That Muppet Rip-off!

“That Puppet Game show” is a new TV series for BBC One co-produced by the Jim Henson Company, the people behind The Muppets and Sesame Street. You can catch it Saturdays on BBC 1 or on BBC iPlayer.

The Muppets played a huge part in my childhood so I was thrilled the first time I saw the advertisement for “That Puppet Game show.” I could tell the puppets had been created by the Jim Henson Company with their classic felt-y style, distinctive colours and impressive individuality. I was so excited that I immediately put it on series link.

I should not have let my nostalgic longing overridden my usual scepticism at the re-imagination of a cherished memory.

The show draws on many of the structures of the original Muppet Show such as backstage plots and a range of quirky characters with different relationships, including family members and even a little romance. What I found lacking, however, was humour. It wasn’t in those extra plots, it wasn’t in the characters and it certainly was not in the Clyde the crabby crab. In fact, it wasn’t exactly present in many of the games, at least not directly. The way the celebrities embraced the tasks and the hilarity that ensued, largely from their mistakes, was the only thing that made it funny, and even then it often dragged.

That’s not the worst part though. No, the worst part has to be how much they have tried to emulate The Muppets, even down to the characters. You have Amber, the diva (AKA Miss Piggy); Dr Strabismus, the crazy scientist (AKA Dr Honeydew) and The Amazing Ian, the weird one (AKA Gonzo the Great) to name just a few. I can’t help but think that if they had started it as an entirely separate new show rather than desperately replicating a previously successful show, they could have created something great. Sadly, that’s simply not the case.

Critical Reflection - Year 2 Semester 2

Critical Reflection

After the success of last semester’s WINOL (a local-news based online student editorial site in the UK), during which we managed to achieve an Alexa Rank of #476,793 globally and #10,338 within the UK, I chose to reprise my role as social media editor as I felt there were a lot of ways I could try to make the process of using social media more efficient for us to use as the improved use of this medium seemed to help radically improve our overall circulation.

The first step of this was to ensure that, at the beginning of the semester, I keep up a good twitter and Facebook presence to remind people that the website was once again operational. Whilst doing this, I also started researching other social media platforms that could be used to help us gain and maintain popularity as a local student journalism site. As well as finding out which would be most helpful and applicable to our needs, I also had to teach myself how to use them. Once things had become more settled in the news room, I began to compile a Social Media usage guide available on my blog which outlined the best ways to make use of our current social media profiles and how we could use newer sites to expand our audience and therefore increase our viewing figures. These included ways of making the process of posting messages more efficient, ways of increasing our online presence and increasing the number of people following our social media output which would then increase our page views. Whilst listing and presenting these concepts was relatively simple, trying to implement them into practice was considerably more challenging. As these new plans involved reporters serious alterations to the speed in which things are processed and the order in which reporters needed to upload their various articles. Whilst this was initially met with a certain amount of enthusiasm from the team, very little action was taken upon these initial recommendations. To try to encourage use of the points outlined in the document I also created an abridged version, also available on my blog, as I felt the length of the original post may discourage people from reading it. On top of this, I ensured I thoroughly briefed the team and made it incredibly clear that I would available to help if they needed. However, the notions made in the handbook were never properly implemented and many of the actions introduced were quickly lost to habit.

To an extent, this struggle to embrace innovation is reflected in the circulation statistics that I collected as an additional part of this role and have been posted on my blog. Over the semester our Alexa rank largely improved. Alexa.com is a website that makes rough estimates of websites' popularity over a period of 3 months; the lower the number, the more views the website has had. I began collecting this information on the 23^rd January and we had a global rank of #460,940 and #33,950 in the UK. At our peak, on the 6th March our global rank was #372,251 and we ranked #9,154 in the UK, our best rankings on record. However, after this point our rank began to slip; the following week our UK rank remained the same and our global rank was down 16,099 points to #388,350. To try and improve our slipping viewing figures, I ensured the team was fully briefed, explaining how Alexa works on a 3 month average and the reason we had not noticed this overall fall in site visitors before was because it seemed likely to be due to the skew created by our absence over the Christmas holidays but that this was no longer applicable to the period of time being averaged. Some members of the team met this idea with criticism, feeling that our work had been considerably improved since then and that the viewing figures should reflect that, especially due to some great spikes in visits seen in many of the Eastleigh by-election articles, and argued that the figures still included the poor figures from over the break. However, both other members of the time and I worked out the number of weeks ago the average started from and proved that it the time period of the average did not include the break, that even if it were it would have already been counted in all our previous averages and finally explained that whilst we may have had good peaks on some days, many others have had a fairly poor viewing result.

To try and improve upon these, I gave several solutions; the first and major one was to get reporters to promote the site on their accounts to spread awareness amongst people that may previously not have been aware of their work on WINOL or even that our local news site existed. Another that should have given a dramatic improvement was to ‘mention’ people involved in stories or groups that are likely to be interested in an article by ‘tagging’ them in twitter posts. By doing this, they are more likely to see the story and potentially share the tweet with their followers, potentially doubling the number of people that see that tweet and potentially follow the link to the article. This is especially good for sports stories as there are plenty of team and sport fan pages on twitter as well as profiles for a lot of the players of many of the sports. However few of these recommendations were acted upon by others which made the resulting improvement minimal compared to its potential impact if properly supported. Still, there was considerable improvement in viewing figures and social media use at the end of the semester and whilst our ending Alexa rank of #373,953 globally and #12,025 in Great Britain on 27^th March might not have been as good as it was at our peak on 6^th March, it was still an improvement on our final results from last semester of #476,793 globally, though we were ranked lower in the UK as we had achieved a rank of #10,338 at the same point in the previous semester.

As well as this, I also took on the role of Editor of new magazine site UK Today, a site that finds and compares the best Student Journalism in the UK, to try and get it running and improve my writing skills. The main difficulty in this was trying to balance the time needed to research and write the stories for the site whilst maintaining an effective presence in my role of Social Media Editor. Due to the difficulties I had in my role of social media editor, my work for this site had to take a back seat and therefore the project never really took off the ground. Another issue I had with running the site was that where it was completely new, there was no previous format or style to follow and, if necessary, improve upon. This made it difficult to find the right way to approach the articles and I had to make a lot of decisions on the tone, structure and content which is difficult when there are no real guidelines already in place.

