Brian Springer - Spin

I have something interesting for you all today. Quite by accident I tripped over a documentary yesterday that I found really fascinating.

It was made in 1992, around the time of the U.S. presidential election and it gives an amazing glimpse into what goes on with politicians and media personalities like Larry King when the cameras aren't rolling, except they are.

The guy who made it explains it better than I'm going to but essentially he recorded hundreds of hours of live satellite feeds that were rolling even though the local cameras were turned off. Some of the people have no idea that they were in fact still live on the air. They forgot the first rule of media: All microphones are live and all cameras are rolling. Never assume they are turned off, ever.

This all gives us an uncut glimpse into how false and even staged things are that we consider to be real. We see spin doctors coaching their clients, we see candid talk between interviewer and interviewee, we see what people actually think instead of what they pretend to think.

Even if you're not that keen on politics, it's a valuable glimpse into how media works, which his more relevant today than ever before. Give it a look.

Beyond that, I will see you next time so until then, have a great week!

Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlJkgQZb0VU

Pretty funny

I was going to do a whole thing about how Respawn Entertainment got insulted that their players aren't grateful because the developers decide to sell character skins for $16 a pop, and then called them names. I was also going to talk about how Bioware has lost two lead developers (Anthem & Dragon Age 4) within a couple of weeks, which could well be symptomatic of bigger problems. I was also going to talk about how the Epic Game Store is still missing a shopping basket, multiple other features but more importantly, it's missing pre-download capability as well, right before the release of one of their biggest “exclusives”. Steam had that capability with Half-Life 2 back in 2004! Shame on you Epic, shame.

Then I thought that this might all be a bit too negative so here is something fun instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W_qrc-TkR8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlt3rA-oDao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYs-QT_aZes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi06BRTBc7Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5dgSi4_Sfk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WTkJHHF4B4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dzOLoOEToc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuOBzWF0Aws&list=PLuKg-Whduhklge1dMCGsemN1Qr_ODqjtZ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVVNuraly8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnS3EM7AScM

Ten of the best sketches I could find so that your week starts with a laugh! Well, fourteen if you count the google sketches separately. For obvious reasons I'm not embedding ten videos, so you are just going to have to follow the links.

There we go, until next time, have yourself a great week!

Henry Jones Jr.

One of my all time favorite film heroes has to be Indiana Jones. The combo of being a daring-do action hero, a tough guy and an academic historian balances well with human weakness and occasional clumsiness that is so entertaining to watch.

I just finished watching a really interesting documentary about the Indiana Jones movies, and I want to share it with you.

It was made around the release of the fourth film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, as a kind of retrospective about the classic trilogy (Raiders, Temple & Crusade) with tons of interesting facts about the creative process, effects, locations, actor choices and more.

Usually when you see interviews concerning movies, they tend to be fluff pieces and contain a lot of “It was so great working with X, I'm a huge fan... etc etc” but this comes across as genuine and passionate.

Since my flu is still giving me a bit of trouble, I'm keeping it short, so until next time, have a great week and crack on!

Direct Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dRw7zuP0PQ

A nailbiting bit of fun.

Seeing as the flu is nibbling around the corners, we're keeping it somewhat short today.

When you got the flu, it's important to drink plenty of fluids and take it easy. So in case you want to take it easy as well, I want to share a great bit of entertainment with you.

The focus for today is Survive the Hunt, on the FailRace Youtube channel. Survive the Hunt is genuinely some of the most compelling stuff I've seen in a while. The FailRace channel is all about racing games, which isn't really my thing, but their hunt series is amazing. One player trying to elude over a dozen hunters in GTAV, or sometimes Forza Horizon 4, is tense and really exciting, trust me. Even if you have no interest in GTA or cars, you can still enjoy Survive the Hunt to the fullest.

So, here are the five first GTAV hunts, you can easily find their Forza stuff if you're keen for it. There are 14 hunts to date, with some about videos for the last few ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v05S3QakEfY - 1 (embedded above)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFPHJQDjoQs - 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddX9FgFBOvE - 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e558a5qAiJs - 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c1fptPZBmk - 5

That's it for today, until next time, have a great week!