Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2008 November 18

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November 18

Brian Sprout

Brian Sprout was a former MLB Baseball Player for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He graduated from St. Olaf's College in 2002 and went to the MLB after that. He also played Shortstop for the St. Paul Saints until 2008. He grew up in Lake City, Minnesota. He is currently teaching Middle School Social Studies at St. Mark's School in St. Paul, Minnesota. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.245.43.43 (talk) 04:36, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

That's good to know. Do you have a question ? StuRat (talk) 04:46, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I can't find anything that shows he actually played in the Show, just the minor leagues. He was MIAC Player of the Year three times, but I doubt this is enough to qualify him for an article. If you could provide some proof that he played in MLB, that would help. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:00, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Here are his minor league statistics in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization: [1]. He never played in the majors and has been out of organized baseball since 2006. He may still be active in the independent leagues, where St. Paul plays. --Xuxl (talk) 14:59, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Artist And Song Name

There's this song that sounds like a boy band sings it. At the end of the chorus, I think something like "love song" is sung. The song has the singers sing in different parts (this song has a lot of/strong harmony). I live in Canada and this song might have been a hit 3, 4, or 5 years ago. I heard it playing at East Side Mario's in Edmonton, the west location.96.53.149.117 (talk) 05:35, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

"Love Song" by Sky_(Canadian band)? 75.157.0.167 (talk) 06:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

OMGOMG OMG!!! IT IS STHAINK OUT!!!!!!!!@@!!q!96.53.149.117 (talk) 06:33, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Bass synth waveforms

I got hold of a Zoom B1X bass pedal (info about it can be found here:[2]) which has a little bass synth within its fx modules. Settings regarding selection of the oscillator waveform and tone variation within the bass synth include sawtooth, square and pulse-width modulation. Any answers as to how each will effect the sound?--Leif edling (talk) 07:10, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Packers

Who was the RB from, I think, Africa, who played in the late 1990's for the Green Bay Packers? What year was that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by JelloTube (talk • contribs) 07:26, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

It may be Samkon Gado, though he has been playing only since 2005. Reggie White played in the 1990's for the Packers and was African American, but not an RB.Leif edling (talk) 07:52, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Pro-football-reference.com is the canonical football site. During most of the late 1990's, the Packers main starting running backs were Travis Jervey and Dorsey Levens while their fullback was William Henderson. All are from the U.S. I couldn't find a starter or backup running back who was from Africa for the Packers. The most famous African to play in the NFL was Christian Okoye (aka The Nigerian Nightmare), though he played for the Kansas City Chiefs in the late 80's/early 90's. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 12:31, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Tshimanga Biakabutuka was a running back born in Zaire, who played for the Carolina Panthers. Same period, different team. --Xuxl (talk) 15:01, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I remember this from a Monday night game. It seems like he may have been a full time rookie. It may have been in their 8-8 year. It was also towards the end of the season. Al Michals continued to praise him as being a major surprise for the NFL. I don't think he returned to the packers the next year. I remember he did have a wonderful game. I've looked the best I could on the NFL reference, but nothing rings a bell. He may not have had a forgien last name, but not sure about that either. I know this was a long shot, but thanks for the help. 1 more thing. it may not have been Africa, but it was a country that you normally don't get alot of NFL players from. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JelloTube (talk • contribs) 08:24, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Daily life of violinist

I am writing a short story about a violinist. Two general questions:

1) What is a violinist's (or for that matter, a professional classical musician's) daily life like?

2) My violinist gets fired. How would such an event occur?

Vltava 68 (talk contribs) 12:03, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

1) Practicing, travelling, more practicing, maybe giving lessons to young musicians.

