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BBC iPlayer Relaunch
the BBC iPlayer has been relaunched, with Mac-friendly streaming capabilities
13th Dec 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
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128MB Of Memory
...something about Chimps.... can't quite remember the details.
4th Dec 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Big Saturday
A couple of surfers have been defying safety warnings and heading out into the 55ft waves off the coast of Ireland this weekend. Low pressure near Iceland has caused the swell, thought to be creating the biggest waves ever recorded in Ireland.
2nd Dec 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
RIP Evel Knievel
Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel, Jr. October 17, 1938 ? November 30, 2007 coincidentally, Top Gear's Richard Hammond has already made a doc about him, that has been in the BBC's Christmas line-up - don't know if they're pulling it or not
1st Dec 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Oh, Carol
dr chimp has alerted us to a good bit of festivus cheer underway in Wales
29th Nov 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
A Few Less Virgins
Virgin Megastore's Oxford Street branch has bitten the dust, re-branded as the utterly uninspiring and mis-guided post-Fopp, post internet 'Zavvi'. Once the biggest record shop in the world, the management buy out follows massive losses over the last few years - with Branson now free to concentrate on his more focussed on core businesses of Gyms, Space Travel and Wine, plus his next big idea about buying up the bank that just lost several billion in value. Someone should make the guy go on Dragon's Den with his next big idea.
28th Nov 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
The Things I Haven't Told You
trailer up for new BBC3 drama The Things I Haven't Told You - looks like they're going for a Skins vibe
28th Nov 2007 - 6 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Early Conchords
if you're after more from current Chimp faves the Flight Of The Conchords, there's some clips of the original radio version up at the bbc
26th Nov 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Steve 'Seagal' Jobs
Managed to catch a screening of Nico (a.k.a. Above The Law) last night in a bout of post-football depression. The near two decades since its creation haven't been kind and it played out like a 99 minute episode of The A-Team, complete with detached noodle-rock soundtrack and added Fu%$ing swearing to bump it up to an 18.
Anyway, two things that surfaced were:
a) It was poorly directed by Andrew Davis (who went on to find his form with The Fugitive), not the awesome John Badham or Martin Brest.
b) Steven Seagal bares more than a passing resemblance to the iPodfather, Steve Jobs. In the iBrows in particular. Boom.
22nd Nov 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Flogging A Dead Chapman
Imagine's got a new Chapman Bros work, Flogging A Dead Horse, free to download for the next 48 hours
20th Nov 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Brasil, Brasil
site up for the recommended BBC4 series Brasil, Brasil starting next Friday
16th Nov 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Live Boosh/ Battles
makes me think of Red Dwarf w added indie jokes really, but if you're into them, the Mighty Boosh are playing live on Jo Whiley this morning. first ep streamable on the bbc3 site too.
While I remember, thought this clip of Battles was a notch above the usual folk legend/soul warble
15th Nov 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
London In Flames
We've had a barrage of emails and texts at CTHQ this morning, but we are not under attack There's a big fire over at the future Olympic Village, casting a daunting cloud over the area....
12th Nov 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Brasil, Brasil
3 part documentary
Another great music series from BBC4 running through the cultural history of Brazil from bossa nova in the 50s, to tropicalia in the 60s, up to baile funk and the re-emergance of samba recently.
From the first episode, it's clear they've got most of the heavyweights on board here - Gilberto Gil, (now Minister of Culture); Pele, Caetano Veloso; Bebel Gilberto; Joyce; Seu Jorge. Plus some excellent footage of everyone from Os Mutantes to Carmen Miranda, Jorge Ben, Joao Gilberto, Tom Jobin etc playing.
It's a cliche that Brazilians are as into their music as they are football - but what's amazing here is learning how the government tried to use it to unify a huge country, and then cracked down when the tropicalia generation proved too radical for the fascist regime.
Highly recommended viewing for anyone wanting to expand their knowledge beyond Girl From Ipanema (which still sounds great btw).
