Evans Above

News photos of looting in New Orleans show an interesting bias from AP and AFP. Apparently one race “loots” while the other one “finds”.

Kudos to Bob Costas for not hosting Larry King Live on Thursday night. The show was supposed to be mostly about the case of Natalee Holloway, with a little bit about the conviction of BTK killer Dennis Rader.

Costas said that, “I didn’t think the subject matter of Thursday’s show was the kind of broadcast that I should be doing.”

I don’t mean any disrespect to Holloway’s family. Obviously the event is in their lives 24/7. In national news terms though, it was news when she disappeared, perhaps news on major breaking evidence, and of course news when they find her alive or dead. The constant hours of pundit speculation on Fox and CNN only serve to sensationalize the story. Of course, sensationalizing crime stories is the opiate of the masses and keeps their attention off things like politics and policy.

The mailbag was heavy with goodies this week and one item in particular had me reaching for the Frosted Flakes.

Rhino has released a new DVD, Saturday Morning with Sid & Marty Krofft, which contains seven pilot episodes of Krofft’s live action Saturday morning series.

• H.R. Pufnstuf, the trippy series that followed Jimmy, his magic flute, and Living Island’s mayor, H.R. Pufnstuf as they tried to keep out of the clutches of the evil Witchiepoo.

• The Bugaloos. I had absolutely no memories of this show which featured four British teens as singing fairies. The show featured Martha Raye as Benita Bizarre.

• Lidsville: The evil magician Hoo Doo (Charles Nelson Reilly) ruled over a land populated by talking hats. And you thought we had to worry about sugar in our cereals.

• Sigmund and the Sea Monsters: Starred Family Affair’s Johnny Whitaker as Johnny Stuart, a boy who befriends Sigmund Ooze, a sea monster banished from his family for being insufficiently gruesome.

• Land of the Lost: A father, two children, dinosaurs, Pakuni and Sleestaks. What more could you ask for?

• The Lost Saucer: Ruth Buzzi and Jim Nabors played androids Fi and Fum.

• Far Out Space Nuts: Bob Denver and Chuck McCann are two NASA commissary employees accidentally shot into space.

It was a blast going through the DVD. Shows like Lidsville and H.R. Pufnstuf hold fonder places in my mind than some of the shows, but all of them knock the dust off some of the Saturday morning memories. The DVD has some fun extras including Lidsville commentary by George Lopez, and interview with Krofft producer Si Rose and the KSAT — Krofft Saturday Aptitude Test.

We also received copies of two soundtrack CDs. The Shield: Music from the Streets presents some of the tracks from the FX network fave. A gritty cop show deserves some gritty music and this CD features tracks from Theory of a Deadman, The Black Maria and Master P. Fans who love the show’s feel will love the tunes that give it its mood.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith was a forgettable film that left me a few hours after leaving the cinema. The Mr. and Mrs. Smith soundtrack features tunes that will stick in the memory far longer. The disc features songs like “Love Stinks” from The J Geils Band, “Tainted Love” from Soft Cell, and “Mondo Bongo” from Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros. Quite a few fun tunes on this CD and definitely more fun to listen to than the movie was to watch.

Tara Reid, the party girl/actress/punchline now hosting E!‘s Wild On… says that she “bumped into” Paris Hilton and fiancé Paris Latsis while taping her premiere episode. Gee, like that wasn’t planned.

Tara says that, “There are just certain people you know you’ll always have fun with, and Paris is definitely one of those people.”

I think that having those three Nobel winners together has to define a perfect vacuum.

I was going to write an entry about how awful the FOX reality show The Princes of Malibu is, but the execs at FOX seem to agree that the series about the spoiled stepsons of music producer David Foster was awful — they’ve cancelled it after two airings.

It also appears that the marriage of Foster and his wife, Linda Thompson, has been cancelled too, as the pair are headed to divorce court. Thompson said the reasons were private but released a statement saying that “it is important to remember that real life is not be confused with art or entertainment.”

