CBC Radio is strange this summer.  Andre Alexis’ new show didn’t seem to me to be that bad at first listen.  That was partially because he was playing some jazz – which I don’t mind – and partly because he wasn’t telling his stories, which I do.  Still, the thing with most CBC music programs this summer is that they’re hard to review.  It’s impossible to review The Circuit when it spends its ninety minutes culling bits from The Winnipeg Folk Festival.  I’m not even going to attempt to review the shows that are comprised of 100% FURNER content, but only because I’m reviewing CBC shows and something from NPR does not count as CBC content in my eyes no matter how quality the content.  This year is such a grab bag compared to last year.  My measured cynicism is being challenged.

To me, this is a strange summer season for CBC Radio.  The show that I thought would be a lock – that’d be the advertising show, to recap – has a dull-as-dishwater host.  Three weeks in, I have realized that the advertising clips are the best part of O’Reilly on Advertising, and the B+ I gave to the show was premature.  It’s still a good show, but as a radio host Terry O’Reilly is a damn good advertising executive.  Deep Night seems amateur to me, Station to Station is actually worth something and I actually don’t hate one of the two native-oriented programs that CBC Radio obviously found important enough to cut into The Current’s running time.  Either I’m going soft or the programming isn’t too adventurous this year.  I’m assuming both excuses to be equally valid.

THE RED EDGE | Actually, The Red Edge isn’t that bad.  The show doesn’t seem to shy away from social issues that weaker shows would brush under the rug, and it seems to know what its purpose is on the schedules.  The hip-hop artist that I heard on one program didn’t interest me, but The Red Edge seems to remain liberal-minded without falling into an easy victim culture mindset.  The show isn’t as good as Dead Dog Café (which is the standard for native CBC programs, to hell with that show being a comedy) but The Red Edge manages to get its politics across while challenging them within the context of the show.  Honestly, it’s nice to hear a show that doesn’t try way too hard to force its diversity down the audience’s brainpan.  I hope The Red Edge keeps this trend up. ¤ B-

FIRST VOICE | I caught this show on a bad day.  A feature length documentary about indigenous erotica that told me, essentially, that natives are just as interested in stories about muscled, shaven Harlequin men and lovelorn, horny women as everyone else?  WOW!  Good grief, that’s diversity!  Hey guys, it’s erotica.  I’m not saying that erotica is an invalid genre, or that it’s essentially softcore pornography for the desperate wanks out there.  Still, the books are more often than not poorly written, and I can’t understand how scratching out the name Brawny Q. Lumberjack and replacing it with Kinikuk T. Eaglepants brings a whole new dimension to hot ‘n’ heavy bodies heavin’ and glistenin’.  This show is the more conventional of the native-oriented CBC programs, and it’s just there. ¤ C

DEEP NIGHT | I love the “you might also like” links for this show.  Deep Night is supposed to be this Twilight Zone contemporary, so obviously I should also be interested in Tom Stone and Doctor Who.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Tom Stone cancelled a year or two ago?  Wasn’t Tom Stone also a detective show that had little or nothing to do with anything supernatural?  I’m not even going to go into the recommendation of two television shows for fans of a radio thriller anthology, but I guess I’m asking too much from the MotherCorp.  I’m apparently spoiled enough.
 
As for the show itself, I didn’t like the show I listened to.  It was full of that wonderful CBC Radio acting, and if you’ve heard CBC players do radio drama you’ll know what I’m talking about.  If you don’t, suffice it to say that no one’s really acting – the actors sound more like they’re giving dispassionate line readings, which is likely what they’re actually doing.  Maybe I’ve caught the show on an off night, or maybe (and I’m assuming this to jibe more with the truth) this show is standard CBC Radio drama and that it rarely gets better than this.  Either way, I’m not impressed with Deep Night so far.  At least this show isn’t Promo Girl bad, though.  That’s a positive thing to say about Deep Night, I guess. ¤ C

LA SUITE ROYALE |  IT’S VIVA VARIETY!  STARRING MR. AND THE FORMER MRS. LAUPIN AND SPECIAL GUEST SEÑOR X!  FEATURING THE SWIMSUIT SQUAD, AND YOUR COOL-ASS PAL JOHNNY BLUEJEANS!  Honestly, what did I say this show was going to be, a lounge music show?  That’s exactly what this show is.  I’m not impressed.  I know I should be a little more openminded, but I fail to see how this differs from standard CBC Radio Two programming.  Then again, I guess that’s the show’s purpose – aural wallpaper.  I hate to be so hard on CBC Radio programs, but I don’t like when the creatives are slumming, either. ¤ D

