for adverts on tv has increased over the years, to something like 20 minutes per hour. If you just zap through the channels, it does seem like it’s all adverts. It isn’t, of course, but it seems that way.

I used to play Words With Friends (= on-line Scrabble). It was quite fun, but got to the point where every move generated a full minute’s advert. You either sat through it all, or quit the app and started again. I gave up and stopped playing.

Facebook got worse. The adverts seemed to be covering the screen and were not relevant to me. Had they been, I would particularly avoid the companies advertising. Twitter is going down the same road.

I remember when you could get movies on tape or dvd and there was 5 or 10 minutes of advertising at the start. Disney were particularly bad. You could wind through tape, but the dvd menu system could be disabled to you were stuck with it (more or less). This seemed to have gone away, but is definitely coming back now.

Continue reading →
Posted in Communication, Culture | Leave a comment

Richard Williams

Posted on 19 August 2019 by pws

The death was announced last week of one of my cinema heroes, Richard Williams.

Williams was born in Canada but lived and worked nearly all his life in the UK. He used to have his headquarters in Soho Square in London. Am not sure if it is still there.

You will know Mr Williams’ work. He has produced some very famous animation over the years, including Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and credits for many feature films, including some Pink Panthers and The Charge of the Light Brigade.

I have seen Mr W several times at the NFT in conversation about his work. The last time wa maybe a year or so ago. He was there to show his big project, an animated full length film variously called The Thief, The Thief and the Cobbler, The Princess and the Cobbler…

This is/was a kind of Arabian Nights type story, and has one of the most longwinded and troubled production histories of any film. You can read all about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thief_and_the_Cobbler

The chances of a final, definitive version appearing seem slight.

Posted in Films, News | Comments Off on Richard Williams

Thunderbirds

Posted on 12 August 2019 by pws

I always loved the original Thunderbirds. It was great tv for its time. But, I have always had questions:

  • why were the launch procedures of the craft so complicated?
  • why did the Tracy brothers nearly always wear the same clothes?
  • what had John done that was so bad that he was almost always banished to the space station?
  • why did John wear his uniform at all times when he lived alone?
  • what did John do for fun?
  • how come no-one could detect T5 in orbit?
  • why weren’t IR working all the time? Surely people are in danger at all times, day and night?
  • although IR said no photographs, we have to be anonymous, plenty of people knew their names and their link to Lady Penelope…
  • how did the craft fly? When they were coming in to land, they seemed to hover with no engines burning. Then they fired downwards and this made them go downwards. Then they stopped firing jets, and settled gently to the ground, rather than falling like stones. How is this even possible?
  • why are T2’s wings on backwards?
  • how did The Hood get his name? Who does he work for?
Posted in Television, Thunderbirds | Leave a comment