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)

Movie Review - Mars Attacks

Mars Attacks (1996) - So let's see, Tim Burton directs, the cast includes Jack Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Glenn Close, Annette Benning, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Michael J. Fox, Jim Brown (the NFL great), Rod Steiger, Natalie Portman, Tom Jones (the great Welsh singer) and Pam Grier.  It is a parody of '50s Science Fiction movies which means it has a RICH vein to mine.

So why does this movie suck?

And trust me, it sucks.  Ponderous, self conscious, unfunny, and totally missing the feeling of the movies it was trying to parody.  The idea is to twist the bad acting, writing and directing of the originals to create a quirky new look.  Instead we get a movie with bad acting, bad writing and bad directing.  There is NOTHING redeeming about this turkey.  Honestly.  Nothing.

The story is pretty much what you'd expect.  First contact with an alien race (Martians) results in the peaceniks vs the war mongers arguing over how to greet them.  When we finally do meet them the Martians immediately begin killing every Earth man, woman and child they see (all while laughing maniacally).  Eventually we discover that we can kill them with Country yodeling   Yes, I just gave away the ending.  You can thank me later.

Some movies are so good you can't take you eyes off them.  Then there are the train wrecks like this one.

Rating - * Don't Bother

The New You, Winter Storm Names and Facebook Study Madness

 "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 15, 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. 

 The New You                                                                                                          

I have talked here before about the ridiculous and antiquated system of demographics used by many media and advertising folks.  The times when we’ve talked about the classic 25-54 age group as a family reunion rather than a rational group for analyzing media use.  Or pretty much anything else for that matter.

So I was interested when I saw that NBC News Digital is trying to do something about it.  The problem of course is that while it’s easy to point out that demographic emperor is in his birthday suit what are you supposed to do in its place?  It may be bad but it’s better than nothing.  Well maybe not any more.  The folks at the Digital News Peacock are approaching the audience based on how they access the news.  I love simple concepts.  Their research says that news consumers come in four flavors.  The “Always Ons” who are constantly plugged in, the “Reporters” you know these guys, they’re the ones who are constantly saying “Hey, did you hear?”.  Then we have the “Skimmers” which is self explanatory I think and finally the “Veterans” who rely on traditional media for their news.  Otherwise known as “Old People”.

It’s a simple system designed to replace what had originally been intended as a temporary measuring stick back in the ‘60s.

The reality is that this is probably just a stopping off place as we begin to try and figure out how to measure the audience in our new media environment.  It would be great if we knew that this was a mature, stable media consuming environment.  Any even cursory examination of the last decade shows that it’s just not true.  By the early 1960’s TV had settled into a stable  system that was going to be around for a while.  The digital media environment doesn’t stay the same for more than a year or two at this point.  So figuring out how users will interact with that media is going to be just as fluid a situation.

At the same time I have to admit that it is nice to be viewed as a person based on what I do in my life rather than just being a number in an age group.  I mean have you seen some of the things people my age do?

Winter Storm Names                                                                                              

Do the following names mean anything to you?  Ike, Andrew, Irene, Agnes and Katrina.  That last one will probably tip you to what we’re talking about.  Those are the names given to some of the most destructive hurricanes to ever hit the United States.  Most of us are so accustomed to having storms named that we may not realize that it’s a relatively new tradition.  The devastating category four hurricane that hammered Galveston Texas in 1900, a storm that remains to this day the deadliest natural disaster in our nation’s history, is known simply as the the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.  It was in 1953 that the National Weather Service began naming them with women’s names in alphabetical order.  Men’s names were added in 1978.

The names exist for two reasons.  First to help track the storms easily in the records and to help folks in the world have a handle on the storms as they approach.  It’s a distinctive if every so slightly silly practice.

But now the Weather Channel has announced that it will begin naming winter storms.  And with that we may have slipped into major silliness.  Why the Weather Channel?  Well because while there is a National Hurricane Center there isn’t one for winter storms.

The problem I see is that there is a very simple formula for naming Hurricanes.  Once they reach sustained wind speeds 39 miles an hour they are declared a tropical storm and given a name.  When they hit 74 miles an hour they’re a hurricane.  Easy.

