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The best thing to come out of that was the media reaction to it. The Daily Star couldn't make its mind up whether it was for or against paedophilia as shown here. The Daily Fail as ever was keen to contradict itself by publishing a shock reaction to the satire, while in the same issue publishing pictures of Princesses Beatrice & Eugenie (13 & 11) in their bikinis.

Source: The Observer.

..and lest we forget the Daily Star condemning the 'pedophile' edition of Brass Eye whilst at the same time commenting on the size of 15 year old Charlotte Church's breasts

Nostalgic USians could really do with a site like this

The way that this is actually implemented is that the movie is on there twice. Once in letterbox or anamorphic format, once in 4:3 format.

That is completely wrong. I burn my own DVDs, and I have successfully made discs that autodetect the aspect ratio and display the appropriate version. I do not need to encode the video twice. I just set two flags that tell the player how the video is encoded.

As yet I don't know if you can encode the offsets into the MPEG stream, so I am stuck with center cut mode. It should be noted that my DVD player does not have a zoom mode, so I can't zoom in on discs that have not been coded this way.

So why are there still Pan 'n' Scan DVDs made? The system that I described still loses resolution compared to a true 4x3 disc, so the quality is reduced. Also, if the widescreen version has a higher aspect ratio that 16x9, then you would still end up with black borders at the top & bottom.

Finally, fullscreen versions are often made by showing more vertical image than by cutting off the sides. It is the widescreen version that has been cropped. Have a look at this random comparison site for examples.

So which version is better for you? Whichever one you like; I don't care. If a director makes both versions then you can't whine about only watching what the director intended.

This is a malformed link. It should be : http://gillen.cream.org/thecradle.pdf.

Possible spoilers in this thread... http://chilled.cream.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=94 35 Seen a few ads on Channel 4 - should be good.

A friend, with my cajoling, [The 'Cream Gang'] recently wrote an article similar to this recently, regarding attending an abortive and mostly useless launch of the UK's EFF equivalent, the Open Rights Group.

Our findings, here:

Open Rights Group Launch

Open Rights Shites

This evening, Coxall, Levine and I attended an open meeting of the Open Rights Group, a new UK organisation set in the mould of the EFF. I wasn't expecting the earth to move for me: we've attended too many of these little geek/numeeja run yack-shacks to hope for anything particularly productive to emerge. This evening did its least to confound me.

It was held in a basement in Soho named Zero-One. I say basement, but, naturally, one is encouraged to term it a "creative space". Said "creative space" was filled with geeks and numeedjas, as well as a scattering of lawyer-types and Earnest Young Men. Overwhelmingly men, of course, the few women who were there either freaks, sociologists or serving the free cheese and wine. Hey - don't shoot the messenger. A few chairs encircled the basement, but the main floor was bare, to encourage crouching and cross-legged encampment. Oh dear. This was all going to be "inclusive and discursive", wasn't it?

Oh dear, indeed: the manageress of the "creative space" started proceedings. Her introduction was little more than an ad for her basement. She then brought on an ex hack, who spouted some trivial nonsense or other, and was excited by the prospect of setting up ever more "wikis" and "blogs". She, in turn, brought on a jargon-clappy professional "meeting facilitator/consultant". This was going to be "fun".

The evening was to commence with a little talk from some Oxford chap or other, followed by a free-fall clustered discussion, in which each cluster was to be provided with its own sticky wall-covering on which to paste their mindstormingly written postcards.

The Oxford nonentity informed us that the Internet was somewhat marvellous, and, gosh, lots of interesting things might become of it soon, what ho, and it's not just paedophilia and terrorists. The poor fellow seemed trapped in 1994.

The Management Consultant Facilitator then spouted some jargon, and asked the floor for ideas for the discussion clusters. The Earnest Young Men pontificated their banalities. The geeks obsessed about some yawnful minutia. And Coxall suggested we discuss how to win over the "unhosed stupid masses". Yes, that is the phrase he used and, yes, the reaction from this righton bunch of whitebread nonces was predictable. "Maybe if you stopped patronising them like that..." was the immediate response from one of the Earnest Young Men on the floor.

Thence began the multiple clustering. Levine, Coxall and I have attended so many of these nascent talking shops now that we decided to skip with the usual niceties and begin some good old Trotskyite agitation. We argued that trying to interest people in the potential problems of overreaching anti-privacy legislation, or draconian Intellectual Property laws and the restrictive technologies therefor, was a lost cause. The "unhosed masses" wouldn't care about these philosophical crampings until they felt the constrictive banding themselves, in their every day lives. We argued for the inculcation of popular anger: to that end, a little DRM here, a little copyright overextension there wasn't enough. We decided that, rather than allow creative society to die the death by a thousand cuts that is its inevitable fate in a world dominated by multi-billion dollar "content" oligarchies, we should use these monoliths' huge power and budgets to subvert themselves from within, to the point where their overreaching hubris could lead to genuine polltax-riot intensity anger, and Berlin-wall-sized dismantlement.