STATION TO STATION |  I don’t like the female host on this program, and Station To Station is the pop version of Global Village.  Still, this show could stick around for a while.  The whole “global pop charts” claim is a bit of a lie – the show I heard focused on friggin’ Oasis and Esthero a bit too much – but, on the whole, there seems to be some consistency within S2S‘ format.  The formula seems a little too whitebread at this point in S2S‘ history, but I’m actually interested in hearing how this formula evolves.  I hope this show acknowledges how popular death metal is in Europe (not that CBC Radio gives a flip about that sort of music, as it doesn’t bounce on the happy fun-time bouncy diversity ball very well) and/or continues to give accurate displays of the popular music scenes in different countries.  This is one of those rare shows CBC Radio does that could end up showing an accurate portrayal of what people are listening to, as opposed to the “YOU LIKE RAP AND GENERALLY AWFUL POST-ROCK AND GLAM POP!” force-feeding that CBC Radio 3 is infamous for.
 
Yes, I said infamous.  Grant Lawrence makes me retch. ¤ B-

TUNE IN TOMORROW AS I, UH, DO SOMETHING ELSE – LIKE TRY TO BE MORE CREATIVE, AND JUNK

This is a new category I’m attempting to get off the ground here.  I subscribe to a lot of film sites/blogs as an addendum to this DVD dealie I’m still trying to get off the ground for UR – I need to actually get some other people to write for me, since I can’t do (read: am bored as shit of) this UR/URBMN stuff myself.  E-mail me if you’re interested in writing, hint shill.  I can’t pay anyone, granted, and I open myself up to people that I haven’t heard from in two and a half years writing me and/or telling me I’m a fag.  That was the risk I took when I decided to become an amateur/somewhat-pro critic, and I’m sure everyone like me has their token psychotic desperate for fame.  I really should stop goading these people.

Anyway, as an attempt to ankle-bite/help (I waver between the two, I admit I’m an asshole) Twitch and other film blogs, I’ve decided to cull the Interweb for anything interesting to me – and maybe to you too, I hope – in the world of film.  Sadly, I’m interested in some of the more obscure and/or “bad” films out there, and I have that weird sense of taste where I seek out Jess Franco films but still follow the more highbrow of film cultures despite me having problems with that world.  Damn me and my questioning nature.  I really should give up and shake my fist at the Weinsteins like everyone else.  Maybe I should complain about IFC changing their format despite said decision being due for at least a few years.  I need to be more absorbed in bullshit minutiae like that.

I also should stop doing stuff like this while procrastinating duties like Unrestrained! and my film degree.  I wish I could like film studies, but that field has to stop being full of itself.  I should also take my own advice and stop being full of myself.  Yes, I make self-deprecating jokes long after they’ve stopped being entertaining and/or funny.  I have ‘the gift.’

• I recently relayed to TheDDT from FilmJerk (as an aside, read TheMikeSays’ newest column – as long as you people don’t think I’m shilling for myself) news about the Jack Black/Mike White/Jared Hess collaboration called Nacho Libre.  The film is about a cook who moonlights as a masked wrestler to save an orphanage.
   
