14 posts tagged “press”

This is as disturbing as when I began to see American publications capitalize after colons in 2001 (which is generally incorrect, according to US publishing professionals I asked, though there are exceptions; it is certainly incorrect in English).
   Carbon dioxide is written out in full or with CO, followed by a subscript 2. Technically, it is incorrect to write CO2. Normally in modern typesetting, if we do not have a subscript font, we would use the superior two (²) and move it down a few points. However, surfing today, I noticed a very disturbing C02 (C-zero-two) at both Reuter and the Los Angeles Times.
   I have no idea how this came about. There is no zero in carbon dioxide. This is as bad as those weather pages that insist that the temperature is measured in coulombs (C) and not degrees Celsius (°C).

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Normally I can work out what’s being said but since I don’t know the first thing about Devangari, anyone like to enlighten me?

TV Scoop has some hints about the next series of Ashes to Ashes, to début February 2009 on BBC One: ‘We’ve just handed in episode one. It’s set in 1982, so the Falklands have just happened. We’re taking it slightly darker this time …’ Read the rest of the quotation from co-creator Ashley Pharoah at TV Scoop. This does mean the VO at the beginning of the show has to change, as Keeley Hawes currently makes a reference to 1981.
   Whatever the case, it’s going far more smoothly than the US Life on Mars—which the Los Angeles Times reported on back in early June (and this blog followed on June 5). The British press only caught up with the news this past week but it did reveal one extra tidbit that we didn’t already know: Matthew Graham said in The Guardian, ‘At the time we thought [US pilot writer and executive producer David E. Kelley] took what we said on board, but I don’t think he did in the end. I think they should go further away from us; otherwise the danger is you look like an imitation.’

A lot of people call George W. Bush a dumbass, because they say he is ignorant about foreign policy and the names of leaders.
   Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is smart and experienced, even if she has memory and “misspeaking” problems caused by sleep deprivation.
   Here’s the latest one that made the front page here in Wellington, New Zealand, in the Australian-owned Dominion Post newspaper. Sen. Clinton called Helen Clark the ‘former prime minister of New Zealand’ even though she’s still in office.
   If she gets in, Americans are still going to get comments about a dumbass, ignorant president from us. So much for restoring America’s international prestige—when she makes mistakes like this.
   No doubt it was caused by sleep deprivation again.
   If you can read the article, the latest Clinton “misstatement” managed to remind the New Zealand press about her gaffe that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, something later revealed to be complete fiction. The Bosnian sniper-fire incident is also in there.
   She’ll say anything, it seems—and in my book, that’s not presidential. The anti-Bush types say that if the world could have voted a US president, he would not have got in. It seems that if New Zealanders could vote in anyone into the White House from here, Hillary Clinton doesn’t look like our pick.

Harry Mount’s column in The Daily Telegraph was a great laugh:

I once saw [Heather Mills] walking down Fifth Avenue in New York and was staggered by the height of her cheekbones and the depth of the groove beneath them.
   But when she opens her mouth—and keeps it open for 11 minutes, as she did outside the High Court—the spell is broken. You forget the cheekbones and drown in the ocean of self-pity pouring out of that pretty mouth.
   During the French state visit, clever Carla Bruni rarely broke the spell by talking. She realised, like the old pro supermodel she is, that all she has to do is look good and say nothing. …
   The real difference between them, though, is in what they say—or don’t say. The answer for Heather Mills in future is to do what John Galliano did with Carla Bruni's cinched Dior outfit—belt up.

   Thinking that was all that Mr Mount had to offer, I was pleasantly surprised by the final segment in his column:

A new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry claims that mobile phone addiction is a mental illness.
   I’m afraid the illness is incurable; it’s related to an addiction that's been around for ever—the addiction to self.
   People aren’t addicted to the phones themselves. They’re addicted to the attention they get from other people via their phones. Obsessive phoners send texts purely in the hope that they’ll get one back. They don’t ring people from the train to find anything out; only to get other people to listen to them saying nothing of any importance. Why is it that the person on the train is always doing the talking, and never the listening?