2) If the violinist gives solo performances, he or she couldn't get fired, there just wouldn't be any bookings anymore. A chamber musician might one day hear that his or her partners would rather stop working together. An orchestra member could get fired, maybe because several performances were ruined by too many wrong notes. If somebody's really unlucky, all of the above could happen. I hope there is a happy ending though. 194.171.56.13 (talk) 12:41, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

If the violinist were unable to get along with the maestro, for whatever reason, one of them would have to go. Is the violinist the concertmaster? Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 02:05, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure; he probably is/was seeing the character's supposed to be really good at playing violin. I'm not sure; one disadvantage of fictional characters is that you can't "know" something for sure if you're the writer. Vltava 68 (talk contribs) 08:58, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe he's sleeping with the maestro's wife, or vice versa.  :) Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 00:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe he got fired for fiddling the books?hotclaws 19:54, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Not really. The one thing I know is that the reason he got fired is unfair (e.g. a dissident). Vltava 68 (talk contribs) 03:01, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Fifa 09 Kit Clashing

Does anyone know if it is possible to change team kits in Fifa 09 Manager Mode on Wii? By default the home team wears their first strip, and the away team wears their second strip. It can get pretty frustrating when both these kits are exactly the same colour (and nigh on unplayable). However, there doesn't seem to be any way of changing the strips (e.g. setting both teams to their first choice strips). It seems to be possible for friendly matches only. Help!!! Thanks, Stulock holmes (talk) 14:08, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Average Duration of Music Lessons in the US

How long are music classes, such as band and choir, generally in American public schools? Please insert links if any. 203.188.92.71 (talk) 14:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Where schools still have music, it is usually offered as a class ans takes an entire class period, so usually about 50 minutes. (But note that class times vary widely among school districts - from 40 or so to as much as 85 minutes) There might also be sectional practices which are shorter. Rmhermen (talk) 15:51, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this is helpful; my high school had block scheduling, meaning that our classes were 80 minutes long. If a student decided to be in band only, the class was 80 minutes long. If the student did band and choir, however, the student left halfway through class, about 40 minutes in, and went to choir. It's the same if the student decided to do choir only, meaning that he/she stayed in choir for the full 80 minutes. A certain amount of sectionals (for choir) and band lessons had to be met each semester.Breadchastick (talk) 18:09, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

My high school had a schedule of seven classes per day, each one lasting 50 minutes. A school day went from 8-3:30. Lunch was either before, during, or after fourth period. Dismas|^(talk) 22:34, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

My high school is on the block schedule, giving 90 minute periods. Students can't be in a band and choir during the school day, so they must choose one or the other. There is also a number of ensembles that rehearse outside of the school day, usually having rehearsals that are and additional 90 minutes. However, at schools without the block schedule, it is more common to see 45 minute rehearsals. 98.227.97.143 (talk) 00:42, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Film soundtracks with pop songs/hits

Hello, I'm looking for movie soundtracks available on CD that consist of a plenty of (or exclusively) pop/rock songs that have been released by various, diverse artists (ie: rather than just/mostly composed original instrumental music from the movie). So far, I've got the following, and would appreciate suggestions for more titles: The Full Monty, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, On connaît la chanson and Bridget Jones' Diary. Any other suggestions? - thanks! --AlexSuricata (talk) 14:30, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure there are hundreds but the one I thought of first was Forrest Gump (soundtrack). If you have a few months to kill, you could comb through Category:Film soundtracks. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 14:35, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

You would be much better off trying to compile a list of movies that do not consist of pop songs. When I managed a movie theater, I would buy the soundtracks of each movie and play them on random in the lobby. I now have a closet full of soundtracks and they are pretty much all full of pop songs. -- kainaw™ 14:46, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's a couple of my favorites :The Crow and Dumb and Dumber..cheers, 10draftsdeep (talk) 16:20, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

While not a film, the soundtrack for the television show Grey's Anatomy is very popular and filled with pop songs/hits. Also, you may be able to find a compilation of James Bond themes. These are generally composed by a popular group that was around at the time, the likes of which include Carly Simon, Duran Duran, Paul McCartney, Madonna, Sheryl Crow, etc. The most famous (or most often still played on radio) of these would probably be McCartney's "Live and Let Die" which has been covered by a few artists including Guns'n'Roses. Getting back to single films, see Garden State. Dismas|^(talk) 22:24, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

The Wedding Singer has a good soundtrack featuring various 1980s pop songs. Dirty Dancing also has quite a diverse soundtrack with different songs all by different artists. 62.249.220.179 (talk) 22:30, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

