TV Tasty is outraged

TV Tasty KnowsIt is with much soul searching that TV Tasty Knows will not present Part 2 of TV Quiz Shows as intimated last week.
"What", you may ask, "could prompt this departure?" "What, pray tell," I hear you ask annoyingly again, "has appeared in the sights of the metaphoric telescope which has been diligently scanning the TV landscape by TV Tasty Knows?"
Well my immediate response is to say that the expression "pray tell" is pretentious, superfluous, and underused (mostly for the previous two reasons). And furthermore, any use of "metaphoric telescope" is passable - but only just.
More importantly though than these distractions, is a serious aberration which occurred in TV tasting land and TV Tasty Knows.
A golden rule has been broken namely: "If a travel show segment involves snorkeling or similar underwater activity, it shall exclusively be undertaken by the female host/s of that show, including but not limited to, a wide descent shot, with body arch." (The inclusion was an amendment passed in 2002).
This rule, one of many in TV production land, was broken on Monday night, when Cameron "suck-in-that-tum" Daddo was seen resplendent in budgie smugglers and toppling into some azure sea and then struggling down to admire the vegetation / fish / picturesque wreck beneath. Yes, I nearly brought up the days takings as they say, but it was the shock as well as the sight itself. TV Tasty is a Cameron fan (easily the best presenter of the 26 Daddo brothers) but this sort of willy-nilly disregard for long established TV statutes is just plain wrong.
I will return to TV Quiz Shows Part 2 and your correspondence next week where, as they say, "We will return you to normal programming shortly."

TV Tasty Knows Pick of the Week
Dip into "Absolute Power" (Wed ABC 9P)

Shallow week

Shallow Hal (Fri 7 830P) is a Farrelly brothers rom. com. (There’s Something About Mary, Stuck On You) which probably tells you everything you need to know. An impossibly large Gwyneth Paltrow, an un-PC Jack Black, a main-star’s-best-friend Jason Alexander and a nice cameo from TV positive-power Tony Robbins makes this an acceptable date movie of the week.
Shaft (Fri 7 11P) starring Samuel L Jackson and Vanessa Williams. When are they going to show the 1971 original instead of this poor imitation ?
What does this tell you about Saturday nights these days : High School Musical (7 630P), Grease (7 830P), Prince Charming (9 730P) ? As none of us fit the gender or the target age range we can happily leave well enough alone. As to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (7 1045P), it’s a cult classic and to maintain an informed movie perspective then you should watch it at least once but its not a good movie. Tim Curry hams it up the most, almost as much as Michael Keaton in Tim Burton’s Beetle Juice (9 930P).
Pen Cruz’s decision to come to America to make it rich has worked a treat but it is turns like Woman On Top (Sun 7 11P) that make you wish she hadn’t. Her resume up to that point was a very fine collection of films in her native Spanish too. As a side note, isn’t it interesting that films have to justify why their main actor have a non-American accent. In this film, they show PC being tossed out of her Brazilian home has her raison d’etre for coming to America. In the past, Australian actors have had to include some passing comment in their films as to how they “studied in Australia” or “their mother was from Sydney” or whatever.

