Technology for Christmas, Mail Privacy, RIP Mr Food

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of December 3, 2012



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Technology for Christmas                                                                                   

I have to admit that the Great American Activity this time of year is something that I absolutely can not abide.  I’m just going to put it out there and I’ll deal with whatever backlash is headed my way.

I hate Christmas shopping.

Don’t get me wrong.  I really enjoy shopping.  In fact my wife and I trade the traditional gender stereotypes when it comes to shopping.  She likes to go in, get what she wants and get out which is the traditional “male” shopping style.  I enjoy window shopping, comparing prices and features and just generally making a project out of it.  Except at Christmas.  You see I hate crowds.  You are all lovely people I am sure.  But when we all get together in a bunch our less desirable personality traits begin to emerge.  Plus there’s the added problem that when that many people all show up at the mall then you end up parking somewhere near Rochester.  Which means I end up having no idea where I parked the car.  Which just adds to the overall level of frustration.

So I think what is being tried at the Mall of the Americas in Minneapolis is a really cool idea.  The super mall has a parking lot with over twelve thousand spaces.  Now they have a text based system that will not only remind you of where the car is parked but also can answer any question you may have about what’s going on at the mall, all done in real time.  You start by texting your location before you leave your car (all the instructions are posted throughout the parking lot.)  Then later in your shopping adventure (and if you’ve never been to the Mall of the Americas let me assure you that shopping there is an adventure.  That place is enormous) you will get a text message with the location of your car.  All provided by actual live customer service reps right there at the mall itself.

Mall of the Americas says it has average over a thousand lost customers every year for a while which is why they added the text service.  Our malls are smaller but I’d bet at Christmas time most of us would consider such a service to be a real gift.

It might even make me a tiny bit less grouchy this time of year.

Mail Privacy                                                                                                          

Privacy is an issue that I’ve talked about many times before on this program.  Privacy covering our personal information, privacy concerning who we are and what we do while we’re online.  The reality is that none of this is particularly easy or clear cut.

For example - we all know that what we post on Facebook or Twitter or any other social media is pretty much public.  There are some ways to control that but the reality is once you put it out there, it’s out there.  Now I would imagine that most of us think that our messages on Facebook are somewhat more private (as compared to posts to our timeline).  And most of us probably presume that our e-mails provide us an even higher level of privacy.

Of course if you follow the news you know that may or may not be true.  E-mails between the former director of the CIA General David Petraeus and his biographer have had massive personal and professional repercussions for Petraeus and the U.S. Intelligence community.

But that required authorization from a court to violate the privacy, right?  Well, it may not be as hard to pull off as we think. For example did you know that if the government wants copies of your e-mails from the last couple months they need to get a court order.  But if they want to see your e-mails that are older than 180 days they don’t need any such thing.  180 days.  So we’re in the first week in December, that would mean anything from this summer and before is pretty much fair game.  

The issue here is that once again the law is trailing real life.  You see we used to store our e-mails on our personal computers.  Now more of us (for example if you use Gmail) keep our e-mail in the Internet “cloud”.  The current law offers limited protection for files stored for more than 180 days on an online server.  There is proposed legislation to change this but at the moment it doesn’t have a great deal of support.

It’s easy to sit back and think that our personal e-mail is part of our private life.  It’s easy to think that we are protected by our Constitutional rights.  Turns out it’s never that simple.

RIP Mr Food

There’s a very special place in the American mythos for the self made man.  We love successful people but our mythology is really built around the person who starts with nothing and makes something out of himself.  It speaks to potential, the American Dream that with a little luck and hard work any of us could be a success.

Two weeks ago we lost one of those great American success stories.  Art Ginsburg passed away back in November.  You probably don’t know that name.  If you do recognize it’s only because of his obituaries.  But you’ve almost surely seen him on TV and maybe even own some of his books.  Art Ginsburg was better known to the world as Mr. Food.

Ginsburg was born in 1931 in Troy New York.  His father was a butcher and that’s what Art grew up to be as well.  The story probably would have ended there except that through a little bit of luck he ended up in the catering business.  His success there led to a local TV station in Schenectady asking him on to do those little drop in bits that are a staple of morning television today.  That grew into a syndicated program that at its peak had 168 affiliates.

Sure there was Julia Child and Graham Kerr but Mr. Food was different.  He had no interest in showing off his arcane knowledge of exotic foods.  Ginsburg was quoted as saying that “...chefs cook for other chefs, I cook for America”.  That meant that he had no problem using canned soups or cake mixes along the way.  The idea was to create good food that didn’t require stuff you couldn’t find in the average American home and to do it quickly and easily.

Along the way Art Ginsburg and his Mr. Food persona became a comfortable and friendly presence.  Maybe you’d start with his stuff and go on to the fancy cooking but you could stay right there with him.  Ginsburg wrote 52 cookbooks that sold over 8 million copies.  He used to record over 200 episodes every year of his show.  He remembered that cooking was about the food we serve our families not a culinary competition.

Along the way he became the great American success story.  And yes, I’ve got to say it,  Oooh, it’s so good.