However, I managed to find some time to try out some of the production roles. This began when the production team were short a few members and asked if I could operate a camera for them.  Since then I have been used on camera several times for live bulletins and pre-recorded content. I was also able to help in the gallery when we opened up the studio to allow anyone who wanted the opportunity to have a go at presenting for their show reel. During this, I was able to learn about how many of the technical aspects work and have a go at filling the roles of director, sound person and autocue operator as well as camera person. Often when on camera I have also had to act as a floor manager, in some respects, as the talkback for the presenter was not working and therefore had to rely on me to cue them in and relay information and queries from the gallery. I also tried to turn my hand at comment writing by trying to start a series of satirical news-based letters and job applications but this, much like UK Today, had to take a back seat due to social media commitments.

From this, I have learnt a lot about time management and prioritising projects as well as the way in which a news team needs structure to work properly and how various roles and systems work. Next year, to improve upon the use of social media, I would recommend greater use of facebook and  twitter as by maintaining a good social media presence helps create greater awareness. I would particularly recommend more use of mentions in tweets to target people likely to have an interest in the article as a way of getting more people to follow the link back to our site. These ideas and many more that would improve viewing figures through social media use are outlined in my social media guide and I would recommend anyone wishing to take on this role read through these if only to gain a greater insight into what things are likely to help and to see what protocols are already either in play or are ready to be implemented. In terms of looking at our circulation, I think we should try to move away from using alexa.com in favour of google analytics as this would be more in line with the way industry works. We should also use the ‘slim stat’ app on Word Press for more detailed and specific information on what our audience is particularly interested on our site to help us find out what style of articles we should try to focus on. Also, if UK Today were to continue next year, I would suggest to the editor to work out the exact tone and style they were looking for before starting any other work on it and to lay out these ideas in their own style guide for the site. As well as this, I would suggest they try to distribute the work between a small team of 2 or 3 other people as it is far difficult to run the entire site on your own. I am hoping to change roles next year and have decided to try to become the overall editor of WINOL as from my position as social media editor I have been able to observe all aspects of WINOL and seen both its positive and negative qualities and have come up with several recommendations to help improve WINOL’s efficiency, quality and therefore its popularity and viewing figures. Many of these recommendations have been outlined in my manifesto which I have submitted to my lecturers.

In general, WINOL has continued to improve this semester. It had maintained its lead, in terms of Alexa rank, against its closest rival East London Lines, seen in these graphs from my circulation blog post:

However, the quality of some aspects their articles (especially their still photography) far surpass our own. If we were to improve this, largely by ceasing our reliance on stills taken from VTs, our site would look more professional and therefore more likely to be frequently read. Having better quality photos would also help with our social media use as many of the sites we use show greater favour to posts with aesthetically pleasing photos to purely text based updates. A great enhancement made to WINOL’s content this semester is the continued improvement of our features section which makes our site ‘sticky,’ meaning that people spend much more time on the site after finding, in this case, an interesting feature than they had not initially intended to read whilst checking on the latest news. He have added several new magazines including the popular New Winchester Review which takes a look at culture and arts locally, nationally and internationally as well as maintained our popular magazines like Absolute:ly – our beauty, fashion and gossip based women’s magazine.

Overall, I feel that WINOL has still been fairly successful this semester and, perhaps, if we had not made such dramatic improvements last semester our achievements would seem even more impressive. Of course, there are still some flaws that should be ironed out – our news slider stopped working for several weeks, subbing stories needs to speed up and checked better and the turnover time for features between filming and upload can still be a little long – but our work has continued to improve which is still reflected in our overall popularity and rank.

Word count: 2,123

Albert Camus - "The Stranger"

(Been meaning and forgetting to post this for months now - apologies for the delay)

Albert Camus’s “The Stranger” was first published in 1942 and translated into English in 1946. It is set in French occupied Algeria and is written from the perspective of Meursault whose perspective of the world can be likened to that similar to an existentialist. The translation I read was by American Matthew Ward in 1988, whose style was different to previous translations in that it was Americanised to fit in with Camus’s more American Literary style. It also differs in tone; whilst other translations can be considered cold, Ward’s is thought to be more curious and less insincere. Whilst the book is considered a great example of existentialism, it is said that Camus did not consider himself an existentialist. Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".^[1]

The initial concept of the book is a little jarring. Whilst it is written from the protagonist’s (Meursault) point of view, the way it reads is quite matter of fact. This quite alien concept threw me to begin with, but highlights beautifully the novel’s link to existentialism. Meursault lives his life in the moment, much like existentialists & phenomenologists such as Husserl taught; by not thinking about the past or future, he does not feel either angst or despair. But it is this lack of forethought that eventually creates trouble for him. In terms of existentialism, Meursault is right to consider himself an individual and not to allow himself to be defined by things such as his job or that he is his mother’s son, but ends up in prison for two reasons. The first is that he anticipates that everyone else thinks and lives in the same way. Whilst for him, it is not essential for him to be grief-stricken at his mother’s funeral, society expects him to be in mourning as he is her son. By not conforming to his role or “essence,” he is considered an outsider of society. The second is that whilst he makes choices, he does not consider the impact of these. In terms of some types of existentialism, this would be the correct move to make. Many existentialists think you should live your own life and try to get to where you want to be. The problem is that you may never get there as other people could get in the way of this. For this reason, Meursault is right not to worry about consequences as, essentially, you should focus on yourself and not worry about others as they are not worried about you. However, others would argue that it is wrong not to consider the impact your actions have on others as if you limit someone’s freedom they cannot make a choice and lead a life according to existentialist values. You could also argue that it would be easier to live life if we all tried to help one another out by thinking about the consequences of our actions, which is reflected by society and further by the jury.