   I knew there was a reason I didn’t use cellphones.

From France 2, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy got a much better reception in the UK than in France. A nice summary of the very packed two days for the Sarkozys, with an emphasis on the First Lady. The kiss in the segment is a nice, romantic finalé to the piece.

If you thought the story of Amir Massoud Tofangsazan was embarrassing, what if something similar happened to a celebrity?
   Over the last few weeks, the Edison Chen scandal has rocked Hong Kong and even affected the Beijing Olympics.
   Chen, a Canadian-born actor about to make a big US début—already he’s a Pepsi spokesman in Hong Kong—took in his laptop for repair but forgot to take down his home-made porn, which includes 12 female celebrities.
   Just as with Laptop Guy (Thomas Sawyer) in the UK with Amir’s photos in 2006, someone at the computer shop decided they would post the 1,200-plus images and videos on to the ’net.
   If we think the Britney Spears Machine is bad, Hong Kong tabloids make that look like a old world gentlemen’s club.
   PC World offers this analogy: ‘Imagine photos of, say, Matthew McConaughey popping up on the Internet, showing him in various states of undress and sexual acts with, say, Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson and Kirsten Dunst.’
   One of the celebs implicated is Gillian Chung, who was supposedly going to perform at the Olympics. Not any more. Prior to this month she had a wholesome image—now she may be more associated with performing and receiving oral sex. (The logical thing now would be to revamp her image as Madonna does regularly, but whether that will go down well in the innocent Cantopop world is another matter.)
   Batgwa summarizes the other celebs:

The biggest female stars implicated were Gillian Chung (鍾欣桐) and Cecilia Cheung (張栢芝).
   Other less well known female celebrities were implicated too, including Bobo Chan (陳文媛), Rachel Ngan (顏穎思), Mandy Chen (陳育嬬), Candice Chan (陳思慧) and Edison’s current girlfriend Vincy Yeung (楊永晴).

   Chen has basically announced, at 27, his retirement from the Hong Kong scene. He might have to: some of the celebs may have Triad connections (there is some gang involvement in Hong Kong moviemaking) and he’s received death threats.
   Cops have arrested nine people so far in connection with the unlawful distribution of the images.
   While Chen is no saint, he deserved his privacy. The poster has essentially brought down the careers of several people. I suppose this is a reminder that when you are in the public eye, you need to take precautions. Putting your own porn on to a disc or a flash drive would be an idea—or simply be a role model and being less promiscuous in relationships and never fear these leaks.
   We may criticize Chen for his behaviour and we certainly should criticize the breach of trust from the shop, but the problem is wider. We need to ask ourselves just where our values are—and the way the Chinese people have reacted shows that they have not fled the free and occupied parts of China.

Another Ashes to Ashes clip is up, thanks to The Daily Telegraph.
   DI Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) arrives at the Met’s office and tries to access files on Gene Hunt’s PC. She knows what’s going on because she’s listened to Sam Tyler’s tape in the wake of what happened to him in 2007. She realizes the mind will fashion conduits back to the real world and reaches for a ringing telephone …

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/ttv/lifestyle.jhtml?bcpid=1365140359&bclid=1363192395&bctid=1390827201

   Articles on the series appear in both The Times and the Telegraph. Since Vox won’t let me link these words for some reason (it is really buggy these days), here they are separately:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article3241252.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/01/26/sm_ashestoashes126.xml

   Can you tell I’m looking forward to the new series?

There has been some more press about Ashes to Ashes and here’s how the première might be shaping up.