Art Ginsberg, Mr. Food, was 82 years old.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

In Flight Movies

Had the opportunity to go to Germany last week with my 9-5 job.  All that time flying over the Atlantic and free movies is pretty much as good as my life can get.  So I watched the following:

Jumper - (2008)  If you take away all plot logic, character development and don't worry about actually explaining what's going on you end up with Jumpers.  There is a really cool concept here (that some people have an ability to "jump" instantaneously from one place to the next.  If they can visualize it they can jump there) that gets utterly squandered by the script.  An attractive cast that obviously had some fun doing this movie also gets let down by just a really weak story.  Where does this ability come from?  Don't know, never explored.  Is it only the lead character (played by Hayden  Christiansen) or are there more?  Well we know there's at least one other (we meet him) and he seems to imply there are more out there.  But otherwise unexplored.  There is a group of folk (led by Samuel L. Jackson) called the Paladins who are hunting down the jumpers and killing them.  Why?  Small spoiler here because I'm about to tell you EVERYTHING the movie supplies as an answer.  They're religious zealots who have been doing it for years.  Basically a ten word explanation.  That's it.  The movie was clearly aimed at being the first of a "Jumpers" franchise.  They chose to set up the franchise rather than actually make a complete movie.  Tag on a stupid and undeveloped ending and you end up with a silly pointless movie.  The only surprising thing is that the cast has enough fun with the pitiful dregs of a story they're given to make the movie at least fun to watch.

Rating - *** Worth a Look (but only just barely)

Prometheus - (2012)  Let me get this out of the way right off the top.  The movie is visually stunning.  Really impressive. That's pretty much it.  This movie is derivative (you can play a game during it.  See how many ideas and images have been lifted from other movies for this one.  That will give you something to amuse yourself during this drivel), tedious, badly acted, unimaginative, pretentious, and utterly unworthy of the amount of movie spent to make it.  I kept thinking that director Ridley Scott had decided to out do the visual impact of "Blade Runner" and gotten lost in the attempt.  The story certainly did.  A train wreck.

Rating - ** Don't Bother

The Bourne Legacy - (2012) I loved the original Bourne trilogy with Matt Damon.  So I didn't know how this extension of the franchise with Jeremy Renner taking over the lead (not as Jason Bourne but as another product of the secret government program that created him) was going to do.  In the end I liked it, maybe even liked it a lot.  It's a Bourne movie so it's action over in depth thoughtfulness but they all are.  The script gives enough depth to the characters to make them interesting.  If there's a complaint it's that the basic story line is familiar.  An agent of a rogue covert U.S. operation designed to create super soldiers decides he's had enough.  He wants out.  The program can't have that so they decide to eliminate him (and all the other agents in the program as well).  He escapes with the help of a beautiful woman who is drawn into the action against her will.  They survive a series of attempts on their lives, win in the end and fall in love.  If you've seen any of the Bourne films you know this by heart.  It's too bad they didn't decide to mix it up somehow.  The fact that this movie is barely making the break even mark should probably tell the producers to try something different if they ever make another.  The cast is great, the story is predictable, the action is fast and furious.  Two out of three isn't bad for an action picture.

Rating - *** Worth a Look

The Descendants - (2011)  This one made the others worth wading through.  To be honest I probably had the lowest expectations of this George Clooney flick of any I saw on my travels.  Yet it out performed the others by miles.

It's the story of a nice if rather ineffectual guy (Clooney) who is suddenly shoved into a series of high stress situations that only he can handle.  He lives in Hawaii and is part of a family descended from the last king of the islands.  They have a large tract of undeveloped land that they have to decide how to handle.  Sell it and become individually wealthy or try to hang on to some of the last undeveloped land in the islands?  Add to that an accident that results in a massive head injury to his wife forcing him to face decisions about pulling the plug.  He has two daughters in crises of their own, a variety of other family issues and a final complication that I won't give away.  All of them are problems that he has to solve.  No one else.  The movie is filled with heavy, serious issues that could have turned this is a ponderous and dour film.  Instead Clooney, the writers and the director manage to give it a warmly funny grace that is charming.  It never cheats and makes fun of any of the situations but it never lets them overwhelm the humanity of the story either.

I loved this movie even as tears poured down my cheeks as the father, daughters and other family members face the horrible waiting for mom to die after being taken off of life support (I've been in that very situation following my mom's stroke).  The cast is wonderful, the script is deft, the direction is exceptional.  It all works.  This is the one I'll recommend to everyone I meet.

Rating - **** Recommended

New Rules Needed, Worst to First, Proof in the Crisis

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of November 26, 2012



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

New Rules Needed                                                                                                                

The BBC has asked its employees not to do it, at least for the time being.  A Kansas state appeals attorney was fired and faces ethics charges because she did it during a session of the state Supreme Court.  And two weeks ago I sat in a meeting where it was a major topic of discussion.

What’s causing all this fuss?  Using the micro-messaging service Twitter otherwise known as tweeting.  And the reality is we are facing a serious change in our culture that needs to be addressed.

At the BBC several senior staff members have been tweeting about the upset following two major scandals that resulted in the head of the broadcasting giant resigning.  The BBC has asked folks to allow these issues to be worked out inside the company.  In Kansas the attorney tweeted a rude comment about the defendant in the middle of a court session!  She was suspended and then fired.

I was attending a series of committee meeting connected with my work that drew people from all over the country.  At the beginning of our meeting we discussed our expectations of one another while we met.  And that’s when the tweeting issue arose.  It splits largely along generational lines.  The younger group sees tweeting as a normal part of their lives.  The older generation sees it as rude and disruptive when done during meeting time.  A realistic look at the issue says that the older generation is going to lose this argument in the long run.

