Apes in captivity watch TV and favor either ER, Disney cartoons or teletubbies

Some researchers have observed that apes held in captivity watch tv programs. Some of them are fond of the Teletubbies, others favour emergency room dramas or Disney cartoons.

ut is it possible to script, shoot and screen cinema just for primates? That's what Rachel Mayeri set out to discover with her work Primate Cinema: Apes as Family.

[via we-make-money-not-art.com]

A Body, Blood and Computers: Just Like TV

CSI: The Experience, a new exhibition at Discovery Times Square, lets you step into the shoes of Grissom, Willows and the other forensic celebrities of the “CSI” TV franchise.

The exhibit will be traveling to several cities, click here to find out where and when.

[via The New York Times]

Game of Thrones [Infographic]

Game of Thrones [Infographic]. Brilliant. via Ryan Block+

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's 'not guilty' plea lost to TV

Electronic media covering the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case in New York, one of the most reported stories of recent years, missed his "not guilty" plea.

His first words uttered in public since his arrest for sexual assault were not recorded because the sole camera permitted in court was not rolling.

The operator had not received permission to start filming, French journalists reported from the scene.

Read full article.

Mad Men Barbie

Mad Men's Betty, Don, Joan and Roger in a special fashion doll collection by Mattel.

[via Adverblog]

SNL. "Damn It My Mom Is on Facebook"

Spotted on the Huffington Post. SNL sketch on a "Damn It My Mom Is on Facebook" filter. Very funny.

TV Star Sues -- Medical Prop Almost Killed Me

TMZ reports that Brando Eaton was the victim of a horrifying prop mishap on the set of Miami Medical -- when he played a character who was supposed to be shocked with a cardiac defibrillator ... but the prop medical device wasn't really a prop. It sent real electrical charges through his body.

Eaton claims he had to be rushed to the hospital -- and afterward, needed "treatment and counseling for the anxiety, flashbacks and apprehension from this incident."

Read full article.

Mad Men. The Daily Beast eulogy of Miss Blankenship

Don't miss The Daily Beast eulogy of Miss Blankenship and The LA Times Show Tracker interview of Randee Heller.

Bridalplasty reality show. Crossing a wedding competition with extreme plastic surgery

In one of the most shocking reality TV ideas yet, E! has ordered a new series that crosses a wedding competition with extreme plastic surgery. The network is set to announce "Bridalplasty," where brides-to-be compete in wedding-themed challenges to win extensive surgical procedures. [via The Hollywood Reporter]

What's wrong with you E! To all involved watch and feel ashamed.

[via tvtattle]

Watch Betty Draper’s Guide to Parenting

Betty Draper's parenting skills compiled in a video by New York Magazine.

[via The Washington Post]

Wall Street Journal Creates Hedcut For Don Draper of Mad Men

Following Sunday night's premier of Mad Men Season 4, The Wall Street Journal imagined what the signature dot-ink portraits hedcut would look like for Don Draper of Mad Men.

The Journal’s signature dot-ink portraits weren’t launched until 1979, and this season “Mad Men” takes place in 1964.

[via Laughing Squid]

Mad Smoke: Every Cigarette Smoked in Mad Men

Spotted on boingboing a video people smoking cigarettes in Mad Men by Whirled.

Scientists: 'Monkeys like TV'

Scientists in Japan have published a new study which they say proves that monkeys like watching television. ModernGhana reports.

A three-year-old male rhesus macaque enjoyed a video of a circus elephant, giraffe and tiger performing, according to scientists from Kyoto's Primate Research Institute.

Scientists used a technique called near-infrared spectroscopy to examine various aspects of the blood flow to the brain of the monkey while it was watching the television images.

The study found that when the monkey was witnessing the acrobatic performances of circus animals on a television screen, the frontal lobe area of its brain became vigorously active.

The activity in such an area was significant in reflecting the monkey's pleasure, as the human equivalent is a neurological area associated with triggering delight in a baby when it sees the smile of its mother.

