Game of Death: France’s Shocking TV Experiment (Video)
From Yahoo News:
Is a crusading French documentary maker striking a blow at the abusive powers of television — or simply taking reality TV to a new low of cynicism and bad taste? That’s the question viewers across France are asking in light of Christophe Nick’s new film Game of Death, which aired on French television Wednesday night. The documentary has generated a massive amount of attention — and naturally, courted controversy — because of the dilemma that faced contestants on a fake game show in the film: Would they allow themselves to be cajoled into delivering near-lethal electrical charges to fellow players, or rather follow their better instincts and refuse?
Game of Death is an adaptation of an infamous experiment conducted by a team led by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s. In order to test people’s obedience to authority figures, the scientists demanded that subjects administer increasingly strong electric shocks to other participants if they answered questions incorrectly. The people delivering the shocks, however, didn’t know that the charges were fake — the volunteers on the other end of the room were actors pretending to suffer agonizing pain. The point was to see how many people would continue following orders to mete out torture.
Tiger Woods, Sex Addiction & South Park
Tiger gets South Parked … When the successful men of the world suddenly want to have sex with tons of women, the top scientists in the country are brought together to put a stop to it. Once the testing gets underway, it turns out some of the fourth grade boys of South Park are sex addicts. (Full episode here)
Sizing Up Sperm: The Most Extreme Race on Earth (Video)
Wow, I had no idea that sperm have to fight Morlocks along the way! National Geographic presents Sizing Up Sperm:
Each of us was the grand prize in an ultimate reality competition, the amazing race a sperm makes on the road to fertilization.
Millions of sperm compete while overcoming armies of antibodies, treacherous terrain and impossible odds to reach their single-minded goal.
To illustrate the full weight of the challenge, Sizing Up Sperm uses real people to represent 250 million sperm on their marathon quest to be first to reach a single egg.
Georgia TV Station Creates Panic With Spoof Documentary Claiming Russian Invasion
From Variety:
A pro-government Georgian television station sparked widespread panic in the Caucasian country when it ran a spoof documentary claiming the Russians had invaded again. The half-hour show — which aired Saturday night — brought chaos to the country after it claimed Russian troops were already in the capital Tbilisi and aired “unconfirmed reports” that pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili had been assassinated.
Mobile telephone networks crashed, cinemas emptied as parents called their children home and people spilled out on to the street of towns and cities across the country to seek safety. But the report on Imedi-TV — once Georgia’s leading independent station until Saakashvili took it off air following the death of its owner, opposition figure Badri Patarkatsishvili in 2008 — was nothing but a hoax, apparently aired by a…
Don’t Cry For Mainstream Media
News dissector Danny Schechter (director of the upcoming disinformation® documentary Plunder: The Crime of our Time) discusses the demise of mainstream media.
Cartman of ‘South Park’ Signs for 500 AK-47s, Like Just Like Blackwater Did…
Art imitating life? Not quite … Spencer Ackerman reports on the Washington Independent:
On Feb. 23, I broke a story about how the Senate Armed Services Committee determined that Blackwater employees in Afghanistan signed for hundreds of AK-47s and pistols using the name “Eric Cartman,” evidently a reference to the popular South Park character.
On March 17 — which Dave Weigel tells me is the season premiere — South Park will show Eric Cartman signing for the guns.
Serial Killer Won On ‘The Dating Game’
Rodney Alcala, 66, is representing himself in the penalty phase of his trial.
By Gabriel Falcon for CNN:
“Oh yeah, I remember it quite clearly,” said Jed Mills, the game-show contestant who sat next to Alcala in 1978. “He was creepy. Definitely creepy.”
Found guilty in February of murdering four women and a child, Alcala, 66, is acting as his own attorney in the penalty phase of the trial. He is hoping to persuade the jury in Santa Ana, California, to spare his life.
The crimes Alcala committed date to the late 1970s. Nobody at the time knew the man with the wavy long hair and toothy grin was a psychopath — an unstable, antisocial personality.
That includes Mills, a veteran television and film actor, whose only encounter with Alcala was when both of them…
Obama Gets Visited by Ghosts of Presidents Past
This is pretty cool if you have been a fan of the history of Saturday Night Live and the actors who played the presidents. Sadly, Phil Hartman who did the best television Reagan ever (among other great things) is no longer with us, so they called in someone else to fill his shoes.
There’s actually a message at the end of the video … enjoy (the video was directed by Ron Howard):
The Jersey Shore Presents: Inglourious Basterds (Video)
Vinny from ”Jersey Shore” stars in the opening scene of Quentin Tarantino’s best picture nominee.
