Look at the vast majority of today’s major labels music videos. They all feature cellphones in many of their scenes, scenes that are not really needed. Their logos are always clear too. Obviously, cellphone companies are the No1 sponsors of music videos today. It’s getting extremely irritating to view such blatant ads every 10 minutes on music TV channels.

To the artists: Fucking sell outs.

My favorite music channel on TV is Fuse. It is primarily about rock. Or used to be. Apparently, the new management now wants to add even more hip-hop/pop crap, movies and reality shows. Just like MTV did, that is. And look where that got MTV: very low ratings, way lower than they used to have 15 years ago when they turned their ship towards popularism.

JBQ was telling me a few months back how the Live 105 radio station in our Bay Area is one of the few remaining stations that play alternative rock. The scene is pretty much dead in New York for example. And I really don’t get that, because Alternative Rock is just so much catchier than most hip-hop songs out there (yes, it is). Indeed, looking at the charts, Staind’s new single “Believe” only made it to the #84 of the Billboard Hot 100, and consider that Staind are a huge name in the alternative rock scene!

The interesting thing is that most [white] people who browse online and are active youtubers/diggers and whatnot, are into alternative rock or hard rock. The same demographic that votes Obama that is. I guess we are not that many of us as I thought we were… Or it just happens that the same demographic are pirating more than others and so the alternative rock market got sterile.

On a semi-related note, the VJ of Fuse, Steven Smith, is hot.

While the NBC broadcast on Monday bombed for “Heroes”, the bittorrent version went well. However, I do expect that the bittorrent fans of “Heroes” to eventually also stop watching too.

The reason is “Heroes” itself. I can’t identify with it. It looks like a show about some people that I care nothing about. It’s spread too thin over some convoluted and repeated “change the future/don’t change the future” crap, and that’s just not serious.

I urge you to find for me two recurring characters apart from Claire’s adopting parents who DO NOT have a super power. Even Mohinder and Ando now have or destined to have super powers. This takes away a lot of the realism of the show, so much that it makes it irrelevant. It’s like the whole Earth is full of these special people, while it’s not the case in the “Heroes” universe.

And some more crap: Niki now has a new power, out of thin air? Peter last year lost his memory and this year is in another body? What an unlucky guy, isn’t he? And Hiro being stupid just for the sake of moving the plot forward? And why no one is staying dead in that series?

In my opinion, Heroes needs a complete reboot.

As you know, I put up an “HV20/30 Music Videos” group at Vimeo the other day. Today, I did an additional search on youtube for more such videos, that don’t appear on Vimeo and therefore can’t be added to the collection. So I will list them here instead:

- DJ Spider - “Tried By 12″
- Hannah Wolff Band - “Ghost of You”
- Southwind- “Malay Mo” (most of this director’s music videos used an HV20)
- Biv De Vera- “Hurting Inside”
- Gumshaw - “Gimme Your Love”
- Attila and the Huns - “Westboro”
- Peter Jones - “When The River Runs Dry”
- dEUS the architect - “Satisfaction Injection”
- A Tainted Image - “The Sea Of Grey”
- AndREA - “Disponible”
- Pluto One
- Kamal Supreme - “All she really wants is love”
and two-three more, found on Vimeo, but don’t allow inclusion on collections:
- The Screening - “Diem”
- The Screening - “10 Green Bottles”
for the rest I can’t find their URLs back.

This list will be updated every few months.

A beautiful song from Loquat, a local band. It’s the kind of music that I absolutely love. Download it for free, legally, from here. Their new album comes out this month.

L.A.P.D. That’s the name of a new TV comedy in Greece (L.A. here sarcastically means “lekanopedio Attikis” instead of Los Angeles, which is the name of the prefecture that Athens belongs to). This is just a trailer, but if it’s half as good as the trailer wants us to think, it might be the most well-done TV show that hits Greece since “Treis Harites” in the early ’90s. Given that I hate the Greek TV, it says much about this effort.

Some funny lines for those who don’t speak Greek:

[On 2′:07″ three cops pull guns at each other.]
Cop: “I am going to kill you!”
[A woman walks in, everyone starts looking innocently, while two of them hide their guns]
Cop [with his gun still visible]: “I am thinking of getting another gun, maybe one in silver color, what do you think?”

Mother: “…This reminds me of your late father”.
Son: “Mom, dad is still alive…”.

Cop (learning english): “you… are… sur… suruded… surrounded…”
Other cop: “Yes, dolby surrounded!”

Cheesy, sure, but better than what was there before in the Greek TV.

Update: Another series, drama this time, that seems to also be pretty rad. I am happy to see the MEGA Channel give money to filmmakers who can create new and interesting kinds of shows, rather than the shit Greeks have been watching for over 20 years now.

One of the ways to realize that this is a real push for something different in the Greek TV, is not just the plots/scripts of these new series, but the fact that all the actors are pretty much unknowns. This is obviously a grass root effort to REBOOT the Greek TV shows and gain back the youth audience (no under-30 person in his/her right mind watches the current shitty shows on TV). And the fact that both these series end up on the same network, Mega Channel, it means that someone at Mega has his fucking head still screwed on, and he has some decision power.

This is good, people.

According to the “Guinness World Records 2009″ book edition, “Lost” is now the most downloaded show of all time. Take that CSI:Miami, most watched show on TV worldwide, that you only get 60+ year old viewers who can’t get bothered to change the channel.