At the same time not every moment of our lives is appropriate to be tweeted about or during.  Out of our conversation at the meeting were a couple of concepts that I’d like to share.  We need to understand that this issue is essentially one of mutual respect.  That we respect the time, the place and the people where we find ourselves.  That we realize that some issues need to be held in private and that everyone needs to make clear what they think should be private.  Finally there needs to be a commitment to presence.  Not just being in the room but being involved in what’s happening there.  When your digital communication interferes with that then you’ve stepped outside the lines.

We need to acknowledge the times are changing and find ways to bridge between the generations.

Worst to First                                                                                                          

This is almost too funny.  It was just a couple years ago, heck barely that, that we all but wrote the obituary for the National Broadcasting Company better known simply as NBC.  The Peacock network has struggled to the point that at one time it appeared that it was going to slide out of the top three among networks for the first time in living memory.

It really wasn’t clear that NBC would ever be able to recover.  The saying is that to everything there is a time and a season and you had to wonder if maybe NBC had just run out its string.  With the media landscape changing as quickly and broadly as it has the question started to look like whether broadcast networks had simply become dinosaurs headed toward extinction.

Then we hit the first week of the fall season this year.  Much to my delight I was able to report here that NBC had actually won a night!  Shortly thereafter they won a week in the ratings as well.  It was all very surprising and encouraging to see the one time champ come back slugging.

Well the latest news is almost impossible to believe.  According to reporting in the Financial Times NBC has pulled off that legendary move called worst to first.  The network has not only climbed out of the hole it has become the highest rated network for the fall broadcast season.  It’s a story that has everyone in the industry scratching their heads.  Turns out that may not be the most amazing part of the story.

The most amazing part of the story is that at the moment NBC is the only network that isn’t seeing significant ratings drops overall.  Think about that.  EVERY other network is facing what the Financial Times report refers to as a “...precipitous drop in television ratings so far this season”.  Which may mean that the other networks may be facing similar kinds of problems some time soon.

So against all odds it looks like NBC had plenty to be thankful about last week.

Proof in the Crisis

Sometimes the most powerful positive moment in a person’s or a company’s life is the moment of crisis.  Normally we think of a crisis as being something to be avoided but think about a crisis as any moment of great stress.  A time when all of your resources will be called upon, a time when you are going to have show just how much you are truly capable of doing and being.  A crisis is never really a fun time but it can be the time when you can find out just who you really are.

Two web companies found themselves in those kind of crisis, high stress moments recently.  And both of them have to be happy with what they discovered about themselves.

The early stress moment was election night and the service in question was Twitter.  The problem that Twitter has consistently suffered from is the appearance of the Fail Whale.  If you’re not into Twitter culture then you may not know that beast.  When the service became overwhelmed by usage you would get a graphic of a whale saying Twitter was down.  But on election night, a night that saw a peak usage of 327,452 messages a minute, the fail whale didn’t make an appearance.  This is huge step forward as Twitter becomes more mainstream.  To survive an event that big without going down was a big victory.

The second moment of crisis was related to Superstorm Sandy.  The storm surge flooded a great many internet server sites in the storm zone.  A lot of online companies suddenly found themselves completely unable to do business.  But the digital world prides itself on it’s flexibility and its ability to react quickly.  So the question became how do we get back online?  And the answer came from a surprising source - the online service Tumblr.  Tumblr is what is called a micro-blogging site.  It’s dedicated to shorter, more image oriented communication.  What happened was when the folks at Gawker and Huffington Post among others got knocked off the internet they turned to Tumblr to help them get up and running.  And the reality is that partnership worked so well some folks think that Tumblr might just be the future of online publishing sites.  Tumblr isn’t sure it’s ready to make the move but let’s face it, it never hurts to have people want you.

A crisis can be a time that can break you.  But if you’re good at what you do it just might be the event that makes you as well.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

John Carter of Meh

John Carter (2012) What a mess.  I read the books as a teenager.  Oh, those Frank Frazetta covers.  They're a wonderful piece of adventure from that time (Edgar Rice Burroughs published the first book "A Princess of Mars" in 1917.  The last book in the series was published posthumously in 1964).  The problem is that the movie version never quite decides how it wants to play the rather campy style of that day.

The movie has a long and twisted history.  Folks have wanted to make it dating back as far as the 1930's when animator Bob Clampett (Looney Tunes at Warner Brothers and Beany and Cecil for TV) talked with the author about an animated version.  In 2009 there was a direct to DVD version starring Antonio Sabato Jr and Tracy Lords (!) as Carter and Dejah Thoris.  A handful of directors have been connected with this big screen version over the years and both Paramount and Disney held the rights.  Mario Kassar, Robert Rodriguez and Jon Favreau all signed on for the project then left.  In the end Disney turned to Andrew Stanton.  His claim to fame was directing both "Finding Nemo" and "Wall-E" for Pixar.  While I enjoyed both of those movie immensely both he and the writers (Stanton, Michael Chabon and Mark Andrews) show that they have no idea where to go with the story.  They can't seem to decide if this is a serious science fiction move, an Indiana Jones type serial homage or a kids science fiction film.  Instead we get the usual bloated CGI dump to try and make up for it.  No time is given to establishing the world in which the story takes place, making any sense of the story line or much in the way character relationships.  When you add in a rather undistinguished cast (who does nothing to change their status as such) you end up with a mess.