The Two Most Hated People In America (Video)
The Wrap led us to this one, noting that:
Sarah Palin stopped by “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” Tuesday.
One wonk on Twitter said it was a meeting of the two most hated people in America. We think that’s unfair to Jay; as for Palin, no comment…
Fear And Loathing On Sesame Street
Poor Count … One, two, three … via All That’s Interesting:
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Crazy Japanese Game Show
Crazy Japanese game show: Try to stack as much food as possible on your animal!
Wall Street’s Love Affair with Curling
Good to know these folks can take a break from destroying this nation’s economy. “It is like drinking merlot,” said one trader. See a video below on what the heck curling is. Eric Dash writes in the New York Times:
Wall Street trading is often described as a blood sport. But inside the great investment houses, the sport of the moment is, of all things, curling — that oddball of the Olympics that is sort of like shuffleboard on ice.
This slow-poke game, which originated in 16th-century Scotland, has captivated the Type-A world of Wall Street almost by accident. CNBC, whose market chatter is the background music on trading floors, switches to curling from Vancouver shortly after the closing bell. And so, after a day of braying for money in the markets, traders are winding down with curling. It is, fans say, a bit of after-market therapy. Curling is so slow and drawn out that it becomes mesmerizing.
“It is like drinking merlot,” said Douglas A. Kass, the president of Seabreeze Partners, who got hooked on Olympic curling a few years ago via CNBC. (Read More: New York Times)
Grant Morrison, Paul McGuigan And Stephen Fry Team Up For TV Series
Grant Morrison, ComiCon 2006. Photo: pinguino, CC
Despite his unbelieveable success as a writer, Grant Morrison has yet to have one of his comics translated onto the screen. Now he’s going to be writing for TV and personally, I can’t wait! Via MTV News:
Comic book scribe Grant Morrison is teaming up with “Push” director Paul McGuigan for a currently untitled television series to be filmed in Scotland, according to McGuigan himself.
In an interview with Live For Films, McGuigan revealed that he’s developing a seven episode television thriller alongside Morrison and actor Stephen Fry, who comic book fans will remember as talk show host Gordon Deitrich in “V for Vendetta.”
“It takes place over seven days around an event that happens in Scotland,” said the “Push” filmmaker. “It’s a modern take on an…
Unplug the Signal: The Truth Will Not Be Televised
By Nathan Janes, Pupaganda.com.
A flow of information is constantly streaming from the television set; a bombardment of words and pictures. The speed at which this information is communicated makes it easy for the signal to take control, switching the viewer’s brain to stand-by as information is absorbed without analysis or question. Today the television’s constant signal shapes the conclusions of the masses and produces the collective norm. The signal prescribes what is news and what is truth through the words of so-called experts and authorities, gelding the consciousness and independent thoughts of those subjected to it. Through television, the masses can be made to accept the most monstrous distortions of reality. The signal is a chill wind of continuous oppression over the minds of the masses. It controls the management of…
‘Family Guy’ Actress with Down Syndrome Tells Sarah Palin to Lighten Up
Following up on this this story, I am wondering what the disinfo.com audience thinks of this:
Italian TV Chef Recommends ‘Cat Stew’
John Hooper writes in the Guardian:
Among other things, Giuseppe “Beppe” Bigazzi is known for his prize-winning cookbook La cucina semplice dei sapori d’Italia (”The simple cuisine of the flavours of Italy”). But as of this week, the flavour with which the TV gastronome is likely to be most closely associated is that of stewed cat.
Bigazzi is familiar to millions of viewers of the publicly-owned RAI network as the white-haired co-presenter of a popular pre-lunchtime programme, La prova del cuoco (”The proof of the cook”). But today he was experiencing his first day without television commitments in 10 years after being axed for expressing his enthusiasm for the flesh of felines.
His remarks came after mentioning how, in the desperate conditions of post-war Italy, some people had taken to boiling stray mogs.
William Shatner in ‘Shit My Dad Says’
William Shatner. Photo by Jerry Avenaim
From the Hollywood Reporter:
Twitter sensation Shit My Dad Says is becoming a TV pilot with William Shatner set to play the larger-than-life dad at the center of it.
The casting of Shatner lifts the contingency on CBS’ multicamera family comedy project based on the Twitter account, which has enlisted more than 1.17 million followers since launching in August and has made its creator, Justin Halpern, an Internet star.
The pilot, executive produced by “Will & Grace” creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, was originally set up at CBS with a script commitment in November. Now, with Shatner on board, it has been greenlighted to pilot.
Halpern co-penned the script with Patrick Schumacker. Halpern and Schumacker co-exec produce the Warner Bros. TV-produced project.
Halpern, 29, had moved back in with his…
