It’s been just over a year since M-Net and DSTV launched Mzansi Magic. In that time the channel has impressed me, especially with the broadcast of rare and historical South African content.

I have seen some of the most compelling stories on Mzansi Magic, documentaries  about politics, sports, celebrities, music, culture and tradition. Retrospective countdowns take viewers back as far as the late 1970′s, playing videos from South Africa’s disco and emerging “bubblegum” scenes.

Although the more current content isn’t my favorite it is still interesting to see local films, which are often independently produced. A series of short films produced by AFDA (one of South Africa’s premiere film schools) has had some airplay, showing just how comprehensive a view the channel provides.

The word mzansi, which is a colloquial term for South African is often irrelevantly put in front of a name, to make it more South African. This certainly isn’t the case for the Mzansi in “Mzansi Magic” as the channel has shown a dedication to commissioning and screening local content, which in effect is a boost for the industry.

The agreement is for digital distribution, and includes all Latinamerican countries. The Mexican production company founded by Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Pablo Cruz has focused on opening doors to Latin-American talent through films, and lately through television series such as Niño Santo and Soy tu fan.

Thanks to this agreement with the world leader in film and series streaming, with some 20 million users in the American continent, it is possible to watch Soy tu fan’s first season through Netflix, the series which placed Once TV México as the most audacious TV channel in Mexico, and one that has given it 7.5 share points in television, a pretty high number for a channel funded by a public university.

***

Acuerdo entre Canana y Netflix

El acuerdo es de distribución digital, e incluye a todos los países de América Latina. La productora de cine y televisión mexicana fundada por Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna y Pablo Cruz se ha enfocado en abrir puertas al talento latinoamericano a través de películas, y a últimas fechas también a través de series de televisión como Niño Santo y Soy tu fan.

Gracias a este acuerdo con el servicio líder en el mundo de suscripción por Internet para ver películas y series, con alrededor de 20 millones de usuarios en el continente americano, es posible ver por Netflix la primera temporada de Soy tu fan, la serie que colocó a Once TV México como la televisora más audaz de México, y la cual le ha dado hasta 7.5 puntos de share en televisión, un nivel altísimo para la televisión financiada por una universidad pública.

Grimm

The show filmed all over Portland was filming outside my work the other day and I got to see how the magic happens. Seeing as the writers of the show had to write for rain due to the NW playing such a strong backdrop to the plot I got to see trucks come in and spray the streets down to make it look wet and misters get set up all around the Naito Fountain to make the scene appear rainy. Despite getting approximately 35 inches of rain per year here in P-Town, the day they were filming this scene was not one of them.

What’s cool about Grimm claiming to be in Portland and actually filmed in Portland is that we get shots of the stars on the MAX (Metropolitan Area Express), that’s our form of rapid transit. People eating Voodoo’s Maple Bacon Bars, that’s our form of doughnut, and saying “I’ll meet you and 13th and Alder”, that our form of a hip neighborhood. Unlike TNT’s show Leverage that has filmed here for years but claims to be Boston. Grimm’s got Portland pride and I like it!

A few years ago, the main French electronic music magazine, Trax, was bought by a new company and the former editorial team went on to set up a new magazine named “Tsugi”.

In their latest issue (and for their fourth anniversary), they managed to bring together a whole classroom of the managers of the main indie labels of the country. They also chose to celebrate it with a bunch of parties. La Gaité Lyrique hosted a concert by Battant and two ‘supergroups’ created for the occasion: Code Napoleon and Versatile Noise Troopers. Code Napoleon is Arnaud Rebotini, Turzi and Kill for Total Peace; Versatile Noise Troopers is Gilb’R, I:Cube, star producer Joakim and the mighty saxophonist Etienne Jaumet.

You can now watch online two of these live shows thanks to the Arte Live Web team.