There are a few good moments, a couple neat visuals.  But way too few.

Muddled.  Slow.  Confused.  Lacking in any engaging characters.  The hope was this would launch a new franchise and there would be two sequels.  Therein may lay the problem.  If they'd spent more time making THIS one a good movie maybe they'd have a chance to make a couple more.  Instead they spent an enormous amount of money that they have virtually no chance of ever making back.  Which means that those wonderful stories of Barsoom may never come to the screen.

Reason enough to dislike this movie.

Rating - ** Not Impressed

Facebook Creeper, Google Books, Turning Out the Lights

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of November 19, 2012



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Turning Out the Lights                                                                                                                 

There’s an old saying that what goes around comes around.  Also that there’s nothing new under the sun.  A lot of folks in the digital media world want to believe otherwise.  And yet reality just keeps jumping up and biting them in the butt.  For all the nearly religious chanting that it’s a whole new world with new rules blah, blah blah in the end some things never change.  For example in the end if you want to play in the big leagues of the media there’s a simple gold standard for success.  You either make money or you don’t.  If you’re not competing in that arena then you’re a really talented amateur.  Now really talented amateurs can do a lot of really cool things.  But you’re not playing in the big leagues.

Of course the down side of playing with the big boys is that they’re relatively unforgiving.  They don’t try to be nice, they don’t cut you any slack and they’re not going to give you a break.  A year ago YouTube decided it wanted to play with the big boys.  They knew they needed to move away from just being the host of endless Gangnam Style and laughing baby videos.  The big leagues required original high quality content so they created “channels”.  These were folks that received at least some financial support from YouTube to create that kind of must see video content.  A year later and YouTube has taken a long look at those channels.

Well that makes one of us.

As it turns out most of us have paid zero attention to the majority of the channels.  So in the very near future most of those channels will face some cold hard reality.  YouTube will be pulling the plug on 60% of the channels.  The reason is simple economics.  YouTube dropped as much as five million dollars per channel and over half of them didn’t turn enough of a profit.  The channels that showed some potential will continue to have the support of the video media giant.  The others will be left to their own devices AND expected to continue to work on paying back the original investment.

It’s a brave new world out there on the digital frontier.  Some people have managed to forget just how tough the frontier has always been.

Google Books                                                                                                          

You may not have noticed but the folks at Google have been working on digitizing the world.  All forms of data, all forms of information and everything in print.  This includes books.  And that has created a little bit of problem.  You see there are folks out there who actually kind of own the publishing rights to some of those books.  Turns out they’re not really happy with having their property offered up for free by Google.  So in that great American tradition they’re settling it in court.

The good news is that it seems like they have actually come to an agreement.  At the center of the disagreement is Google’s Library Project, which they describe as “An enhanced card catalog of the world’s books”.  What they were doing was scanning books from public libraries, making the books searchable and offering snippets of them online.  That resulted in groups representing both the publishers and the authors bringing suit.  This settlement covers the publishers only.  Google maintains this is all covered under the concept of “Fair Use”.  The courts have yet to rule on that issue.

Now the deal would seem to be a win-win-win for Google, the publishers and readers like you and me.  Google is one step closer to moving forward with the project.  The publishers get the right to exclude a title from the project if they so choose.  And the rest of us get a better way of finding books online.  Financial terms, if any, have not been disclosed.

I will note that the publishers did get one thing they may not want.  They get a free digital copy of every book in their list.  I’ve looked at a fair number of those Google scanned books and a lot of them are a mess.  Seems like maybe some of the scans put more emphasis on quantity rather than quality.
Given that these legal shenanigans date back to 2005 getting some kind of settlement done is a good thing.  Even the publishers acknowledge that there will be a growing influence of e-books in the years to come and having a digital card catalog works to their advantage.

Getting it done right is just as important.

Facebook Creeper

I have to admit I was a little cranky when I heard about this next item.  A little cranky and a little creeped out.  You see I just discovered that someone has created a page about my relationship with the Lady in My Life.  For those of you new to the world of the Phlipside that’s my long standing nickname for my wife.  We’ve been together for over 30 years.  That doesn’t mean I wasn’t upset to discover that someone has been collecting photos of the two of us, scanning our personal social media postings and amassing them all on a web page.  A web page I knew nothing about and for which they did hot have the permission of me or my wife.  That’s pretty creepy.

Now the bad news.  You probably have one too.  If you’re on Facebook and are listed as being in a relationship then Facebook has probably created a page about you and your significant other.  Did a chill just run up and down your spine?  Check it out at www dot facebook dot com front slash us.

The pages are called Friendship Pages and they’re actually not new.  The social media giant introduced them two years ago with a certain amount of fanfare but they promptly slipped off of most people’s radar pretty quickly.  Let’s face it Facebook is constantly changing things, adding features and generally running amok.

What I find creepy, that is creepy beyond the fact that Facebook is doing this at all, is that it happens without my permission or knowledge and the fact that there’s basically nothing I can do about it.  You can not make the page go away.  You can not opt out.  The best you can do is crank up your privacy levels nice and high to limit what the creeper page can post about you.  That, of course, is the best defense against any online creeper out there.
My question is simple.  Why do I need to protect myself against Facebook?  In what possible alternate universe did the brain trust at Facebook decide that turning itself into the world’s biggest creeper was a good idea?  Unfortunately this is symptomatic of the overall attitude within the Kingdom of Zuckerberg.  An attitude that they know better than we do how to run our lives online and control our information.