The first classic I listened to was my parents' LP Easy Rider. The soundtracks of Tarantino films are cult. I occasionally put on Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. (I don't own any others :) Moreover, movies by the Coen brothers:. The Big Lebowski 's collection was quite a success, and one of my all time personal favorite tracks of this kind is O Brother, Where Art Thou?, though this is definitely not pop/rock. High Fidelity!---Sluzzelin talk 01:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Dazed and Confused, Empire Records, Reality Bites...Singles (soundtrack) is pretty famous. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:45, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Films like American Beauty and Vanilla Sky feature a good mix of today's pop and classic rock pop songs as well. If you're looking for more of today's stuff, Cruel Intentions is a good mix, featuring songs like Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve. If you're looking for older stuff, the recent film Zodiac features a good mix, including lesser known but equally great pop songs like The Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan. Also, if you wanna get into TV show soundtracks, The OC and Six Feet Under are good suggestions. --Megan (talk) 9:50, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Grosse Pointe Blank —Tamfang (talk) 03:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Songs in the key of X, which is music from the X-Files TV series.hotclaws 19:57, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Why did Forrest Gump win over Shawshank Redemption in the 1994 Oscars?

Why?140.198.158.73 (talk) 21:46, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, the simple answer is because more members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted for it. Why did they do that? Would it even be possible to know? Adam Bishop (talk) 22:02, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Sure it's possible to know. Go and ask them. Algebraist 23:11, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

The Shawshank Redemption was not a big success when it first came out in cinemas. Relatively few people (I was one) saw it on the big screen and realised what a wonderful film it was. It only really became well known by word of mouth when it was later released on video. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 23:25, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't Forrest Gump one of the highest grossing films in history? Shawshank is a brilliant firm, but so is Forrest Gump. I suspect the scale of success of Forrest Gump with the audience helped it win. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:07, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

No, Forrest Gump is not a brilliant film. And I for one hope that box office success is not a criterion that the Academy uses. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 09:15, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure it's not. The voters have to certify that they have actually viewed all the nominated films, otherwise the result would be meaningless. But Hollywood is all about hype, and all about believing the hype, so when one movie gets a LOT more hype than another, it's not hard to see why voters might be swayed by that. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:08, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, in most of the Oscar categories, the voters don't have to view all the nominees, or any of them. Voting based on "Somebody told me that was good" or "My friend was in that movie" is not encouraged, but it's allowed. If you think that makes the result meaningless, well, I agree that it certainly doesn't make it meaningful. (Exceptions: Voters do have to view all the nominees in the foreign language film, documentary, and short film categories to vote in those categories.) --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:24, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Forrest Gump had several advantages: its special effects were cutting edge for the time and got a lot of attention, Tom Hanks was hitting his peak as a popular actor, and the values of the film seemed to resonate with audiences (in ways the filmmakers apparently didn't intend and didn't desire). Personally, both Gump and Shawshank, though enjoyable, are too schmaltzy for my tastes; I'd have voted for Pulp Fiction, but it was too transgressive to actually win. Other films from 1994 arguably better than Gump or Shawshank include Burnt by the Sun, Bullets over Broadway, Nobody's Fool, Heavenly Creatures, and Three Colors: Red. I thought it was a very good year for movies. —Kevin Myers 14:39, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Biggest Year in Cinema

After looking into the 1994 (67th?) Oscars because of the above question I got thinking...What a year for cinema that was. Forrest Gump, Shawshank and Pulp Fiction are all acclaimed movies which are pretty darn high up the list in IMDB (Shawshank #1, Pulp Fiction #6, Forrest Gump #45). What would be the 'top' year for cinema (e.g. a single year that produced the most high-grossing films, a year that produced the most critically acclaimed classics). 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:15, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, 1939 has to be a leading candidate. The 10 nominees for Best Picture that year, in alphabetical order, were: Dark Victory, Gone with the Wind, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights. Several other years around that time are worth a nomination, so to speak, as well. --Anonymous, 11:15 UTC, November 19, 2008.