As well as an existentialist, Meursault can be considered an empiricist in the sense that he does not seem to deal with emotion but facts and measurements. When talking about going to his mother’s funeral, he describes it as being “about eighty kilometres away.” For most people, this could seem cold and callous but as you read further into the book, this neutral tone starts to become more and more natural. As you begin to realise how normal the unfeeling attitude begins, you realise how unsettling it is that distancing emotion and being absorbed into something, similar to Heidegger’s ideas about being dasein. This is not the only way, though, that the book links back to existentialism; some of the other characters in the book that contrast with Meursault serve to show how being dasein and dasman affect your life from an existentialist’s point of view. Salamano and his dog show that you should live for yourself to be dasein. Because he has made his dog his world, Salamano is not happy; he constantly swears at and beats the dog but, when he loses his dog, he is still dasman as he has lost his life’s purpose which he assigned to the dog. Contrary to this, the relationship between Salamano and his dog can also highlight the existentialist idea that we assign our own values to things as there are no inherent values or meaning in life. Another person that lives in the same apartment block to Meursault and Salamano is Raymond Sintès; it could be argued that Raymond’s outlook on life is similar to Meursault and that both could be considered existentialists to some degree. However, unlike Meursault, Raymond seems keen to live up to others expectations. For example, at the beach, the existentialist side of Raymond would have shot the Arab as that is what he wanted to do but as he was so keen to please Meursault, he did not. These characters’ social normalcy directly contrasts Meursault’s arguably more modern outlook.

At the end of the book Meursault’s thoughts become more obviously similar to an existentialist’s viewpoint. As he waits in prison, he stops hoping to be freed and begins to be almost content that he is to be executed as he realises that, in his mind, there is no real point to life. As he opens himself “to the gentle indifference of the world,” he concludes that nearing the end of life gives you a kind of freedom and with this knowledge he finds happiness. This links back to his mother and the way she acted in the time leading up to her death; originally, Meursault finds it difficult to understand why his mother “took a fiancé” whilst at the care home but as he realises the brevity of his existence, he understands the freedom that comes with this finality. It is debatable that his view point at this stage is almost nihilistic, depending on your interpretation of the text, in that aside from not finding any inherent meaning in the world he seems content to resign himself death, almost as though this lack of definite value makes living pointless. However, the fact that he imparts his own meaning onto the things he can see from his cell directly contradicts this idea.

It is easy to apply absurdism to Meursault’s perspective. Meursault applies his own values and meaning to things that generally differ greatly from that of others; for him it is reasonable to shoot someone accidently due to the heat of the sun and almost expects others to understand. Similarly, he does not try to apply meaning to his relationship with Marie. Whilst she attempts to find meaning with him by asking if he loves her and if he would marry her, Meursault appears indifferent. This indifference, it could be said, is not due to a lack of feelings for his girlfriend, but instead is him showing that he does not need to apply a meaning or label to the two of them as these differ from person to person and therefore are, to him at least, unnecessary.

Whether or not an existentialist would consider Meursault’s life authentic or not is difficult to decide. On one hand, you can argue that he does not allow his facticity (his past) to affect his life. This is seen at the beginning of the book when he says, “it occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.” However, existentialists could also say that to entirely disregard your facticity is also to live an inauthentic life as you deny yourself. Plus, for existentialists, the future is the most important dimension as we are creatures of the possible; the very next decision we make is the most important in existentialism. As Meursault does not seem to consider the future at all, you could argue he does not live as an existentialist would. However, if he dwelled too long on the future, his life would also be inauthentic so it is difficult to work out if he has got the balance correct or not, particularly as this would differ with each fraction of existentialism and, indeed, each individual person has their own nature, as stated by Nietzsche; as “God is dead” there is not universal human nature so we are free to find and follow our own thoughts and ideals.

In terms of ethics, Meursault does not seem interested in the utility of others so is unlikely to subscribe to utilitarian thoughts on the subject, seen both in his lack of compassion when he discovers Salamono’s dog is lost but particularly when writing the horrible letter to Raymond’s girlfriend on his behalf. Neither does he seem to think transcending will is good, seen in the way that he indulges pleasures such as smoking and sleeping with Marie. Arguably, if he had transcended self and led a Christian life, as depicted in Kierkegaard’s concept of moral ascent, he could have avoided his fate and been happy. By marrying Marie or showing grief and following Christian observations at his mother’s funeral, the jury and therefore society, would have been less inclined to see him as a threat and believe that the shooting was in fact an accident. However, Meursault’s existential view point extends to his morality and he at least appears to try to live and authentic life.

When reading “The Stranger,” the factual tone and emotional distance of the protagonist to his account of the day, the immediate comparison I drew was to “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon. Both novels are written from the main character’s perspective and both are very factual in their accounts of the story. However, the major difference between them is that Meursault has the ability to understand emotion, he seems to deliberately distance himself from them whereas Christopher Boone from Haddon’s book is autistic and therefore finds it very difficult to understand and process emotion. Another similarity they share is that others do not understand them and in many ways, they do not understand other people. When Christopher is questioned by the police about the dog, his answers do not make sense to what the police officer expected; similarly, Meursault’s lawyer does not understand why he wants to tell the truth. Also, neither understands the thought process of those asking the questions. However, whilst Meursault cannot understand the necessity for certain questions to be asked, Christopher struggles to understand the questions or how he is supposed to respond which is seen in the way these characters describe these difficult conversations. Comparing these two characters is quite interesting; you could argue that, potentially, these similarities give an insight into the way both characters think and, in turn, how the mind of an autistic person works.

You could argue that, as both characters see life in quite a linear fashion, an autistic person’s brain is hard wired to think like an existentialist might. For example, a common part of autism is having fixations or obsessions with things such as a television show or computer game. This could be equated to their dasein as it is the person’s involvement with this that makes them happy. Of course, this concept could never be proved as there is not real way of telling how anyone’s brain works, per say, besides which, there are as many differences as there are similarities. For example, the nihilism of Meursault’s thoughts differ greatly to that of Christopher’s; whilst there is no meaning to life or a necessary natural progression of history for Meursault, you could easily argue that Christopher sees the world in a more teleological light. As he investigates the death of his neighbour’s dog, he indirectly uses the idea of ends and beginnings to history, which seems to be an intrinsic part of his thinking, to work back through time to find out who the killer was.

Critical Reflection - Year 2, Semester 1

Critical Reflection

It would be fair to say that, as an editorial product, WINOL is the most popular student-lead news organisation in the UK, which is proven in the comparison of our Alexa ranking to that of others. This is particularly impressive for such a small group; with only around 30 students in an area that is not particularly heavy with news, maintaining the high standard of each 10-15 minute bulletin as well as the website and features sections is certainly a challenge.

