watch Movies, Sports, Music and More on pc


Satellite Direct Introduces the Internet Television Revolution on pc

Are you ready for a new way to watch live tv channels? What if I told you that there was a way for you to watch all of your favorite shows, along with news, sports, movies, and even dozens of music stations… all for a one time fee that’s less than half of what you currently pay for cable? (And yes, it’s 100% legal!)

The internet changed the way you work, shop, book travel, and spend your free time. Now, your computer can revolutionize the way you enjoy watching television, too. Imagine: no more cable or satellite bills, no hardware to install, no worrying about bandwidth limits- just thousands of channels and crystal clear picture and sound quality.

With Satellite Direct, you get unlimited 24/7 access to over 3,500 live tv channels on pc. That’s thousands more than cable TV, including dozens of hard to find international channels, as well as all the best premium, movie, sports, news, and music programming. And unlike traditional live satellite television, you don’t need to worry about expensive equipment or heavy satellite dishes. In fact, you don’t even have to wait for installation at all! Our easy to use software can be downloaded in about a minute… meaning you are only 60 seconds away from great television, without paying another cable bill ever again.

If you have a computer and an internet connection, you have the ability to cancel your cable company today, and begin enjoying thousands of premium live tv channels right away.

What would you expect to pay for technology that allows you to access the best that television has to offer? Even spending several hundred dollars on a one time fee would add up to thousands of dollars in savings when compared to the thousands you will likely spend on cable subscription services over the next few years.

But for a limited time, Satellite Direct is offering their revolutionary software at the unbelievable price of only $49.95. That’s about half the average monthly cost of cable… for a lifetime of television service!


Watch Live tv channels on the pc with Satellite Direct It’s as Easy as 1 2 3…

Are you fed up with the high price of cable TV? What if there was a way for you to watch all of your favorite channels- including premium movie channels, all of the best sports programming, and hard to find international television shows – and never pay another monthly cable bill again? With Satellite Direct, there is.

Satellite Direct is a new way to watch tv on the pc

You don’t need a satellite dish, cable box, or receiver to watch television with Satellite Direct. In fact, all you need to run our state of the art software is your home computer or laptop. That’s right- for less than half of what you’re probably paying for one month of your current subscription service, you can enjoy unlimited 24/7 access to thousands of television channels, right from your PC. And with no hardware to install, you can forget about waiting around for a technician to set up your service. Our easy, one time software download will take less than a minute.

Making the switch is as easy as:

1. Registration: Using our safe and secure checkout process, simply register for Satellite Direct by answering a few questions and providing us your one time payment. Your information is always treated with the utmost respect, and the ordering process is fast and easy.
2. Download: The Satellite Direct software can be downloaded in about a minute… just follow our simple on-screen instructions.
3. Enjoy: That’s it! Just sit back and enjoy the variety of over 3,500 TV channels right on your PC. You’ll never pay another month of cable or satellite subscription service again.

Satellite Direct is so sure that you will love watching television through the comfort and convenience of your PC that we are offering a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So why wait? Cancel your cable service today. With Satellite Direct, the future of live tv channels is here now


TV for Your PC: The Truth About live Satellite Television for Your Computer



Warning! Do not sign up for a television service for your PC until you’ve read this.

So, you’re fed up with paying outrageous cable bills, and are ready to make the switch to watching live tv channels on the pc. Before you do there is something you need to know: Not all live satellite services are created equal. In fact, most television for PC services are downright terrible. With poor picture quality, outdated software, lousy customer service, and limited access to the channels you really want to see, many live satellite for PC providers just aren’t worth making the switch.

That’s where Satellite Direct comes in.

Named by Interactive Media Magazine as “Unequivocally the best TV to PC software on the net”, Satellite Direct is your best bet when it comes to watching television from the comfort of your home computer or laptop. Forget subscriptions or monthly fees… Satellite Direct brings you unlimited access to over 3,500 live tv channels- including premium movie channels and all of the best sports stations. Additionally, with Satellite Direct, you also get dozens of hard to find international channels. And you never have to worry about bandwidth signals or poor picture or sound quality. It’s like having the best of cable or satellite television- without ever having to pay the outrageous monthly bills again!

In fact, a lifetime of Satellite Direct costs about half of what you would pay for just one month of comparable service from your current cable or satellite provider. Why pay over $100 a month for cable? For a one time price of just $49.95, you can have 24/7 access to thousands of live tv channels- with no hidden fees, ever.

Ordering is safe and secure, and your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. You have nothing to lose- except your monthly cable bill



Unplug Your Cable Service




Satellite Direct Brings Thousands of live TV Channels Straight to Your PC


What if there was a way for you to watch thousands of television channels, any time you want… and never pay another cable bill again? With Satellite Direct, there is.