Aussie Aussie Aussie - a footballing rant of regret

I won’t deny that I’m still hurting from the Australia v Italy World Cup knock out game played on Tuesday morning. After I woke up the second time (at 7A to go to work) my wife said, “Well, its only a game.” I replied that in twelve months time it will “only be a game.” Right now I only have murderous and violent thoughts. “We wuz robbed I tells ya.”
(Many thanks to "Rosie the Beautiful" for the picture)
Penalty or no, the truth is Australia should have converted before the 90 minute mark and won the game off their own boot. They were however unable to penetrate a very resolute Italian defence despite controlling play for long periods of time (and having a numerical advantage for most of the second half).
What hurts is that the Italians did not deserve to win either. They displayed a very great unwillingness to try and the wrest the game from the Australians and played a very defensive and negative game plan. To then “steal” a victory with 10 seconds left on the clock through no skill of their own making is shocking.
It is here though that the randomness of the football gods (conspiracy theories aside) demonstrate their fickle natures with neither fear nor favour. The old world footballing nations such as Italy know their gods and know that such things happen in football. It happened to them in South Korea four years ago and this week was payback (again, conspiracy theories aside!).
Australia’s own sense of destiny regarding this World Cup appears to have lodged naively in the public’s consciousness that there was no telling what the Socceroos could accomplish. South Korea made it the final four, four years ago, why not us ? To be shunned so callously has left us hurt and bruised. We will be stronger for the experience however. We have now progressed through adolescence and look forward to young adulthood with optimism – our whole life is ahead of us and anything is possible.
Hiddink has showed us that to play attacking, positive football is appealing to watch and allows a team to create its own luck. This is contrasted with the likes of the old guard who, quite frankly, have been unimpressive in this tournament, albeit that some of them are still alive to talk about it : Netherlands (eliminated), Italy, England to name but three.
This kind of negative thinking meant that all of Australia’s opponents in the group stage and the Netherlands before them underestimated their opponent by dropping back into defensive mode after scoring the first goal. This came unstuck for three of them as Australia either won or drew the game.
The exception of course is Brazil who were still warming up when they defeated the Aussies 2-0 in Munich. Here is a team that attacks positively but defends resolutely. To watch them against a “what have we got to lose?” Ghana on Wednesday morning was to see all of their class and poise. They’re five time world champions so we know they’re good. Let us hope that the Socceroos’s emulate this team of the beautiful game and build from strength to strength and put the disappointment of Kaiserlautern behind them.
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The World Cup takes a breather for a couple of days with the quarter finals this Saturday and Sunday mornings : Germany v Argentina and Italy v Ukraine in one half and England v Portugal and Brazil v France in the other. The semi-finals are Wednesday and Thursday mornings next week.

Tasty TV - Quiz Shows

Quiz shows (Part 1)
(n.) The perennial plant of the TV garden.
Currently dear viewers there are a narrow, but generally high level of quality quiz shows to service our trivial needs.
The king, without doubt, is Sale of the Century (M-F 9 7P) (I know its "Temptation" but who is kidding whom?). TV Tasty still turns on Sale occasionally to fill the 7pm gap and if you can grit your teeth as needed for Ed on occasion, it's still a fine bit of TV crumpet for what it is. And if you're like TV Tasty (well I guess you can dream) you have the nights where you run red hot and think "I should go on this show! Where did I put Skinny Nixon's number? Perhaps John So can text it to me"; and then you have the nights when you think, "Have I developed Alzheimer's?"; and THEN you have the worst nights when you realise, "I am being given a trivia pasting by my Significant Other".
I draw our attention this week however to a newer set of Quiz shows. I speak of the "Einstein Factor" (Sun 2 630P), "Rock Kwiz" and "Spicks and Specks" (Wed 2 830P). TV Tasty says make sure you have a look at any of these three that you haven't yet sampled. There could be a quiz on it next week.

TV Tasty Knows Pick of the Week:
Clearing a swathe through most of the sad offerings, I draw your attention to "West Wing" (Thur 2 830P).
Yes, it is a sugary sweet idealistic soap on one level with dialogue that would never actually happen, let alone in an office or the White House where everyone shares the same brand of dry humour. On another level though it offers some decent brain food, well drawn characters, hypothetical situations that are involving, production values as lush as you'd find and the drama unfolding like a warm blanket. The repeats currently being shown on the ABC are without ad breaks and the 1.5 hours uninterrupted really does justice to the writing, acting and very snappy dialogue. If you can shout yourself the time, you will be rewarded.

Capt'n Jack

Possibly one of the better decisions for fans of either Peter Jackson or King Kong, was the release of Mighty Joe Young (Fri 7 midday) in 1998. Because of this simian release, Jackson’s remake of Kong was shelved and he focussed his attention on Lord of the Rings. The rest as they say is history. Without anywhere near the resources or the profile, let alone the technology, the younger Jackson would not have been able to accomplish the epic he did last year. Mighty Joe Young stars Charlize Theron (a good reason) and Bill Paxton (I would rather sit through a Sally Field-fest) which may be reasons to watch and not watch accordingly.
Roxanne (Sat 10 3P) and Mystery Alaska (Sun 7 1120P) are fun enough, not very recent comedies. The first stars Steve Martin as the rhinitically challenged Cyrano and the second, our Rusty as the ice hockey champ turned chump taking on the New York Rangers.
For all daughters out there, Barbie’s latest animated creation, Barbie Fairytopia – Mermaidia (Sun 7 145P) is a must watch and must tape. Great fun for girls with good songs and exciting stories.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Sun 7 830P) likewise stars Rusty (but don’t hold that against it) in a role that suits him : rugged, physical and as a leader of men who follow him because he appeals with his heart and inspires with his mind. Australian Peter Weir is director and Russell Boyd the cinematographer who won an Oscar for his efforts. Yes it’s a rip roaring sea-faring adventure but where the film adds value for mine is the mateship exhibited between Crowe’s Captain Aubrey and Paul Bettany’s Dr Maturin.