In terms of our popularity, our website’s global traffic has more than doubled in the last 10 weeks and we have been consistently the top online student editorial site in the UK for the last month according to figures on the Alexa website. In the last two weeks we have been tracking and comparing the ranks of several major student-run news sites. As of today, 9^th December 2012, we are ranked #476,793 globally and #10,338 within the UK, according to Alexa, whilst our closest rival, East London Lines, are at #593,839 and #23,814 respectively. Whilst the difference may be fairly slight in terms of rank, the resources available to our competitor far outweigh our own; the students working on the publication are all masters’ degree students, so therefore have a greater knowledge of their medium as they should have already had experience in the field. They also work in London which is a much more news-rich area of the country. However, I personally feel that their content is not as well written as our own; their stories often seem to be reminiscent of a press release in their tome, which is likely to be the source that they have come from. There is, though, one aspect that they do seem to be beating us on, which is their still pictures. However, the quality of our photos are steadily improving, which may form part of the explanation as to why we have now overtaken them in terms of global rank. Similarly, our reach is also greater than that of our closest competitor on a local level, The Hampshire Chronicle; their global rank is #894,774 and in the UK they are ranked #43,856, showing that we are almost twice as popular worldwide and over four times more popular within the UK which, in my mind at least, proves that the quality of our content is just as good, if not better, than that of professional news organisations. Overall, our reach in the last month has improved by 70% and 160% over the last 3 months.

Aside from the quality and frequency of our uploads, there were several other aspects of our site that seem to have influenced the upward trend in our viewings. Possibly one of the bigger aspects is the much improved features section that makes our site what many would call ‘sticky,’ meaning that people spend much more time on the site after finding an interesting feature than they had initially intended whilst checking on the latest news. The way in which features have been structured both on the site and within the news room has increased its success in that their improved organisation allows for greater quantity and quality of each article. Another factor is the use of live shows to cover both local and global significance on the site, such as the American election and the Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner debate.

One other new innovation that is likely to be responsible, at least in part, for the increased circulation is the new and improved use of social media. As WINOL’s social media editor, I have been in charge of increasing our followers on twitter, creating and maintaining a Facebook page and driving social media users towards our websites, amongst other things, which has helped to maintain and expand our news operation’s internet presence. As social media has become such an important part of the internet in the modern era, the role of social media editor has become a vital role within any news organization; twitter in particular has an important role both in alerting people to the presence of new articles and to advertise the article through ‘retweets’ where other people share your 140 character post with other people. In the first week, we began with around 650 followers which has increased to over 1000 in the 10 weeks WINOL has been active this semester. This impressive increase in numbers has been largely responsible due to the frequency of tweets and Facebook updates as well as through the use of a consistent and easily read style, including links in each direct to winol.co.uk.

Another part of my role is to ensure that my colleagues maintain some form of twitter presence; by promoting their own work for WINOL and retweeting things from our social media we can dramatically increase the number of people our messages reach. This, combined with messages that target specific people such as interviewees and interested parties, allows us to portray our articles and their importance directly to those with a specific interest in a story as well as our regular audience. Whilst it is not necessarily the most efficient way of contacting relevant twitter users, a large part of my time each week has been devoted to searching twitter user names of groups and individuals who may have an interest in our stories. To improve on this in the next year, however, it would make more sense to get the journalists working on each story to compile a list of relevant twitter user, or at least groups likely to have a twitter account, as this would make it a much quicker process. It would also be easier as the person who wrote the story understands who would be interested in it much better than anyone else would. It is also vital that they use their own professional twitter account more frequently and effectively and ensure that it is kept separate from their personal one. It would be much easier to increase our followers further through this; by discussing where they are going, who they are interviewing and interesting still photos of people and places relevant to their work they keep up our appearance on the internet and spark interest from followers in their work. Through this, we can gain further followers and views, especially if the tweet links to the site on a relatively regular basis.

Where using twitter becomes difficult is getting people outside of your followers to see your tweet. The normal way of doing this, other than getting retweets, is to use hashtags. However, many of the ones that are popular and are “trending” are not appropriate for us, as a news site, to use. TO try and counteract this, we have started our own hashtag “#WINdeals” which is a way of people finding deals in the local area. However, this has had very limited success as local, relevant deals are difficult and time consuming to find. There has become a definite lean towards the Students Union in these tweets as well which is a problem as we are supposed to be impartial and therefore should not appear to be affiliated with any aspect of the University.

As well as the use twitter, I have created a Facebook page for WINOL which may not be as popular as our twitter site but has still been fairly successful in its brief existence thus far. Comparatively, it has gained more followers than that of rival student news groups that have had their Facebook page for around the same length of time. I have also created a mailing list for students and faculty within the University, which may not necessarily be particularly useful in terms of circulation but has been quite helpful as a method of presenting and reminding people of our presence in terms of giving us interviews and story ideas. For example, I received a reply from one of the sports lecturers about having rugby coach Eddie Jones in as a guest speaker and passed on this information to those working on Sportsweek who interviewed him.

On top of my work as social media editor, I have been involved in a variety of WINOL run events, often being in charge of live tweeting the event, including (but not limited to) the HPCC debate, the American Election special and the BJTC Awards 2012. I have also aided many of my colleagues in filming and attempted to create a Christmas themed consumer review of the top toys for the year. After compiling a large number of lists, I was unable to find a supplier willing to give me the toys to review despite saying that they would be donated to either a charity or school afterwards. As I intend on attempting this again next year, I will begin research earlier as well as start phoning toy companies sooner and more frequently.

Overall, I feel that WINOL has been very successful this semester and that my role within it has certainly been a fairly vital stepping stone in our road to this. Of course, WINOL has some flaws that still need to be ironed out – the website breaks fairly frequently and is still not overly user friendly (though it is vastly better than it was before) and the turnover time for features between filming and upload can still be unnecessarily long – but it has certainly improved which is reflected in its overall popularity and rank.

Channel 5 News Critique 27/11/12 (5pm)

As our guest editor this week is Geoff Hill, the WINOL team has been asked to review the Channel 5 news. It is a 20 minute bulletin, with an opening sequence that cuts straight to the headlines after it is introduced at the end of the adverts. The headlines are quite pacey and generally cut the point. Today’s headlines were:

·         Flooding across Britain;

·         Bill Tarmey funeral; and

·         BBC Sports personality of the year 2012 contenders.

The fact that there is new angle on the first story as it could become a little repetitive without it and he shots of the floods from the helicopters were fairly visually interesting. I felt, however, that the Bill Tarmey story was perhaps not important as others that could have taken its place in the headlines. I also thought that the edit on Chris Hoy for the sports personality story looked a little strange; I realise was to tease the audience, but I feel there were probably better ways of doing this by perhaps choosing a different clip or using a different edit.

