TV, Guided
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
From the Vastly Underserved Blog Demographic desk comes the Classic Television Showbiz site, which I recently stumbled across while looking for Tom Snyder clips, and which can of course, sadly enough, serve those looking for that other, gaudier recently passed television host.
Merv Griffin with Priscilla Presley
Tom Snyder with Durk Pearson & Jerry Pournelle (Sci-fi twiddlers. “IBM” com-puters. Lots of smoking. Three parts.)
Steve Martin with Andy Kaufman (guest-hosting the Tonight Show, 1980. Martin’s not dead. Kaufman is crystal-clear.) —————- In other TV-on-the-Think-Box findings, I offer Chime.tv, an aggregator of online video like Hype Machine is for mp3s. I doubt I’ll do much with setting up my own channels or anything, but I’ve dug around the content loaded by others (where’s the Classic Television Talk Shows from the 70s Channel?), and found some cool stuff. The “documentary” channel is particularly fun, loaded with all manner of those lefty, conspiratorial works of non-fiction, but also with a few gems, many of which I was delighted to find (and watch). Style Wars (If you haven’t yet, you simply must.)
Good Copy, Bad Copy (A simply wonderful, engaging, and never polemicizing documentary on the ridiculous American copyright laws, made by Swedes (I think) with a sense of humor. With Lessig (of course), the Girl Talk guy (who’s much less annoying than I gave him credit for, and actually very engaging), Danger Mouse et al. Side trips to Nigeria and Brazil, examining their film and remix cultures, respectively. Do yourself a favor.)
This Film is Not Yet Rated (Engaging reportage and straight-up Dateline NBC-style private-investigator inquiries into the ridiculously private MPAA board-members’ identities, rationales, etc.)
Steely Dan: the Making of Aja (Totally cheesy in parts (the beach scenes?), but a killer inside-baseball look at Fagen and Becker diddling with the master tapes. You have to stick around for them picking apart “Peg”.
Tom Snyder with Durk Pearson & Jerry Pournelle (Sci-fi twiddlers. “IBM” com-puters. Lots of smoking. Three parts.)
Steve Martin with Andy Kaufman (guest-hosting the Tonight Show, 1980. Martin’s not dead. Kaufman is crystal-clear.) —————- In other TV-on-the-Think-Box findings, I offer Chime.tv, an aggregator of online video like Hype Machine is for mp3s. I doubt I’ll do much with setting up my own channels or anything, but I’ve dug around the content loaded by others (where’s the Classic Television Talk Shows from the 70s Channel?), and found some cool stuff. The “documentary” channel is particularly fun, loaded with all manner of those lefty, conspiratorial works of non-fiction, but also with a few gems, many of which I was delighted to find (and watch). Style Wars (If you haven’t yet, you simply must.)
Good Copy, Bad Copy (A simply wonderful, engaging, and never polemicizing documentary on the ridiculous American copyright laws, made by Swedes (I think) with a sense of humor. With Lessig (of course), the Girl Talk guy (who’s much less annoying than I gave him credit for, and actually very engaging), Danger Mouse et al. Side trips to Nigeria and Brazil, examining their film and remix cultures, respectively. Do yourself a favor.)
This Film is Not Yet Rated (Engaging reportage and straight-up Dateline NBC-style private-investigator inquiries into the ridiculously private MPAA board-members’ identities, rationales, etc.)
Steely Dan: the Making of Aja (Totally cheesy in parts (the beach scenes?), but a killer inside-baseball look at Fagen and Becker diddling with the master tapes. You have to stick around for them picking apart “Peg”.
Thanks for the intro to Style Wars, I think graffiti is an art form, the style is amazing (as long as it is not on my house or car) Kaufman and Martin what a classic pair, I miss Andy Kaufman
SPOILER ALERT. but holy shit. you’re right. that part where they isolate michael mcdonald’s vocals sounds crazy-up. it sounds more like a church organ than vocals. maybe even more impressive than the isolated vocals on that making-of Rumours documentary you see on VH-1 Classics.
If you really want to see the ultimante Merv Griffith moment just go here it speaks for itself
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04BhAxBNWIo
Thanks for the mention Eric!
Also wanted to point out that you can preface any site like yours or the youtube video mentioned above like so:
http://chime.tv/http://www.marathonpacks.com
http://chime.tv/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04BhAxBNWIo
We’ve begun planning v2 already too!
I hadn’t, but I absolutely did. Style Wars was fantastic.
No the question I had was why do I feel so nostaligic for things like this, even though I have no prior experience or reference point for this sort of stuff? The music especially, but the characters in the film too.
And super8. Even though it was never something I had/ experienced in my childhood.
I blame the go! team in part. Maybe that links in with the rap/ go team link you were discussing recetnly.