7th Nov 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 4 star reviewsMighty Boosh series 3
the Boosh are back for more trips through the Nabooniverse - 10.30pm, Thurs Nov 15, BBC3. always get that feeling like i should like it more than i do, but do know lots of people who dig it - episode guide w mild spoilers in comments if you want to know what they're up to, and some clips here
6th Nov 2007 - 7 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Steve Ditko
anyone who enjoyed the great Jonathan Ross doc on Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko will be happy to hear there's a retrospective of his work - Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko - coming out June 2008 - full details in Comments
6th Nov 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Open Handset Alliance
Google is leading a pack of 30+ companies who have formed the Open Handset Alliance, with the intention of unifying the vast array of mindless mobile phone platforms out there. The plan is to bring together a stack of basic apps that will be available as a free mobile phone operating system called Android, allowing much easier development of software for the platform. For the user that will hopefully mean we get a way better experience, and the capability of phones sees a big improvement.
5th Nov 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Mothership Is Landing
Led Zepplelin's Mothership Best Of is available for pre-order on iTunes, as well as a £60/165 track "digital box-set" (?!) The Complete Led Zeppelin - featuring all the albums, including the BBC Sessions and some live bits. Best of all, any pre-order is entered intro a prize draw for:
Two tickets to the concert at the O2 AND two tickets to a "private dress rehearsal". Boom. Although I somehow doubt it will be that private once O2's loyal pay-as-you-go prize winners turn up. Plus travel, hotel and £400 of Led Zep food stamps.
Glad they've settled on the classic 70's iconography for all this reunion stuff, rather than the mid-90's crop-circle cliches of the last box set...
24th Oct 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Mac-Friendly BBC iPlayer
the BBC's hooked up w Adobe for a Mac-friendly streaming version of the iPlayer. ie, no downloading, but it's a start. full release in comments
16th Oct 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Damn It!!!
Jack Bauer hasn't received the same lenient sentencing doshed out to the likes of Paris Hilton or Pete Doherty. He's been condemned to 48 days for drunk driving ...although they will allow him to serve the sentence while he is on a break from saving the world.
10th Oct 2007 - 5 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Captcha the moment
University researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are putting those annoying spam protectors that require you to type a word (see our comments section) to good use. By serving up scanned images from books, the words that you type are helping to digitize a vast library of older texts. Confused? Maybe the BBC can describe what's happening more eLOqUently.
5th Oct 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Prison Break 4.0
It looks like Die Hard director John McTiernan may be spending some time in the big house. The confused director had just flown in from in Asia, AND was on anti-biotics, AND his dog had totally eaten his homework - when ruthless FBI agents had interviewed him about (alleged) celebrity wire-tapper Anthony Pellicano and he totally misunderstood the question.
Maybe Bruce Willis can rustle up a posse and spring him.
25th Sep 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Heavy Facts
The BBC are now chipping in on the rumoured Led Zep re-union gig. Harvey Goldsmith is making an announcement today according to them.
****** update: it's happening - £125, Nov 26 at the O2. to get tickets you have to register at www.Ahmettribute.com and then there's going to be a ballot. two per household - get to work chimps!
12th Sep 2007 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
The BBC's Multi Format iPlayer
The iPlayer should be available on platforms other than Windows "as soon as possible".
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7th Sep 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Beastie Boys
Brixton Academy, London
It's only until you see these guys live that you realise just how special they are. They've been around so long it's easy to forget or take for granted the reasons for being a fan. But last night it all came flooding back. There really is no one quite like them. As they waltzed effortlessly through a never ending back catalogue from punk gems like Heart Attack Man, Hip Hop classics like Shake Your Rump and their new instrumental jams you can't help to marvel at how they move from one genre to another maintaining full control and sincerity. They do it all and do it all better than most. Sporting cheap suits and shades and with the exception of a rather elderly looking MCA who stared longingly at his guitar during the hip hop numbers these guys never stopped moving and would run rings around most young bands now. Highlights were opener Time For Livin', So What'cha Want and the ferocious closer Sabotage featuring dare-devil stunts by Money Mark. Truly awesome.
BC - 4 Stars
Both they, and we are now a little older. The granddaddies of hip-hop/rock/punk/lounge moved casually through the eras and the styles. Not many acts could pull this off so casually and convincingly. Mix-Master Mike kept the classics interesting with his old-skool beats and occasional lyrical input. Highlights: Brass Monkey, Shake Your Rump, and the mosh-pitt crowd coming out of retirement for finale Sabotage. I also felt that having heard the tracks live the latest offering The Mix Up is deserving of more attention.
