Discover ThisTV, even if by accident
It was a channel that remained in the ether and away from the ethos until many picked up a digital converter box. On Nov. 1, 2008, Time Warner Cable bumped a channel to make room for ThisTV (201 on cable and 58-3 on digital air in Milwaukee). Now audiences are discovering this quirky pre-programmed channel offered by Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting and MGM to bolster sibling station WDJT CBS-58 and predecessor MeTV (58-2). In an age where most Americans have at least seen a cable channel (walking through an airport or bar) or, more likely, have several televisions programmed into a system in their home – the memory of what it was like to get four or five VHF channels and a handful of fuzzy UHF ones on a second dial is fading like a lost signal. But digital antenna programming is about to birth a new renaissance. At first, viewing habits were established around a channel hierarchy which was later weakened by the increasingly commonplace remote control. Cable and satellite programming went from being a luxury of the privileged to a necessity for all classes to stay informed and entertained. Now, in a strange back-sidestep, the strength of independent national broadcasting companies and alliances with multiple local stations have likely created a new form with a widespread marketing campaign and government subsidies proliferating the digital converter box before the new conversion deadline. Watching ThisTV, it certainly feels like a secret. While the rest of the world copes with a proliferating density of cable channels (which then split into additional HD versions and sub-categories i.e. Discovery for Kids, Investigate Discovery, Animal Planet, Discovery Health), the effort to get some piece of the pie with non-cable (ThisTV doesn’t appear to be on DirecTV locally) audiences emerges in a niche programming way. While MeTV plays old TV shows 24/7 similar to TV Land or WMLW, ThisTV mostly plays movies “from the classic age” – as one incessant interstitial ad likes to tout. Read: not classic movies, but from that era. After the overnight and early six hours are done showing old Patty Duke and Mister Ed episodes, the rest of the day is programmed into blocks showing movies from MGM’s lesser-known library. While a few these films’ production dates stray into the new millennium, most are from the 1950s to 1980s – excluding a range of films which were sold and still under control of other companies. Theme days are built around a performer, like the recent Vincent Price set (The Abominable Dr. Phibes, From a Whisper to a Scream) or famous directors (Stanley Kubrick’s Killers Kiss, Brian DePalma’s Blow Out). All the films on ThisTV may be considered B-Movies or second-run features; nothing on the roster ever reaches into AFI’s or imdb.com’s “Top 100” anything. However, there’s a peculiar grace and quietly assuming nature to these films that make them low culture reborn as fresh entertainment. When I worked in video stores, there were always rows of VHS boxes bleached on one […]
Apr 1st, 2009 by Brian Jacobson
Milw / TCD Filmmaker Finalist in Warner Brothers / CW Network Film Contest – VOTE TODAY!
LAST WEEK TO VOTE!! Local filmmaker and long-time, much-loved TCD contributor Howie Goldklang is a FINALIST in the CW Green Your World contest. The contest has 4 filmmakers submitting weekly vlogs (video blogs) reporting on green, eco-cool initiatives in their town. Please click over, vote MILWAUKEE, vote for HOWIE GOLDKLANG! CLICK HERE TO VOTE
Apr 1st, 2009 by Amy Elliott
Art and Performance April 2-8, 2009
Visual Art Art in Bloom, Milwaukee Art Museum. 4/2 through 4/5. Celebrating springtime, Art In Bloom showcases the talents of more than 40 renowned floral designers interpreting masterworks from the Museum’s Collection. This year’s expanded exhibition also includes lectures and workshops with celebrity floral designers and master gardeners, book signings, plein air painters, a multi-vendor indoor marketplace, a garden sculpture sale, and floral-inspired dining in the Café Calatrava Garden Room. Presenting lectures, demonstrations, and book signings will be Michael George—one of the most sought after floral designers in the United States; Milwaukee native Michael Weishan, former host of PBS television’s The Victory Garden; Portland-based vine expert Linda Beutler; landscape designer Craig Bergmann; Chicago Master Gardener and radio host Mike Nowak; local horticulture expert Melinda Myers; renowned children’s book author Lois Ehlert and many others. Awesome Art Sale, Racine Art Museum, 4/3 Due