Now they’ve decided they know what I want said about the most significant relationship in my life.  And that makes Facebook a creeper.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

400th post - A Classic Movie

The Best Years of Our Lives - (1946) This is one of those legendary movies that you hear about long before you see them.  As classics so often are it is not only a movie of its time but of all time as well.  The issues it touches on are every bit as topical now as then.

Three veterans return to the small town where they live at the end of World War II. One a banker, one a former soda jerk and one a sailor who has lost both his hands in the war.  Each of them face problems trying to return to civilian life after years away in war zones.  Al (Frederic March) returns to a family that has grown up and learned to adapt to a different way of life than he left behind.  His wife Milly (Myrna Loy) and daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright) are smart competent women but they aren't the woman and little girl he left behind.  Al's return to his job at the local bank presents problems as well because his understanding of what's important have changed.  Meanwhile Fred (Dana Andrews) knows he wants no part of his old job as a soda jerk.  The problem is that he has no experience and no education.  His wife married him after they met at his training base and isn't happy that her officer husband is now her unemployed husband.  Finally there's Homer, the sailor who lost his hands.  In their place are two sets of hooks.  Homer is used to them but his family and his girl struggle with the change in him.

The actor who played Homer, Harold Russell, is worth an essay all on his own.  Born in Canada Russell had moved to the States as a child.  When the war broke out he enlisted and while working on an Army training film (of all things) an explosive damaged his hands so badly they had to be amputated.  The hooks you see in the movie are his in real life.  Russell brings an honest, natural style to his role.  Director William Wyler wanted that untrained naturalness and was furious when producer Samuel Goldwyn sent Russell off for acting lessons prior to the start of filming.  Russell is the only actor to win two Academy Awards for the same role. The Academy was sure that a virtual amateur couldn't win in the Best Supporting category.  They gave Russell a special Oscar for his inspiration to returning veterans and then he promptly turned around and won the other award as well (He beat out Charles Coburn, William DeMarest, Claude Rains and Clifton Webb).

The movie touches on such contemporary issues as Post Traumatic Shock Disorder, re-entry issues, the economy after a major economic change and more.  The performances are excellent walking the line between some very serious subjects while never descending into something too dark.  Wyler is a great director whose name isn't as well known today as it once was.  The movie picked up a handful of Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Lead Actor, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Dramatic Score and Film Editing) and was a huge critical and box office hit.  Great story, great cast, great director.

I'm glad I've finally gotten the chance to see this movie.  It more than lived up to its reputation.

Rating - **** Recommended

Snark, Please Don't, Just Lie

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of November 12, 2012



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

 Just Lie                                                                                                                  

I’ve talked before about the whole question of safety online for our essential information.  The entire digital business model is really based on getting as much of that information and either using it directly or selling it.  The problem is trying to control access to that information while still enjoying the joys of the World Wide Web.  Folks over in England may have come up with the simplest way to achieve that.

Lie.

No seriously, an Internet security officer for the British government advised people at a major conference over there to only give your actual information to highly trusted sites like those from the government.  To everyone else?  Lie like a rug.  

Andy Smith, listed as an Internet security chief for the Cabinet office, advised everyone to tell social networking sites lies about themselves.  The rationale is that while a limited number of sites absolutely need your correct information everybody else is a potential danger and should be treated as such.

The push back was almost immediate.  It came from all of the business folk who make their living on the web.  If all our social networking info is fake their ability to use that information for advertising purposes.  While I understand their concern let’s say it’s not first on my list of thoughts.

In a world where online predators can be a very serious problem this really seems like a simple solution.  As with any simple solution it turns out there are a few bumps along the road.  I’m a little leery of actually advocating that people start creating fake identities on the web because that comes with its own set of problems.  It also means that those “trusted” sites to whom we do entrust our real details will need to be hyper secure.  Right now a thief has lots of places to try and grab your info.  If they know that all your info is confined to just a handful of sites you can assume that the assault on those sites will go up exponentially.  Which means I need to trust the government to do a really good job with their Internet security.  Let’s just say that I’m a little doubtful on that subject.

For the moment I think I’ll keep my security to myself and my lying to a necessary minimum.

Please Don't                                                                                                          

It used to be that you never saw the names of products or even businesses in the movies.  The movie makers would create fake names for pretty much everything.  There were always exceptions, like when Macy’s appeared in the movie “The Miracle on 34th Street” but more often than not it was some version of Wile E. Coyote’s ACME Corporation.  Then came the days of the paid product placement.  Companies would pay the movie makers to actually have their logo or company name to appear clearly and openly on the screen.  And in those early days there was not even an attempt to disguise it.  You would get a long slow pan over the Pacific Bell logo on a phone booth or have a Pepsi can placed prominently in the scene.  Over the years the product placements have gotten a little subtler.

So I was interested in the product placement issue that has arisen around the Denzel Washington movie “Flight”.  Washington’s character is a high functioning alcoholic airline pilot.  His plane gets into a mid-air catastrophe from which he miraculously saves it and all the folks on board.  The problem is that in the post crash physical the level of alcohol in his blood becomes an issue.  And that’s the real issue in the dispute.