For the first live cut to the floods, I thought the positioning with the fire engine in the background looked good. The way in which the UK map moved as locations were pinned on there looked odd as the pins did not move with it and the interview with David Cameron seemed quite bland; the statement made seemed very pre-prepared and perhaps a better quote was available, perhaps different questioning could have acquired it. The second throw was very same-y in a way and some of the quotes and questioning of the rescue person and those in hostels seemed a little weak and pointless. It wasn’t overly interesting either. The interview with the man trapped in his house was very good though. Personally, I found it impressive that the sound was so good in that interview when there was no way of getting him a good mic.

The Norovirus story had too many facts from the interviewees and the dramatic music at the end sounded very out of place in the VT. The story about the rebate was seemed very important yet was over so quickly I didn’t get a chance to make many notes on it.

The Nadine Dorries story didn’t seem to be as important as fourth story to me, especially as there was not a lot of new information.

The “still to come” before the ad break seemed much better in its construction than the headlines. However, the news recap after only included one story, which I felt made it a little short over all.

The possible murder of President Yasser Arafat was a very interesting story, however it wasn’t particularly grabbing visually and the interviews did not add a lot, especially the scientist who mostly spoke about facts.

Bill Tarmey funeral, whilst quite moving, seemed unusually long. It would, perhaps, make more sense to be that long if Coronation Street was a Channel 5 program. There was also a strange buzzing during part of the eulogy which could have been removed or at least faded during edited.

The crane fire story was very visually interesting, using good images for a good length. The story was about the right length to, however the scripting could have been more dramatic and had a greater focus on the people involved.

Chris Hoy was quite oddly framed in the Sports Personality story. It became a little better when it was tightened but seeing the back of the journalist’s head was a little jarring and unnecessary. The voiceover quality was poor and seemed to peak quite a lot. Personally, I would have cut (or at least shortened) the last voxpop as it was a little long, as was the overall length of time dedicated to them.

Overall, I found the bulletin quite informative and enjoyable. However, finding things I could critique gave me confidence for our own on http://winol.co.uk (live at 5pm every Wednesday, in case you don’t know) and for my own future career, as well as those of my colleagues/fellow students.

Review – The County Arms (Winchester)

As one of the closest pubs to the University of Winchester, The County Arms is a fairly popular student haunt. It is also near to the hospital and police station, so it is also visited by many local people, particularly during sporting events as it has several television screens. Alongside an array of drinks, the pub also serves food.

Emma and I visited The County Arms on the 15^th November. Upon entering, we found the pub to be quite quiet and were easily able to find a seat. We found the menu had a large variety of dishes to choose from, which made it hard for Emma to decide what she wanted. After much deliberation, Emma went to the bar to order. She found the staff friendly and, even once business had picked up, they never seemed too busy to help.

Whilst our selection arrived relatively quickly, both Emma and I found that the food quickly lost its temperature. Having ordered the tuna and cheese melt baguette with a side of sweet potato fries, I had anticipated a much warmer and more toasted offering. The baguette seemed undercooked and was quite pale in its complexion while the sandwich filling had almost no warmth to it at all. I also found the ratio of tuna to cheese to be overly weighted towards the fish, almost as though the cheese was an afterthought. The sweet potato fries seemed to be unseasoned however, they were well cooked and beautifully crispy. The salad garnish was lackluster at best; the lettuce was limp and the dressing looked unappetisingly grey. I found their selection of wine to be far too weighted towards the drier end of the spectrum. Whilst I am no wine expert, I do know that I much prefer a sweeter bottle so my choice was immediately narrowed. I ended up opting for a glass of the sweetest (and also newest) white on the menu, Yellow Tail Moscato, which was slightly sweet and lightly fizzy with a fruity finish to it.

Emma’s meal, pasta meatball marinara, also got cold fairly quickly. She said that she was “less than impressed” with her meal, though still found it pleasant. Describing it as tasting “homemade,” she was a little disappointed that, whilst the food was nice, it was no better than something she could easily make herself any night. The pasta was a little soggy and the meatballs grisly.  She also said she would have liked more olives in the sauce as this is how it was advertised and, at first, thought that there weren’t any in there. Emma found the garlic bread, too, was soggy; she wanted something crunchy “almost like bruschetta” but thought that the fact it was ciabatta bread that was used was “a nice touch.” As a bit of a cola connoisseur, she rated their soda 5 on a scale of 1-10 (10 being perfect and 1 being ‘I had to take it back to the bar’) as the syrup content was quite low and the ice melted in it making it watery.

Personally, I found the décor fairly pleasing if only as it seemed almost familiar; it has a fairly standard English pub look to it, though some of the colours seemed a little ‘mishmashed’.

Overall ratings:

Haz: 

Emma:

Is an Original Always better than a Remake?

As the film industry has seemingly found the fountain of ideas has run dry, it has become common place for writers to remake ones that have already been proven popular. Most recently, classic 80s & 90s movies and cult phenomena have been the focus of floundering film writers’ attention, much to the annoyance and disappointment of many film buffs. However, are these movie purists always right to assume that a remake won’t be as good as the original? Or does the use of improved graphics and modernised story telling merely enhance the film and make it more accessible to a new generation of film fans? I looked at the recently released Dredd 3D and Total Recall to make my own mind up.

I initially saw Total Recall (2012); having not seen the original film beforehand, I went into the cinema with little more than a basic idea of the plot and no real expectations of what the film should include. In many respects it was less of a remake and more a re-think or reworking of the original into something wholly more believable. Looking at it as a film in its own right, the story and the science is fairly believable and it is filled with as much action, suspense and general bad-ass stuff as you would expect from any film of its genre. The inclusion of a little back story at the beginning helps a little to understand why certain aspects of the plot are happening but, generally, it feels a little irrelevant. What is nice though is the way in which the audience is allowed to piece the plot together by themselves which, whilst this aspect is present in the original, makes a lot sense in this version. It’s also nice that the new film doesn’t feel it has to spell it out quite as clearly, which can sometimes detracts from the enjoyment of thinking for yourself.