  The film apparently is based on what seems to be (by sometime former TheDDT contributor Hankula’s conclusion) Frey Tormenta’s life, but the film has obviously been dumbed down to the point where the main character is called Nacho.  That’s shitting fabulous.  A decent-sounding source of luchadore drama dumbed down to the Napoleon Dynamite level.  I swear Jack Black was entertaining at one time but now he’s just insufferable.
• I’m enjoying Bitter Cinema.  The site is very readable and is entertaining without being didactic.  I wish all film sites were like this, but that may be because a lot of film sites follow that romantic film-school version of cinema criticism that disdains all lowbrow and/or truly obscure content even though all cinema is supposed to be on the same level of criticism.  Well, there’s that and those insufferable Laura Mulvey articles that claim Jodie Foster to be lesbian because she wears a suit in Silence of the Lambs.  Words cannot describe how much I hate film studies.
• I don’t know what Matt Paprocki expected from a “Sci-Fi Original Movie,” but here’s a review of one of those films, this week featuring sabretooths.  The film doesn’t sound as good as Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy, but what does?
• Reuters and AP make a big deal out of Fantastic Four being critically shit but commercially successful.  I don’t understand how this is the first “reviled” film to be commercially successful at the box-office its first week (uh, Godzilla had worse reviews and made more money its first week, I recall) but some people are saying that this film just broke Hollywood’s “box office slump.”  I can’t opine on how good the film is myself but some people are painting this as one of the worst films of the year.  It’s another case of media hype meeting negative hype and it hurts my brain.
• Guardian piece on Asia Argento.  Daria Argento seems to be one of those few horror filmmakers that highbrow film people bother to put up with.  It’s funny – people have heard of him, George Romero and Mario Bava but I always wonder if that’s just to look like they know shit.  It’s not like they’re sticking around for Richard Driscoll or that guy who directed Zombiez, not that I blame them.
• Moviemark DVD has a discount sale on Facets, Brain Damage and Tempe Entertainment product.  I suggest you look into that.  Why there’s a film called The Crotchening and why it’s the top-selling DVD at Moviemark, though, I can’t explain that.  I mean, good God, The Crotchening – HORRIBLE TITLE.
• There’s a MadTV best-of DVD featuring seasons eight through ten.  That shouldn’t exist.  Those seasons comprise MadTV at its most dire.  SNL wasn’t too great this year, but don’t be fooled.  MadTV is three times as horrible as SNL can ever be.  That show needs a complete overhaul right now like you wouldn’t believe.
• People are still trying to flog the Crow franchise long past its death.  Please stop.  Just so you don’t think I’ve gone downmarket, here’s a review of Alien 3000.
• Children shouldn’t play with dead things.
• Roger Ebert becomes entertaining again.  He’s always been a bit out of the loop as “pop culture” (how I loathe it and atrocities done in its name) goes, but he’s still one of the few film reviewers to give an honest, not overly-influenced opinion on a film.  I wish Ebert & Roeper wasn’t so stultifying to watch, though.
• Old old OLD news (nine days, in fact!) but here’s a PRWeb missive for a film called Ultraviolent.  Film looks rather cheap, but I’m guessing it does because it’s a low-budget (i.e., unaffiliated with a familiar-sounding film label – y’know, ACTUAL INDEPENDENT) film done on a home computer.  Reviewers tend to shoot these films down at first glance sometimes.
• Taiwanese film LiveJournal.  Usually Technorati tags are full of lame LiveJournals and “OH MY GOD!  FANTASTIC FLOOR WAS AWSOME”-type links, but somehow this managed to break through the ennui.  I wish that was a regular occurrence, but it rarely is.
• Cheap DVDs (a/k/a www.destrucity.com, and “packratshow” should expect a lawsuit from The Ultimate Lesion Destroyer in three…two…one…now) talks about Double D Distribution’s/Front Row Entertainment’s Spanish/English budget DVD’s, among other titles.  Sports bloopers are among the list, so it’s not like Double Front D Row’s going high-end or anything.  About time some cheap DVDs came with more than one audio option.  Quality is probably questionable, but how could it not be with budget titles.
• Finally, Foyeurisms.  Might as well end the article on a high note if this column isn’t very good.  Seriously, let me know.

I am aware that I am talking about the WWE and that’s just not right because it isn’t “cool” or some other dumb excuse (usually having to do with homosexuality, apparently) but the Raw writers have turned Chavo Guerrero Jr. into a sellout to his race.

Are WWE ball-tonguing the lowest common denominator with this gimmick?  Of course they are, let’s not be silly.

Is this gimmick going to insult at least half of the WWE’s Latino audience?  Depends whether anyone besides Latino idiots are watching.

Is the character more poorly-realized than Carlito?  No, simply for the fact that Heidenreich, Gene Snitsky and Carlito exist.  Also, Viscera’s a sex object now for those of you that haven’t watched WWE programming since it stopped being trendy, which I assume is all of you.

Am I interested in watching Chavo Guerrero matches for the first time since he stopped being Lt. Loco?  YES, YES, OH MY GOD, YES.

I’m a bad person.

Keep in mind these are preliminary reviews.  I know I need to be less accessible and ignore readers’ pleas for clearer language while I go on about how amazing the word “bloviate” is and start a contest about it.

Yes, I heard The Sunday Edition today.  I also listened to Siege of Hate and the Benümb/Premonitions of War split last night.  I’m complex.

Honestly, this is why I can’t stand CBC Radio’s attitude towards programming.  I have no problem with Michael Enright using the occasional ten-dollar word on The Sunday Edition, since that’s a part of his hosting style.  The Sunday Edition appeals to the highly educated blowhards of Canada and I can tolerate Enright’s pompous, look-how-intellectual-I-am attitude towards hosting.  Like anything CBC, though, the network ignores the crux of the argument posited by a listener – that Enright assumes the listeners are as intelligent as he feels he is, when it is his job as a host to describe intelligent concepts to the less knowing.  To that end, The Sunday Edition blows the argument off and starts some armchair etymologist contest where listeners look for obscure words to revive for a modern audience.  Just starting the contest would have been fine, but CBC just had to dismiss thoughtful negative comments about its programming while the iron was hot.  That’s just not scrumtrelescent.  Or cromulent.

