For cineasts around the world, tonight was the night. Since I didn’t have to work this morning I took the chance and started watching the show broadcasted through Pro7. The red carpet show produced by Pro7 themselves really impressed me. The reporter was well informed and got a lot of interesting stars to short interviews. Of course the format only allows some small talk but I wouldn’t consider it as too shallow. Unluckily Pro7 didn’t continue until the show started, but got the last 30 minutes of the red carpet show from ABC. ABC broadcasting the whole event of course had several correspondents all around the venue and did good work in cutting from one to another.

The American Comedian John Stewart has been hosting the show, and continued the vivid impression with an interesting opening speech including some elements about the author’s strike and the presidential election campaign. But after he was done the award went to a tiresome trot. Since the format has been really restricted through the last years, there was no way out of this. Mentioning restrictions I’m talking about the rigid time restrictions for winners to say there thanks (after a certain amount of time music will be played, which becomes louder after another while), also censoring aspects (after some political statements in the past, a winner mentioning something in this direction would have been muted). Also due to the time restriction the interaction between the person handing over the award, and the winner was limited to a short handshake, or greeting kisses. So banalities like Spanish actor Javier Bardem (He won the award “Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role” for “No country for Old Men”) saying some thanks in Spanish grew to something special. I really was missing something special about the award show. The music performances taken from one of the nominated soundtracks really bored me and there were no big surprises on nominees and winners. Although I got to admit, that I support the view of the SPON article, I really would have loved to see Ellen Page winning the award fot “Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role”, she did really, really a terrific job playing Juno. To see an overview of winners and nominees, I suggest to visit Imdb's Oscar-Page.

I think the Academy Awards are a good example, that a show targeting a large audience, and trying to meet the requirements for different groups in such an audience is hard to assemble. For me this requirements matching has been overachieved by the creators. I feel like years ago the Academy Awards where more targeted to this cineastic community of the academy. Dominated by progressive people the show has already been good for some surprises. But at the moment my impression is, that the show matching too many requirements became pabulum. Sad, sad.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Event at 15:53 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Thx to british trance DJ Shaun Baker I’ve learned a little Zulu. He created a cover version of Laid Back’s song “Bakerman” and brought it into the German Single charts. He even performed his song at the ZDF Fernsehgarten… (the performance is very funny, if you put under regard that it is a trance DJ who is doing the perfomance.) I personally didn’t expect a trance DJ to do such a mainstream-pop-cover.. Guess the explanation is quite simple: there is a trance version, too – but of course you need to sell your records and the group of trance fans is shrinking in Europe. So it’s better to produce for the mainstream. Anyway. Now I need to get this catchy tune out of my mind again!

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Media at 15:43 | Comments (0) | Trackback (1)

About a year ago the Bavarian TV produced a little documentation about our university. This documentation has been broadcasted a few weeks ago, and now the press office of your university made it available for free download. I suggest not to download the .ogg Version since the compression is kinda crappy..

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Media, university at 19:38 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

As most of you know, I don’t own a TV. This is absolutely no problem for me in general. If I wanted to watch a movie I’d just ask one of my friends for a DVD, or I’d go to the movies with friends. I always followed some brand new TV-Series from the U.S. via Bit-Torrent. But right now I’m a little pissed. I can’t sit here in my room and follow a soccer match! Well actually I can. Since there are P2P streaming services like Sopcast or TVAnts, I can watch a TV stream from Asia (CCTV5 rules!). But it will drive you crazy listening to the commentary longer than a few minutes.

Which gets me to the question – where is our German TV? Starting from the first of January next year they want me to pay TV-fees for my internet-capable computer! I absolutely don’t know what for. Would it be so difficult to set up a streaming platform for German TV?

But, well watching games home alone is boring anyway. So I will try to meet up with friends during the interesting games.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Things to know at 13:21 | Comments (0) | Trackback (1)

Watching the Austrian music television “gotv” I had some interesting findings lately:

• The Austrian ministry for transportation has started an initiative to speed up the traffic in Austria. On a 12km long part of the A10 a maximum Speed of 160km/h will be allowed…
• I discovered a nice “buckle up” TV-Spot
• I really like gotv’s homepage. It contains no unnecessary advertisement, is well structured and there is a preview for the next music video.
  

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Lost and Found at 14:37 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)