But The Weather Channel has laid out the most complicated standards to determine if a winter storm gets a name you can imagine.  First it can only happen three days before the storm hits a metropolitan area.  Then things like snowfall, wind and temperature will be factored in.  Finally the day of the week and the time the storm arrives will also have an effect.  So presumably a big storm that hits the Great Plains on a weekend day won’t get named.  I guess.  On top of that the list of names for the first storms are just silly.  Athena, Brutus, Caesar plus names like Rocky and Zeus.

As we well know around here winter storms are a pain in the butt.  They’re dangerous and unpredictable.  And naming them isn’t going to make that any easier at all.

There’s nothing silly about a blizzard.

Facebook Study Madness

There’s nothing quite as much fun as hearing the media lose its collective mind over the latest study on...whatever.  Somewhere along the line it seems like we have lost the gene that allows to take a step back and consider the issues with even the tiniest bit of rationality.

I have no doubt that we are going to spend a lot of time in the very near future listening to people lose their marbles over a new study that says Facebook makes you fat and rude.

Yeah, really.

The study is coming from folks at Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh.  The basic concept is easy.  Facebook with it’s constant system of “Likes” and “Friends” raises the self image of users while decreasing their self control.  As a result they are more likely to get into arguments, more likely to be aggressive in their interaction with one another.  At the same time that impulsive reaction to life can lead to poor decisions in what Facebook users eat and even in how they spend their money.  Because of that the study indicates that Facebook users can be overweight, resort to binge eating and carry higher levels of debt.  Even more depressing is that the study said the effect can come after as little as five minutes of cruising Facebook.  FIVE MINUTES!

I can already hear every parent out there who is looking for some reason, ANY reason to limit the amount of time that their kids spend on Facebook.  It’s the mother lode!!!!

Except it’s really not.  You see there was another study from the University of Salford in England that showed using Facebook resulted in feelings of inferiority.  Looking at everything that is going on in their friends lives made them feel like they were failures.  

The reality is that both of these studies describe only portions of the reaction that many Facebook users have.  Most of us manage to hang out with our friends, share photos and even have discussions without losing our minds, gaining tons of weight or sinking deep into depression or credit card debt.

In other words we can use Facebook and still stay rational.

We ought to take the same attitude about the latest batch of studies.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

Movie Review - The Philadelphia Story

The Philadelphia Story (1940) It is such a joy to come across a movie that truly excellent in every aspect.  Great cast(Katherine Hepburn, James Stewart and Cary Grant plus a top notch supporting cast), great scrip(based on a Broadway script written especially for Hepburn), and director(George Cukor)  each bringing their tasks home with skill, a complete package.  AFI put this movie at #5 for Romantic Comedies.  It's all of that and more.

On the eve of her second marriage wealthy and beautiful Tracy (Hepburn) has questions about how she really feels when her ex-husband (Grant) returns bringing a tabloid reporter (Stewart) along for the ride.  In the end she's not the only one who will re-assess how they feel and what they want to do with their lives.

This is a sharp smart movie with some really wonderful performances not only by the three stars (I keep forgetting how good Cary Grant can be) but from the rest of the cast as well.  But mostly they just need to keep setting the big three up and then get out of the way.  Think of this movie as Middle America's mid-20th Century riff on Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew".  Like the Bard's Kate Tracy is headstrong and unaccustomed to suffering other people's shortcomings.  America's Kate is stylish and coolly remote as the resident "goddess" winding her way among all the men in her life.  Her philandering father delivers one of only awkward moment in the movie.  His "explanation" of why husbands cheat is appropriate in the context of the movie's time but just sounds foolish 70+ years later. The other moment is in the opening of the movie when Grant grabs Hepburn by the face and shoves her to the ground.  The female character doesn't seem to be injured nor particularly upset by the move but it feels uncomfortable in this day and age.  Meanwhile Tracy ends up with no less than three men who want to marry her.  In the end she finds a much more modern partnership than her Elizabethan counterpart manages.