The study, published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, the Swiss online scientific journal, reflects the latest parallels between the physiological make-up of monkeys and humans.

Read full article.

Measurement of neuronal activity in a macaque monkey in response to animate images using near-infrared spectroscopy (pdf)

emily | 6:21 PM | permalink | comment (0)

Tweet

Pirate Bay launches Dating Site: PirateDate.com

In a bizarre move, The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker, is partnering with social dating site Meezoog to launch an online dating site PirateDate.com, to take on Match.com, Zoosk and others.

[via TechCrunch]

Mad Men: the musical

Seeing the cast and crew of Mad Men singing Bye Bye Birdie could be the best thing ever to happen on YouTube – or the worst. [The Guardian via TV Tattle]

Mad Men Barbie and Ken Dolls

Spotted in The New York Times, Mattel's Barbie and Ken dolls styled after Mad Men.

The dolls are part of a premium-price collectors’ series for adults that Mattel calls the Barbie Fashion Model Collection. There have been Barbies and Kens based on other TV series, among them “I Love Lucy” and “The X-Files.”

Shoes made out of recycled TVs

Spotted on Ecouterre via boingboing, Elizabeth Olsen's Fall/Winter 2010 shoe collection made from polyester microfiber extracted from old analog TVs. How cool is that?

South Korean Cabbies Watch TV While Driving

Switched has reported on a crazy BBC story about a South Korean judge who ruled in favor of a taxi driver watching TV in his cab.

I remember an even more horrifying story that came out last year, about French truck drivers who apparently beat the boredom of their long-haul trips by putting their feet up on the dashboard and watching videos or playing computer games. To take their eyes off the road, they devised, get this, a technique for "driving by ear".

Sesame Street parody of Mad Men

Spotted on TV Squad, a Sesame Street parody of Mad Men.

The ten most shocking moments on Mad Men

[via TV Squad]

Daily Show visits the New York Times

The Daily Show's segment on the decline of the New York Times ("reporting the news, making stuff up, getting us into war") is fantastic - and reaches its peak when Jason Jones asks an editor to describe the appeal of "aged news," and when the editor asks him to explain, he challenges the editor to find a single thing in the paper that happened that day.

Ouch!

[via boingboing]

Japan Baby Coke Comerical

Just for fun. Spotted on Japan Probe, a commercial for "baby coke".

Everyone From Don Draper to the Sterling Cooper Copy Machine Has a Voice on Twitter

Mad Men's appeal extends beyond ordinary television viewing. But with Twitter, fans not only share their appreciation but have also created their own personal parallel universe. To learn more about this social-networking phenomena, AMCtv.com spoke with Bud Caddell, an advertising strategist in New York City who runs the Mad Men fansite We Are Sterling Cooper. In the Twitter world, he's known as Bud Melman, the self-anointed Sterling Cooper mailroom clerk.

Read full interview in AMC Blog.

[via TV Tattle]

BeTaMaXMAS

BeTaMaXMAS, a nostalgia YouTube tour through xmas specials of yesteryear.

[via boingboing]

Sopranos Wine

According to Reuters, HBO's The Sopranos- who's final episode was last June - has sparked an unusual spinoff, a line of Italian wines that will be launched in the United States this fall.

Sopranos Wines are being produced under a licensing agreement between the TV network HBO and New-York based Vesuvio Import Company. The wines will be distributed by Duggan's Distillers Products Corp.

It's not the series' first overlap into wine. Actress Lorraine Bracco, who played Dr. Jennifer Melfi in the series, launched Bracco Wines in 2006.

Wine labels from The Luxist.

Don Draper on SNL

« Don Draper's Guide to Picking up Women » on Saturday Night Live. You too, can be like Don Draper...

Mad Men Fans: A Zippo For Your iPhone

If you are a "Mad Men" fan and an iPhone user, this new iPhone ap is just for you!