The character is seen regularly drinking Budweiser and Stolichnaya vodka among other drinks.  The manufacturers of the two alcoholic beverages have asked Paramount Pictures to remove or obscure the logos of their products in all future versions of the movie.   The reason is simple.  Both companies have spent a lot of time and money supporting responsible drinking campaigns.  What’s shown in the movie is exactly what they DON’T want connected with the images of their products.  From their point of view this is negative product placement.
The real problem is that Paramount doesn’t really have to do it.  The Trademark laws don’t give this kind of protection.  The products are available world wide and are being used in the manner intended even if over used in this case.  It’ll be interesting to see what Paramount’s final decision will be.

And of course on the other hand Heineken paid millions of dollars to have their beer featured prominently in the new James Bond movie.  To each their own I guess.

Snark

Last week someone on Facebook accused me of being snarky.  Moi?   OK I’ll be honest and say it’s not the first time.  In fact I’m not the only one out there.  I’ve heard people refer to this as the “Age of Snark”.  It’s a word that I toss around with fair abandon.  But it dawned on me this time that I’d never really looked into the word itself.  Since our snark is expressed primarily over digital media I thought I’d take the time right now to do just that.

First we look it up in some online dictionaries.  And it’s right there.  Most of them seem to agree that the word comes from the combination of the words “snide” and “remark” which gives us snark.  The definition of the word itself talks about remarks involving sarcasm or malice.  I’m going to come back to that.  Now the history of the word  (its etymology) is a little unclear it appears that the word has been used in the contemporary understanding going back to at least 1906.  But of course that’s not the earliest usage. That probably goes to The Rev. Charles Dodgeson, better known to most of us as Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice in Wonderland”.  Among his other works was “The Hunting of the Snark” a nonsense poem about a fictional beast with a made up name.  Curiously the name snark has been used a lot since then.  There have been missiles, planes, ships, alien races all named snark.  There’s even a Corporal Snark in Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch-22”.

But the kind of snark we’re interested in today is the kind involving sarcasm or malice.  And I think that provides the dividing line on snark itself.  There’s good snark and bad snark.  The bad snark is the kind grounded in malice.  It’s meant just to be mean and hurtful.  That kind of snark is all too common out on the web.  And it’s what gives snark a bad reputation.
The other kind of snark, based in sarcasm, has some value I think.  If you went back to the days of the Algonquin Round Table, a gathering of wise cracking intellectuals in New York City in the early 20th Century, I think you’d find snark in its finest form.  Dorothy Parker would feel right at home cranking out beautifully turned snark all day long.  While sarcasm can cut and be quite painful let’s say that it’s a surgical cut where malice based snark is just a blunt instrument.

None of which is going to make me less snarky.  But it may push me to raise the quality of my snark.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

8 Bits of Fun - Movie Review

Wreck It Ralph - 2012- Let me be honest, I went to see this movie because my daughter wanted to see it (and she was paying).  I'm not a gamer, wasn't even much of an arcade game player back in the day.  But what the heck?

What I got was a fabulous surprise.  This movie is a lot of fun.  Even better it's a great movie for the whole family.  Lots of silly fun stuff for the youngest kids and great subtle stuff for the adults too.

The movie is based on a whole range of classic video games.  At the center is a game called "Fix It Felix" and the game's villain Wreck It Ralph.  Ralph wrecks things and then Felix fixes them.  Yes, video games used to be that simple once upon a time.  After 30 years of being shunned by the rest of the cast of his game Ralph wants something different.  So he leaves the game to explore the action in other places.  Along the way he will run into nearly 200 characters from actual video games and just have a rollicking good time.  There some good messages in the movie as well particularly with finding happiness in who you are and what you do well rather than trying to be something else.

The movie is funny and touching and really, really wonderful.  Looking for some fun?  Drop a token for "Wreck It Ralph"

A Classic Thriller - movie review

The Day of the Jackal - (1973) Sometimes classics aren't big hits.  At least not at first. When director Fred Zinneman ("High Noon", "From Here to Eternity", "A Man For All Seasons") began casting the movie he decided he didn't want a big name star.  He wanted the story to be the star.  So the relatively unknown Edward Fox was cast as the Jackal, an assassin brought in to kill French President Charles DeGaulle.  The lack of star power is thought to be part of why the movie was not a big hit when first released.  The critics knew a classic when they saw it however.

The story is based on history.  In the early 1960's, after fighting a long and bitter war in Algeria, the French government decided enough was enough and granted the Algerians independence.  A small group in the French military was outraged and formed what would today be called a domestic terrorist group, the OAS.  In 1962 they made an attempt on the life of the French president.  The attempt failed, the conspirators were caught and their leader was executed.  The movie then takes the action one step further.  What if remaining members of the organization paid an assassin to try again?

What you end up with is a classic thriller.  The assassin making his way towards his moment.  The French police trying to put together the pieces to figure out what is going on.  The action is tense and moves quickly. At the same time Zinneman gives the action all the room it needs to build the tension.  In the end the director gets exactly what he wanted.  The story is the star and the story is a beauty.

Rating - **** Recommended Movie

Five People You Meet in Heaven review

The Five People You Meet in Heaven - (2004) Based on the book by Mitch Albom the movie is the story of an 80 year old Army vet who dies trying to save a little girl's life at the amusement park where he has worked since he was a kid himself.  When he arrives in the next world he's met by five people from his own life who are there to help him understand all that he has been through.

