About time you did something on The Sopranos. man, I'm going to miss it so much.

...

Just finished watching The King... I can't remember which one of you said it (Brett, perhaps?), but I agree that the end doesn't work so well. If they had to do it like that (which I felt was a little bit twee), I think it would've worked better with the actors reciting the speech verbatim.

Thanks, Bolden. That's a really interesting point.

I've got that issue of Vanity Fair sitting in my "to read" pile. I'm waiting for the series to finish so I can read that very article just in case there are any spoilers at all.

Every week I watch the new episode and have to take about 15 minutes to myself just to get over what I've seen.

I'll be sure to bring this point up when we do Sopranos in GATV in the coming weeks.

Josh, an interesting counterpoint to 'The Larry Sanders Show' point you made in the 'Golden Age' segment. In the April 2007 Vanity Fair, Sopranos producer(I think), Brad Grey pointed out about taking the pilot of Sopranos to the networks....
'Because of the Larry Sanders show, which, despite enormous critical acclaim, made no money. I really didn't want to do the show at HBO. Nobody went to cable, certainly not to pay cable.'

Granted he goes on to say about wanting to make a lot of money, and we are probably more interested in seeing good tv, but it was an interesting view of HBO at the time.

I don't get Eurovision either. Is it actually supposed to be bad, or do a significant fraction of Europeans actually enjoy the songs on their own merits?

It strikes me as kind of sad. Europe is good at so many things. They even produced some of the world's best music back in the day of Mozart and Beethoven. And of course, if you count the UK as part of Europe (I don't) there was amazing rock and pop, and still is. And of course, there was the brilliance of Kraftwerk.

But how is it that Australia, a country with a miniscule population, can kick the arse of the entirety of continental Europe when it comes to producing music?

Back in the days that Des Mangan was doing the introductions to the films on SBS, an associate who knew him said that Des thought he was some sort of comic genius. I don't think he was a Wogan try-hard because the popularity of Wogan was how wrong he was. Mangan actually thought he couldn't help but be hilarious.

As to urban sprawl, I'm not sure suburbia has reached its tentacles out quite that far. People in Pakenham or Rockbank never watched Win or Southern Cross - they just put up a great big mast with an antenna at the top and picked up the metro signal. I think the case will remain the same for analogue TV. Digital TV, on the other hand, could be a completely different matter. I know it definitely will be for digital radio because the range is significantly smaller. For an area the size of Melbourne, they need (from memory) 6 digital multiplex transmitters. Back in the late 90s, when we were first talking about it, the prospect of a chain of transmitters up the Hume seemed to be a big selling point. That way, you wouldn't have to switch stations all the way up to at least the border, if not Sydney.

I might see if I can track down what the deal is currently with digiTV in regionals.

Lordi ROCK! I will have nothing said against Eurovision - so what if it's like a car crash? You've still got to watch... although, admittedly, this year I only skimmed through a recording of the preliminary final because ballads were back (*hurls*), apart from the Czech Republic band who probably do a nice turn in death metal.
Des Mangan is crap - he's just a Wogan try-hard.

I don't suppose the new Showtime channel 'Showcase' has anything to do with Showcase Canada?

It's curious how all this WIN/NBN/Nine stuff will pan out, particularly when the regional/metro boundaries have become blurred due to urban sprawl.

yahoo7lost. Peace out.

LOL Brett. I did the very same thing :)

Thanks to Chad for reminding us it's Jeremy Piven that plays Ari Gold on Entourage.

Don't bash Blue Heelers Josh. My favourite drama!

Oh, I thought it was commonly accepted that Hank and Dr Phil are the same person.

Not being a regular viewer of The Chin's Tonight Live show, when I saw the footage of Rove walking onto the set, I thought Hank had scored a job as Leno's offsider... I really did. It took me a good few seconds to figure out what was going on.

I am just glad it wasn't just me that thought Hank and Dr Phil were the same person.

Gee, I think that is the looongest non special edition ep ever.

ok scratch that - ive gotta stop puting up posts before i finish listening to the episodes. sorry.

dont worry - your safe josh -

from wikipedia:

"The Larry Sanders Show is a satirical television sitcom that originally aired from 1992 to 1998 "

It works fine for me, Brett, and I'm using Firefox - although I did have to allow a bunch of cookies and stuff through the firewall.

Tom Elliot - a famous cutter of boxers and a renowned restorer of balance!

I must say, the yahoo7/lost site is cool if you're watching the series at the pace of channel 7's broadcasts for the clue recaps but the video player is kludgey, even in IE7, and doesn't do ANYthing in Firefox. Sure, it opens a new window and puts the menu and links in but then does no serving of video whatsoever. If they know it doesn't play on Firefox, why don't they check the useragent and say it doesn't work, rather than leaving the user to eventually decide nothing is going to happen.

Seriously.