Satellite Direct is a new way to watch TV- from the convenience of your own desktop PC or laptop. Why pay over $100 a month for a cable or satellite television subscription with limited channel availability, when you can get a lifetime of unlimited access to over 3,500 channels for less than half of that?

Just some of the benefits of choosing Satellite Direct over cable:

• 24/7 unlimited access to over 3,500 channels
• Hard to find international channels, as well as all the best movies, sports and news shows- at no additional cost
• No hardware to install
• No bandwidth limits
• No subscription or installation fees - EVER
• Automatic channel updates

And best of all… You’ll never have to pay another monthly cable or satellite bill again!

Why settle for other TV for PC services that deliver poor sound and picture quality, or come loaded with hidden fees? With world class customer service and support, making the switch to Satellite Direct will be one of the best decisions you’ve made for your family in a long time. (And with no hardware to install and no waiting around for hours for the cable guy to show up… it will be one of the easiest, as well)

Switching to Satellite Direct is simple and straightforward: Just answer a few questions using our safe and secure registration process. After your one time payment, you can download our easy to use software directly onto your PC or laptop.

Then sit back and enjoy thousands of premium live tv channels, any time you want. That’s it!

Don’t pay another cable bill





Stop Paying Cable Bills

How to Get Thousands of live TV Channels on Your PC… And Never Pay Another Monthly Bill Again




In today’s rocky economic climate, most households are cutting back wherever they can. And with cable and satellite television costing anywhere from $65- $150 a month (more if you count premium movie channels) many people are making their television sets the first part of their homes to get the axe. But what if there was a way to enjoy thousands of television channels, including hard to find international shows and sports programming, and never pay another monthly cable bill again?

Welcome to Satellite Direct- the future of television.

With no subscription services or monthly bills, no hardware to install, and 24/7 unlimited access, is it any wonder that Internet Media Magazine hailed Satellite Direct as “unequivocally the best TV to PC software on the net”? Don’t be fooled by other so called “Great Deals” on live satellite television service for your PC that give you only limited access to channels, or have dozens of hidden fees that end up costing you more than your current cable service.

For less than the price of one month’s subscription cable or live satellite service, you can enjoy a lifetime of television- over 3,500 live tv channels!- from the convenience of your laptop or desktop. And forget the hassles of waiting for installation, or hours on hold with the cable company. Installing Satellite Direct is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. Register - Answer a few simple questions, and our easy registration system will process your ONE TIME payment. That’s right, no monthly bills- ever.

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With crystal clear picture and sound quality, exceptional customer service, and a lifetime of television for less than you’d pay for just one month of cable service, Satellite Direct is the best way to get the most for your TV dollar.

for more information visit official site

Frank Rueter's NukeMari Workflow Video

Frank Rueter's NukeMari Workflow Video from Hieronymus Foundry on Vimeo.

Cinema Criticism and Social Class

Art films, middle cinema and commercial films in India all depend on the middle classes for legitimacy and critical acclaim. Even those producers and performers who stridently proclaim the supremacy of popular taste, or denounce the elitism of the art-film critics, are on the defensive when there is a sharp criticism of their wares in the media. Indeed, the way the producers of each of these kinds of movies try to win friends and influence middle-class opinion give the lie to their declared dependence on only the opinions of the 'common Indian.' The common Indian is rarely influenced by what Kumar Shahani says of Manmohan Desai. But Desai was distressed when Shahani took him on while Shahani in turn resents that his films do not get the patronage or support of those for whom is radical hear bleeds, whereas Desai mobilizes such support with casual ease. Nevertheless, there are clear differences in the cultural thrusts of the three; to gauge the appeal or lack of appeal of any of these forms, one must first identify the thrusts.

First, the commercial film tends to reflect and be protective towards the implicit cultural values of the society. If it criticizes traditions, the criticism tends to be indirect, latent or unintended. if for instance there is criticism of untouchability, it is grounded on the traditional concept of a humane society; if there is criticism of religious violence, the criticism invokes not so much the secular values of a modern polity as the perennial values of the religions involved.

Of course, the emphasis on cultural self-expression or cultural self-defense is also simultaneously a defiance and unwitting criticism of middle-class values. The commercial cinema in India does tend to reaffirm the values that are being increasingly marginalized in public life by the language of the modernizing middle classes, values such as community ties, consensual non-contractual human relations, primacy of maternity over conjugality, priority of the mythic over the historical. But even such indirect criticism of middle-class values is cast not in the language of social criticism but in that of playful, melodramatic, spectacles.