Rather than fiddle with legislation to make it slightly less bad, then, or to try to temper corporate excesses with the few thrown crumbs of compromise, a smartly utilitarian organisati

PC Gamer: Any particular incidents stuck in your memory from your research?

Jordan Thomas: One story involved a patient who managed to escape into the storage wings of the asylum, and because of her eroded state-of-mind, she became lost and succumbed to starvation. The
place was such a teeming 'snake pit' that she wasn't missed, and the stain from her body seeped permanently into the wood.

Another involved a man who was committed as a toddler. Decades later, when asked to sign his own name, he drew a rough silhouette of the hospital. The place was so omnipresent and dominant a force in his life that it eclipsed his identity. The Cradle was built out of that sort of cheery material.

Thief: Deadly Shadows had a level in a place named The Shalebridge Cradle [PDF] which was scarier than anything I've ever played. A haunted, burnt out asylum/orphanage with creepy sounds and grueling atmosphere. It was a level that I was glad to be finished.

Play it in the dark on a big screen and Dolby Digital sound. If there's a thunderstorm outside make sure you're wearing Depends.

In .uk at least, there was a cartoon called Mighty Mouse about 20 years ago.

The mouse used to wear a yellow jumpsuit and a red cape - see http://tv.cream.org/a-z/m/m2.htm

The Jean Shepherd Archive has hundreds of hours of unrestricted downloadable audio collected by fans over the years:
http://shep-archives.com/

Some other sources of unrestricted material:

Transom public radio workshop/showcase:
http://www.transom.org/

Archive.org has some good audio.
http://www.archive.org/

Benjamin Walker's site:
http://toeradio.org/

Cook'd and Bomb'd - Chris Morris site. Hunt around for mirrors that have archived radio programs. (The Blue Jam series is my personal favorite.)
http://chilled.cream.org/

If you don't mind downloading material that's not supposed to be available for download (most easily done using mplayer, I find), then there are plenty of radio offerings. I'm a public radio junkie, and usually stock up on a few dozen shows before taking a long trip. Among my favorites:

Joe Frank. The greatest radio artist in the history of, well, radio artistry. (Subscription costs $10/mo, but is well worth it.)
http://joefrank.com/

This American Life. (free)
http://thislife.org/

Fresh Air. (free, but a pain in the ass to navigate)
http://freshair.npr.org/

it isn't dead, i used it just yesterday

I thought the same, but GP is right, it was bought by CNET and now forwards to tv.com. You got another URL?

IMDB is very comprehensive if you're after TV show cast info. In the UK, there's always TV Cream...

A Rape in Cyberspace

Possessing Barbie

Dreaming in an empty room: a defense of Metal Gear Solid 2

Shoot Club: Saving Private Donny

ZangbandTK: Confessions of a Dungeon Hack

The Great Scam

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Going Planetside

Red Eye #114

here ...

Given the subject of this post, perhaps the poster's name should be 'anonymouse coward'?
For more Dangermouse information, try TV Cream, or Dangermouse.org.
Enjoy...

Yes; indeed, it was much the same with Jon Pertwee (The Third Doctor Who).

"There is a real moral panic underway in the UK about this now"

Oh, do give over.

For one thing the UK *is not* the tabloids.

They try to foster a particular opinion as being national whether it is or not, and the Sun recently dropped the ball bigtime with their 'Bruno Bonkers' headline that they had to reprint because it was insensitive trash.

The whole deal with 'peadophiles' in the UK is that we don't have the association with 'Terrorism' that the US has. We've had terrorism for so long that it doesn't affect us. Kiddy Fiddlers, on the other hand, are this scary lurking menace that haunt the internet, street corners and *live in your town*.

The Brass Eye Peadophile special nailed this concept completely, and the flak that surrounded it was indicative of the PR value of this kind of fear.

The British public, generally speaking, have a bit more cynicism.

Chris Morris is a genius. Check out "The Day Today" and "Brass Eye" for inspired and disturbing media satire. Check out his radio show "Jam" for inspired and disturbing um... er... stuff...

"In "Brass Eye" Chris Morris managed to produce what is easily the most explosive and challenging comedy series yet seen on television. Co-written with Peter Baynham and co-produced with Caroline Leddy, each episode was structured as a serious documentary, only the centre of its study was a plausible but completely fabricated source of media panic, from killer drugs to plans to 'get tough' on young offenders. To add weight to the glorious fabrications of "Brass Eye", Morris undertook innumerable interviewer disguises to persuade dozens of publicity-hungry celebrities to decry the damage that was being done to society.

One such individual, MP David Amess, was so totally taken in by the 'rise' of a non-existent drug named 'Cake' that he brought the matter up in Parliament. This sparked a wave of panic inside Channel 4, who pulled the series from its intended November 1996 transmission slot for 'further consideration'. A concerted campaign by Morris' fans and his many admirers in the media ensured that the series resurfaced in early 1997, although by then it had been tainted by Channel 4's uncharacteristically cowardly editing. Debates over cut material raged right up until each actual transmission, and a last-minute spat over a sketch intended for the final episode resulted in a caption card likening Channel 4 head Michael Grade to a moist area of the female anatomy being inserted in its place."