Spotted on Uberphones, a Zippo iPhone application that will let you have a Zippo lighter on your own iPhone. The lighter will open with a flick of your wrist, and light up once you turn the flint wheel. How cool is that?

Ringo Starr's bizarre online video message

Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr has told his fans in a bizarre online video message to stop sending him fan mail as he is too busy to sign or read it, and it will only be "tossed".

"This is a serious message to everybody watching my update right now. Peace and love, peace and love," the musician said.

[via The Sydney Morning Herald]

Italian TV to broadcast Bible reading

It may have taken God a week to create the world, but it will take nearly as long to read the Bible from beginning to end in what is being described as the longest live television broadcast in Italian history. The IHT reports.

"On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI will read the opening verses of the Book of Genesis. The nonstop Bible recital will take 139 hours. ... About 1,250 readers from many walks of life and religious faiths will take turns until every word in the 73 books that make up the Roman Catholic Bible has been uttered (mostly in Italian but also with some ancient Greek and Hebrew).

Related: - The White House 2007 Bible Reading Marathon

Hollywood 'paid fortune to smoke'

According to the BBC, tobacco firms paid huge amounts for endorsements from the stars of Hollywood's "Golden Age".

"Industry documents released following anti-smoking lawsuits reveal the extent of the relationship between tobacco and movie studios.

One firm paid more than $3m in today's money in one year to stars.

Researchers writing in the Tobacco Control journal said "classic" films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s still helped promote smoking today.

Virtually all of the biggest names of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s were involved in paid cigarette promotion, according to the University of California at San Francisco researchers.

They obtained endorsement contracts signed at the times to help them calculate just how much money was involved.

Deals dated from the start of the "talkie" era, with "Jazz Singer" star Al Jolson signing testimonials stating that the "Lucky Strike" brand was "the cigarette of the acting profession . "The good old flavor of Luckies is as sweet and soothing as the best 'Mammy' song ever written," he wrote.

Related (wonderful) movie "Thank you for Smoking". Watch the trailer below.

Mad Men Illustrated

File under something wonderful. Spotted on Josh Spear Trendspotting, "Mad Men" illustrated by Dyna Moe on Flickr.

In her own words:

These are my drawings of people and things from the show.

I started by doing Rich Sommer's (Harry Crane) Christmas card to his coworkers last season. I decided to keep going.

I'm doing a new wallpaper for every episode of the second season.

Customizable prints of the most popular illustrations are for sale through zazzle.com.

A low tolerance for high definition

A witty piece from The Guardian on the harsh reality of HD - where "skin blemishes and hairpieces vie for unwanted attention".

"There are some things we were never meant to see. Now, thanks to high definition technology, we can see them only too clearly.

Films suddenly become more detailed, more textured to a distracting level. Pages of dialogue fly by, important plotlines and revelations go unnoticed as you spend minutes staring at the fabric of costumes, the wallpaper, even the hair. Try watching any of the remastered Star Trek original series without having your eyes continually locked on Shatner's dubious hairline.

The camera may add a few pounds but under HD it adds a few years as well. I watched the standard DVD of No Country For Old Men then saw Tommy Lee Jones again in the Blu-ray of In The Valley Of Elah, two films made in the same year. In the first, Jones looked merely craggy, in the second, it was as if putrefaction had set in.

On a big enough screen, HD offers a dizzying level of detail. It's hard to know what you are supposed to be looking at when everything looks so wonderful."

Jerry Seinfeld / Bill Gates second commercial together

The odd couple is back in a second commercial about "real people". The above long version is really boring but both Seinfeld and Gates (especially) are endearing.

More on their first commercial together.

[via Reel Pop]

Google Turned 10. Inrterview of the company's first employee

Google turned 10 this week. Fun to remember way back then.

And on the BBC in video, an interview of Google's first employee, Craig Silverstein.

Flight attendants on in-flight porn usage

According to CrunchGear, as in-flight internet becomes more widespread, watching porn has become a popular choice on those long and lonely flights.