The stories behind the movie are almost as much fun as the film itself. Shot in just 8 weeks the movie apparently required NO re-takes.  The opening scene is great especially when it dawns on you that there is NO dialogue!  Stewart would win an Oscar for the role even though he always said that Henry Fonda should have won that year for "Grapes of Wrath".  For Hepburn the movie was something of jump start for a career that had hit a string of flops (she was listed as "box office poison" by a group of theater owners).

In the end the movie is just spectacular.  I was prepared to like it but not prepared to be drawn in by it the way I was.  This should be required viewing by most modern movie directors.

Rating = ***** You Should Own It

Movie Review - Father of Invention

Father of Invention (2010) - Kevin Spacey is one of those actors that I will always watch.  So this one had to be added to my queue solely on the basis that he stars in it.  I don't remember seeing any publicity at the time and the title means nothing to me.
   Spacey plays an infomercial superstar Robert Axle who falls when one of his products, a combination ab exerciser/TV remote, ends up costing users a finger due to poor design.  He does eight years in prison and comes to discover that his family and his company have moved on without him.  He has to try and find his place in the world and in his family once again.

So in the end this is a classic redemption movie.  Or at least it tries.  There are some very good moments in "Father of Invention".  They center largely around Axle and his daughter (played by Camilla Belle).  That's where the heart of the story can be found.  Unfortunately writer/director Trent Cooper (he shares the writer credit with co-producer Jonathan D. Krane) didn't choose to focus on the heart and ends up with a scattershot approach to the story that just drains the movie of any energy at all.  Astoundingly in the mini-documentary on the making of the movie he has the audacity to claim that watching the movie reminds him of Billy Wilder.  I was just aghast.  Wilder's worst day was better than this.

Having said that this is not a terrible movie.  It's simply not a very good one.  Some very good ideas and a perfectly workable cast never get a chance to really get on a role.  The opening 15-20 minutes are probably the worst.  The script reaches for cliché after cliché.  Seriously, we have a man hating lesbian gym teacher character.  Worse yet she becomes Robert Axle's love interest.  I wish I were kidding.  Axle's wife(Virginia Madsen) is a caricature, and his daughter's roommates (the man hater Phoebe played by Heather Graham and cute, rather vapid Donna played by Anna Anissimova) have no important role to fulfill.  The movie is filled with characters who could have been interesting and important to the story but are never developed.  Meanwhile we don't get nearly enough between Spacey and Belle who have some pretty nice chemistry.

I watched this movie on the perfect day for it.  A chilly, rainy Saturday afternoon when I had nothing better to do.

Rating - *** Worth A Look (but only barely)

Trouble After Harry, Televised Politics and James Bond

 "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 8, 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. 

Trouble After Harry                                                                                             

When I first heard that J.K. Rowling had written a new book following the blockbuster success of her 7 book Harry Potter series I knew she was in trouble.  And I’m watching that prediction come true right now.

Her new book “Casual Vacancy” hit the bookshelves at the end of September.  Since then it has done very well on initial sales.  The Publishers Weekly best sellers list that was released last Thursday shows Rowling comfortably at the top of the list.  That doesn’t surprise me since I’d be willing to bet that the pre-order for the book was huge even with a $36 price tag.

Reviews for the book seem to be mixed.  The New York Times reviewer was not at all impressed but there are plenty of others who found it quite acceptable.  The general consensus seems to be that Rowling’s writing continues to be very good.  The topics are very different from Harry Potter.  It tells the story of a small English town where a well known local figure who also sits on the local governing council dies just before a very important vote on a divisive local issue.  The story includes a variety of unpleasant real life issues like rape and includes a fair dose of obscene language.

In other words this is an adult book.  

And that’s what is really bothering a lot of her fans.  The customer reviews at places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble are utterly, utterly predictable.  People who claimed that they knew perfectly well that “Casual Vacancy” wasn’t Harry Potter clearly show by their reviews that they were expecting more of the same.  It is the greatest trap that any artist can confront because it’s a trap based on the success of your previous work.  People fall in love with the characters and the created universe and have a terrible time separating that world from the author.  These people are the ones who are given a chance to read a sample chapter (which in this case would have shown just how different this book is from the seven that preceded it) but don’t and then complain because the book isn’t what they expected.  In the end there’s no way to satisfy these folk.

