Screenshot: forecasting

And this is summer time. I’m going to have to get used to this, I think.

Shipping rates

AbeBooks is one of a number of handy websites for sourcing discounted books from around the world. It’s also preferable to the big online stores like Amazon because instead of buying books from one multinational source, Abe and others put you in touch with individual book sellers and bookshops who’ve uploaded their inventory.

That means each seller has their own delivery rates, depending on the number of books ordered and the delivery speed. And for every seller, another chance for a computer glitch to mess up the numbers. So while £8.69 isn’t an extortionate amount for trans-Atlantic postage, I’d expect slightly faster delivery…

Globalisation: more virtual newsroom architecture

A few weeks ago I wrote about the relocation of the Canadian Global National newscast to a “virtual” studio in Ottawa. One interesting question being, what’s the point of moving your news anchor to the nation’s capital, when all that indicates that Kevin Newman is in Ottawa is a computer-controlled image of the Canadian Parliament behind him?

I’m very interested in the architecture of television news, because it crosses into all kinds of interesting fields of study to do with architecture and the projection of power, security and knowledge. It’s also one of the most readily accessible situations in which virtual architecture finds environment in which it is ready to demonstrate its potential.

The “virtual” treatment of the Ottawa studio has now been applied to the Global Television affiliate CKMI-TV in Montréal. Even when I lived in Montréal I didn’t watch CKMI much, mainly because TV didn’t play much part in my life, but also because the channel’s principal evening news bulletins were broadcast too early in the evening for me to watch. The concept of a 17h00, 17h30 or even 18h00 English language news bulletin in Montréal being to catch the captive audience of anglo housewives waiting for their partners to come home. From that any Montrealer or Montréalais(e) reader will know exactly what sort of political leaning Global Québec takes.

Here’s a shot of Global Québec anchor Jamie Orchard opening an edition of the evening news. See that bustling newsroom behind her? Yep. It’s a hive of activity down there at Global Québec. Or so you might imagine. The physical set isn’t the only thing that has been put out to pasture. A number of control-room and on-screen staff have been laid off as well, victims not only of a remotely controlled programme (the news studio is now controlled from Vancouver) but also of the cancellation of This Morning Live, CKMI’s breakfast programming. The creation of a virtual newsroom doesn’t just dispense with the need to have that buzzing newsroom behind the anchor, it also dispenses with the need to have people working in every regional news studio controlling the cameras and cue-ing up reports.

If there is one good point to note about the application of this virtual studio, it’s that so far the design has been better applied in Montréal than in Ottawa. This opening pan shot, looking down on the anchor and the desk (the only real things in the entire shot) works better than the acuter angle of the opening shot on Ottawa: the perspective is, at least, more believable. That said, I imagine there have been a few instances in which Jamie Orchard has or will be tempted out from behind her desk to stand in front of another hideously mis-proportioned long shot of the non-existent studio.

I can’t claim to be close to any informed sources in the Canadian media industry, but Global has no made no bones in announcing that Global Edmonton, Global Calgary and Global Toronto will be the next affiliates to welcome virtual newsrooms. And that means control-room staff there might do well to start refreshing their resumés.

Guilty cinematic pleasures

With the death of Arthur C. Clarke last week, a number of critics and reporters touched upon the film which with he is perhaps most famously remembered - 2001: A Space Odyssey, although as Philip Hensher writes in today’s Independent, that’s a shame since Clark’s only real input was to co-adapt the book for a screenplay. In fact, as Clark himself wrote in his companion to the film, The Lost Worlds of 2001, “the nearest approximation to the complicated truth” is that the screenplay should be credited to “Kubrick and Clarke” and the novel to “Clarke and Kubrick” (thanks to the many Wikipedia contributors helping me find that quote).

So it is, perhaps, insincere to remember Clarke with the film of 2001, when one considers how many other books he published during the course of his lifetime. Our fascination with the filmed adaptation of 2001 is perhaps as much because of our cultural obsession with the reclusive Stanley Kubrick, a director who produced so few films relative to his contemporaries and yet who has left film such a broad and meaningful legacy.

I must confess to being a fan of Kubrick, not just because of the films themselves, but also because of the convoluted and often eccentric processes that lead to their creation. I’m intrigued, fascinated and inspired by the creative life of this unusual director. I suspect I could be part of a generation that is as interest in the back story as the story itself. Wikipedia isn’t just interesting for discovering the facts about a film, but also the trivia behind the production.

I am not only a young Kubrick-ite, but also a naïve Tarkovsky-ite. It was a little under a year ago that I indulged in a Friday night of Andrei Tarkovsky at the Strasbourg Cinema Odysée, when a rare original print of Stalker (1979) was presented in a shabby basement screen. This week I’ve finally found the time to complete another installment in Tarkovsky’s career, the enigmatic and much-discussed Solaris (1972).

I’ve ownd the DVD of Solaris for years now, but simply hadn’t got round to watching it in its entirety. This time I didn’t have the luxury of a cinema screen, just a shabby little laptop, but with enough pillows and cushions and a dark enough room I could just about imagine that I wasn’t watching it in bed but in a darkened French cinema (perhaps the best place to enjoy Tarkovsky?).

I don’t have the quote to hand to corroborate it, but from reading Tarkovsky’s diaries and other material, I’m lead to believe that it was one of the director’s least favorite films. It is too late to console the deceased Tarkovsky, but Stanisław Lem, the author of the novel Solaris liked neither Tarkovsky’s effort nor Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 adaptation. The problem with both films (and perhaps even the book) is that it is an essentially humanist exploration of memory, love and loss set on a space station. Were it not set on a space station, it might not be mistaken for science fiction, but because of the space suits and setting Solaris is often dismissed or celebrated as a work of science fiction.

I feel guilty, therefore, for partly loving the film as a work of science fiction. Tarkovsky may have tried very hard to create a film that was not identified within one particular genre, but he is - as far as I know - the only Soviet Russian filmmaker who made something resembling a science fiction film behind the Iron Curtain. I could be proved wrong, and I would welcome recommendations for other USSR sci-fi flicks. I would just feel very guilty for not enjoying them as they were intended to be.

That said, I’m still on the look-out for a DVD copy of the utterly inexplicable 1981 Czech horror film Upír z Feratu - about a vampire rally car that drinks the blood of its drivers through a carnivorous accelerator pedal.

I have adored and devoured every film of Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky that I have seen, but sometimes not for the reasons that those directors might have wanted or expected. The information explosion that has been fueled by the contemporary user-edited generation of web portals and sources makes us all much more aware of the conditions and climate in which works of cinema, art or architecture were created. It may lead us to enjoy things for different reasons, but at least it introduces us to new works.

Never say never

Since he left sunny Northern Ireland for Nashville, Tennessee last year, the podcaster, blogger, photographer and general international-man-of-mystery Jett Loe has been re-adjusting to life in the U. S. of A. Amongst other things, he’s been getting used to American TV once more, and the delights of unreliable digital TV signals.

He’s not alone. Facecrash affects us all, even the eighty-two year old stalwart of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, the Reverend Ian Paisley, as seen here during an interview on BBC Television’s Andrew Marr Show.

The “big man” has announced his retirement, saying in this, his first televised interview, that he intends to take some time to write his life story. Probably just as well, because the pictures really don’t do him justice.