10 October, 2005

LB2 DVD: the great textbook for English phonetics

This is what I've been longing for. Finally, the second series of Little Britain, BBC's hit comedy, is released today.

It will brings some senses of the UK to my mind and makes me laugh. Since I came back to Tokyo, I've led a life, which is not really connected to "English". No matter what I do, of course, there're few chances to get in touch with "English" here in Japan.

However, at lease I've got Internet and satellite channel's BBC. They barely keep my English. And this Little Britain is also helpful for me.

***

By the way, there is another story.

Last month, I got an e-mail from my professor of English phonetics, who taught me at university. He asked me to come to his class and talk about studying in Cardiff. I finally said yes after thinking twice. The reason why I hesitated was because, first, I had to take the morning off; second, I'm not good at talking in front of people. But the reason for the final answer, which was yes, was because I hadn't thanked him for his reference letter for Cardiff university. He is one of those who surpported my going to the UK.

Anyway, I went to my old university last week. I talked about a bit of my life in Cardiff and report about "British English". My speech was not that bad, but not that good. Bit wandering. Nevertheless, the students were more attentive than I expected. No one seemed to texting with a mobile.

English phonetics is a too broad subject. Based on differences of intonation and pronounciation, some students study about American English and some tackle with English spoken by Chinese. But when I say English spoken in one country, it is still broad. To explain this, I wanted to show the Little Britain DVD in the class. "Even in the UK, see how diverse their English is!" If I have a chance to have another speech, I'd show the DVD. Or I'll have my professor buy it at amazon,co.uk.

19 June, 2005

Little Britain with Vogue and Oasis

I came accross some information today about Little Britain, which is BBC's award-winning comedy show.

The July issue of British Vogue features a twelve-pages article of Little Britain, accompanied with special photos of the characters, by photographer Mario Testino. It is a women's magazine, but this is a killer issue for LB fans, regardless of sex. Well, I don't know I can get the actual magazine over here in Japan.

And I also found an article about the comedy in today's Observer. It is about the meeting between Little Britain's star, David Walliams and Noel Gallagher, of Oasis. This also seems accompanied with a special photo session. But I can't find images online.

Well, anyway, when will the DVD of the series 2 be out?

» The Observer | OMM | 'Yeah, but Noel, but...'
19 June 2005
By David Bailey

25 May, 2005

BBC strike

18 May, 2005

BBC evolution

BBC announced that they would start an experimental service which enables people to watch and listen their programmmes in the BBC website in September. With this service, people will be able to enjoy programmes, which they miss.

The experiment will last for three months, providing 5,000 people with the BBC Interactive Media Player, which can download and record the programmes.

But there is, of course, something like copyright issues. To deal with them, BBC regulates the system - the programmes, which viewers obtain, will not play again after a week has passed. In other words, the programmes are to be broadcast within the last seven days. (There still seems to be more to be done for copyright issues, though.)

I'm very excited to hear this news, but unfortunately, BBC haven't announced that they will offer this service to overseas viewers yet.

» BBC News | BBC moves ahead with TV downloads

Moreover, another evolution. BBC will soon introduce the new generation of weather graphics.

» BBC | Clearer Weather from the BBC
» BBC News | BBC defends new weather forecasts

So I think this series of developments in the television sector, closely related to the Internet, should be advanced. And I hope BBC will bring many interesting BBC programmes, including the Office, Little Britain, Newsnight, etc, to us - those who do not have access to them like someone living outside the UK.

It's been long since a phrase - Linkage between TV and the Internet - started to be spotlighted in Japan. But what has been done? What does NHK do for it? How about Fuji TV? And Livedoor?

Just look at the BBC. They do what Japanese TV stations and others have to do. Respect BBC.

29 March, 2005

The US remake of The Office

One of the favourite things of Britain is comedy. Like Mr. Bean and Little Britain, Britain has produced lots of high-quality comedies. Even though I was tierd of British poor service system and lost my sense of taste by British tasty food when I was staying in the UK, the county's creativity of comedies undid what happened to me. Yes, BBC's hit comedy, The Office, is one of them.

The US remake of The Office is going to be broadcast tonight on NBC. Of course, it's impossible for me to watch it.

The Office is created as a mock documentary about ordinary people's lives at the Slough branch, the southeast of England, of a paper company, Wernham Hogg, and was broadcast in two series and one Christmas special on BBC from 2001 to 2003. The comedy became a huge hit in Britain and finally became the surprise winner of two Golden Globes in 2004.

The reason for this huge success mainly attributes to genius comedian Ricky Gervais and creative script writer Stephen Merchant. Thanks to Gervais's act and Merchant's realistic script, everything appears so real to make us feel as if this office exists in Slough. Cameras shoots human dramas at the office, including love relationship between Dawn and Tim, who are main characters and awkward situations mostly caused by an awful office manager, David Brent, performed by Ricky Gervais.

Because the original version was widely acclaimed, it will be hard for the US remake to be as good as the original one and to be seen without comparing it with the original one. Here are already viewer's opinions.

» BBC News | Have Your Say | Will the US version of The Office be a hit?

19 January, 2005

Little Britain Live

Again about my favourite, Little Britain. Matt Lucas and David Walliams are going to go on Little Britain Live tour all over the UK this autumn. It is said that 100,000 tickets were sold in just only 6 hours. It sounds like some pop stars. They're men of the moment and I'm going to miss it...

» www.littlebritain.info