The reality is that only time will reveal whether or not Rowling has really been able to make the jump from the young adult.  For the time being people are reading her book and talking about it.  And that’s what you need to happen.

Televised Politics                                                                                               

The Presidential election always comes with two big media “events”.  I hope you could hear the air quotes when I said “events” because I think it’s time to dump both political conventions and the Presidential debates from the media.  They are enormous non-events in any real sense as far as I can tell.

As always let me be clear right up front.  I am deeply interested in politics.  I believe we need to be informed, that we need to know what our candidates stand for and what the parties are advocating.  I just think that the current media oriented versions of the debates and conventions are largely a waste of time.  As such I believe they are actively turning off a new generation of voters who find the whole thing an utter wast of time.

Political conventions were created in the 1830s when the Anti-Mason Party, the Democratic Party and the National Republican Party (not the GOP) all had them.  They’ve been televised since 1940.  The problem is that the very nature of conventions are committee meetings and long speeches.  In the age of 140 CHARACTER tweets I’m not sure how you make that work.  But week long talk fests are just not on in the digital age.

In large part the same problem arises when it comes to the debates.  Their history is even shorter.  You may remember being taught about the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  You were probably never taught the format.  Hour long speech, hour and a half long rebuttal and closed with a half hour response to the rebuttal.  That would be GREAT TV don’t you think?  Debates as we think of them are really creations of television and the first one was the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960.  The problem is that the current format requires short answers to complex questions.  I heard an interview with one of the prep teams for President Obama talking about working hard to get the President to stop making long substantive answers.  And you can bet that Governor Romney’s team was doing the same thing.

What we are left with are beauty pageants.  It’s all about surface and appearance.  Things like actual discussion of the issues with carefully thought out answers to the complex issues that face us today have no place in either pseudo event.  It’s actually the media at it’s most shallow.

So let’s do the right thing and just dump them both.

James Bond

So this past weekend marked the 50th anniversary of the James Bond movie franchise.  Like most media icons Bond inspires many opinions.  So I figured why not weigh in as well.

I became a Bond fan first from the books.  So it never hurts to remember that the original stories were written between 1953 and 1966.  A lot of the mindset of that time remains in even the latest versions of 007.

But for the movie versions there are four important pieces to being a great Bond movie.  You need great devices (courtesty of Q), you need beautiful women, you need a great theme song, and of course you need the right actor playing Bond.

Best gadget?  Easy.  We all want our own jet pack.  007 got his in “Thunderball” in 1965.  The only other contender would be any of the Bond cars.  But they’re beyond mere gadgets.

Best Bond girl?  Yes, the whole concept is pretty sexist.  But it’s part of the Bond legend.  Sadly far too many of the Bond Girls haven’t been worth remembering.  And there’s the whole personal taste thing.  So how about a top 3?  Michelle Yeoh in 1997’s “Tomorrow Never Dies” simply because she is the rare female who can kick butt right along with 007.  Hard for me to put Halle Berry in 2002’s “Die Another Day” in second place because, well, she’s Halle Berry.  But first place for me has to be Ursula Andress as Honeychile Rider and the original Bond Girl in 1962’s “Dr. No”.

For theme song (not the classic Bond theme but the song for each movie) I was astounded to see a survey that put Paul McCartney and Wings “Live and Let Die” at the top.  That’s silly.  It’s a fine little pop tune but it’s not BOND.  You want Bond theme song you want Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger”.  No contest.  I think Adele has a shot at creating that kind of sound for the new movie.

And as for who plays Bond, why is this still discussed?  It’s Sean Connery first and last.  Daniel Craig is second, Timothy Dalton third.  If you think that Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan should be on the list don’t ever speak to me again.

The 22nd movie in the Bond franchise, “Skyfall”, opens November 9 in the United States.