This just shows what kind of people watch “Lost”. Not boring, unintelligent, people that is.

PINK the series, season 2 started a few days ago. Good stuff from Blake:

Also, don’t miss these two Tom Cruise impersonations, they are amazing! Down to the voice!

Second part here.

If you are a cinematography enthusiast, then you should definitely buy the Blu-Ray disc of “The Fall“. It’s shot with a Velvia-like film, and it looks fantastic. The director of photography did an amazing job, and if that’s not all, the movie and story-telling itself is something.

A good editorial by SyFy Portal’s Wayne Hall about the future of sci-fi on TV (and apparently movies, as this year there was not a single one space-oriented major movie). Some excerpts:

“…the future of science-fiction on television is “Eureka,” not “Battlestar Galactica.” As costs to produce expensive shows like BSG continue to escalate, we’ll see more and more Earth-based shows like “Eureka,” […] ” The question is, is it science-fiction?” […] “But if every episode worries about how they are going to pay their bills and survive action-oriented plots, is that any different from a cop or mystery show?”

Worth a read.

Tonight, the most hyped show of the new season aired on FOX: “Fringe“. Its pilot is the second most expensive TV pilot ever that cost $10 million (”Lost” is first with well over $10 million). “Fringe” is primarily a detective story with parapsychology and sci-fi elements, and a background story arc. It is, as you have heard, similar to “X-Files” in many ways.

Unfortunately, the good things end here. I felt almost no connection with the main character, as except knowing who her lover was, we know or feel nothing for her. Then, the whole story felt out of place. From one side you have some X-Files-like science that is acceptable (as it’s part of what you expect on a series like this), and from the other one you are shown a Terminator-like robotic arm — a robotic arm that’s not questioned by the lead character when she sees it in front of her. If Scully was to see this robotic arm she would say “this is impossible, we don’t have the technology for this yet”. And yet, the lead character just looks at it, and then she just goes away like nothing happened. This scene in itself shows that the show is not taking itself seriously. It is not making the unbelievable “fringe science”, believable to us.

And then, finding some gross excuse to have the lead character take off her clothes, or the stupidity of having the FBI not be able to visit a mental hospital patient with a warrant. Both excuses are shallow, and especially the second one, that serves as a plot device, is underestimating our intelligence.

All in all, “Fringe” is an expensive production, it feels bad ass at first look, but it doesn’t leave you with a feeling of wanting to shout: “Awesome!”.

What bothers me even more is that JJ Abrams is pulling this like he did on some of his other series too: he writes the pilot and the main story of the series, and then he doesn’t bother again with it. That’s ok with me, but I hate it when I hear “JJ Abrams’ Fringe” or even worse, “JJ Abrams’ Lost”, when he hasn’t written a word of script after the initial 3-4 episodes. JJ seems to me like this mythological creature that’s here to “bless” a film project (for a hefty fee, of course) and then hop to the next one. Like a priest. Or Tinkerbell.

In all honesty, “Fringe” is not bad. It’s just an expensive TV series and it looks like one. But it’s also not great. It’s a very average series, made (possibly) for less intelligent people (e.g. FOX executives). If I was a FOX share holder I would feel ripped off. It definitely is no “Lost”, and it won’t enjoy not even the moderate success of “Heroes”, let alone “Lost”’s first season mania.

JJ Abrams is overrated.

The Duran Duran were my favorite band in the ’80s — no need to mention that I, as most of my friends at the time, also wanted to marry bassist John Taylor when I would grow up. “Save a prayer“, and “Come undone” were always my favorite tracks, but I never realized, until tonight when I saw them performing it on TV at “live at Webley 2004″, how good “The Chauffeur” really is. A very little known gem. Even the Deftones did a rock cover of it apparently.

I am not into MMOs, but this game really sounds exciting. “Eve Online” is a space saga, and in all accounts, a 3D online re-implementation of the classic “Elite“.

It’s not only its theme that I like, but from what I read online it’s the MMO for “smart people”. Where all the “normal” people might play Everquest or WoW, this one is meant for players who can handle complex situations.

It would be great the day where an MMO could offer a pretty complex infrastructure in space, not just traders and pirates like in Eve, but a place where government officials, police, doctors, and a multitude of judges (voted on/off by the players) are all played by real gamers. In other words, try to create a realistic world, within that mostly-trader space game. That, ad-hock additions, and user-created plugins that allow creation of objects shouldn’t be too far away.

A few new TV shows start this season, some of them might turn to be interesting as it seems to be a trend to have a sci-fi/fantasy elements in them, although they certainly are rehashes of older ideas we’ve seen before:

* Crusoe. A guy shipwrecked on a tropical island tries to make it back home.
* Eleventh Hour. A tech/science-type detective. Obviously a crime drama geared towards geeks.
* Fringe. An X-Files/Alias type of paranormal drama. Might make it big, might not.
* Kings. The biblical story about David, but set in our time and world.
* Knight Rider. This one is going to suck, just like its preview movie did.
* Life on Mars. Yet another detective drama, but this one has some time travel elements. Remake of a BBC drama.
* The Mentalist. Another detective story. Between “Psyche” and “Life” last year, we’ve seen it all before.
* My Own Worst Enemy. Multiple-personalities spy thriller.
* Dollhouse. Multiple-personalities spy thriller. You read that right.