I really enjoyed Albom's first best selling mainstream book "Tuesdays With Morrie" which was the primary reason I put this movie into my queue. (I've never seen the movie of "Tuesdays" and I've never read the book of "Five People".  That seems weird to me but there it is).  So I had no idea of what was coming.

My first impression was not good.  The movie starts off slowly and feels like a made for TV movie (which it was) rather than a major motion picture.  It just felt awkward, clunky and a little cheesy.  The good news is that eventually the movie finds itself and gets much better.  The movie isn't perfect and it's still the kind of feel good, heart warming ending that you'd expect but at least it's a well done one.

Rating - *** Worth a Look

Movie Review - Senna

Senna (2010) - This is for racing fans.  The documentary follows the racing career of the great Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna through his tragic death at Imola in 1994.  Senna put the world on notice  from the moment he slid down into the cockpit of an F1 machine.  Astoundingly fast, intensely competitive and brilliant in the rain Senna was beloved by fans (especially in his home country).  At the same time he was something of an anomaly in the racing world being overtly religious and unapologetic about it.  That faith led him to be far more direct and honest than is sometimes wise in the extremely political world of F1.  His rivalry and crashes with the great French driver Alain Prost added to the drama.  In the end result if Senna had a good car under him he could be virtually unbeatable.

Unfortunately in the final racing season of his life Senna did not have a good car.  In fact the argument could be made that no one did.  The previous season had seen the addition of many electronic driving aids that disturbed the competitive balance and removed some of the influence of the driver's skills from the race.  The resulting cars were skittish and hard to handle.  The San Marino Grand Prix was marred by a series of accidents.  Young Brazilian driver Rubens Barichello had a tremendous shunt during qualifying, rookie driver Roland Ratzenberger was killed later in qualifying and then at the start of the race proper there was a spectacular accident on the grid when Pedro Lamy drove right up the back of JJ Lehto when Lehto's car stalled.  Just 7 laps later Senna's Williams race car would fail to make the turn at the Tamburello curve and slam into a retaining wall.

The movie does a wonderful job of presenting all the sides of Ayrton Senna.  His brilliance, his humility, his ruthlessness, his spirituality.  Fans of Alain Prost may have reservations about the less than complimentary view of him.  Formula One is filled with strong personalities and lots of politics.  The movie itself makes great use of Senna family movies, in car footage and news coverage.

A split rating for this one.
Rating = **** Recommended (for the average viewer) ***** Gotta Own It (if you're a racing fan)

Newsweek, the Price of Immediacy, Tracking You

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of October 22, 2012



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

 Newsweek Goes Digital                                                                                        

It really feels like I ought to be doing one of my RIP commentaries.  The ones I do when someone or something has passed away or closed up shop.  The passing of an icon, something like that.  But it’s not really that.  At least not yet.

Last week Tina Brown, a publishing icon in her own right and editor of Newsweek magazine, announced that effective later this year the news magazine would completely cease the printed version and go all in on a digital version.  It is the end of an era even though it’s not the end of the line.

This news is really no small thing.  Newsweek has been around for just shy of 80 years.  It never rose to the top of the pile constantly trailing “Time”.  At the same time it was the second largest weekly news magazine in the United States.  I remember getting a copy every week during my high school Current Affairs class to study.  It even got mentioned in a popular Paul Simon song.  Newsweek has probably felt the shift in paradigm of the print media as painfully as anyone.  How else do you explain the sale of the magazine by owner The Washington Post Company to 92 year old audio innovator Sidney Harmon in 2010 for a dollar.  You heard me right, one dollar.   Harman took on the magazine’s debts in the deal as well.

I’ve always felt that magazines were probably better positioned to make the move to digital better than newspapers.  The daily paper has to concern itself with the news plus the minutiae  of day to day life.  Magazines have the opportunity to range more widely, delve a little deeper and explore issues from more angles.  Consequently the opportunity that the new Newsweek, to be called Newsweek Global, has is to use all the tools of the new media world as it presents its case for continued existence.
Of course the problem is that magazines are pretty much by their nature long form and the digital world has been a bit more short form in its nature.  There are plenty of things that go well beyond Twitter’s 140 character limit.  Newsweek might be able to offer a winning package as Newsweek Global.  The highest hurdle may not be making the new digital world work but whether it can make enough money fast enough to deal with the legacy debt burden it brings with it.

This may not be RIP for Newsweek but it certainly feels like the patient is in need of some serious care.

The Price of Immediacy                                                                                             

One of the great innovations of the world wide web has also turned out to be one of the great pitfalls as well.  It’s immediacy, the fact that what you post to the world wide web is in fact world wide in just a split second.  Because there is so little processing time that immediacy has been a great assist to things like people’s revolutions like the Arab Spring.  The fact that it is spread so widely and quickly means that it’s virtually impossible for governments or censors to have much impact.  By the time you realize you have a problem it’s long past the time when you can do anything about it.

Of course that immediacy also causes problems when people post ideas and thoughts before they’ve had a chance to really consider what they are saying.  The list of athletes and celebrities who have gotten themselves into trouble by posting whatever pops into their heads in a kind of stream of consciousness foolishness.  I suppose it was only a matter of time before we took the step from foolish trouble to real trouble.