Call that the View From the Phlipsid

Book Review - Goodbye Mr. Chips

Goodbye Mr. Chips by James Hilton (1934) When I realized how much I had enjoyed "Lost Horizon" I kept my eyes open for his other work.  This is one that I had heard about for years but never got around to reading.  So when I finally got a copy for my Nook Color my first surprise was learning that the book only runs about 40 pages!  A friend who taught at a private school at one point in his life said this book was pivotal in making the decision to do it.

This is a warm and charming look at an English Public school Brookfield (what we would think of as private schools) and a modestly talented instructor named Mr. Chipping.  His tenure at Brookfield runs from 1870 into the mid-1920s or so.  Chipping is nicknamed Mr. Chips and becomes a beloved fixture at the school.  It takes us through his brief but very happy marriage to a younger woman, his relationship with generation after generation of boys and his struggles with the changing world outside the school's grounds.

There is a certain sentimentality to this story, one that probably struck a very strong chord in the English readers when the story was first published in a magazine.  The years following Queen Victoria's death including two World Wars and the abdication of a King tore at the fabric of the English people's understanding of themselves.  Chips expresses that longing for the order of a different age even as he defies the social norm during the first World War by insisting on including the name of a former German instructor who died fighting for the Germans when the list of alumni who had died in the war was read.

You could easily come away feeling that this is a rather sad book.  At the same time it is a story of a man who learns to live with his own shortcomings, who found true unqualified love and who did what most of  us hope we will do in our lives, he made a difference.  He knows that no one may remember him just a few years after he dies but he continues to do what he is gifted to do for as long as he can.

In the end I found myself to be one more of Mr. Chip's "boys" who have been touched by his gentle charm.

Rating - **** Reccommended Read

Movie Review - Smokin' Aces

Smokin' Aces (2006) - Rated R -

OK, start by thinking Tarantino.  Think Grindhouse.  Then take away any sense of humor, any wit or any real style.  What you're left with is "Smokin' Aces".  It's violent, its obscenity laden, it's bloody in the extreme.  Add in, shall we call it, leisurely pacing and you end up with a movie that leaves you thinking about what might have been.  A good cast and an interesting concept just never mesh for anything interesting.

Buddy "Aces" Israel is a Las Vegas headliner with deep ties to the Mob who decides to become a snitch.  That results in a million dollar bounty on his head and heart.  The field of hit men and women who want to cash in on Israel grows quickly.  Meanwhile the FBI is trying to make sure that he stays alive to testify against the aging capo who had been Buddy's mentor.  Along the way bullets fly, the body count rolls up at a tremendous pace and secrets are suddenly revealed.  There is a cute kind of double twist at the end but it only leaves you wishing the rest of the movie was as clever as the twist.

I have a category of movies called "Spot the Stars".  This one is a surefire entrant.  Ray Liotta, Alex Rocco, Wayne Newton, Ben Affleck, Peter Berg, Andy Garcia, Alicia Keys, Chris Pine, Curtis Armstrong, Jason Bateman and Matthew Fox (the cast includes Nestor Carbonell and Kevin Durand who would appear with Fox on "Lost").  Taraji P. Henson who currently co-stars in "Person of Interest" plays Keys partner.

So an interesting concept and a fun cast.  Somehow Joe Carnahan who both wrote and directed the movie never seems to find the key to make it all happen.  There are a few interesting moments but not enough to really save the movie.  If you like lots of action and have a couple hours to waste go for it.

Rating - *** Worth A Look

Peacock Victorious, MySpace Returns? and Beach Boy Cover Bands

 "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 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. 

Peacock Victorious                                                                                             

Normally I would never spend the time even on this quick little program to get all hot and bothered about the weekly TV ratings.  The reality is that they are usually pretty boring, pretty much the same from week to week.  You wait to see what might be the new hit of the season early on but they’re pretty much a yawn after that.

But I was just so excited when the ratings for the first week of the new TV season came out recently.  Because for at least the first night of the new season, NBC was in first place.  After so many years talking about the seemingly bottomless pit that the Peacock Network had fallen into I just couldn’t believe my eyes.