to overwhelming success, this awesome event is back with more artwork than ever! Many one-of-a-kind items priced as low as $20! Discover original, museum-quality artwork donated by collectors and nationally known artists from across the country. Purchase a great piece of art and know that you are contributing to the sustaining growth of RAM’s exhibition and education programs. This is a fabulous time to add to your art collection or start one now! For more info click here! Frankie Martin, Green Gallery West. 4/3 Get down with the (original) Green Gallery on their momentous fifth anniversary with an exhibition of new works by Frankie Martin, whose work was a part of the very first Green Gallery show. In Life or Death?, Martin will show new video work as well as paintings and video stills. Who Died? is a five part, non-linear narrative video that reinterprets popular representations of death and the transcendence of the human body. Some light paintings will accompany this piece. Frankie will also present part of her series Left Behind which features paintings and mobiles based on the idea of what normally gets discarded. To do this she stretches her drop cloths as finished paintings that expose the materials and process of the work done in her studio. Frankie also incorporates objects from her neighborhood or from her own garbage into the work. In Frankie’s words “the idea is that these things become non-things, then become re-contextualized as things again.” Frankie will also exhibit Born Again, a video in which Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is translated into the video format. Frankie Martin’s work has appeared in galleries all over the world, from Milwaukee to Oslo to Paris to San Francisco and New York, where she now lives. Bon anniversaire, Green Gallery! Marina Bychkova: Enchanted Doll, Villa Terrace, 4/8 Exploring the dark, dreamy side of folklore and fantasy, Bychokova transforms a children’s toy into an exploration and reinterpretation of femininity, tradition and fairy tales. Says the artist, ““Creating a visual narrative is the most intriguing way of articulating my ideas and a doll is a perfect medium because of its potential for such visual story. My […]
Apr 1st, 2009 by Ryan Findley
TULPAN a huge hit in NYC, coming to MKE Monday!
This just in: the New York Times‘ A.O. Scott posted a fabulous review today of Tulpan, a romance, coming-of-age story and epic landscape drama set on the desolate steppes of Kazhakstan. Scott writes: Tulpan, the first fictional feature by the Kazakh director Sergey Dvortsevoy, might be described as an epic landscape film, a sweetly comic coming-of-age story or a lyrical work of social realism. But the setting — a windswept, sparely populated steppe in southern Kazakhstan — gives the movie a mood that sometimes feels closer to that of science fiction. … [The lamb birth] scene, a milestone in cinematic ovine obstetrics, is both crucial to the story and a tour de force, the kind of thing a director like David Cronenberg or Takashi Miike would attempt only with prosthetics or other special effects. In “Tulpan” you see it for real, a perfectly ordinary event that is also something of a miracle. Tulpan took home the Prix un Certain Regard at Cannes this year, and it celebrates an anticipated opening in New York today. And here’s the best part, Milwaukee: you can see it here on Monday as part of Milwaukee Film‘s so-far-successful Monday Night at the Movies series at the Marcus North Shore Cinema in Mequon. It’s unusual that we have the chance here on the Third Coast to see an independent international release within the same week of screenings on the East Coast, so we recommend you attend. You can buy your tickets online now at milwaukee-film.org. See the Tulpan trailer and learn more here. Don’t feel like driving to Mequon? No car? NO PROBLEM! Join Milwaukee Film, WMSE and TCD at the Wicked Hop for a big, bad bus party. Come early for drink specials and burger madness. Bus departs at 6:30 sharp. Play trivia with WMSE DJs and join Program Director Jonathan Jackson for a casual discussion about the film on the way back. We’ll have some great giveaways on the bus and after the show! The bus is FREE, so save some cash, save the earth, and have a crazy good time. See you there, film-os.
Apr 1st, 2009 by Amy Elliott
MCTS Adds New Bus Route
MCTS, empowered by a veto override by the Milawukee County Board in November, has added (in reality restored) a bus route to their service offerings, offering service from the Downtown Transit Center through downtown and out to 60th Street via Vliet Avenue.