Although the new film is very different in most aspects of its story, there are a fair few throw backs to the original – I’m sure there are many men out there that are pleased to hear that they’ve kept the lady with three breasts – which is quite nice to see; these include all the names being the same, some similar lines and the fat lady in yellow going through customs, though this has been changed a little to create some surprise for film goers who have seen the original. I’m pleased to say, though, that the creepy JohnnyCab drivers have gone – those things are, frankly, scarier than most of the film.

Unlike the two Total Recall films, Dredd 3D and Judge Dredd are very different from one another – the newest is certainly not a sensitive modernisation of the first. Judge Dredd takes more elements from the comic book series it’s based upon; however, you could argue that the newest film is reminiscent of an individual episode and leaves room for one or more follow on to explore other elements from the comics. Aside from this, it is very hard to compare the two films. Whether this is a good or bad thing is hard to decide; by making it so modern and changing the story line so drastically to me makes the idea that it’s a Judge Dredd film seem more of a gimmick as it is, arguably, just like any other action film. Having said that, I can also see that it is a way of interesting a modern audience in the story line and by creating it that way allows for sequels that can expand into the areas of the comic that have yet to be explored. Of course, you could also say that the fact that there were only 7 other people in the cinema with me speaks volumes.

Having said that, I have a bit of a problem with Judge Dredd. For a start, I found the entire plot much too predictable; I was calling the next scene about 5 minutes before it happened. Perhaps in 1995 it wasn’t obvious that he had a twin or that the jet was going to crash or that the old guy was going to walk in just at the right time to save them or anything like that, but for me it was. I also couldn’t stand the scientific inaccuracies. If an embryo split in two, it would make identical twins and whilst they could grow up to be very different people, they would still look the same. I understand the idea is that the DNA in Rico was supposed to have mutated to make him the perfect villain, but the DNA would have had to have been, essentially inverted and DNA doesn’t do that. And, if it did, the encoding on the gun would be different as his and Dredd’s DNA would be different (and yes, this does also summarise my feelings towards the film “Twins” too). Also, the idea that they could create clones the way they did in the film is a scientific impossibility. Even if it wasn’t, they still wouldn’t have had anything programmed into their brains, nor would they have been able to move around like that if their bones and muscles had only been 80% formed. Just saying.

Another thing I’d like to point out, though it’s a little unrelated, is that Dredd 3D has not had many 2D screening for people like myself who feel that 3D is pointless and over-rated (and who get headaches after about 20minutes of watching it) which I think is both a major oversight from the film’s distributers and an unwelcome omen for the future of modern cinema.

With all this in mind, I have come to the conclusion that re-makes can, in some circumstances, be as good as (or perhaps even better) than  the originals. However, if you’re the kind of person that becomes overly emotional and attached to a film, it is perhaps better to stick with your beloved original as it’s likely you’ll find the new one a butchery of your precious original.

The Cabin in the… Wait, what? – “The Cabin in the Woods” Review

***Contains Spoilers***

Generally speaking, I am not the greatest fan of horror films. This is largely because I don’t find them scary and I dislike their lack of subtlety and plausibility. However, the advertising campaign behind “The Cabin in the Woods” lead me to believe that someone out there had finally created a clever and original take on the horror film, exploring how films of the genre could be made by murdering real people and passing it off as fiction (stripping away the one glimmer of hope that helps you sleep afterwards) in a way that uses metaphors the issues with things such as the industrialisation of modern filmmaking and mass, popular culture.

 I could not have been further from the truth.

It seems that horror films are really made to satisfy men with a lust for gore and sex and lack the mental capacity to concentrate on a plot more complicated than “a monster kills of loads of stereotypical characters who try and sleep with each other and some might survive,” though they probably don’t know the meaning of the word “stereotype” (or possibly even “characters”) which is probably why my dream of metaphors and satire went right out the window along with subtlety and originality within the first twenty or so minutes. In fact, the thing that was meant to make the film stand out made it awful. It wasn’t scary, it wasn’t believable and, now I really think about it, it wasn’t actually that gory. I mean yes, there’s a lot of blood but then you’d also see lots of that at a hospital or if you go to one of those “give blood” drives. Admittedly, it wouldn’t necessarily be smeared all over the walls but the setting ‘room littered with bodies and filled with red sticky-ness’ is totally over used and has lost its impact on the modern audience.

The film’s defining characteristic of “it’s actually real” has turned out to be its biggest let down. Instead of adding to the fear or giving the film some kind of deep meaning it actually detracts from the horror. Each time they cut back to the ‘studio’ you are, more or less, told what’s going to happen next and given plenty of time to get over the last the scare, if you found one. It more closely resembles a spoof than an actual film, which would be fine but that’s not how it was marketed. The conspiracy aspect of the film would be scarier and more believable if their reasoning behind it was actually possible…

Now, it is physically impossible for me to try and explain this without giving it away, so if you don’t want the film spoiled then leave this post now with the knowledge that I thought the film, over all, was incredibly disappointing though possibly just because I’d had considerably higher expectations for it.

Right, as you’re still reading this I assume you don’t mind me totally ruining the ending of the film. One of the characters that was previously thought to have been murdered to death (technical term) suddenly returns and having convinced her that his conspiracy theory was correct, helps the only surviving character to get into the studio by hacking into the controls of the monster elevator. Already sound unconvincing? It gets worse…

The reason characters in horror films always fit a stereotype and why they need to be killed is to satisfy ancient Gods that have been trapped in the Earth. Yes, you did indeed read that right – sacrifices to Ancient Gods. If you hadn’t picked up on that vibe from what was said throughout the film (and if you’re a typical horror film fan, you probably won’t have), Sigourney Weaver (yes, actual Sigourney Weaver) appears right at the end to explain it all just before she’s eaten by a zombie… and then the world explodes. Yeah, again you read correctly. The earth is destroyed at the end because, y’know, that DEFINITELY adds to the realism.

So, over all, I found this film to be horrifically disappointing; it’s unrealistic, unsurprising and underwhelming, but at least it gave me something to write about.

Have you seen this film? Got an opinion? Add a comment!

Conway's Time of the Month - Review

I am hoping that this review will begin a new culture of arriving fashionably early – arriving at Concrete at Pizza East on Thursday for Conway’s Time of the Month dead on half 7 for the opening of the door meant that as you walked in, you had the ability to sit anywhere, get straight to the bar or meet the comedians sat in the corner by the stage. Even though very few people were there, the atmosphere was already buzzing and you could just tell it was going to be a good night.