In art films and middle cinema, on the other hand, the emphasis on the expressive function of art of the reaffirmation of cultural values tends to be muted. High-brow films usually provide sharp criticisms and deep analyses of the social pathologies associate with tradition, which contrasts markedly with their shallow or superficial criticisms of the violence and exploitation associated with modern institutions. The high cinema in India has never been particularly sensitive to the growing threats to lifestyles, life-support system and non- modern cognitive orders, or for that matter to the values those in the 'survial sector' of the society - a sector not primarily concerned with the goal of a good life (as it is defined by modern Indian), but with mere survival and the protection of whatever little the survivor has by way of access to the global commons, traditional technologies, knowledge of health care, and community self-sufficiency outside the monetized sector of the economy. The feelings, attitude and values associated with the survival sector are the ones that the commercial cinema consciously or unconsciously exploits but in the process also unwittingly supports, even if only partially and even while mouthing the slogans of the dominant culture of politics. Commercial cinema romanticizes and, given half a chance, vulgarizes the problems of the survival sector, but it never rejects as childish or primitive the categories or worldviews of those trying to survive the processes of victimization let loose by modern institutions. The makers of commerical cinema cannot indulge in the luxury of such rejection, given the kind of audience they seek. (This tacit refusal to reject cultural values and embrace modernity uncritically also partially explains the enormous popularity of the Indian commercial cinema in parts of the erstwhile Soviet Block which had rich native traditions of art cinema patronized by the state.)

Second, the middle cinema is - some may say was - the true heir to pre-Independence popular cinema and its occasional, mostly unsuccessful attempts to be arty (by which I simply mean the scattered attempts by some movie-makers to turn cinema into a new artistic medium of cultural and personal self-expression in India). P.C. Barua, V. Shantaram, Debaki Bose, and Bimal Roy did not make art films, nor did they lay down the basis for future directors of art films. (Satyajit Ray has often claimed that he learnt little from these makers of what were popularly seen as clean, socially relevant, technically competent films; he had virtually to create his own medium and style.) Though the middle cinema is often viewed as a compromise between art and commerical cinema, it could be more appropriately seen as a further development of the style that once catered to the middle-class culture of the 1930s and 1940s. The middle cinema has in fact a tradition to build upon, the tradition of the 'good popular cinema' of yesteryears.

Indeed, the middle cinema can claim to originate from an even wider cultural current - the current represented by a galaxy of well-crafted, less-than-great creative products, from the work of Ravi Verma to Premchand, Girish Chandra Ghose to Prithviraj Kapoor, from Marathi stage music to K.L. Saigal. Viewed thus, the middle cinema caters to that part of the middle-class consciousness which has during the last century and a half played a creative role in Indian society by sustaining a dialogue at the popular plane, however imperfect, between the traditional and the modern, the East and the West, the classical and the folk.

What we call popular cinema today is certainly popular but its links are now weakening with the pre-war popular cinema and the middle-class experiences that sustained that cinema. Popular cinema now (for the sake of clarity I shall stick to the term commercial cinema) has more links with the growing mass culture in India. However, though these links are getting stronger every day, they do not monopolize commercial cinema; nor are they likely to do so in the near future. So do distinctive ways of telling a story, the styles of acting, and the set-piece interactions of stereotypes. Above all survives a structure of myths that has proved remarkably resilient to all demands for change.

Third, commercial cinema has to take an instrumental view of cultural traditions and worldviews and present them theatrically and spectacularly. To do so, it has to generalize the specific problems of its different audiences and then exteriorize the psychological components of these problems. To this extent such cinema is anti-psychological: it presents conflicts as if they were conflicts among social types or products of a unique conjunction of external events. This point is further explored in Ashis Nandy, 'The Popular Hindi Film: Ideology and First Principles,' India International Centre Quarterly, 1981, 9, pp. 89-96; and The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games (New Delhi: Viking and Penguin, 1989), Ch. 1.

Thus, for instance, the grandiloquent stylization of the Muslim aristocratic traditions of north India, Goan Christian simplicity and love of a good life, Rajput valour, Bengali romanticism; they are all essential to the basic style of the commercial cinema. Thus also the dependence on stereotypical 'external' events or situations to sustain its story-line. Together they allow commercial cinema to 'spectacularize' and de-psychologize everything it touches - violence, dance, music, death, dress and love - and subject every sentiment and value to the judgment of the market. On commercial film as a spectacle in Roland Barthe's sense of the term, see the above cited article, 'The Popular Hindi Film.'

I sometimes suspect that this double-edged 'sensitivity' to culture is one of the few valid grounds for a social criticism of popular movies, not the violence and sex they depict nor what urbane critics say about their irrationality, crudity and use of stereotypes. In fact, the lack of realism and the dream-like quality - the 'cultural dream work,' one may call it - is deployed to deal with the concerns of low-brow viewers, concerns which most art films and middle cinema do not touch upon. The basic principles of commercial cinema derive from the needs of Indians caught in the hinges of social change who are trying to understand their predicament in terms of cultural categories known to them. The strength of the commercial cinema lies in its ability to tap the fears, anxieties and felt pressures towards deculturation and even depersonalization that plague a growing number of Indians who do not find the normative framework of the established urban middle-class culture adequate for their needs and yet have been pushed to adopt it in everyday life.