CJ - 4 Stars
21 years since they first hit Brixton Academy, Raising Hell with Run DMC and getting the Sun readers all worked up about the possibility of their VW logos being liberated, the Beastie Boys (II Men) are back. New songs from this year's instrumental jam fest The Mix-Up work much better in the wider context of the BBCatalogue, breaking things up rather than sounding like they're just arsing around in the studio for a bit. Thought the sound was a bit woolly at times, with MCA's bass so distorted that it was on the verge of being some generic low rumble, rather than the kick-ass riff machine it should be, and Ad Rock's guitar a little lost too - Mike D's drums cut through with some pretty crisp beats though, holding down the fort, with Mix Master Mike's turtabletricknologismery pretty entertaining. Stand out tracks for me were Gratitude, Shake Your Rump(ah!), So What'cha Want, 3 MCs and Sabotage - think that's still in at least one version of my all-time top ten. Also amusing to see that Money Mark still jumps up and down on his keyboard exactly the same way he did last time I saw them back in 95 (Hong Kong Stadium, with Foo Fighters and Sonic Youth on the bill - that's a proper support act).
C71 - 3.5 Stars
I must admit I was slightly skeptical about this show. After easily being my favourite live band for many years, 1999's upgrade to Wembley Arena was very dissapointing - although to be fair it was the crowd that sucked not the band (too many fair weather Hello Nasty fans sitting not singing).
All that was quickly brushed aside here, as I couldn't have wished for a better start than Time For Livin' (although technically you could say Biz vs The Nuge was the real opener). Their was never a sign of age kicking in, other than their choice of suits. Mike D's reflections of playing Brixton in '86 ("Google that y'all") brought it all home - this is a band that has always moved forwards and kept things going in their own unique style.
Mix Master Mike has turned out to be the best signing the group ever made, and his constantly surprising beats and pieces constantly kept things fressssh. As a pure hip-hop band they have to be up at the top of the pile with their mic passing styles (So Watcha Want, Ch-Check It Out), but add a punk band (Heart Attack Man, Egg Raid On Mojo), a rock band (Sabotage, Gratitude) and some lounge jazz (Electric Worm, Live At P.J.'s) to the mix and this band is unsurpassable. Brilliant.
CSF - 4 Stars
Set List:
Mix Master Mike Intro
Time For Livin'
Gratitude
Off The Grid
Root Down
Super Disco Breakin'
Sure Shot
Shake Your Rump
Live At PJ's
Remote Control
Electric Worm
Lighten Up
Tough Guy
Brass Monkey
Pass The Mic
Flute Loop
Skills To PayThe Bills
Time To Get Ill
Son Of Neckbone
The Gala Event
Egg Raid On Mojo
Sabrosa
Alright Hear This
Ch-check It Out
Body Movin'
3 MC's
So What'cha want
Intergalactic
Heartattack man
Sabotag
6th Sep 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 4 star reviewsGroup Hug
It seems that Luke Wilson may be in need of a group hug. Where are the rest of the frat pack when you need them? Seriously though, let's hope this story has been incorrectly reported.
28th Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
New Heroes
Fairly cheesy promo up for Heroes Season 2.... which starts on US TV next month.
....and another clip here. Probably best to skip both if you're still watching on the BBC.
22nd Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Red Elvis
Caught this on Radio 4 yesterday, it goes some way to explain Elvis Presley's true role in the Cold War. Thoroughly baffling at times, it also explains the entire history of decadent western popular music.
well worth a 'listen again' (available for one week)
Radio 4 Afternoon Play
17th Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Dragons
B.F.I.
Ninja Tune
You owe me a debt of gratitude. In reviewing ‘BFI’, I have saved you from losing a precious forty-five minutes of your existence to the misery of phonic drivel. ‘BFI’, short for ‘Blue Forces Intelligence’ is an album by The Dragons, recorded in 1970 and released for the first time this month by Ninja Tune.
The pre-release hype describes the ‘Great Story’ that lies behind the album’s creation: The three brothers Dragon, (Doug, Daryl and Dennis) are unveiled as a trio of tripped-up surfer-dudes living in Malibu and working furiously after-hours to record their ‘psychedelic soul/ rock masterpiece’. I mean that says is all doesn’t it. If you weren’t getting the heebie-jeebies from the album title, then surely the proposal of a ‘psychedelic soul/ rock masterpiece’ sends you screaming for your Spinal Tap box set.