I was not wrong.

As the show is celebrating its first birthday, the venue was decorated with balloons and glitter which gave it a relaxed yet exciting party atmosphere as soon as you walked. However, I think this would be true of any room this show would be hosted in; with dance anthems playing and the beautiful host Eleanor Conway constantly walking around and chatting with audience members, you feel involved before the show even begins.

The seating’s layout is all close to the stage so even those at the back are still visible to the comedians, making it impossible to escape being dragged into conversation at some point in the night, willingly or otherwise. This is great though because it makes each night totally unique and vaguely reminiscent of a tamer Late ‘n’ Live. My one criticism of the venue, and perhaps of the night in general, is that whilst the main idea of the evening is audience interaction, the way in which the seating is laid out means that groups tend to stay secular where as it could be changed around to allow for conversation between everyone which could add to the friendly atmosphere and make people feel more comfortable in sharing secrets an anecdotes, not that any encouragement seemed particularly necessary.

Eleanor Conway acts as both an excellent talk show host and hilarious comedian, really encouraging you to talk without creating pressure or expectation and has the brilliant ability improvise with whatever is said, keeping you laughing at things you never realised were funny. Her discussions with the acts after their sets are entertaining and interactive and help stitch the show together.

First act of the evening, Eric Lampaert, is rather like a French Russell Brand; his quirky, bordering on metrosexual, appearance fits well with his style of comedy. Weaving in his cultural heritage with observation and audience interaction, Lampaert’s genre of comedy is accessible to a diverse range of people which is great at bringing the crowd together.

Ed Gamble’s set was highly entertaining and a brilliant example of how each night is totally different as well as proving his ability to improvise and deal with heckling in a way that is entertaining for the rest of the audience though unfortunately this meant that a large portion of his set had to be abandoned. However, Gamble kept the audience both on side and laughing throughout.

Rob Beckett’s style makes a great change from the standard self-deprecating stance taken by most comedians. Instead he uses family anecdotes and observation about things that everyone can relate to, making the audience feel included. His set was smooth and seemed well-rehearsed which is particularly impressive as all the material was new.

Finally, Sara Pascoe finished the evening with excellent new material in her usual observational style. As a female comedian, she doesn’t find herself trapped by this as many do and comments on life and society in a way that it can be observed by either gender, making her hilarious and leaving the audience wanting more.

All in all, an excellent gig with a great blend of side-splitting sets and eccentric audience interaction that will leave you laughing the whole way home.

Comedy Central Live Stand Up at The Vault

It must be awkward playing a gig in front of a small crowd of University students; this probably isn’t aided when the necessity to begin a show by asking the audience to move towards the stage arises, but this evening’s compere Marlon Davis certainly made it work for him. However, his initial success diminished slightly as the audience was incredibly hesitant to interact. Of course this is often the case when warming up a crowd, but it seemed to knock his confidence slightly as pauses between sections began to feel hesitant and even a little awkward.

Over time though, Davis’ performance gained momentum through his use of relatable anecdotes and a few well researched and executed snipes about the area along with his friendly personality and appearance which he certainly knows how to use to great comic effect.

Matt Forde, of Talk Sport fame, had great presence on stage despite initial hesitance from the audience. His clear observational skill is weaved into fairly topical material in a way that makes even political-based remarks funny and accessible to all. Forde’s personal stories were also told in a way that made them hilarious even to those who might not have been able to fully relate as his honesty and openness allowed everyone to feel part of them.

Headliner, Josh Widdicombe (Live at the Apollo, 8 out of 10 Cats), blended both tried-and-tested and new material in his performance to great effect. Using his improvisation and observational skills, he delivered a set that was both personal to the audience and entertaining in a way that would be appealing to anyone. His normal smoothness, however, was diminished by his lack of links between each section of his new material but this created its own comedy that kept up the great energy his performance provided.

In all, a hilarious and well received show by three clearly talented comedians.

WINOL Review

It seems that over the holidays WINOL has undergone a bit of a face lift. Whilst this, in many respects, is nice to see in an ever evolving world of media, I can’t help but feel that many of the elements are strange or unnecessary, particularly the “voice of God” at the beginning of the show; for a British audience, which this programme is aimed at, this is particularly unusual and, in my opinion, off-putting. In fact, it made me laugh. I’m not sure if this is because I found it so peculiar or because it sent me into a micro-rage at how everything nowadays is becoming “Americanised” (which is, in itself, an Americanisation – they’re becoming almost impossible to avoid).

However, on the whole it’s still very good, particularly as a student news programme. Of course, there are a few areas for improvement; some of the presenters talk much too fast still and, on occasion, look far too casual in the posture or positioning in front of the camera and there are also a couple of really slight issues with some of the lighting and sound, but perhaps I’m just over scrutinising it.

I also am still having problems with the length of time given to sport. It may be, in part at least, due to the fact that I don’t have any personal interest in it, but I can’t help but think that the amount of coverage given to one individual game of football is a little ridiculous. For example the coverage of the Eastleigh game this week lasted one minute and 28 seconds which doesn’t sound a lot but considering the whole sports section is four minutes 21 long and the entire bulletin is just over 15 minutes, you can start to see what I’m talking about. The same thing goes for coverage of the ice hockey. This is not to say that these aren’t well done, they just feel like they drag on a little. I think this may be largely due to the amount of detail and large gaps between sentences filled with clips that don’t feel overly relevant. The coverage of the Winchester City game I think is done much better; it’s short and to the point, giving enough detail to know what has happened without going into so much that it seems to go on forever…

Perhaps I’m biased with my major dislike for sport (particularly football).

Watch this week’s WINOL bulletin here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo0Xbie48wo

Some Flood, Some Food and Science Fiction

Today I’m feeling opinionated which, as any proper journalist knows, isn’t good if you’re trying to write news stories. After all, it’s hard to be totally objective when you’re having one of those days when everything goes wrong; you wake up early, you fall asleep listening to the Today program yet again, your shower floods your bathroom 20 minutes before you’re meant to be in lectures, you can’t find your bottle opener – that kind of jazz. Seriously though, there was about an inch of water on the floor- anti-fun times! Today was not my day…

So, as I’m not allowed to have an opinion writing news, I thought I’d do something where my opinion is valid and do some reviewing! I’d like to do travel writing, but I’m a poor uni student so I don’t have the means… (Free holiday, anyone? Please?)