"A few airlines have taken the issue upon themselves to lock down certain themed sites but that doesn’t rule out already downloaded material. Then other airlines, such as American Airlines, are offering unfiltered service and thus leaving the discretion up to the user — and flight attendants."

[via CrunchGear. Image from Airliners.net]

Samsung provided periscope-like personal TVs for Olympic fans

Samsung gave Olympic fans an alternative way to see the games in Beijing: with their very own monitor, enclosed in a periscope-like apparatus.

Spotted on DVICE.

TV stars say they don't watch TV ... are they lying?

In interviews, actors often claim not watching much TV. Then why did they want to get into TV in the first place? Asks TV Squard.

"... TV actors argue that hey're far too busy now to watch television, since shooting schedules make for such long days. However, with lots of time in make-up or sitting around in trailers, with DVRs and streaming online, it sounds like a lousy excuse these days. "

The only argument that makes some sense is that once you get into a particular field, you find yourself less inclined to participate as a fan of that same field."

By my books, TV is no longer a lesser art compared to movies, just the opposite. The quality TV series have better writing, a faster pace, more character development (over time, rather than just over a couple of hours). They have the opportunity for much more acting and benefit from better story lines with less reliance on special effects.

Watching TV in your store

Catching a glimpse of a TV set in the back of a store, while walking through Sikakap, Mentawai Islands, Indonesia.

Fembot stars in TV commercial

Japan's Fembot, Actroid DER2, makes her small screen debut in a 15-second commercial spot for a UV insect repellent/sunscreen spray.

[via Newlaunches]

Trendspotting. The Style of Mad Men

More on Mad Men, my latest greatest obsession. If you're not a fan, it's because you've never seen the show.

Trendspotting Josh Spears writes up a new men’s lifestyle site, Valet, with advice straight from the source.

"Their four part feature explores the style of each character on AMC’s hit show with the assistance of costume designer Janie Bryant.

The article takes a look at which current designers are taking their cues from the fads of post-war America, and even lists vital accessories and tips to help you dress the part."

TV Squad has gotten an interview with Mad Men's Rich Sommer who plays Harry Crane, the Sterling Cooper ad exec with the glasses and bow tie (he's second to the left in the above photo). It's a good read specially because interviews of the cast are hard to come by. I tried finding interviews on YouTube but with no success. This will surely change.

Off the show, Mad Men actresses have started smoking again

Outside a crowded press conference for AMC's Mad Men, the most critically acclaimed new series of last season, two actresses sneaked away to indulge in a habit closely associated with their characters. The Denver Post reports

"January Jones, who plays repressed housewife Betty, and Elisabeth Moss, who plays talented copywriter Peggy, stood unaccompanied by publicists or network staff in a palm-lined courtyard, smoking.

"I had quit for a long time, but the show got me started again," Jones said, referring to the nearly constant puffing scripted in the retro series about an advertising agency in the early 1960s.

... Prepare to see the ugly, desperate, vulnerable sides of the characters when "Mad Men" returns for its second season on July 27. "The second season gets deeper, edgier, darker," Jones said. "

[via [ TVt a t t l e . c o m ]]

DVD Man Men. Zippo lighter shaped box!

I'm a huge Mad Men fan, and though I've seen every episode online, I ordered and have just unboxed the complete first season in DVD .

To my complete delight I discovered that the box is in the shape of a Zippo lighter! So clever.

Zippo lighter picture from shop-online-4.com

Synchronized Office Swimming

Female Russian office workers with time on their hands. Genius!

[via darkroastedblend]

Gandolfini 'Sopranos' wardrobe sells for $187,750

The Soprano's wardrobe was auctioned off at Christie's POP CULTURE Auction today. The highest bid was $43,750 for a faux bloodstained costume, worn by Tony in a scene when heis shot by a demented Uncle Junior.

Read full article in USA Today.

Bill Gates' 'senior moment'

The Microsoft CEO shows his humorous side by acting out "a senior moment" in his leaving video which was shown to Microsoft colleagues.

[via BBC]