Anyhow, these ‘multi-instrumentalist sons of a symphony conductor and an opera singer’, have a great deal of trouble selling their album to a label. Which is strange really since you’d have thought an album as morale-crushingly average as this would have found a use in some Vietnam-era Abu Ghraib, destroying the resistance of its Viet Cong inmates.
The three DD’s get disillusioned because all these straight record execs, keep telling them their ‘spacey and weird, but also funky’ album is utter crap. They lope off into session work and, if you believe the myth, they all go on to be in the Beach Boys backing band. And ‘you can kind of hear that in their own sound’, as the press would have you believe. Yeah, ‘kind of’ being crucial to how you interpret that statement.
Then again, maybe I’m wrong and maybe it’s the reason that Brian Wilson has spent a good chunk of his life monumentally depressed, off his face on psychotropic drugs and hearing voices in his head. All of them presumably repeating, ‘Hey Brian, isn’t it strange how you can hear that way-out Dragons sound behind some of the most inspired and uplifting masterpieces of the Beach Boys?! Kind of’.
37 years later and the source of all this horror, the BFI master-tapes, lie quietly pulsating in rightful oblivion in the basement of Dennis Dragon’s home. Hidden, that is, until the day that Kev of DJ Food gives him a call and, ‘being a fan of all possible food-based puns’, asks if he can include the track ‘Food for my soul’, on a future ‘Solid Steel’ mix for Ninja tunes. And there you have it, as if at the opening of the musical Ark of the Covenant, we must look away from the eruption of screaming demons and evil sonic harpies pouring forth from the speakers. All because of a love of food-based puns.
‘BFI’, represents everything that went wrong musically in the late sixties and seventies; bloated ambition, walls of over-layered instrumentals, swelling chorals and pretentiousness disguised as a trippy careless, ease. The album reeks of musical shop-lifting with its cod-Doors allusions and could have done with a strong editorial hand in order to stop other parts sounding like a BBC sound effects tape; ‘Doctor Who/ 60’s psychedelica’. If you press me I’ll say the first two songs lead you into a false sense of security, and ‘Mercy Call’, the ninth track, does serve its purpose by providing some relief from the misery. However, other than that, the rest sounds like a struggle between Count Dracula and Austin Powers, wrestling for control of the Hammond organ.
Sifting through the compressed layers of dire lyrics on ‘BFI’ produces a few gems, but none shares the pertinence of; "I can’t believe that hate is real". Well Dragons, it is - and you too, reader, can share in this mind blowing revelation by popping on The Dragons and sampling a little of this ‘lost classic of psych-whimsy, Westcoast sexiness and serious musical chops’.
13th Aug 2007 - 5 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 2 star reviewsFake CEOs
Fake Steve Jobs may have been unmasked, but here's a video of Fake Steve Ballmer. A lookalike of the Microsoft honcho is obviously out to undermine the credibility of the company.
13th Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Lion vs Croc vs Buffalo
Never ones to overlook a YouTube phenomenon, check out this crazy animal street fight.
9th Aug 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
BBC iPlayer live
the bbc's iPlayer has gone live in a beta format - PC only though - can mac users get a refund on their tv licence? any PC chimps out there, feel free to let us know how it is
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27th Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Comics Britannia
following on from Jazz Britannia, Soul Britannia, Folk Britannia and SciFi Britannia, BBC4 are doing a Comics Britannia season in September. Dig out your Beanos now
26th Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
New Boosh
more mighty boosh on the way: series 3 filming soon, should be on bbc3 by october:
"The third series of THE MIGHTY BOOSH ?finds? Vince Noir (Noel Fielding) and Howard Moon (Julian Barratt) working in Naboo's second hand shop in Dalston. ?Howard, unsuccessfully trying to sell his esoteric? jazz records, mainly moons away the hours in delusions of grandeur while Vince lays around in a hammock playing loud music, trying on wigs and finding Howard ludicrous.?Needless to say they don?t get much work done. This doesn?t bother Naboo too much, firstly as the shop is really only a cover for his shady interplanetary Shaman business and secondly, he's usually quite chilled out from sampling his own magical herbs and remedies.?Characters new and old will join them as they battle demons and monsters in the depths of East London."