• DI Alex Drake is shot in the head before going to 1981. She needed that like a hole in the head. She has a daughter who remains in the present day.
• She has read Sam Tyler’s files so she has more awareness of what is going on than he did.
• The action takes place in London, not Manchester, providing for a bit of north–south conflict.
• In This Is Scotland: the sexist Gene Hunt and Alex Drake have a bit of romance (as many of us knew—Ian Wylie confirms it’s like Moonlighting, which was what the BBC said). The première episode sees Alex undercover as a prostitute to bust a drugs’ ring when she arrives in July 1981. Philip also does not say that Gene will be killed off, which is what the Murdoch Press has reported—just that he does not think that Gene should go beyond the 1980s, nor would he look good in a trilby.
• Montserrat Lombard plays WPC Shaz Granger, who has a crush on Chris (Marshall Lancaster).
• The makers know that the right-hand-drive Audi Quattro was not available in 1981.
• Steve Strange cameos.
• From The Daily Telegraph: the first day’s filming consists of Gene and Alex nicking a villain in 1981—but he’s also her nemesis in 2008. Sean Harris playes Arthur Layton. Presumably this is for the first episode.
• A speedboat rescue scene comes at the end of the episode. This is filmed at the Royal Docks but it’s to double for the area around Tower Bridge, which will be CGIed in later.
• A story arc (according to the Murdoch Press) is the Scarman Report, which was being compiled in 1981. Geoffrey Palmer (not the former New Zealand prime minister!) plays Lord Scarman.

I really need our UK correspondents to extend their reach into TV so they can get to these premières.

These are some photos from Taiwan, some taken for a friend to whom I promised I would send oddball pics. Let’s begin:

   Jiji is the end of the line if you’re heading south from Taipei, and this is the local freak show. There is a Gremlin (not AMC, but Spielberg) and a caged pig outside. I didn’t go in: the signage was too off-putting. But it stands true that small country towns have some weird things.    Taichung is the second largest city in Taiwan. This isn’t the best pic, but since I was staying in the tallest building in town, the Hotel One, I had to attempt to shoot something from a high floor. Embarrassing admission: I forgot my room number and had to go to reception to ask. The floors all looked the same, but boy was this a good hotel. The ergonomic seats are the best I encountered on my trip.    I didn’t spend much time in Nantou and only had lunch there. Across from the restaurant was this strange furniture store logo. Look closely: it’s a guy with his pants pulled down. No, there is no particular significance to this in Chinese.    I expected to meet some aboriginal Taiwanese in Alishan but didn’t. However, I did see some of their art. This giant wiener is supposedly a guardian against evil female spirits, or so the tale went. Now we all knew what 48 inches looked like.    The chap in the middle was a wonderful man who served us love jade fruit. His aim wasn’t to get tourists: he wanted to make friends, and just hosts strange foreigners like me (and some of the journos who were with me here) now that he’s retired. This was in the Alishan mountains, where the local tourism department really went all out for us and had a photographer follow us around.    While atop the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101, I snapped this. Obviously, I wasn’t totally atop if there were a few floors to go. This was from the observation deck—the outside one where clouds literally came at you (no exaggeration at all) and the winds were like, well, Wellington. The winds felt like 50 mph up there and I was worried that it would blow the things out of my pockets.
   What is it with November? Last year I was up the Tour Eiffel, this year it’s 101.    If you’re an overseas Chinese, you would probably feel a bit patriotic seeing this sculpture by Ju Ming of a KMT soldier in World War II garb. The Juming Museum is an outdoor museum that hosts works primarily by Ju Ming, but features other artists as well. Ju Ming seems to have a bit of a fixation on the military and some of his soldiers held sculpted Chinese flags.    Finally, what is a trip to Taiwan if you don’t get to check out the high-tech stuff? The computer-geek district has plenty on offer, including DVDs, but I found the prices of the gear on a par with New Zealand. You can even find old American films with Jimmy Stewart, but if you are after some classic Hong Kong flicks, then think again. I picked up one DVD here (Rob-B-Hood, with Jackie Chan) for a very low price and no, it wasn’t pirated.