Sabotage review

Sabotage, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s earlier movies before his trip across the Atlantic to America to make his more famous explorations into mystery, fear and guilt (such as Psycho, North By Northwest, Dial M for Murder and Rear Window) is a shocking movie by today’s standards. Made in 1936, it is possibly more shocking and appalling in its real life application now than could ever have been conceived at the height of the depression.
A disaffected and struggling cinema operator, Karl Verloc (played by Oskar Homolka), with the promise of fiscal reward, cuts out the power grid in London’s central district. Instead of terrorising the populace however the townsfolk treat it is a lark and enjoy the novelty of lighting candles while they wait for the power to come back on.
The international terrorist group that is supplying Verloc with his orders arrange a more daring mission that will ensure that no one laughs at their expense. It is here that the terror becomes real. With a build up that only Hitchcock and few others can match, we see Verloc’s teenage brother-in-law carry a package on a bus that has inside it a ticking bomb, set to go off at 1:45 PM. The boy, unaware of what is in his package, is held up enroute and fails to deliver it at the appointed place. The boy, the bus and all other passengers are blown to pieces in a devastating explosion. In this post 9-11 world such events like this are all too seared in our consciousness and to try and dissociate such violence on screen is nearly impossible.
While shocking and violent acts on screen are a regular part of a staple movie diet, they almost universally are unreal to our life experience and while grotesque, retain an element of fantasy. I do not fancy that many vets from world war 2 for example would view Saving Private Ryan with quite the same fantasy that I do.
Verloc’s wife (played by Sylvia Sidney), the boy’s brother, upon learning of his death is struck dumb. She does not speak for at least 5 minutes of screen time. Her stunned look conveys anger, sorrow, confusion, disgust and revenge. Verloc stands just as dumbly before her trying to convince her that he had no choice but to send the boy on what was his errand. He seems all to willing to try and forget the matter. This is a typical Hitchcock set-play where he explores the guilt of one of his characters.
In the second shocking denouement Mrs Verloc takes up the carving knife and stabs her husband. He dies but she is now guilty of his murder. The police, who have been trailing him for some time, have not had a chance to prove his guilt.
In a clever Hitchcock sleight of hand, another bomb explodes in the room where the body of Mr Verloc lies (this time killing only one more, one of the “baddies”) thereby absolving Mrs Verloc from prosecution.
Terrifying in a way that Hitchcock could never have envisaged, Sabotage is a well constructed mystery, full of engaging performances by both the main characters and the background city folk and directed by a man coming to the top of his game.

Royal week

At First Sight (Fri 7 12noon) I doubt that this midday drama is especially worthwhile, usually the domain of B-grade tearies (this one has Val Kilmer playing a blind masseur named Virgil) however if Mira Sorvino is your idea of a good time then put in a tape. I can’t give you any more of a hint than that. Either that or Carla Gugino in She Creature (Sat 9 1230A).
The Poseidon Adventure (Fri 7 11P) More pulp but if you had intended on seeing the remake in the cinema (Rutger Hauer and Adam Baldwin) then you might like to see what you’re letting yourself in for (and saving the price of admission in the process I’ll warrant). Stars Gene Hackman as a priest and Leslie Nielson as ship’s captain (no, this is not a joke).
The Royal Tenenbaums (Sun 7 1115P) is Wes Anderson’s third feature and while I don’t think it hits the high notes with the same consistency as his fourth feature (Life Aquatic) it mixes his trademark “dead pan humour and nonplussed irony [with] genuine pathos.” Using some of his favourite actors, Bill Murray, Angelica Huston, the Owen brothers (Luke and Owen) along with other class stayers, Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Stiller, this is an ensemble cast worthy to note in a film that has a number of fans.
ABC / Hitchcock double act late on Sunday night : Sabotage (1230A) and The 39 Steps (140A). Both cinematic classics and both on my dating schedule with the VCR machine.
In the football (World Cup football of course … is there anything else at the mo. ?) sees Australia take on the mighty Brazil early Monday morning (2A kick-off). I had planned to put in a video tape and watch on a 3 hour delay when I woke up at 5 however Hitchcock may be too good to pass up and I might awaken at that ungodly hour and watch it live. Australia’s third group game is against Croatia at 5A the following Friday morning.
As the third group matches get underway (from Tuesday) you may note that four games are broadcast in succession. Two of them will be live (Australia’s is for example) and the other two will be shown on a two hour delay. This is because FIFA have scheduled the final two games from each group simultaneously to cut-down any likelihood of contrived results.