I’ll start with a restaurant review, I think, and then review the last 4 series of Red Dwarf (i.e. series 5-8). I’ve never written a restaurant review before, so constructive feedback would be greatly appreciated! Though quickly, before I do, just want to ask if it’s acceptable for a man to wear a t-shirt with the neck cut so low that his boobs were almost falling out and jeans so low his boxer-clad bum overhangs the top… it’s not is it? Though, what’s probably worse was that this guy was a waiter (at a totally different restaurant, I hasten to add) and every time he went to serve the customers outside he appeared to me smoking! I mean jeez, surely you can wait for your break before you light up…

Anyway, reviewing... I would like to point out that all opinions are indeed my own and that everything was paid for by myself and not someone trying to make me write nice things about their stuff (because even if I do get free things, I refuse to say nice things about them if I didn’t think they deserved it… please give me a free holiday please?)

Today I ate at the Slug and Lettuce in Winchester for the first time. The front of the restaurant made it look quiet and unassuming and the décor, upon entry, was nothing of particular significance. The wooden floor gave it a slight rustic feel and reminded me of my friends & my favourite pub from back home. We were seated in the restaurant very quickly by our incredibly friendly and helpful waitress. Our order was taken and filled quickly too, which was nice. The food itself was good; the tuna melt was well toasted without becoming too crispy and the ratio of tuna to cheese was about right, however I personally found that the sautéed red onions inside were a little over done and felt they should have been cut smaller too. My friend Emma (whose blog can be found here: http://emmahblog.blogspot.com) enjoyed her food too, having opted for sausage and mash but changing the mash to chips, which they were very accommodating of. In fact, we ate there at her recommendation as she said: “I’m never disappointed when I go there.” The food seemed relatively reasonable in terms of pricing too, though it’s not somewhere I could afford to eat out at too regularly as a student.

Over all, I’d give it four out of 5 stars (see, right here: * * * * … ta-dah) which, technically means nothing because I have no background in food, apart from living off of it for the last 19 years of my life like the rest of humanity. That and the fact that I have nothing to go by star-wise and you have nothing else starred by myself to compare it to.

Moving on to Red Dwarf! (I’ve lost my professional/hoity-toity voice for now, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know). Warning: SPOILERS!

Having thoroughly enjoyed every episode of series 1-4, despite the continuation errors, I found myself feeling a little disappointed towards the end of watching series 5-8. Series 5 followed on relatively well from series 4 and ended with one of my favourite episodes (though I could say that about a lot of the series). However, Series 6 begins with the crew in pursuit of Red Dwarf in one of the smaller ships but it is never explained how they lost it. At the end of series 7 we discover that Kryten’s nanobots (which live inside him to repair him) have somehow shrunk the ship and are flying around Lister’s laundry basket but it’s never established when they managed to do this or where the crew and Starbug were when this took place. Perhaps I’ve missed something somewhere whilst I’ve been too busy laughing.

Anyway, I begin to lose some of my love for the series after losing Rimmer mid-series 7. Although the scripting is still good and the plots interesting and funny, I feel the novelty of him being gone and replaced my Lister’s love interest, Kristine Kochanski, rather wears off after the first two or three episodes. He returns in series 8 after the nanobots recreate both Red Dwarf and its entire crew but the show doesn’t feel the same; the set is completely different and although the additional characters may make for a greater number of possibilities in terms of plots and scripts, they change the shows entire dynamic. And don’t even get me started on the ending of series 8! Leaving Rimmer trapped on Red Dwarf as it completely corrodes and the ending with the words “The End” changing into “The smeg it is” is both thoroughly unimaginative and incredibly annoying. After all, what happens after that? And how does that link to the latest special episodes in “Back to Earth”? I think when I watch Red Dwarf next I’ll just make sure I don’t bother with Series 8, at least not the second half of it anyway.

So, there you have it; my reviews of various things.

Until next time, thanks and keep reading!

Let’s Get Out There And Review It!

I don’t care how much of a total nerd this makes me sound: Red Dwarf has totally taken over my life!

My most excellent parents bought me the box set for my birthday, and I’ve been putting off watching it ever since because I knew exactly this would happen, but a few days ago I gave into temptation to make myself feel less ill and generally happier. It worked; I felt much better by the end of the first two series though I had just spent over 5 hours of my life doing nothing but watching that, huddled in my blanket, eating noodle soup, so…

Anyway, as I’m thoroughly out of ideas at this precise moment in time (writing a blog a day is killing me a little bit), I thought I might as well make use of the 674 minutes I have spent of my life watching Red Dwarf over the past couple of days and write a bit of a review of series 1 – 4.

For those of you who have never seen Red Dwarf – Get off my blog! Joke, joke! Essentially, in deep space, a human (Dave Lister) was put in suspended animation before the rest of the crew was killed due to a radiation leak. He is now 3 million light years from Earth and is alone aside from Cat (a creature evolved from the ship’s cat), the hologram of his friend Arnold Rimmer who died, an android called Kryten and the ship’s computer (Holly). The show follows their (mis)adventures in space as they try to return to Earth.

Despite the fact that some of my favourite episodes are in Series 3 and 4, I have found watching Series 1 and 2 more enjoyable. I have a couple of theories on this, the major one being that the first series flows into the second one well – all the plots and characters make sense and have not changed at all between the two. I think if I wasn’t watching all the episodes in order, almost back-to-back, I might not care as much, however, I am and it annoys me that between Series 2 and 3:

1.       Kryten re-appears without warning or any sort of explanation and has once again is unable to rebel (plus he looks different, but, still – it’s an improvement, not a bad thing)

2.       Holly has changed face and gender

3.       Rimmer has suddenly had more/different girlfriends and sexual partners compared to before, or seemingly so

4.       The set has changed

5.       Lister is suddenly no longer pregnant (long story) and there’s no trace of him ever having been (i.e., no kids) and no explanation of what happened

6.       Rimmer’s uniform has changed

My other sort-of substantial theory is that I hadn’t seen much of series 1 and 2 but had already watched most of the episodes in 3 and 4. Not that this usually makes a difference; I can watch repeats of most shows and find them equally and entertaining and enjoyable.

Anyway, I can’t think of much else to say other than that I am loving watching Red Dwarf (and it's all in order for once)!

Until tomorrow...