58 posts tagged “2007”

For our American friends who might not know what Chris Tarrant looks or sounds like in the 21st century, ITV (presumably, as the eventual successor to ATV and Carlton) did a Tiswas reunion special a few years ago. I found this part on YouTube, and it includes a very politically incorrect rant against the French by Michael Palin toward the end.

I have blogged about this before, but didn’t post a clip. And it makes me wonder why the Brits need to remake Outrageous Fortune. Is the Kiwi accent that hard to understand?
   Don’t answer that.
   But this show is so West Auckland you couldn’t even remake it in Wellington.

Does Death at a Funeral (with Matthew Macfadyen and Keeley Hawes) seriously need an American remake? Hollywood says yes.

   I can understand why some things need to be remade, but surely the original crosses the Atlantic rather well? I realize it has an English director, but he was Miss Piggy for years and has directed plenty of US films.

I have to admit I did get stumped once when watching Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? when the question was on the different levels of sky, something I never learned about at school. And when I learned that the kids on the show swotted up prior, I lost interest in it: if I swotted, I could beat their sorry asses.
   But every now and then, I impress myself. I knew when Herbert Hoover was the US president, for example, and the contestant didn’t (nor did the kid). Occasionally it’s not hard to impress yourself, when you have contestants like these (found on Snowy’s blog):

I never realized that these two characters were played by the same actor—and I have extra admiration for him as a result. I’d seen a few of Ralph Brown’s work of late but never know I was watching the same actor in some of his earlier works.
   First, DCI Frank Morgan from Life on Mars:

I had been under the impression that Red Chinese automaker BYD was a Toyota licensee, though in Autocade I stopped short of making this assertion since I had no proof of it. I did think it was odd that BYD has Mitsubishi-derived engines. It turns out there is no connection, but when you see things like the below you have to wonder.
   Two years ago, BYD issued this photograph of its upcoming model, the F1. It since renamed the car the F0, because it claimed it didn’t to get into a legal dispute with the Formula 1 people.

   Look familiar? While BYD might not want legal trouble with F1, it doesn’t seem to mind legal trouble with Toyota. Here’s a publicity photograph for the Toyota Aygo:    BYD’s general manager, Xia Zhibing, has been quoted as saying, ‘The BYD F1 is a model developed by ourselves and we hold the intellectual property right for it.’
   I guess there’s no shame at BYD, and that the ideals of truthfulness in Confucianism haven’t made a return to parts of Red China.
   Come on, Mr Xia, the only contribution BYD has made to the 2007 photo is in Adobe Photoshop! If you are going to lie about it, don’t make it so obvious by using someone else’s publicity pic first! At least use CAD to generate something new!
   Or this could be some form of getting war reparations from Japan, but that Toyota hasn’t been informed.
   And this is the company that Warren Buffett has put money in to. Somehow I think that if any BYD cars ever make it to the US as Mr Buffett intends, Toyota’s going slap a big court order on them, and not a single one will make it on to the market.
   If you look at the F3 and F6, BYD’s larger models, the doors look identical to those of the Toyota Corolla E120 and Toyota Camry XV30, but the front- and rear-end styling has been modified to resemble some of Honda’s work. I understand the dimensions are slightly different but that an expert should be able to prove objective similarity in the shapes of the doors—or enough to stop BYDs from going on sale in many markets.
   The F3 hybrid, the world’s first plug-in car, beating Chevrolet with its Volt, might have an innovative powertrain, but what is the likelihood that has come from somewhere else?
   BYD shows how out of touch parts of Red Chinese commerce is with, well, honesty and decency. I’m happy to deal with mainland Chinese firms, but only those that I am connected to by blood or referred to by family—and governments should not be signing things like free-trade agreements with the Politburo in Beijing till some of these intellectual property issues can be sorted out.
   New Zealand, of course, is a trifle too naïve, with its free-trade agreement.

I still think Monica Zetterlund is unbeatable but as far as covers go, Charlotte Perrelli does a good job of the hit ‘Gröna små äpplen’—this is a 2007 video.

Disgracefully, I don’t think Last of the Summer Wine airs in New Zealand any more, at least not on terrestrial TV. (The last series aired here was the first one without Bill Owen, from memory.) Someone has uploaded some episodes on to YouTube which I had not seen before—it was lovely seeing it again. I knew Burt Kwouk from the early James Bond (Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice) and Pink Panther films had joined the cast but didn’t know Brian Murphy (Man about the House, George and Mildred) had.
   And for those who think the British have short TV series, this is the world’s longest running sitcom. The following is a 2007, 28th “season” episode. For the youngsters, Peter Sallis is the voice of Wallace in Wallace & Gromit and, in my mind, irreplaceable.
   Roy Clarke, who I believe has written all the episodes, has no end of ideas. They are as funny now as they were 10 and 20 years ago.

   I understand this is HM the Queen’s favourite TV show.

As I am in a Little Britain and Minder mood:

   Any Kiwis remember Dennis coming down to New Zealand for Telethon and filming a Ford commercial in the process? He drives up in a Capri and sings ‘I Can Be So Good for You’ with lyrics to suit the dealers. The middle bit seemed to go, ‘He’s got cars, he’s got wagons / Trucks and tractors, too,’ replacing, ‘Don’t ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies’.
   By the looks of the above video from YouTube, Dennis has still got it when it comes to voice.