There can, of course, be political and aesthetic criticism of films catering to the mass culture. But it is possible that public lamentation about the alleged aesthetic and moral failure of the commercial film only reinforces its appeal for its audience which is unconcerned about the aesthetic and the ethics, the absurdity of 'immorality,' because it has the secret code by which to decipher the film's latent social message in the context of its life-world. It is actually willing to read such lamentations as final and satisfactory proof of the commercial film's defiance of culturally alien aspects of middle-class morality.

Fourth, there are differences in the way art films and commercial films, so to speak, see themselves and see each other. The main difference is that for the art film there is a clear artistic break between it and commercial films; for the commercial film there is only a commercial break. The partisans of art films see themselves as champions of a proper medium of individual and cultural self-expression; to them, commercial films are technically competent, high-paying financial ventures with no artistic legitimacy or social relevance. When the votaries of art cinema grant social relevance to the commercial film, they do so in negative terms, seeing the commercial cinema only as an index of social pathology.

To the partisans of commercial films, on the other hand, art films constitute an artistic continuum with the commercial cinema. They hold that the art-film maker is usually careless about the producer's money and can therefore afford to indulge in useless, baroque detailing as a private ego trip at public expense. The applause the art-film maker receives is primarily the work of pedantic film critics pretending to be entertained when they are actually bored to tears. Such art films are distinguished mainly by their cultural inability to gauge public sentiment and their ability to fail at the box office. The situation is actually more complicated. Like Hindu nationalists who constantly speak of themselves as representatives of Hindu sentiments but have never managed to get more than one-fifth of the Hindu vote, commercial filmmakers are not great prognosticators of the public taste. As already mentioned, according to informal trade estimates, in India 80 percent of all commercial films fail at the box office; another 15 percent barely recover their costs. Less than 5 percent are hits. Obviously, there is no one-to-one relationship between popular taste and commercial cinema. To get an idea of what popular taste may be reading into commercial cinema, see Nandy, 'The Popular Hind Film.' There is also the fact that many famous and commercially thriving film producers have, at some stage of life, approached distinguished directors of art cinema, such as Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, to make films for them.

The two kinds of film-makers also regard censorship differently. Commercial film-makers dislike censorship for the same reasons that businessmen hate social controls on business. They are out to sell their wares to the public and they feel that censorship, reflecting middle-class prudery, interferes with entrepreneurial freedom. Like other sections of the corporate world, they are convinced that what is good for the commercial film is also good for India. However, there is in them a deeper acceptance of censorship, as is evident from their frequent attempts to justify their films by pointing out how standard family values and politically correct public norms are upheld in them and by their spirited denial that their films include pornographic elements and anti-women attitudes of that they promote consumerism and violent vigilantism. Commercial film-makers never argue openly for great freedom to express eroticism or realistic violence or political dissent. They only argue that they are even more conventional in these respects than many others (such as the makers of low-brow Hollywood films that get past the Indian censors).

Art-film makers, in closer touch with the haute bourgeoisie, take a different line. They feel that their work need not be censored, for all art films by definition have mature and responsible viewpoints, unlike the commercial films which are (by definition again) infantile, irresponsible and deserving of censorship. True, art-film makes would like the censorship not to be too prudish or anti-political. But, on the whole, they consider the makers and consumers of commerical films to be eminently educable in matters of public morality and they believe censorship to be an instrument of discipline and socialization. The partisans of art cinema do not deny that they appeal of the commerical cinema lies precisely in its 'immaturity' and 'childishness'; they merely deny that immaturity can be defiance and regression rebellion, for they equate the child with the primitive waiting to be civilized and educated. The champions of the art film cannot afford to keep a space in the public realm for the undersocialized self of the viewer that registers, however imperfectly or crudely, the political presence of Indians at the margins of modern India.

[This essay was extracted from 'An Intelligent Critic's Guide to Indian Cinema' by Ashis Nandy and originally published in The Savage Freud and Other Essays on Possible and Retrievable Selves (Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 202-207.]

Dish Network Now Offers HBO GO and Max GO

DISH Network now offers HBO GO and Max GO. This service offers DISH Network customers more than 1800 On-Demand movies and original series to online customers. DISH Network's DISHOnline delivers HBO and Cinemax movies that are not available on Netflix's online service.

If you are not a current DISH Network customer you can sign up for Free DISH Network TV installation and order HBO and Cinemax today.