Jack's Back

Channel 7 are popular rant material (as are the Australian government) because of their ongoing selfish indifference to the wellbeing of the charges they have sworn to serve. Notwithstanding the excellent TV commentary (below), another feature which will appeal to the Good Lady Wife if no other, is the return of Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) in 24 next week (Wed & Thu 7 930P). An early comment I have read regarding this latest series of 24, series 5, is that it is a rehash of series’ 1 to 4 and doesn’t offer anything very new. It seems you just can’t keep a good man down though.
Meanwhile, back at the rant, Channel 7 have decided in their great programming wisdom to fatigue their viewers with two double screenings on sequential nights. Now that just beggars belief. Do they believe that 24 episodes is just to much (stretched over 24 weeks) or doesn’t fit into their ratings periods – couldn’t they have started sooner ?
Or do they believe that regular viewers are just so desperate to find out what happens next that they can’t wait an ordinary week like every other TV drama ? I find that hard to believe. If any punter is bursting with that much energy he should a) go for a run b) get on-line and order it from the US c) go for a run on a Malaysian beach and then purchase a ripped off copy from a street vendor for a whole lot less than US RRP.
Who has two hours, two nights in a row, to watch something that you might otherwise commit to over a season ? Isn’t there a greater chance that viewers who can’t hack the gruelling pace set up ch.7 give up thereby defeating the channel’s purpose of engaging more viewers ? I don’t doubt that there will be special “encore” (read : “repeat”) screenings tucked in over the following weekend to give those who missed a chance to catch up but me thinks they overestimate their capacity to entertain. The first, much hyped season of a series ? Yes possibly it will generate that much interest. The fifth season of a show that has run its course ? Probably not.
One last thing, why, when the (ridiculous) gimmick of 1 minute of show time equates to 1 minute of real time, would two hours of TV show only be scheduled to run for 1 hour 45 minutes ? On both nights, Jack Bauer is programmed from 930P to 1115P. Less advertisement breaks by channel 7 ? Well, maybe to get the punters in but I do find that hard to believe that they wouldn’t be milking one of their marquee shows for all it is worth. Channel 7, get over yourself.

New Segment : TV Tasty Knows

We have a very welcome new entry to Thursday=Green Guide Day blog spot this week. TV highlights are a portion of the market not traditionally covered by your regular correspondent and so I have great pleasure in introducing TV Tasty Knows. - ed. GGBlog

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TV Tasty Knows:
As you may have seen mentioned within this pithy tome, the World Cup is upon us. And verily, verily I say unto you, there is no getting around it. And it grows on you (like mould). News reports, radio updates, talk back, discussion at the office printer, (and yes, even blog spots) are humming with talk of Ronaldo this, and off-side that. For late night relief, TV Tasty Knows refers you to the current gems of American Dad, Scrubs (though current series is more forced), and any episode you can find of Arrested Development. Indeed these are among the best of T.V. offerings, and those looking to catch the Cup action would be well served to tickle themselves with these while they're up.


TV Tasty Knows Pick of the Week:
Enough Rope (Mon ABC 930P)
Interview with Peace Activist Ciaron O'Reilly
I heard Ciaron O'Reilly's story told with dry Irish humour and his highly thought-provoking motivations earlier this year and immediately thought, "he should be on Denton." On Monday he is. If he has time to tell the full circumstances of facing ten years gaol for $U.S. 2.5 million criminal damage to a US Navy warplane enroute to invasion of Iraq, you are in for a very well spent hour. His legal reasoning and stance in non-violently (and farcically) challenging our world leaders solutions for peace is highly stimulating and perhaps even inspirational.