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I am not sure if everybody knows The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain , but after watching their DVD Anarchy in the Ukulele, I came to the conclusion that everybody should. Their rendition of popular songs on the Hawaiian instrument is so refreshing and often humorous, and as someone who loves remixes it is no wonder I loved their performance.

After playing their 2005 performance at the Barbican oh-so-many times, I have noticed one of the musicians, Jonty Bankes, looks eerily close to English actor John Simm, which I first knew as Detective Inspector Sam Tyler on BBC One’s ‘Life on Mars’:

In addition to the facial similarities, note the ‘Life on Mars’ connection as you watch this ’song about plagiarism’ from their DVD:

There are four major methods used on TV to obscure a person’s face so that he would not be recognized:

• Pixelization: during editing, a video graphics filter is used to lower the resolution of the footage
• Black bars: during editing, a graphical element is superimposed over the footage
• Extreme close-up: focusing during filming on a single facial feature, such as lips or eyes
• Silhouette: adjusting the camera exposure during filming so that the person appears totally black

The latter method was used during yesterday’s evening news, in a pre-taped press conference. Since this was not a live broadcast, there was no reason for any slip-up, and for the most part I could only see the silhouette of the woman talking. But when some still photojournalists used their camera flash, it lit the entire room and for a split second revealed the face of the woman.
Now perhaps during the 1990’s this kind of incident would not amount to much, since you could not rewind live TV or use your computer to download the news - but those analog days are long gone, and it is about time people in the Israeli media would recognize that fact.

Since this is not the first time I have noticed the Israeli media dropping the ball on this issue, I thought I would present a case study of the three Israeli broadcast channels, examining yesterday’s cover of that news conference:

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The 2008 UEFA European Football Championship is on. Constantly on. So much so that it sent my TV watching habits into temporary exile, as my disdain from football is utter and well documented. And so, it is my great honor to publish a guest post written by my aptly named friend, Guy, who seem to know a lot about this sport:

While watching the Euro 2008 Group A game between Portugal and Turkey, I knew the German referee Herbert Fandel reminded me of someone but wasn’t quite sure who. It took me almost a day until it hit me - Robbie Coltrane, who played criminal psychologist Eddie Fitzgerald in the BBC show “The Cracker”. Fandel is best known for being the referee in the Euro 2008 qualifying game between Sweden And Denmark, where Denmark was down 3-0 at half time but managed to tie the game 3-3 in the final minutes. In the 89th minute Fandel awarded Sweden with a penalty kick after a fight broke up between two players. At this point a Danish fan broke into the field and attacked Fandel, who left the field without concluding the game. Coltrane has appeared lately as Hagrid in the Harry Potter film series.

Hagigit, the Jerusalem artists’ cooperative I co-founded, got some attention today in the form of an interview:
Jerusalemite.net, the self-proclaimed ‘definitive English-language culture guide to the center of the world’ published today an interview with Guy Yitzhaki, a fellow co-founder of our little art group. In the interview Guy discusses the goals of our group and elaborates on our most recent activity. Check it out!