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Egypt - Pay your Phone Bill Online

For residents and newcomers, is remembering to pay your phone bill and where to pay. Well you can pay online if you have visa or master card from local bank. The portal is in Arabic and English.  I subscribe to the email service and they send me notice of bill payment due. Only glitch I found is trying to pay more than one invoice at a time.

Here is link to Egypt Telecom 

Choose Ebill then English version. Very easy...........

Starmax HD - new satellite TV service for Spain

Starmax HD is a new satellite pay-TV platform for Spain.

StarMax HD focuses mainly on providing programs in high definition televisions (HDTV)

Starmax HD has no fixed contract period so you can cancel at anytime if you chose to pay as you go.

The subscription is expected to be just 10€ per month.

For this subscription you wil get access to the following channels:
BBC Entertainment
MGM HD

TNT SAT FRANCE New Code 2011

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1B339CE933EAA6988788176E51B88D4E

Sign Up for DISH Network Today! Order DISH Network Online Here

It's easy to sign up for DISH Network. Order DISH Network online! Sign up today and have a DISH system installed in 48 hrs. Free standard 6 room installation with DISH Platinum and Showtime free for 3 months is available now. Sign up to DISH Network today and get your Free HD DVR. Call 1-800-998-DISH(3474) You must use ext 50531 and promo code A12 to receive all the current specials in your area. 

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Understanding Nuke's unique Layer and Channel system (including the Shuffle Nodes)

First thanks SeaDog's great info!
Understanding Nuke's unique Layer and Channel system (including the Shuffle Nodes)

DISH Network Has Indian Premier League and 5 More Cricket Boards

Agreements for NEO Cricket and TEN Cricket give DISH Network customers a front row seat to the World Champion Indian National Team, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and West Indies for a total of 9 Cricket Boards.

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Channel 4 HD finally arrives on Freesat HD receivers.

Channel 4 HD finally arrives on Freesat HD receivers.

Channel 4 HD is available for free on Sky HD and from today Freesat HD recievers.

YOu may need to perform a rescan of the channels.

YOu will find Channel 4 HD on:
Sky channel 140
Freesat channel 126


The Sat and PC Guy - Digital Satellite and Terrestrial Installations and Maintenance for the Costa Blanca

or the forum

The Sat and PC Guy

Fox Movies on Nilesat 7 West - Important new frequency information

Fox Movies and Fox Series / Fox Arabic will be changing frequencies soon.

Fox Movies and Fox Arabic on Nilesat 101 at 7 West will be moving satellites.

This is shown on a message currently being shown on the channels.

The new frequency for Fox Movies and Fox Series / Fox Arabic will be
Frequency 11296
Polarization H
Symbol Rate 27500
FEC 5/6

However, as this is a frequency on the new Atlantic

Under the Skin of the City

Rakhshan Bani-Etemad's 'Under the Skin of the City' animates an essential question of political filmmaking: how to balance fidelity to social reality with the often more compelling and convincing dictates of dramatic fiction. In the opening scene of the film Tuba, a late-middle-aged woman, stares with bewilderment into the lens of a documentary crew's camera and is unable to answer their questions about an upcoming election. She and her fellow gray-haired, shawl-covered factory workers are too involved in the problems of their everyday lives to be concerned. She says that she hopes the politicians will address these issues. Her coworkers' voices join hers, creating a cacophony that seems to chase the image away as the screen fades to black. We continue to hear their voices while the opening titles roll. When the image returns, it is in the midst of a fictional world, or at least a world where the camera does not acknowledge its own presence.

The film chronicles the lives of Tuba (Golab Adineh) and her family, each of whom rather schematically represents a different economic and political position in Iranian society. Tuba's husband Mahmoud (Mohsen Ghazi Moradi) is a dissolute, ineffectual, politically jaded man. Injured in a student protest years ago, he is disabled and unable to work, leaving his financial and parental obligations to his wife. Abbas (Mohammad Reza Foroutan), the eldest son, does odd jobs and deliveries that allow him to move between Tehran's legitimate and underground business worlds. On the periphery of both, he dreams of getting a visa so that he can go to Japan for a while and earn some real money that will lift himself and his family out of their poverty. Abbas's brother Ali (Ebraheem Sheibani) is a student who has become involved in an anti-government student group. He no longer attends class regularly, devoting all of his time to debate and secret meetings. An elder daughter Hamideh (Homeira Riazi) has been married off to a brutal husband, whose family, allows him to regularly abuse her. The youngest, Mahboubeh (Baran Kowsari), is a schoolgirl, who talks about pop music with her best friend and next-door neighbor, Masoumeh (Mahraveh Sharifi-Nia).