Cook' d and Bomb'd

I think the reason why kids don't watch Saturday morning TV anymore is that well, its rubbish!

I live in the UK and I was brought up watching a program in the late70s/early 80s called TISWAS. It was totally revolutionary at the time. Basically the program was based around total anarchy, where kids could gunge adults and the presenters went mad along with the kids in the studio. One thing this program was noted for was as amany adults as kids watched it and there even a late night adult spin off called OTT, which went too far and had to be pulled. TISWAS was fun and I would never ever miss it. It knocked the socks off the BBC's effort of Noel Edmonds Multi Couloured Swap Shop, a kids TV show based around the concept of kids swapping things!

When it was taken off the air in the early 80s, it was replaced by programs that wanted to be like TISWAS, but where the presenters and producers didn't have the will or the guts to pull off some of the stunts that were frequent in TISWAS. As time went on Saturday morning TV got more and more sterile, instead of letting kids let off steam on a Saturday morning, these programs started lecturing kids on how they should live their lives, but more importantly they became big long adverts for the latest band/toy or TV show.

I grew up and stopped watching Saturday morning TV in the late 80s. By that time Saturday Morning programms seemed to be based around modern cartoons made only to get kids to buy the mercandise or having the presenters lick up to some new pop star. That would have never happened on TISWAS, if a pop star wanted to promote a record, they would have to get a soaking and stay in the cage for the duration of the show. Nowadays the PR people would never allow that. There have been a few bright lights since TISWAS I can think of Paralell 9 and No. 73, but on the whole most programs were rubbish.

I put the decline in Saturday morning kids TV down to the gradual commercialisation of the format and the lack of willingness to innovate, simple as that.

If only PBS would license The Adventure Game or Now Get Out of That

If only PBS would license The Adventure Game or Now Get Out of That

See the Chris Morris spoof newspaper coverage of the attack: here here, here, and here.

See the Chris Morris spoof newspaper coverage of the attack: here here, here, and here.

See the Chris Morris spoof newspaper coverage of the attack: here here, here, and here.

See the Chris Morris spoof newspaper coverage of the attack: here here, here, and here.

Wobbly matter. It's caused by sodomised electrons, which is like a tonne of invisible lead soup.

Obviously John Noakes was the definitive presenter, though I'd suggest that Mark Curry would win the award for being the "oddest" of the "25-odd" presenters. What was Biddy thinking?

...ummm that I believe is the point.

Have a look at this picture - it pretty much sums it up.

From there he did a radio show which became the BBC show The Day Today, which offered surreal news stories combined with the best parody of news reportage as stands in the Western world I've ever seen. His vaguely threatening goodnight, the use of insane graphics and pounding music... But then he got Brass Eye.

In the UK, humor and sex aren't as big a deal as violence, and you'd be amazed at what's shown on television here compared to the US. Before Brass Eye was even aired it became a news story, as several celebrities and politicians complained to the commisioning network, Channel 4, that he had gone too far.

During the height of Ecstacy hysteria in the UK, he had gotten politicans and celebrities to denounce the evils of a dangerous new drug ruining our children, called CAKE. As in, "We must ban cake." He did it so brilliantly that one of the Members of Parliament who he recorded denouncing cake ("which affects the part of the brain known as Shatner's Bassoon, which affects perception of time - cake is a made up drug, made up of chemicals") asked questions about it in Parliament. The then head of Channel 4 tried to get Morris to tone down the show's vitriol and abuse of celebrities. In the Science on Trial episode he had several UK celebrities talking about the dangers of "heavy electricity" which was killing people in the Far East. So Morris put a subliminal message in the final episode, calling his boss a cunt, which led to statements that he would never work for Channel 4 again. He returned to radio.

Until this year, when changes at Channel 4 led to a rebroadcast of the series and the commisioning of the new one off special on pedophilia. He had a famous London radio DJ stating that pedophiles had more genes in common with crabs than you or I, and there's no evidence for it, but it's a scientific fact! It went on. The result was instant, knee jerk tabloid hysteria, I think best represented in this picture. What you should know is that earlier this year, thanks to a name and shame campaign a major UK tabloid did on paedophiles, a paedatrician was attacked by an angry mob and had her car firebombed. A few days after airing of the programme, several politicans got in on the act, admitting they hadn't seen the show. One of them is even blind!

But thankfully the British public have shown their sense of good humor and more calls of support were received on Channel 4's complaints line then actual complaints, so the entire issue is now being hushed up.

I think what really grates about Morris is that he deigned to show that you cannot trust any of the mainstream media you partake of, that celebrity endorsements count for nothing. My favorite moment on the paedophilia special was a presenter for the BBC's technology show stating that internet padeophiles can use penis shaped sound waves to molest children. I think it's far more frightening to the public to know that those people that put a comforting, sickly gloss on the world as it is today are patently full of shit. The result of Morris' work may be greater than any piece of culture I've had all year, because it's made me question everything. I can no longer watch the news without laughing and being shocked by the idiocy and dramatics of it all. For that he deserves to be knighted.