Sandy Lakdar is one of her kind. As a young French girl fantasizing about gangsta-rap, she could have just kept on blasting mixtapes and talking about it, online & offline. But she made friends on Myspace. And it gave her the drive to look out for more. Hence what comes today as a book, Gangsta Rap and a handful of cheap quality videos, supported by Arte, the French/German institutional TV channel. At the beginning she wanted to shoot a whole documentary, and that’s what she did apparently – but the gangsters are not always who you think they are, and she was cheated by her own production company, who left her with few material to show. Are the remaining documents interesting? The naive approach of a French young girl trying to approach the twisted version of the American Dream, the Gangsta Rap idea, is refreshing. Outside of the clichés of shiny cars & hot girls that the TV documentaries most usually like to show, we are shown glimpses of a few places – Compton, South Central, Memphis – and their rap communities which all compete for their slice of the cake. Forget the gallery of superstars, here’s a bunch of secondary characters who sell mixtapes after mixtapes out of the car and brag about their famous friends. These guys, maybe sometimes more than they would want to, are showing the distance between them and the Gangsta dream, as people for who Gangsta is really not MTV videos and fame, but just an appealing story about the ghetto.

In the mid 90′s some Canadians moved to California and started a pop culture TV show that was syndicated by Fox. I always thought TV in the mid 90′s was pretty tame, but in retrospect that was the era of TV Nation and the Word, and Weird TV is very much in the vein of those shows.

 Although it’s a bit cringe inducing to see some of the intros (and in particular the main host’s combover), some of their reporting on the freaks and eccentrics of middle America is really awesome. I especially like the drive by shooting range they filmed in Burning man.

Obviously there is no need for stand-up comedy to exist anymore, now that Cats are the new standard in funny (thanks internet). As a eulogy to one person and a microphone I’d like to talk about Doug Stanhope.

I’ve been watching his No Refunds show a lot, usually late at night when I need to be reminded that I’m not alone in hating the world. His skit about why cocaine is illegal is funny because it’s true. Well, up until the diatribe about capitalism. And it’s nice to be reminded that there is still something out there other than animated gifs and character comedy. Although, obviously, I love Tim and Eric  –  it’s just everyone doing that now?

You know what TV used to be really good at? Sci-fi. Long running shows like TNG get written off as nerdy too quickly. Really, with its 45 minute episodes and character arcs, it sets the stage for the HBO series that anyone “cool” likes today.

Next to Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica is one of the most amazing television shows that has ever been created.  Action, drama, love, intrigue; there is every element that makes a series irresistible.  Aside from the hooks that make you keep wanting to watch more, the show is such an amazing commentary on how society functions.  It questions the existence of God, human morals, governmental structures and pretty much everything else you can possibly imagine.  Also, the entire thing is set in space!  But even if the nebulas and black holes they almost collide into don’t really do it for you, no matter what your interests are, three episodes in the world around you will disappear and you won’t be able to stop watching.

The Grandpa Show is the lifestyle store Grandpa’s own talk show which recently launched.

The show is sent live from their store on Kungsholmen once a month. They aim to ask interesting questions and have entertaining and knowledgeable people on the show focusing on environmental questions. They see the over-exploitation of the earths resources as major discussion point and so have linked the show to the WWF. It’s rather interesting that a fashion store is working to get this topic discussed by their consumers.

Sometimes TV shows have something to do with philosophical jokes. In this scene from What’s my line, we are looking at a collective effort to get through the difficulties of the practical meaning of clothes.  Isn’t it funny that you can define a fashion designer as “someone whose face is likely to be recognizable” as well as someone who’s involved with clothes?

Watch What’s my line? Yves Saint Laurent

Actually the whole thing is funny, part of it because Yves Saint Laurent is daring to come down to the matters of entertainment, and he handles his marketing duties in a shy yet graceful manner. In the pursuit of the show, he had to admit, almost by accident, that he has nothing to do with entertainment… at the very moment he is taking part in mainstream TV.