The plot turns on Abbas's desire to leave Iran. He and his father have schemed behind Tuba's back to sell their house, the family's only valuable asset, in order to get the money for a fake passport and visa. Tuba is violently opposed to this plan, but Abbas is convinced that he can buy her four houses if he gets the chance to work abroad. As Abbas travels through the city running errands for his employer and making plans to get the visa, he encounters opposing opinions about his trip. A young friend who had worked in Japan for a few months before being deported as an illegal alien speaks of the country as a promised land. He practices his Japanese by wooing a poster of a Japanese flight attendant, much to Abbas' amusement and fascination. An older man who runs an architecture firm chastises Abbas, complaining about the brain drain caused by low Iranian wages, and asking Abbas if he has no feeling for his country. The impact of the Iranian government on the flight of intellectuals and professionals is notably missing from the scene and the discussion. Abbas stubbornly sticks to his plan and leads the family into ruin. When the people who promised Abbas a visa disappear with his money, the house is lost. Abbas makes a last desperate, futile attempt to earn the money back, and the film ends in tragedy.

The majority of screen time is spent on Abbas's exploits, but Tuba is at the core of the film. Although she is the force that holds the family together, and the main wage earner, she cannot stop her husband and son from selling the house. For all her hard work in sustaining the family, she has no legal or social standing inside or outside of it. Through her study of Tuba and her two daughters Mahboubeh and Hamideh, writer-director Bani-Etemad reveals their powerlessness and the compromised position of women in Iran. After a particularly cruel beating, Hamideh returns home, but is told immediately that she must go back to her husband, even though everyone in the family acknowledges that she is being mistreated. Masoumeh runs away after her drug-addicted brother beats her for going to a concert with Mahboubeh. After searching in vain for her friend for several weeks, Mahboubeh finally discovers that Masoumeh has become a prostitute who works in a park along with many other young runaways. We learn of this transformation through an accumulation of subtle details - a little too much eye shadow and cracked purple nail polish.

More interesting than the larger melodramatic situations in 'Under the Skin of the City' are Bani-Etemad's close observations that reveal how life can be bearable under a repressive government and in seemingly intolerable circumstances. Before Hamideh is returned to her husband, Tuba has a conversation with her daughter's mother-in-law. The two older women discuss the situation as they hang their laundry in a windy backyard. Avoiding direct confrontation, or accusations, Tuba cajoles and prods the other woman into saying that she will try to keep her son's behavior in check. Tuba's position forces her to work behind the scenes and through networks of other women. Early in the film, on payday, Abbas decides to take the family out for pizza. Seeing an Iranian family at a fast-food Pizza Hut-like restaurant is surprising to Western eyes, which are veiled by assumptions about Iranian isolation. Through Abbas's connections they get four pies for the price of three, but Tuba is still embarrassed by the extravagance of eating at this 'fancy restaurant.' The next day in the factory lunchroom, she shares the leftovers with her fellow workers, out of generosity, but also to keep her support network intact.

Through Abbas's dreams of wealth and his pursuit of a woman he can afford to marry only if he is able to work abroad, the film makes palpable its characters' longings and unfulfilled hopes, hampered by poverty and social and religious conventions. Ali's energetic political activity contrasts with his father's apathy and defeat, while Tuba's practicality stands out against Mahboubeh's passionate outrage. These juxtapositions and the sense of broken dreams paint a picture of a country where it is difficult to have faith in rhetoric and principles, and where optimism and despair exist side by side.

At the end of the film, when everything has fallen apart, Tuba addresses another film crew and pointedly asks about the purpose of making films when people are suffering and the films make no difference in their lives. Bani-Etemad seems divided on the question. An established filmmaker, having made documentary and fiction features, her film is passionately engaged with the politics of Iran, but it also betrays an uncertainty as to how such issues should be addressed on film. The self-reflexive opening and closing sequences of the film directly reference the mixed style of many recent Iranian films. But Tuba's annoyance and despair in these scenes betrays Bani-Etemad's ambivalent feelings towards this style and the movie craze in Iran - and perhaps about the political efficacy of cinema itself.

[This review was written by Rahul Hamid and was originally published in Cineaste (Fall 2003), pp. 50-51. 'Under the Skin of the City' was produced by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Jahangir Kowsari and was directed by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, who also wrote the screenplay along with Farid Mestafavi. The film features cinematography by Hassein Jafarian, editing by Mastafa Kherghehpoush, production design by Omid Mohit, sound recording by Asghar Shahverdi, and sound design by Mohammad Reza Delpak. The second video clip above features Bani-Etemad speaking about her 2002 documentary 'Our Times.']

