The Filter, officially debuting tomorrow but already available today, is a website that asks for some basic information about your tastes in film and music, and then makes recommendations about other things you’d like–music, movies, web videos, and TV. It’s not clear from the CNN coverage how it compares to Amazon.com’s recommendation engine or to sites like Pandora, but it looks interesting.
We’ve been watching reruns of “Millennium” on the Chiller channel, and just saw “Jose Chung’s Doomsday Defense," about the fictional religion of “Selfosophy.” This episode was written by Darin Morgan, who also wrote “The X-Files” episode, “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space," one of the best shows of that series. Fantastic. The opening sequence can be seen here. One big difference between Selfosophy and Scientology–the Selfosophists give the visiting cops copies of the Selfosophy book. Scientologists would have made them pay for it. Charles Nelson Reilly, who played Jose Chung, just died last May. I was pleased to see that they worked a clip from the crazy Sid and Marty Krofft TV series “Lidsville” into the opening story of Selfosophy. Too bad they didn’t also include a reference to “Uncle Croc’s Block," which inspired me to some childhood musical creativity.
If you advocate torture and car bombs, how can you have any moral justification for saying that those who use such tactics against us are wrong or evil?
The Parents Television Council, the organization that is responsible for generating over 99.8% of all indecency complaints to the FCC, has further demonstrated its own complete pointlessness by putting out a website that assembles a collection of the most indecent clips from broadcast television, with no parental controls of any kind on the page. Each clip is categorized with labels like “sex,” “violence,” and “foul language." What’s a kid more likely to come across? A five-second bit in one of thousands of television shows, or a huge collection of the worst of the worst all in one place on the Internet? It’s high time for broadcast television indecency rules to be dropped. (Via The Agitator.)
(Thanks, Jami!) Danny Boy, FCD (2007-10-01): *blush*My, that is kinda intense. I never noticed the level of profanity in Casino before, maybe I'm too used to Joe Pesci's mobster routine. Lippard (2007-10-03): Or maybe it's the contrast with Bert and Ernie that makes it stand out...
Check out this hilarious compilation of David Caruso one-liner clips from CSI: Miami. (Caruso aspires to fill Shatner’s shoes, as Kat likes to point out.) Next, this Warren Ellis commentary on the role of sunglasses in CSI: Miami. Then, this review of tonight’s Battlestar Galactica (which contains spoilers, and if you’ve already seen it, pay close attention to the remarks about the opening credit survivor count). And Warren Ellis’s response. (Via Wolven’s LiveJournal.) ...
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has placed anti-drug PSAs on YouTube. You know, those same ads that have been shown to increase drug use? Perhaps they hope that the video replies which YouTube users generate in response will similarly have an effect opposite to their intent? (Via CNN.)
I’m rather skeptical about whether this concept will actually accomplish anything, because, aside from the fact that Fox almost certainly makes orders of magnitude more revenue from commercial advertising than they do from DVD sales, advertisers don’t care about DVD sales, they care about ratings. But what the hell? I can’t resist stumping for such a hilariously funny show. What other broadcast television show on the Republican-shill Fox network can you think of that makes fun of Bush’s absurd “Mission Accomplished” photo-op, the military’s recruiting difficulties, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, “free speech zones”, and the lack of WMDs in Iraq? I suppose an argument could be made that more DVD sales now could translate to higher ratings in the future. But how is it that the DVD can be ranked #4 on Amazon but the TV show is still getting dismal (less than 4 mil/week) viewership? It’s a mystery! Anyway, I hope the show at least finishes out a fourth season.