Hmmm, there's an interesting problem with your comma separated list which includes an item with it's own comma: Goodbye, Mr. Chips. I wonder what the best way is to handle such a situation without having it look like two movies, named "Goodbye" and "Mr. Chips". StuRat (talk) 15:39, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Change the commas between the titles to semicolons, of course. I didn't notice the problem, or I would have. The reason I didn't notice is that I'm using a browser where I can tell where one linked phrase ends and the next one starts, thus delimiting the titles; but not everyone does. --Anon, 17:01 UTC, November 19, 2008.

Yeah, Hollywood was really firing on all cylinders at that time. 1941 in film was pretty amazing: Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, The Lady Eve, and Sullivan's Travels, among others. A year with two releases by Preston Sturges has an unfair advantage, of course! —Kevin Myers 14:52, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

BTW, Sturges also gives unfair advantage to 1944 in film with two classics released that year, including the best comedy ever made, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, which somehow escaped the censors. —Kevin Myers 15:00, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

When I first read the question, 1939 came to mind, as well, and I was about to reply with that till I saw Anonymous's answer. What a great year that was. Thomas Mitchell not only played Scarlett O'Hara's father in Gone With the Wind, he won the best supporting actor Oscar for Stagecoach. Other great films from that year include Beau Geste, Destry Rides Again, Dodge City, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Four Feathers, Gulliver's Travels, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Intermezzo, Jesse James, Stanley and Livingstone, The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, The Women and Young Mr. Lincoln. And what a year it was for Henry Fonda! In 1939 alone, he starred in Drums Along the Mohawk, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, Let Us Live and Jesse James. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 00:24, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Video tapes and TV broadcasting

Following last week's question and the fascinating article about the practice of TV stations wiping video tapes, it got me thinking about how much stuff TV companies must keep. I doubt anyone will have any accurate answers but just interested in rough ideas:

1. How many videotapes would a major national broadcaster (for example the BBC) hold in its archive?
2. How much physical space would storing all those tapes take up? Where do they actually keep them? At the studios or offsite for safe keeping?
3. How many hours of video is that?
4. What format would their archive be held in? A lot of the older stuff would be on film or Quadruplex tapes originally but I would assume they would have converted it all to a much less space consuming videotape such as DV or even ripped it into a data file? I doubt they would still have the machines to read large and obsolete tape formats such as quad.
5. How much of what is broadcast is actually kept? Do they keep every news bulletin or weather forecast that goes out or just the more major programmes? Do they record the actual output of the channel (ie including links, continuity etc) or just the individual programmes?
6. Are videotapes still used in the broadcast industry or are they 'ripping' everything to video files on a hard disk or similiar? I would have thought that digitising everything would make sense as HDDs are so cheap these days and once a video tape is converted to a data file, it doesn't need to be done again, unlike copying old tapes between different formats.

Any answers would be most interesting! 62.249.220.179 (talk) 22:44, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

4. Wiping states that "the advance of technology has resulted in old programming being transferred to new digital media. In the United Kingdom, the archives of both the BBC and those available of ITV, along with other channels, are being switched from cumbersome 2-inch quadruplex videotape to digital format." Gwinva (talk) 23:27, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

See digital preservation for some insight into this huge problem. It wasn't so long ago that I transferred all my computer archives from floppies to zip disks. As for my video tapes....--Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:30, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I work at a network-owned television station in the US and can answer questions 5 and 6: Locally-produced programs, such as news and Public Affairs shows, are recorded here on DVCPRO format digital video tape. Occasional news or weather bulletins that are not part of a regular show are not recorded. Some public affairs programs are pre-recorded and broadcast later, in which case the tapes do not contain commercials breaks, "links, continuity etc". News programs are generally recorded as "air checks" from the demodulated air signal, and therefore contain commercials and promos that air during the breaks. Although programs are sometimes copied to a video file server for air, these copies are short-term storage and the files are deleted after airing. Tape is still the preferred long-term storage medium. Thomprod (talk) 19:29, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

In the UK, broadcasters are required to keep recordings of all broadcast material for specified periods of time: 42 days for radio, 60 days for satellite/cable TV, and 90 days for terrestrial TV[3]. --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 14:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)