And it wasn’t some skimply little squeaker of a victory either.  This was pretty convincing.  The overall rating for the first night from the folks at Neilsen was a 4.0 rating and a 10 share.  Now those numbers don’t mean a whole more to me than they probably mean to you so let’s take a look at the competition for comparison.  CBS had a 2.7 rating and a 7 share, ABC had a 2.6 rating and a 7 share and Fox had 1.7 rating and a 5 share.  That’s a fairly comfortable edge for the network that couldn’t shoot straight.

Even better it wasn’t just NBC’s new programming titan “The Voice” that was a winner.  A new program “Revolution”  took on a couple of veteran shows, ABC’s “Castle” and CBS’s “Hawaii 5-0” and beat both of them handily.

I need to sit back and savor that concept for just a moment.  NBC won a night and has two, count ‘em two, hit programs on Monday night.  Would I sound terrible if I said I wasn’t sure that NBC would EVER manage to pull that off again?
In the end there’s something about rooting for the underdog.  And in the last couple years NBC has been about as under as you could possibly put a dog.  As always there is a sure fire cure for making your way from the back of the pack.  You need to find something new and interesting that can carry the audience forward.  “The Voice” has been just that for the network.  With any luck they will be able to build some momentum so that those embarrassing days will behind them forever.

Nice to see some new plumage for the Peacock.

MySpace Returns?                                                                                               

I have no idea how to respond to this.  This invitation to check out the soon to be re-launched MySpace.  It’s like an old actor that you haven’t heard about in years.  My first reaction is “Aren’t they dead?”.  Apparently the answer is - not yet.

MySpace.  Time for a quick review I think.  Launched in 2003 it was the first big social network for most of us.  By 2005 it was big enough that News Corp bought in for 580 million dollars.  In 2006 it became the most visited web site on the Internet passing Google.  That lasted till 2008 when Facebook passed it worldwide and in 2009 passed MySpace in the United States as well.  Between then and now (just three years, my friends!) MySpace has fallen to the 161st in total web traffic.  Among sites in the U.S. they currently come in behind the likes of tumblr and WebMD.  In that same time they went from approximately sixteen hundred employees to about 200.  Talk about crash and burn.

For all that they are not ready to throw in the towel.  In June of last year Specific Media Group and pop star Justin Timberlake pitched in and bought the company.  Sale price?  35 million dollars.  Ouch.

Part of the problem with MySpace the first time around was that it really focused on an adolescent audience which made it a very uncomfortable place for college aged users and adults of all other ages.  Which is part of why Facebook supplanted it as quickly as it did.  So what will the new MySpace look like?

That’s a good question.  There is an introductory video out there that gives glimpses of it.  What I see doesn’t look quite like anything quite so much as Pinterest with a strong helping of music and Twitter type comments.  At least that’s what I think it looks like.  The problem is that I’ve tried watching the video on several different computers and haven’t managed to get it to play the whole way through yet.  If you’re trying to attract a media savvy user base that’s probably not the way to go about it.

In the end I look at it and say “So why do I need this?”.  I already have one social network I rarely use (Google Plus).  Maybe Justin and the brain trust at the new MySpace have a really cool new idea.  Or maybe that’s 35 million dollars they're never going to see again.

Beach Boy Cover Bands

I’ve always wondered about the life span of a rock band.  At what point is the band no longer the band?  How many original members have to remain?  If Paul and Ringo got a couple of guitar players would they really still be the Beatles?  Or is the name the thing?

Mike Love of the Beach Boys is betting that all he needs is the name.  I’m not sure how else you explain the fact that Love fired most of the rest of the band last week.  The Beach Boys have been on a 50th Anniversary tour.  Just before the tour ended in London at the end of September Love announced that the post anniversary tour version of the band would no longer include David Marks, Al Jardine or Brian Wilson.  Think about that for a minute.  The Beach Boys without Brian Wilson.

The original Beach Boys were Brian, his two brothers Carl and Dennis, their cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine.  David Marks has been an on and off member for years.  With more than two dozen Top 40 hits in their career they have been international stars, one of the biggest acts of their era and sometimes called America’s Band.