Musical Instruments, Culture and Classification

An important aspect of Western music research over the last century has been the creation of classification systems for musical instruments. These systems have been useful for the purposes of cataloguing, especially for information retrieval systems and museum archives. They have also been seen as a means for gaining a conceptual handle on the great variety of musical instruments the world over. However, and just as importantly, instrument classification systems independent of Western scholarship have existed in most of the world's cultures for as long as there have been instruments to classify. By examining systems of classification and their justification, we can therefore learn something about the cultures that produce those systems.

While many academics have written articles and books proposing various systems of classification and/or criticizing systems proposed by others, and some documentation is available for specific non-Western systems as well, few scholars have produced comparative studies of instrument classification systems in general. Cross-cultural analysis of musical instrument classification is possible with all the major classical cultures: Arabic, Chinese, Indian, Greek and European, as well as Tibetan and Javanese. Thanks to long literary traditions in those cultures, one can get some sense of how these systems have developed over time, as well as an awareness of the cultural assumptions underlying each system. Many systems of classification have been proposed by modern Western academics, including Hornbostel and Sachs, Hood, Lysloff and Matson, or Elschek and Stockmann, but there are also systems from orality-based cultures, including Mandailing and Minangkabau (Sumatra), T'boli (Philippines), Dan and Kpelle (Ivory Coast and Liberia), 'Are'are (Solomon Islands), and other indigenous peoples. In some of the smaller societies, musical instrument classification systems are not conceived or taught in an explicit fashion, and so scholars need to learn to explore concepts of instruments as found within each culture, which in turn may imply a presumed underlying classification.

Cultural studies of classification, whether they deal with botany, social structures, cosmology, or musical instruments, are always fascinating as well as controversial. The question of how people choose to divide up and organize their world - which features they choose to treat as meaningful distinctions, and the implied relationships and non-relationships that lie behind those choices - provide a unique perspective on the human mind, and on social and material culture. Musical instrument classification systems both reflect and influence how people think about, compose and hear music. Concepts and classifications of instruments and ensembles are part of the webs of cultural knowledge. The process of classification is not just a one-dimensional activity resulting in the production of a tightly-structured, systematic data set. Rather, it is frequently a multi-level, and at times creative way of thinking and organizing knowledge about instruments and ensembles in ways that are consistent with socially influenced or structured ideas or belief systems in a particular time and place.

Classification systems for musical instruments take a wide variety of forms, and use a wide variety of criteria for making distinctions. Many systems use the physical features of how an instrument makes its sound. Thus, instruments with strings are distinguished from those with membranes, and so forth; and progressively more detailed differentiations can be made along these lines. Some cultures classify instruments based on the materials out which they are made, such as the Chinese system, which classifies instruments as being made of wood, stone, metal or other materials. Another common way to classify instruments is by playing technique: e.g., struck instruments are distinguished from blown instruments. Many systems categorize instruments based upon their musical function in important ensembles within the culture. Tunings available on the instruments may come into play as well. Equally important - and this is just as true in text-based cultures as in oral cultures - instruments may have cosmological or spiritual connections, social and hierarchical positions, or cultural/historical associations, all of which can function as part of their categorization.

An interesting area of inquiry is the matter of how Western academic systems have developed over the last century. A number of thought-provoking issues have been at play. As some scholars have pointed out, recent Western systems are not based on 'natural classifications' - they did not arise organically in a process of cultural development in conjunction with a body of instruments. Instead, they were imposed upon the existing data in an after-the-fact intellectual process, usually the work of an individual. By the late 19th century, museum collections in the colonial metropoles of Europe and America were filling with instruments from around the world. The new awareness of different cultures stretched traditional Western classifications to the breaking point, and researchers, museum curators, and musicologists began to see a need to create a more comprehensive system. They called for a universal system, free of predisposition to any particular culture, which would be open and expandable to accommodate any conceivable sort of instrument that might be found, perhaps not realizing that the need to hegemonize is itself a cultural outlook. To meet that grand expectation, a system would need to possess two qualities: 1) It would have to be logical, meaning that for each progressive step of subdivision a single criterion of differentiation must be found that can be applied consistently and unambiguously; and 2) it would have to be logically exhaustive, meaning that there must be no holes that could leave unforeseen types with no place in the system. Over the years since these issues first arose, it has proven remarkably difficult to meet these prescriptions. The ensuing efforts to remove presumed cultural biases from the suggested classifications have been an ongoing exercise in sociological thought. And the struggle to achieve logical consistency and exhaustiveness has been a fascinating intellectual exercise of a different sort - a meditation, in many ways, on the very nature of musical instruments, calling for extensive detailed knowledge of the subject, complemented by great insight, but also humbling in its expansiveness.

