Entertainment — Category

This video is taking the rounds since it was released on the 1st of April. Alanis Morissette made a parody of the Black Eyed Peas’ My Humps and did a good job of pointing out just how generally bad the song is. Well worth a watch, and it just gets better as the song goes on.

YouTube strikes again. Fergalicious, a song by Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas has been parodied quite well - in drag! See the parody to the left, and if you haven’t seen it, the original is to your right.

TVNZ onDemand has launched today with lots of stuff to download. Register now and you can get 10 free playpoints (good for two half hour shows or one hour long show).

Now I can finally watch that episode of Rude Awakenings I missed a couple of weeks ago.

Here’s something I caught on C4 the other day and ended up hunting it down. It’s Hey Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken. Very interesting song, and equally interesting music video. It’s by Camera Obscura, an indie band from Glasgow, Scotland as a response to Lloyd Cole’s song (Are You) Ready To Be Heartbroken?. How cute. It’s worth a listen.

Here’s a bit of history from the Dan News archives. The Sky Digital launch. Laugh at the $650 installation fee (it is now $99) and the single channel (Sky Sports). Then, think about what the CEO said:

Sky will soon offer all sorts of choice, channels dedicated solely to children, music, science and nature, business news, additional sports, additional movies are but a few of the options

Additional seems to be the operative word these days.

TVNZ has announced that it will be going into the online era from March next year with TVNZ ondemand. You’ll be able to watch new, old and catch up programmes that are shown or yet to be shown on TV, with many being free (such as news or archived shows) or $2 to $4 (like Shortland Street).

TVNZ has lead the way in New Zealand by being the first to offer streaming news reports. This year it has stepped up by offering ASB Business and Fair Go as podcasts, it also last week offered the first episode of Karaoke High from TVNZ.co.nz for free since last Monday, but it was shown on TV2 tonight. Also, other shows like Eating Media Lunch have been available.

From the sounds of it, you will be able to download the episodes or watch them streaming. They hope to have most of their popular shows available online, such as Shortland Street and Eating Media Lunch. Unfortunately, it sounds like you pay to watch it an unlimited amount of times from seven days of purchasing the license. If you want to watch it again after that, you’ll have to pay again. That is the only black mark I can think of with this (that and the fact that it only works with Windows at the moment).

A quick clip shown at the end of the press event touted the content being accessible from laptops, iPods, Xbox 360’s, PSP’s and cellphones. The video can be watched from the linked article, going into the first video clip into about 17 minutes, or watch the snippets from the One News clip.

It is about time we had this, however it isn’t like we are the last off the mark on this one.

Our TV2 reception is bad where we live, so I wait until Monday to get my Eating Media Lunch fix online.

Well, yesterday I told you guys two songs that sucked but I couldn’t get out of my head. Today I’ll tell you two songs that are going through my head, but I’m glad that they are.

James Morrison is a new singer on the block, who would probably remind you of James Blunt (and hopefully the music industry learned their lesson with that one). But, this guy is much better. Wonderful World is an awesome song and is well worth the listen to. This album, Undiscovered is definitely one I’m buying when I get the chance.

Here It Goes Again is also by a new group called OK Go. They reached fame last year when they personally released a music video to A Million Ways on the internet. It was recorded with a handycam at a cost of only $10, and choreographed by the leads sister. This one is noticeably higher budget (just), but in the same vein.

I have two songs swimming in my head, and they are both terrible. I don’t know why, but they are just… catchy. But then, they are horrible.

Fergielicious from Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie is just as bad as her first solo outing, London Bridge. Though, it is arguably a bit more bearable, but only by a hair’s breadth. The music video is terrible. It also took me a while to figure out what will.i.am (from BEP) was trying to spell (it is “delicious”).

Gwen Stefani has released her first single off her new album The Sweet Escape, Wind It Up. I am not amused. It seems it is written with the help of Pharrell (who must be that voice that randomly says “c’mon” at random places). It is a catchy song (Wind it up!), but is a horrible sounding mish-mash of The Sound of Music samples. Ugh.

So do what Gwen says and “let the beat get under your skin.”

Any songs you guys are finding annoying as hell? Share with the class.

Officially the Playstation 3 has launched in the US to queues of awaiting fans. But hey, it’s already been out in Japan for a week.

The main point of this post is to point out that Sony has now launched the Open Platform website. From here you can get full instructions on installing compatible Linux distributions onto your PS3. Compatible distributions are those that have a PPC build (which is almost all of them) and a PS3 bootloader (which is apparently kboot). Fedora Core 5 has been confirmed to have full support, and Yellow Dog Linux is also available.

• Playstation 3 Open Platform.
• PS3 QuickJournal has full instructions on installing Fedora Core 5.

This enables you to use your PS3 as if it was a normal computer. The PS3 can be set to boot into Linux by default (this can be overridden by holding down the power button for 5 seconds).

Now those of us in European territories have to wait until March next year for the Playstation 3 to reach our shores. However, SCEE are creating some pretty neat marketing short-films that can be viewed on their website (in HiDef even).

• Playstation 3 - This is Living.

The government has put $80 million behind TVNZ to launch two new free to air channels. The first will be a 24 hour news channel to be launched before the end of next year, and the second will be a family/childrens/arts/drama channel.

The thing is, this money is helping to make these channels ad free.

Though, CanWest isn’t happy - it wants money too. However, for one TVNZ is a public broadcaster, which is also meant to run as a commercial one too. Also, the CEO Rick Ellis had said in the announcement yesterday that TVNZ had to fight to get the money. Was CanWest fighting?

Either way, this will be good (24 hour news? I’m there!). It would be interesting to see the family channel and how much that would change the current TVOne and 2 that TVNZ already run, it would probably mean less New Zealand programming on those two as they get shuffled on the new digital channel.

Can New Zealand, however, have a large enough market to warrant a 24 hour news channel, with news updates on the hour, every hour?