This ties in to CBC programming as a whole.  Instead of disseminating intelligent concepts in a way that people of “normal” intelligence can understand, the listener is supposed to gravitate toward the concepts.  CBC programs sometimes take the attitude that the listener is dumb, and if he/she can’t understand and/or agree with what the host is saying the person’s a knuckle-scratching moron.  It’s the attitude I see with “pop culture” tastemakers all the time – if you like something other than what they think is cool, you’re a goddamn retard and should be sent in a concentration camp where your kind die in a fire like your heroes Great White.  I’m Right, You’re Wrong.  Shut Up.  Shut Up.  Shut Up.

That was a generalizing rant, of course.  I still don’t generalize as much as CBC Radio.  HYOOO!

O’REILLY ON ADVERTISING | I’ve only listened to eight or so minutes of the first program but it’s as good as I thought it would be.  See, the program works because Teddy O’Reilly has that rare CBC trait that I see from Bob McDonald on Quirks and Quarks and precious few other MomCo employees – he knows what he’s talking about, and he explains it to an audience in clear, concise language.  The show’s not without its faults – O’Reilly on Advertising feels like a long-form Definitely Not the Opera segment and O’Reilly is, at this point, a bit wooden as a host.  Still, one episode in and I honestly think this show could last a few years.  The show simply does not have the CBC homogeneity to it and Terry O’Reilly’s one of the best hosts I’ve heard from CBC Radio in years.  Hopefully the show won’t turn shit a few episodes in, which I honestly doubt it will. ¤ B+

SIMPLY SEAN | What the hell happened here?  So Simply Sean is an hour of Sean Cullen playing his favourite music?  This is it?  What a waste of talent.  I realize the show is early in its run yet, but the show is boring, to be honest about it.  The show feels like someone just went up to Sean Cullen, said “here’s CBC scale, go play your favourite albums” and that’s it.  The Summer Waves initiative this year feels incredibly conservative – this is the time of year where CBC Radio should be experimenting with programming, and the executives decide to fill the Go slot with what amounts to Sean Cullen’s RadioSonic.  Maybe it will improve in the coming weeks, but Sean Cullen has been more entertaining and funnier than this.  Let the man cut loose.  He has to be as bored with the format you gave him as I am.  He certainly sounds it. ¤ C

LOST AND FOUND | Not bad, not good.  Lost and Found is a show without a format, sure, but I’ll admit that it’s better than the Live 8 MORathon that followed – that’s not saying much, but the first episode of Lost and Found wasn’t bad.  The show’s deathly dull but an interview segment with Tom Green saved the first episode from total meaninglessness.  Tom Green seems like the genuine performer and person he is (although he’s made a lot of dumb decisions in the past, I can’t put that past him) and even though he’s selling a new book he didn’t come across as shilling or promoting himself, which of course he was.  Maybe my feelings on the man are coloured by his naming his book Hollywood Causes Cancer, but Tom Green is not a stupid man despite his cable show schtick suggesting otherwise.  The interview gave an insight into Green that Green’s cries of “BOOBY BOOBY BOOBY BOOBY” never could.  The rest of the show was filled with the event of some guy making 96 out of 100 free throws and other stuff.  WOW, WHAT ENTHRALLING RADIO.  EX.  CI.  TING. ¤ C

PROMO GIRL IN “THE CASE OF THE WASTED THIRTY MINUTES” | This whole show exists as an omnibus for a long-form contest, nothing more.  It’s a lazy way to fill thirty minutes, which ties in with this whole “CBC not trying hard enough to come up with decent summer programming” theme.  I despise this show with a loathing I’ve only ever had for What a Week and National Pastime.  CBC needs to try harder than this. ¤ F

FUSE | Bandwidth is a rather okay program – it’s not like the show is going to play Whitehouse or Sheer Terror but it’s better than the Radio 3 standard in that Bandwidth is local, while Radio 3 is mainly “let’s run through Exclaim! and Spin and see what ‘the kids’ are into.”  Fuse, though – see, the show only works if the subjects are different from each other, because the “pop singer meets pop singer but AH, THIS SINGER’S JUST A BIT DIFFERENT” format doesn’t work.  Most of the featured guests on the Fuse website are the typical CBC musical guests – Feist, Hawksley Workman, Mighty Popo etc.  The guy who wrote “Sugar Sugar” and some tone-deaf schlub from Three Gut Records aren’t exactly awe-inspiring musical guests, guys.  I refer to the Neil Young/Gary Numan model again, because this show needs to be more incorrigible with its format (and because Neil Young diddled with synths before, so it’s not a stretch for him to be paired with Numan.)  I’m not looking for matchups like DRI/Forgotten Rebels, but Randy and Tal Bachman?  How cheap are the executives at CBC Radio? ¤ C

TUNE IN TOMORROW AS I THROW MIDGETS OFF A BRIDGE!  FUN!  BLOVIATING!

Last night marked the series finale for one of the most notorious shows Canada ever produced.  Some people looking for any easy baby harp seal to club vilified it, calling it the worst show ever produced in Canadian television history.  At least one blog found cheap notoriety in decrying its existence.  What sort of show could evoke such sentiment among certain audiences and yet be so loved by others?  An improvised soap opera about train commuters.  Welcome to Canada.

I’m here to tell people that Train 48 wasn’t actually all that bad.

Was Train 48 a good show?  No, it was mediocre at the best of times.  That it managed to survive for three seasons on Global at 7:00 PM is amazing enough.  Was Train 48 the most visible scourge of the public airwaves in all of Canadian television for eternity as some people accused it of being, though?  Of course not.  In fact, it was the only show Global produced in the last few years that was actually worth half a damn.

One needs to realize the nature of Global’s programming to fully appreciate Train 48.  Global is famous for being amazingly cheap with its programming and/or having a hand in creating some of the worst shows to ever be considered Canadian content.  Most of the network’s indigenous output falls in the “industrial” category – The Adventures of Sinbad, Zoe Busiek: Wild Card, Andromeda and The Outer Limits chief among its half-hearted attempts to both fill CanCon regulations and appeal to the American market (mostly to appeal to the American market, which is why Kevin Sorbo still graces television screens every Saturday night despite most people rightfully not caring about the likes of him.)  Global also loves its time-filling portovers from its cable channels, mostly home and garden/Queer Eye-style shows like Room to Grow and Diva On a Dime that are worse than Train 48 ever was.

I don’t even need to explain the existence of My Fabulous Gay Wedding, as it combines selling to American audiences (Viacom’s new gay/lesbian network Logo bought this for some reason) with managing to make Scott Thompson even more insufferable than he was before, which is extremely hard to do.  To say that Train 48 made people want to gouge their eyes out like seeing Scott Thompson on a television screen does would be lying.  There is no excuse for My Fabulous Gay Wedding.

What was so bad about Train 48 that it received all the negative attention it did, anyway?  It was one of the few shows that Global produced that was legitimately Canadian, and it lasted a year longer than the Australian soap it was based on.  Global gave this show a better push than maybe it really deserved, and the network managed to find a niche for Train 48 besides.  Train 48 was one of the few shows Global ever had a hand in that spelled out new opportunities for the network.  Surely it was successful enough – not successful enough not to be replaced by whatever bog-standard, infuriating entertainment news/home renovation show will eventually take its place, but that Train 48 managed to be the most successful Canadian “soap opera” in the past decade counts for more than the derisive cries of insipidity thrown at it.  The show shouldn’t have lasted six weeks.  A wholly improvised, cheaply-produced show with one set to its name filling thirty minutes of airtime shouldn’t have worked at all – and yet it did.  Train 48 could have been the first of a series of shows that would establish a new, better identity for Global’s Canadian programming while being cheap enough for Global executive sensibilities, but Global executives have always lacked vision.  In the end, the death of Train 48 won’t mean a blessed thing.  It’s lamentable but in the end, not surprising.

So Train 48 wasn’t a “fit” at the end.  Global has gone back to what the network always does – producing terrible reality programs and financing shows that mean more to SciFi and Lifetime than they ever will to Canadian audiences.  Train 48, though, didn’t pander to the American television system.  It didn’t exist just because an American network bought terrestrial broadcast rights to it.  It was what it was, and it never made out like it was anything different.

In the end, Train 48 shall be fondly remembered more than any criticism against it ever will.  It managed to last 319 episodes, enough for Train 48 to last through at least ten years of syndication on Showcase or whatever network bought the rebroadcasting rights to it.  It won the war for the right to exist.  That’s something no one will ever take away from it.

Train 48 is survived by its son, http://www.shedforbrains.com/. Canadians will never see the likes of this show again. na na na na na na train