I’m anxious to check out the new D70s from Nikon. Nikon generously provided us with its predecessor, the D70, for use during last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and this year’s Academy Awards.

We’ve used quite a few cameras over the years and events like festivals really put a camera through its paces. Last year at the Toronto festival, the two of us probably took over 9000 photos in ten days. We loved the D70. It was fast, dependable and produced stunning shots. When you’re crowded into a press pen at the end of the carpet and some celebrity decides they’re only giving you five seconds, you want a camera that you don’t have to think or worry about. The D70 was that camera.

The new D70s improves upon the wonderful D70. It powers up in 0.2 seconds and can shoot 3 frames a second for a burst of 144 shots. In the old days of digital, that five seconds provided by a speeding celeb might produce two shots max. The D70s will be able to give you 15 frames to choose from.

According to Nikon Canada other specs include:

• Shutter speeds from 30 to 1/8,000 second and sensitivity that can range from ISO 200 – 1600.
• Auto pop-up flash that can synchronize at shutter speeds of up to 1/500 second for great fill flash effects.
• 5-area autofocus system continues to feature a cross-type sensor in the centre, broad frame coverage, and class-leading low light detection, but is improved to deliver greater precision with fast, more consistent subject acquisition and improved focus tracking.
• The 6.1 effective megapixel Nikon DX Format CCD image sensor features wide dynamic range and a high signal to noise ratio that produces 3,008 × 2,000-pixel images with high resolution and superbly sharp details suited for making large prints, or for cropping for creative detail.
• Nikon’s 3D Color Matrix Metering with 1,005-pixel sensor that measures brightness, colour, contrast, selected focus area, and subject-to-camera distance values for each shot, and then references the results against an onboard database of 30,000 scenes from actual photography.
• A new high-energy rechargeable lithium-ion battery EN-EL3a delivers the power to shoot up to 2,500 images on a single charge.
• Controls are located for easier access and smoother operation. Newly designed menus are presented clearly and in plain language on the large 2.0-inch LCD monitor, while intuitive help dialogues are available for on-the-spot reference to the respective menu selections.

Excuse me while I drool.

I had to go back and look at Motley Crue‘s performance at Live8 in Barrie.

For anyone else who watched/taped that performance: Was Vince Neil actually singing the verses or did it sound like chipmunk gibberish followed by clear choruses?

It really sounded like: “Shwee wa woo hee hee Dr. Feelgood.”

Watching the “Greatest Hits” summary of the various Live8 concerts around the world on CTV. Watching a recap of live8 toronto (which is really live8 barrie). Neil Young and most of the bands that performed there jammed on Young’s “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” and then segued into a rendition of “O Canada.”

Jamming is the one great thing that musicians have over most other artists. You can get newcomers and legends sharing the stage and trading riffs. A bunch of actors can’t do that in the same way.

One moment that wasn’t shown in the summary: Dan Aykroyd and Tom Green trying to shush the booing that greeted Celine Dion’s “live from Las Vegas” performance.

I’m watching the live8 coverage on CTV. The most important thing that people have to remember is that this is not a one day effort. It’s one thing for the crowd to shout “Yeah!” when Will Smith or Dan Aykroyd asks them to end poverty, but another thing for them to put pressure on their elected officials. Think of today as the first step on a long march.

Don’t forget to go to the Live8 site and sign the online petition.

The entertainment media has been focusing on the perceived box office slump compared to last year. Heck, even I’ve been guilty. The current example of a cinema slump article comes from AP’s David Germain, who notes that as of this weekend, “Revenues for the top 12 movies came in at $116.5 million, down 16 percent from the same weekend last year…”

The Hot Blog’s David Poland has been digging a little deeper and has previously mentioned the anomaly of last year, a year that included The Passion of the Christ, a film that drew folks to the cinema that usually avoid the multiplex. Passion was released by Newmarket, not one of the major studios. Poland likes crunching numbers and according to his financial footwork, “the studio business is, by this calculation, up by $301,427,400 this year.”