That happened last week.  The financial markets wait with bated breath for the earnings reports from all the big companies.  If earnings are better or worse than expected it can cause big changes in the value of a variety of stocks and other financial instruments.  So the that information is very carefully handled.  Now take the case of Google.  Information of all kinds is taken VERY seriously at Google.  Paranoid would not be over stating Google’s approach to their corporate information.

So imagine their unhappiness when someone at financial publisher R.R. Donnelly released quarterly earning report before the report was finalized.  Given that the news in the report was not particularly good it set Google’s stock into a tail spin.  A 22 Billion dollar tail spin.  Google had planned to release the report AFTER the market had closed to try and ease the damage.  But that’s when immediacy jumped into the equation.

In theater we say that timing is everything.  In the age of immediacy timing is even more vital than that.  And the only way to make sure you’re handling the timing right in such an environment is to slow down and take a little more care along the way.

Tracking You

It’s not something most of us think about.  But our computers are tracking where we go, what we watch and what we do online.  Everything.  Let me tell you a slightly embarrassing personal story as an example.

A couple months ago I was looking for a particular style of let’s just say undergarment.  I couldn’t find it at our local stores so I went online.  I spent a grand total of about 15 minutes researching the subject.  Ever since then I spend most of my time when I’m on Facebook looking at ads that feature men’s behinds.  Seriously.  Sometimes two at a time.  It’s not my idea of a good time.

Now how does that happen?  Simple.  My computer tracks where I’ve been and some websites, like Facebook, make use of that information.  Those sites even sell that information to other websites.  It’s called tracking and a lot of folks don’t the concept.  So there has been an ongoing push to give users (that’s you and me) control over who tracks us.  It’s called the Do Not Track movement.

Well don’t get too comfortable just yet that you will be able to decide who gets your info.  The National Association of Advertisers is raising a huge stink about Microsoft actually making Do Not Track the default setting on the newest Explorer browser.  They claim that Microsoft should side with the advertising community who wants that data rather than the overwhelming number of users who want Do Not Track.  As much as I like to pick on the folks up in Redmond  Washington I have to give them credit this time for choosing what their users want.

So what’s the bottom line?  For me there is a little bit of a balancing act here.  I understand the need for advertising to help pay for what is out there on the World Wide Web.  At the same time where I go and what I do is the center of the privacy discussion.  I want the final decision to be mine.  I don’t believe that the advertisers have any “right” to that information.  They need to do a better job of selling why we should allow them to track us.  And they need to let us determine just how much tracking we are comfortable with in our browsing.

I’d be happy if they could just forget those 15 minutes of my life.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

Book reviews - Philip K. Dick and Trivial Knowledge

I'm a little behind on the books.  Lots of travelling gives me lots of time to rip through my reading list.

Confession of a Crap Artist - Philip K. Dick (originally published in 1975 but written in 1959)  This is a strange but fascinating story of  Jack, a man who views the world from a peculiar and unique point of view and his narcissistic sister Fay and her husband Charley.  Jack suffers from some kind of mental disorder and isn't really prepared to deal with the real world head on.  He ends up living with his sister and brother-in-law and realizes that there are worse conditions in the world than his.  It is Charley who dubs Jack a "crap artist" which would translate as "bullshitter" today. Eventually the mutually destructive nature of Fay and Charley's relationship will drive them to destroy everything they love.  Along the way they will take others right along with them.  It is a delightful and idiosyncratic look at life in California in the '50s.  At least among a certain set.

Dick is really working his writing genius in this one even as he largely strays from the mysticism and science fiction that most of us associate with him.  The point of view of the story moves from character to character with very little indication that it's about to happen.  Yet within a few chapters I didn't find it at all difficult to follow along.  You figure out pretty quickly that Jack may be the only sane person in the book.  He is consistent in pursuing his vision of how he should live his life.  Everyone else is deeply caught up in their own illusions which end up destroying all of them.

This isn't his best known novel but it's well worth your time.

Rating - **** Recommended Read

I'm going to lump these next books together.  They are of a category that I have always loved.  Call them "Volumes of Trivial Knowledge".  I was the kid who would lie on the floor on a rainy weekend and read the encyclopedia.  Just pick a volume at random and open it at random and start reading.  When things like "The Book of Lists" and "The People's Almanac" came along I was in seventh heaven.  These books belong in that same category.

A Little Bit of Everything for Dummies (2011), The Trivia Lover's Guide to the World (2012), and A Short History of the World (2012) are all great additions to the tradition.  Each one has it's own slant.  The Dummies book is just what it says, a little bit of everything tapped from the vast ocean of material that the series has covered in the last 20+ years.  This includes fun stuff, lifestyle stuff, social stuff and even some around the world stuff.  Which led quite nicely into the Guide to the World which is geography based.  I pride myself on being above average in geographical literacy but it got me going several times.  Two of my favorites - What is the first foreign country you come to going south from Detroit MI and what South American country do you hit first if you drove south from Chicago IL?  Answers?  Canada and none.  As a wise man once said "You could look it up".  The Short History attempts to give you a quick but thorough overview of the history of the globe.  Taking what the author believes are the most important events he weaves a connected narrative rather than just a recitation of facts.  They're all fun reads.

Rating ***/****  Worth a Look (for the average reader)/Recommended Read (for the Trivial Knowledge Junkie)