Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2008 May 2

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May 2

Badminton

Who are the top three ranked players of badminton in the world and where are they from? What are the name of the world championship trophies for badminton and when and where are they held? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.65.45.130 (talk) 04:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Top players here and list of tournaments here. Google is your friend. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 06:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

haku

my friend keeps telling me that haku from the anime naruto is a girl, and i disagree, what is she/he? a girl or a boy?--119.95.130.172 (talk) 05:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Did you read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haku_%28Naruto%29#Haku? It explains that Haku is a boy.71.142.208.226 (talk) 05:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)Cardinal Raven

Why do German channels ZDF and ARD look...kind of cheap?

Hello,

sorry for asking such a bold question, but I've been thinking about this for a while. I regularly watch ZDF and ARD, and I often find interesting things on those channels... but sometimes I get the feeling that much smaller channels do some things better. For instance : they don't always offer subtitles for the hearing impaired, not even for each movie (which is very handy for non-native speakers like me), while this is almost the standard on BBC1 and BBC2. Another surprising thing is that news anchors just stand there, reading their papers (which means they have to look down all the time to read their papers and then up again to stare into the camera)

I just don't get it, since German is one of the most spoken languages in Europe, shouldn't these channels be among the most popular? How come BBC and other even much smaller channels can do much better than that?

Evilbu (talk) 14:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Bureaucracy Beamter Gebühreneinzugszentrale Public broadcasting#Europe#Germany Potemkin village or in short: After the war they wanted to make radio and television available to all citizens. The public broad casting stations are financed from money collected from everyone who owns a radio or TV-set (whether you use it to watch public broadcasting or not). The stations are run by a bureaucratic office where the officials get paid by how long they've been with the office, can't be fired and get promoted whether they mess up or not. They waste tons of money, but who cares? Lisa4edit (talk) 07:30, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

The public broad casting stations are financed from money collected from everyone who owns a radio or TV-set - exactly the same as the way the BBC is financed. As the OP specifically compares ARD & ZDF to the BBC, the method of finance would not seem to be a likely explanation. The fact that Germans are charged 17.03 Euros per month (204.36 a year) for owning a TV whilst the licence fee in the UK is £139.50 p.a. (a similar amount at current exchange rates) would seem to support the second half of your argument - that the bureaucratic nature of German public broadcasters results in money wasted on a bad product. However, right-wing commentators in the UK level similar charges at the BBC.

I used to watch a fair amount of German TV in the 90s when many German channels, public and commercial, were available via the Astra analogue satellite alongside UK-targeted channels like Sky Television; since Sky went digital, however, I've only caught German TV occasionally, so my impressions may be a little out of date. I generally found the public broadcasters to look very old-fashioned whilst the commercial broadcasters had a presentational style closer to UK TV at the same time. In terms of the programming, however, many of the German-made programmes on the commercial channels were either execrable - occasionally approaching Chanel 9 tackiness - or tolerably well-made but low brow. (A quick browse through the programmes listed at RTL Television gives an idea of the demographic being aimed for). The publicly funded channels, on the other hand, do produce some quality programming; they (especially WDR) are also responsible for the few German programmes which have had success beyond the German-speaking nations (e.g. Heimat, Berlin Alexanderplatz).

If I were to venture a personal opinion, I would be tempted to suggest that the "cheap" look of German public broadcasters is partly cultural. The OP refers to the way the news is delivered and I'd suggest that German viewers may associate the flashiness which, say, BBC News always aims for with a lack of seriousness. I'd hedge this in with caveats as the commercial German-language news channel n-tv is a deal slicker, though I feel it still looks less shiny than English-language news channels on either side of the Atlantic. Valiantis (talk) 02:49, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

From a German viewpoint it's simply fake to look into the autocue and pretend you look into the eye of the viewer. Anyway, reading the news from paper is these days an exclusive feature of ARD news "Tagesschau". The same with news overseas on satellite: I personally prefer the less excited German Deutsche Welle news presentation to BBCs flashier offering which tries to emotionalise things more. Oalexander-En (talk) 15:28, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Help me find this flash game

Alright, I remember once playing this one flash game. It was really neat, but it's name completely escapes me now. It's sort of a turn-based RPG style game, in which you control a family in a third-world country farming, working, getting educated, etc... It would be fantastic if somebody could help me to identify this game. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenjibeast (talk • contribs) 14:57, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Your edit summary said you found the game. What was it? AtaruMoroboshi (talk) 15:01, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Animals WERE hurt during the making of this film

What happens when an animal gets (accidentally) hurt during the filming of a movie? Do the end credits say that animals were hurt instead of the usual "no animals were hurt..."? Or do the credits get cut the right to show this prompt and that's it? What if a pet or other animal not appearing in the movie but roaming around the time of filming got hurt? Would they have to acknowledge that too? Kreachure (talk) 16:39, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a good question. It looks like the production company shouldn't be allowed to use the certified "No Animals Were Harmed" end credit disclaimer. Or that's what the American Humane Association Film & Television Unit's guidelines suggest anyway. It would be misleading for a production to present the disclaimer when animals did get harmed, even if the producers had followed the AHA's guidelines and even if AHA inspectors were present during production. And animals do get harmed, even die on the set, see No Animals Were Harmed...? for example, but I can't check the mentioned movies' end credits. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:39, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

The end credits of Bruce McDonald's 1989 film Roadkill includes the line "Animals were harmed in the making of this film" (or similar wording).--TrogWoolley (talk) 18:36, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

From what I understand, it's not uncommon for some movies to feature the disclaimer "The American Humane Association monitored the animal action" instead of "no animals were harmed". This can happen if -- just to pick some fairly random examples -- a horse just happens to fall and break a leg, a cat being transported in a car dies in a traffic accident, or a dog just keels over because of a heart attack, or whatever. It essentially means that the producers allowed AHA representatives to monitor the production and did their best to keep animals from being hurt, but what with life being imperfect, things didn't work out that way, but it can't be blamed on negligence or disregard for the animals' well-being. The AHA website's history section discusses their rating system and its evolution over the years. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 18:48, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

In a similar vein, I had to laugh the other day when watching an episode of Bones. The credits at the beginning of the show say something along the lines of "Based on the life of forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs." But the ending credits say, "Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental." Well, make up your minds! Corvus cornix_talk 21:06, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe the same disclaimer was made at the end of The Other Boleyn Girl (film), giving you some idea of how accurate a biography it was. DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:24, 5 May 2008 (UTC)