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10th Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
more thick of it
just in case you weren't able to catch the red button Opposition extras stuff after the Thick Of It Special on BBC4, it's showing on the TTOI site
9th Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
bbc iplayer
the bbc's iplayer is launching 27 july, letting you download bbc shows 7 days after transmission
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27th Jun 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Glastonbury Report
I've been scrutinising this year's Glastonbury festival from the comfort of the sofa, making extensive use of the red button on the remote. One thing I've realised is that I'm definitely the target audience for BBC 4. John Fogerty put in a barn storming performance, reclaiming Rockin' All Over The World in his encore. The Dude would have fainted.
The Stooges were awesome with Iggy back at the helm. Chimp hero Mike Watt had his moment in the limelight, but it was Iggy's show - finishing with the most audacious stage invasion I think I have ever seen. Brilliant.
Links
watch sets again here
mike watt interview for bass player magazine
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24th Jun 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Nopranos
Millions watched the final finale of the Sopranos last night in the US. The BBC has an article about it .....which I haven't read. I doubt it it gives much away, but no comments please. The Chimpomatic International Television Monitoring Unit is running a few episodes behind on this one.
11th Jun 2007 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
New Hockney
giant yorkshire landscape Bigger Trees Near Water coming to the royal academy from david hockney June 11 - Aug 19
30th May 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
CSI Miami?
This is definitely a case for Horatio and his gang: Alligator vs Snake
24th May 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Later...With Jools Holland
I had the pleasure of sitting in on the filming of Later...With Jools Holland last night. A mouthwatering lineup that included Bloc Party, LCD Soundsystem, Joan Armatrading and the mighty Wilco. Wilco's You Are My Face was fantastic, Bloc Party were so-so, but LCD Soundsystem were awesome. Playing 2 songs from their great new album - including the amazing All My Friends - these guys came out loud, strong and bursting with energy. A quick song by new boy Richard Swift was also good and very much enjoyed by Mr Tweedy by the looks of things.
Check it out on BBC 2 this Friday. The Who and White Stripes are up next week.
23rd May 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
3 Cheers For Joy Division
Anton Corbijn's debut feature Control has gone down well at Cannes. Starring ex-factory worker (no not that Factory) Sam Riley, it tells the story of the rise of Joy Division, and the fall of Ian Curtis.
Links
www.controlthemovie.com
www.imdb.com
www.bbc.co.uk
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18th May 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Disturbia
I was going to post today about checking out upcoming US Indie movie Disturbia, but it looks like the American public beat me to it. As pointed out in the IMDB comments "It's totally the same as this movie Rear Window - check it out" ....which to me is exactly why it looks so good, although it's not indie at all and looks a little more mainstream than I expected.
30th Apr 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Super Earth
more new planet news - they've found some super-earth.
If that's no enough however, check out NASA's remarkably similar image of the day:
The New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took this 2-millisecond exposure of Jupiter at 04:41:04 UTC on Jan. 24, 2007. The spacecraft was 57 million kilometers (35.3 million miles) from Jupiter, closing in on the giant planet at 41,500 miles (66,790 kilometers) per hour. At right are the moons Io (bottom) and Ganymede; Ganymede's shadow creeps toward the top of Jupiter's northern hemisphere.
Two of Jupiter's largest storms are visible; the Great Red Spot on the western (left) limb of the planet, trailing the Little Red Spot on the eastern limb, at slightly lower latitude. The Great Red Spot is a 300-year old storm more than twice the size of Earth. The Little Red Spot, which formed over the past decade from the merging of three smaller storms, is about half the size of its older and "greater" counterpart.
25th Apr 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Phil Spector's Hair
The Phil Spector murder trial is ready to roll, following the final selection of the jury - after over 100 potential jurors were dismissed for being potentially impartial. That situation was helped when Spector reconsidered his haircut - eschewing the Krusty the Clown look, for a more subdued "Phil-Spector-who-played-the-coke-fiend-in-Easy-Rider-look"
24th Apr 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Kryptonite Discovered
A new mineral matching its unique chemistry - as described in the film Superman Returns - has been identified in a mine in Serbia.
The BBC have the story.
24th Apr 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Incredible Norton
Ed Norton's getting the green screen treatment in the new Incredible Hulk outing. bit more of a littlest hobo vibe from the sound of things
17th Apr 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet
Midlake in Session
6 Music have got chimp faves Midlake live in their Hub thing. (did we really only give Van Occupanther 3.5?!!!)
16th Apr 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet