John Stamos Drank Too Much Last Night

John Stamos arrived bleary-eyed, sockless, stumbling and inarticulate at an Australian press call, where he was expected to plug his appearance in the upcoming season of ER. Stamos blamed his difficulty speaking on having too many cups of coffee, and his appearance on jet lag. "I came from Greece, Cairo and Japan ... and for whatever reason I am so jet-lagged here,'' he said. This seems odd, considering he's been in Sydney since Thursday.
When you put all these signs together, you have to ask the question: Are they seriously still filming new episodes of ER?

Visit to Westport

My trip to Israel has been postponed for two days - my flight, which was supposed to leave tonight, was cancelled, and I have new reservations for Tuesday night. On my way from Ithaca, I came to visit my father and his wife in Westport, Mass., since I'm flying out of Boston. With my new camera, given to me by my father, I took quite a few photos of this pleasant place.

TV advertisements around the world

United States of America

an advertisment

[edit] Frequency
Television advertisements appear between shows, but also interrupt the shows at intervals. This method of screening advertisements is intended to capture or grab the attention of the audience, keeping the viewers focused on the television show so that they will not want to change the channel; instead, they will (hopefully) watch the love advertisements while waiting for the next segment of the show. This is a technique of adding suspense, especially if the break occurs at a cliffhanger moment in the show.
Entire industries exist that focus solely on the task of keeping the viewing audience interested enough to sit through advertisements. The Nielsen ratings system exists as a way for stations to determine how successful their television shows are, so that they can decide what rates to charge advertisers for their commercial.
Advertisements take airtime away from programs. In the 1960s a typical hour-long American show would run for 51 minutes excluding advertisements. Today, a similar program would only be 42 minutes long; a typical 30-minute block of time includes 22 minutes of programming with 6 minutes of national advertising and 2 minutes of local (although some half-hour blocks may have as much as 29 minutes of advertisements).
In other words, over the course of 10 hours, American viewers will see approximately 3 hours of advertisements, twice what they would have seen in the sixties. Furthermore, if that sixties show is rerun today it may be cut by 9 minutes to make room for the extra advertisements. (Some modern showings of Star Trek, for example)
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the average length of a television advertisement was one minute. As the years passed, the average length shrank to 30 seconds (and often 10 seconds, depending on the television station's purchase of ad time). However, today a majority of advertisements run in 15-second increments (often known as "hooks").
TV advertisements are being identified by the so called ISCI code.

What I'll Be Watching, June 07

On tonight's episode ("Pirates, Guns, and Money"), Joe Don gets a little too comfortable as the ship's tyrannical captain, while one player may be out of the game following an injury during an expedition.
8:30 pm: 30 Rock.
It's a repeat of my favorite new series of the year. On tonight's episode of 30 Rock ("Jack Meets Dennis"), after Liz returns to the arms of her ex-boyfriend (guest star Dean Winters) simply because he asked her to, Jack decides to become her mentor and teach her a thing or two about life.
9 pm: The Office.
On tonight's repeat episode of The Office ("Grief Counseling"), following the death of his former regional manager, Michael forces the staff of Dunder-Mifflin to attend grief counseling, Michael Scott-style.
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Jace's blog, Televisionary, can be found at televisionaryblog.com.

The Best of the Summer's Small Budget Films

I know it's been hammered home before, but you're just gonna have to grin your little grin and continue to hear it, because seriously, it's harder to ignore than that one chick who's on her way to the clink, I refuse to link to her (editors note: but we don't!). If you like blockbuster sequels and remakes with budgets the size of modest national space programs, you make sure an' buckle up, 'cause this is your summer.
A quick review? Well, we've already gotten the capstones to those web-crawly and Johnny Depp-subsisting-on-scenery-alone trilogies out of the way, not to mention that other, green one; we're about to get pounded by an impossibly star-studded sequel to a remake and a second helping of slowscarysexpain -- but that ain't the half of it. Witness: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Evan Almighty, Live Free or Die Hard, Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix, The Bourne Ultimatum, Rush Hour 3, Halloween, Resident Evil: Extinction ... shoot, man -- they're even doing a monumentally crazy-looking Underdog retread. And there's one more I'm not mentioning, I just know it. Hem-haw. Oh, well. I'm sure it'll come to me.

Paes moves on, Sania's run ends

New Delhi: Leander Paes and Meghann Shaughnessy are through to the third round in the mixed doubles.
The pair beat Sybille Bammer and Marcin Matkowski in a tie breaker. Paes-Shaughnessy took the first set 6-2 without much trouble but were routed in the second set losing 0-6.
However, the duo then came back in the tie breaker to win the third set 10-8 to book their place in the next round.
On the other hand it was the end of Sania Mirza's French Open campaign.
Sania partnering Fabrice Santoro in the mixed doubles lost to Katrina Srebotnik and Nenad Zimonjic in the second round. The sixth seeded pair beat Sania and Santoro 6-2, 7-6 (1).
Mahesh Bhupathi and his partner Radek Stepanek are also through to the fourth round of the men's doubles after the pair beat seventh seeds Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram in straight sets 7-6, 6-4 in an hour and 30 minutes.
In the boy's singles Rupesh Roy was knocked out by Ricardas Berankis of Lithuania 6-7, 2-6.

Cheenicum

Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Tabu, Paresh Rawal, Zohra Sehgal, Swini KharaDirector: R. BalakrishnanMusic: IllaiyarR. Balakrishnan makes his directorial debut with Cheeni Kum. The film is based in London and thereby, the humour will tickle the class audience and not the masses. Certainly, this cannot be adjudged as the flip side of the film. Broadly, the humour is on a more sarcastic side and may not go well with the global audience.
Buddhadev Gupta (Amitabh Bachchan) is a 64 year old chef and owner of London's top Indian restaurant. He lives with his 85 year old mother and his only best friend being his 9 year old neighbour. Mr Gupta is an arrogant, egoistic, pompous man with a singular passion in life - cooking. He has been a bachelor all these years and has never been in love until Nina Verma (Tabu), a 34 years old, walks into his restaurant and into his life. Nina is a beautiful and a charming woman. Cool, calm, and always smiling, she is independent and strong willed by nature.
Both of them eventually fall in love and decide to get married!! Now, the situation comes where Mr. Gupta goes to Nina's father, Om Prakash Verma (Paresh Rawal), to ask her hand for marriage. The problem here for Nina’s father is that his son-in-law is 6 years elder to him.
Director Balakrishna successfully qualifies as a fine story teller and handles some of the sequences really well. The screenplay could have been better. The editing department lost out on a lot of scenes which drag, to say the least. Music director Illayairaja does well to compose tracks which gel with the theme of the movie. P.C. Sreeram's cinematography is splendid. Ilaiyaraaja's musical score is soothing.
Tabu is a great actress, and with a role that calls for far less bravura than her leading man, she is comfortably understated. Amitabh Bachchan proves his supremacy yet again. Playing an arrogant chef, the actor is natural all through, but his performance in the finale makes the character all the more believable. Paresh Rawal is only adding to his credibility with every film. Zohra Sehgal is adorable. Swini Khara is supremely confident.
R. Balakrishnan does well to handle the complex story but some parts of it still lack the awesome touch witnessed before in films like Murder and Gangster. The concept of introducing Illaiyaraja and his band in every song of the film does not add to the flavour of the film.
The crackling first half coasts along wonderfully, relying almost solely on Bachchan's formidable charm. The second half sees trouble with a hammy third act.ajaProducer: Sunil Manchanda