Trouble in the lives of the cleanest of the clean cut ‘60s group is nothing new.  Brian Wilson’s mental health issues, arguments, break ups and even law suits.  One of which awarded Mike Love the rights to the name of The Beach Boys.

But that brings me back to my original question.  When does a group stop being that group?  There are some ‘50s Doo Wop groups touring that have no original members, largely because the original members have all died.  If there were only Mick and Keith would they still be the Rolling Stones?  At some point don’t you really just become a cover band of yourself?  What really happens is that some members of the band realize that they can’t make it as themselves and need to hang on to the identity that pays the bills.  Unfortunately you can end up with what I can only describe as zombie bands.  The re-animated corpse of a once great entity that goes through the motions of life but without the soul.

Meaning no disrespect to Al Jardine or David Marks but in the end that’s The Beach Boys without Brian Wilson.  A zombie shambling it’s way through our memories of one of the seminal catalogues of American music.

The Beach Boys just became the sound track to the Zombie Apocalypse.


Call that the View From the Phlipside

Book Review - The Prophet

The Prophet by Ethan Cross (The Story Plant) - Why do we love serial killers?  We have TV shows that are dedicated to tracking them down or even making them the hero.  None of us would ever want to meet one in person but we are fascinated by what kind of person would do such things.

Ethan Cross brings us not one but two fascinating.killers.  Francis Ackerman is the product of a childhood of bizarre experiments by an insane father.  The Anarchist is the result of a mad man who believes that he is a prophet and that a young boy is the AntiChrist.  As a grown up the Anarchist is confronted with deep spiritual conflicts as he tries to find a way towards a very different life.  Caught in the middle is Agent Marcus Williams of the Shepherd Organization a special unit of the Department of Justice tasked with tracking serial killers down.  The story weaves between these three drawing in families, partners, other federal and local agencies and innocents that will be destroyed along the way.

The Prophet is the second novel in a series focused on the Shepherd Organization and Marcus Williams (the first is "The Shepherd").  It's a fast paced, intense, psychological thriller that takes you not only into the twisted corners of the bad guys but of the good guys as well.  This is the kind of book that won't let you put it down.  It demands your return to carry you deeper into the darkness surrounding the characters.

I had a couple small problems with the book.  The female agent characters are treated with little respect by the author.  They are both driven by their emotions into poor decisions both professionally and personally.  One agent goes to question a witness and at the end of the interview accepts a lunch date invitation for the next day.  The other goes from considering shooting Marcus to tearing off their clothes in a hotel room in the span of just a few days.  Can't imagine that female federal agents of any kind will appreciate the vision of them shown here.

The other has to do with the Shepherd Organization.  It's a government sponsored unit with the authority to hunt down citizens and kill them.  No trial, no evidence.  If they decide that you need to be eliminated they will use the power of the government to do just that.  The explanation is that well it's only BAD people like serial killers that they hunt.  The reality is that a group like this in another country would be called a "death squad".  It's an unfortunate choice to carry forward an otherwise great story.

Read this book.  Sure you'll sleep with the light on and baseball bat at your side but you won't regret reading "The Prophet".  It hits bookstores on October 16.

Rating - **** Recommended Read

Book Review - When The Devil Whistles

When The Devil Whistles by Rick Acker - Allie Whitman is a whistleblower.  In fact she's figured out how to make a career out of it.  With the help of an inevitably good looking male attorney they've set up a shell company called "Devil to Pay" and are working their way through California corporations that are bilking the government out millions of dollars.  Through a process called "qui tam" (where an individual sues on behalf of the government) she gets to keep a percentage of whatever the recovery is.  It's made for a comfortable living.  Unfortunately for her the next target does a little research (an incredibly obvious move) and discovers that, what do you know, EVERY company sued by Devil to Pay had a temp named Allie Whitman in the months prior to being hauled into court!  The result is blackmail and the near destruction of the relationship between client and  counsel that is prepared to blossom into something more intimate if it could.