Apr 1st, 2009 by Jeramey Jannene
Abrahamson and Evers, Don’t Leave it to Chance
If you’re reading this, you probably know that there is an election in Wisconsin next Tuesday. Turnout for these Spring elections tends to be notoriously low which is never a good thing for democracy. Yet the candidates for the two statewide races present critical differences in experience and philosophy and the choices that voters make will have an enormous impact on Wisconsin’s future. We will select someone to serve on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court for a ten-year term and the state Superintendent of Public Instruction who will guide state oversight of education for the next four years. Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson is a nationally respected jurist who deserves reelection. Her tenure on the court has set a standard for judicial excellence, not only in terms of her decisions but also for her administrative acumen which has expanded openness and efficiency. Her opponent is an unabashed conservative who is asking for your support based on his ideology. This is the third year in a row that the voters are being asked to choose between two very different candidates for a seat on the state’s highest court. Conservatives and business groups have succeeded in the past two, more egregiously last year when Michael Gableman engaged in an ethically challenged, despicable campaign to defeat incumbent Louis Butler. Gableman’s defense to the charges he faces about the distortions in his ads is that the First Amendment protects political advertisements as free speech. It’s not very reassuring when a judge sitting on the Wisconsin Supreme Court claims that the Constitution gives him the right to say anything he wants regardless of its truth or any ethical standard set by a judicial commission. But it shouldn’t be necessary to rehash the elections of the past when discussing Shirley Abrahamson. She has earned your vote. And then there’s the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction between longtime education professional Tony Evers and another ideologue, Rose Fernandez. Evers has served as a teacher and administrator for decades and has helped improve the working relationship between the state and local school districts. Fernandez has no experience in education other than as a supporter for alternatives to public education. She also wants to replace Milwaukee’s elected school board with an appointed board. If you care about public education, especially in Milwaukee, the choice is clear. Vote for Tony Evers. There are also local court and school board elections that deserve your attention. So get out and vote on April 7th. Your vote matters especially during the low turnout Spring election.
Apr 1st, 2009 by Ted Bobrow
Drink Like An Egyptian
Who knows if King Tut was given to tippling, but when his tomb was opened in 1922, three dozen plain pottery wine jars were discovered inside, twenty-six of which had hieroglyphs telling of the vineyard location, the estate where it was produced, and the vinter who produced it. Two pots were labeled “very good.” Tut died in 1352 BC, and perhaps the labels were the first, or almost the first, examples of things to come in the world of labels. A few of the wine jars in the tomb were empty. Or perhaps laced with poison, who knows? My personal favorite label, is pasted in my Cooking of Provincial France cookbook, circa 1968. The label from a Beaujolais Saint-Amour burgundy produced by “Jaboulet-Vercherre,” is square, designed in tones of burgundy, white and metallic gold. Stamped “JV,” it includes a coat-of-arms bannered “in tenebris lumen rectis,” which means, “true light in the darkness.” I drank large draughts of the Beaujolais while mastering the art of whipping up Coquille Saint-Jacques a la Provencale, which incidentally, is best served with a dry white wine. Dude, peel me a grape. Paper labels as we know them today, weren’t developed for general use until around 1860, when manufacturers understood how to make them stick to glass. Prior to that, well-heeled households used silver “bottle tickets” hung by narrow silver chains from wine decanters. In the 1740s, European wineries sold their products unlabeled. They were stored stacked in bins and the bins were then identified with glazed pottery tags. Labels were designed to inform. Consider this from a late 1800s bottle of sweet red Tokay from Hungary: This wine having been stored in wood for the full period necessary for maturity, and all unwholesome acids being thereby eliminated, is safely included in the dietary scale of the invalid; whilst its fine delicate bouquet will please the taste of the connoisseur. Makes you want to drink yourself stupid doesn’t it? In 2001, an image of Mona Lisa sporting a red mustache took first prize in a label-making content hyped by Wine Maker Magazine An obvious rip off of “Got Milk” campaign, I wonder if it bombed? Anyone who shops for wine, knows it’s the label that grabs the eye and it’s the label that clinches the sale. Face it, it’s where “art meets commerce.” The youth of today now drink more wine than beer, and yes, these are the youths who grew up with television, digital graphics, People Magazine, and clothing “branded” with labels. Come on now, who wouldn’t want a bottle of “Marilyn Merlot,” named after Marilyn Monroe who died way back in 1962. She’s there on the label in living color…head thrown back, rosy lips parted to reveal pearly teeth. Her famous eyes are partially closed. Clad in a ribbed white tank-top; a delicate necklace dripping seal shells and polished stone hangs around her famous neck. A wine expert claims Marilyn Merlot (2003 Napa Valley Winery) is “middling,” and it’s suggested that perhaps connoisseurs should […]
Apr 1st, 2009 by Judith Ann Moriarty