The book is published by Abingdon Press which is a Christian publisher.  Like their previous offerings I was surprised at the end when I realized that it was Christian fiction.  The faith matters are handled beautifully as simply part of the personalities of the characters.  I'm not sure I would have pegged it as CF at all if there hadn't been the discussion group questions at the end.  Acker writes a story that is about character and integrity not about faith.  Perfectly balanced.

Rick Acker does a great job laying out the story between Allie and Connor Norman the attorney.  In real life he is a Deputy Attorney General in the California Department of Justice who pursues corporate fraud cases.  So the legal bits ring true.  His characters are fully developed real people that will draw you in.  And he knows how to tell a good story.  Other than the head scratcher about using her real name over and over again mentioned before there's only one other clinker in the whole book.  A secondary story line about North Korea trying to salvage Russian nuclear weapons feels tacked on.  Since it never really connects with Allie and Connor you never really care too much about it.  But even that is well written.

In the end this is the same kind of legal thriller that made John Grisham famous.  Think "Pelican Brief" for a parallel.  Great writing, characters to root for (and who have character themselves!) and action to keep you turning the pages.  This book can compete with any of the big name best sellers of the genre.  And if your church book discussion group is looking for something different the perfect book for you as well.

Rating - **** Recommended Read

Book - The Elizabethans

The Elizabethans by A.N. Wilson  The age of Elizabeth the First is arguably one of the two great eras in the history of England (the other being the reign of Victoria).  It is an age of exploration, the arts, the creation of the church tradition that would become my own, the birth of the tiny island nation into a power in its own right (rather than being an appendage to European holdings) and all led by a woman of brilliance and ruthlessness.

Sadly you will have struggle to piece that story together from A.N. Wilson's book on the subject.  The best image I can give you for how this book tells this story is to ask you to imagine (or remember) a professor at college who was deep with the knowledge of his or her subject.  Knew it front to back and back to front.  But who had the unfortunate habit of becoming distracted and wandering off in mid-lecture on one subject to examine some other subject that may have only the most tenuous of connections with the first.  That's the way this book reads.  If you are looking for a linear telling of the story of The Virgin Queen's reign you're going to struggle.  There is a linear progression but the side trips just strip away any sense of the overall flow of history.

Let me offer two examples:
A chapter titled "Elizabethan Women".  Now here's a concept that sounded fascinating.  How did the rule of a Queen as absolute monarch affect the place of the rest of her gender?  The chapter is 18 pages long and the first 10 are mostly about women (there's a long discussion of marriage but that was the central issue for both Elizabeth and the ladies of her age) although it should be noted that the discussion is only of "gentlewomen" and no mention is made of the "lower classes" (a fairly consistent approach throughout).  Most of the rest of the chapter is about architecture.  It is led into by the story of Bess Hardwick who through marriage and the death of her husbands become one of the kingdom's great landholders.  But she's only a launching pad for 8 pages of discussion that have nothing to do with the Elizabethan Women.

Likewise a chapter on Sir Philip Sidney.  Sidney is heir to one of the influential families of the age.  His greatest claims to fame are his writing, especially his prose "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia" and his sonnets, plus dying young from his wounds taken in battle.  His funeral was the largest ever seen in London.  On the whole he was a bit of a pop star at the time.  This chapter runs 11 pages and Sidney isn't even mentioned for the first four.  The next four give us the history of his brief life (32 at the time of his death).  The final three pages might possibly be described as outlining his legacy but they really aren't.  They discuss his contemporaries in the arts with virtually no reference to him at all.  Given that he was considered one of the great stars of his time both at court and in the public it strikes me as a paltry offering.

But that's pretty much the way the book goes.  It wanders this way and that.  When Wilson gets his teeth into the story of some place, event or person the book is a joy to read.  Beyond the authorial wandering you are also burdened with quotes done in the original Elizabethan spelling although others are "translated".  There didn't seem to be rhyme nor reason to which ones were or weren't put into modern spellings.  It becomes one hurdle after another at times.

If you want a well written (if somewhat opinionated) outline of the Elizabethan Age this is not a bad addition. If what you want is a clear and concise examination of the Age I can only hope there's something else out there.  The book only just squeaks into its rating class.
Rating - *** Worth A Look