Comparative analysis of how different cultures classify musical instruments can assist critical thinking about the predominant inherited system in European-derived cultures, the primary division of instruments into winds, strings and percussion, with further subdivisions following. Some have expressed disdain for this system for its obvious lack of logic, since the criteria of distinction are inconsistent and not mutually exclusive. But at the same time, it does accurately represent a division of musical functions within the Western musical system itself, and also reflects how most people in Western civilization naturally hear symphonic music and to varying degrees other music as well. It reflects a certain hierarchical thought, too, in which sustaining winds and strings are elevated to the most important positions, while the undifferentiated sounds of percussion instruments are sent to the back of the orchestra. In all these ways, the Western classification system is true to its purpose, true to the body of music and cultural associations that it serves, and in that sense it is meaningful and appropriate, although in a limited way. However, the Western system is less useful when discussing non-Western music. In the end, perhaps abandoning efforts to create a universal and hegemonic Western-based system would open the field to varieties of explorations on how each culture categorizes and classifies its own instruments.

[This essay was used by J. Progler with his students in a course on World Music at Zayed University in Dubai during 2003 through 2006. Progler has taught ethnomusicology (among other subjects) in Dubai, New York and Japan. Some of his writings on music are available online, including an article on music ownership in the digital age, a research paper on perceptions and performances of jazz swing (PDF), a piece on 'musical stupidity' (PDF), and an essay on teaching and learning the kora in West Africa. He also led a live dialog on the art of sound in the world of Islam for IslamOnline, and his 2008 book Encountering Islam includes a chapter on ethnomusicology and the representation of Muslim music. Some of these are archived here.]

DISH TV

DISH TV is now known as the value leader in pay TV. In most part due to the DISH Network channels, packages and DISH TV promotions now available. DISH Network TV is the highest rated pay TV provider in the US.

Since the latest DISH TV price change and freeze I've noticed more traffic than ever to this blog. This post will give you some answers about the appeal of DISH TV and provide the latest DISH TV promotion codes.

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C4HD on Freesat HD receivers...

Channel 4 HD has been available for a few weeks now.

On Sky HD boxes you will have noticed no real changes.

However, even though Channel 4 HD is available free to air, with no sky viewing card required, Channel 4 HD is not yet availabl;e on the Freesat channel list.

However, it is possible on some Freesat HD receivers to add CHannel 4 HD to the "non freesat" channel list.

Frequency 12.606

The 3D Truth in Old Masters

Thanks AIC class great input! What a creative idea behind....

The 3D Truth in Old Masters

miss NYC...........................

new york city. from James Ogle on Vimeo.

DISH Network Acquires Blockbuster

DISH Network acquires Blockbuster Video
DISH Network Corporation has announced that it was chosen as the winning bidder for largely all of the assets of Blockbuster, Inc in the bankruptcy court auction.

The winning bid by DISH Network, the fastest growing satellite TV service was valued at approximately $320 million. After some adjustments are made at the closing of the transaction, including adjustments for available cash and inventory, DISH Network anticipates to pay around $228 million in cash to purchase Blockbuster at the closing that is expected to take place in the second quarter of the year 2011.

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Dish Network vs Cable TV

Dish Network vs Cable TV is a very popular question among pay TV customers across the USA. This article will touch on the answers and give a better understanding of what both Dish Network and Cable TV have to offer.

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Michigan DISH Network

Dish Network deals in Michigan and across the USA have never been better! You can now lock in your price until 2013 and enjoy DISH Platinum and Showtime free for 3 months.

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Great photographer to remember : Julius Shulman

http://www.juliusshulmanfilm.com/

Media and Lebanese Identity

When we left Lebanon in the summer of 1984, our youngest son, Ramzi, was barely two years old. Even then, one was aware of his fondness, almost an inborn talent, for music and dance. Rhythmic movement, miming, even a bit of burlesque were unmistakably his favorite form of self-expression. He indulged his passions with the abandon and exuberance of a gifted child, oblivious to the havoc of deadly strife raging outside his own enchanted world. Like whistling in the dark, dance was perhaps his own beguiling respite from the scares and scars of war.

The enchantment was not, though, a mere flight of fancy. Over the past seven years, he has pursued his flair for dance and other artistic pursuits with added fervor. Thanks to the supportive milieu of Princeton, the allures of Broadway, HBO, MTV, the Disney Channel and Princeton Ballet, he has had ample opportunity to cultivate his talents. He is, as a result, an avid reader and listener. For a child of nine, he has developed a rather critical and discriminating taste for the performing arts. He choreographs his own dance routines, writes school sketches and lyrics and acts out their parts. He scans daily, much like an ardent connoisseur, the news and reviews of new releases and events.

He longs to entertain and be entertained and seems, while doing so, buoyed by a blissful mood of intense rapture. No wonder he greets his day, often at the break of dawn, with spirited bouts of dancing! Whatever oracles he is responding to, they are clearly voices within, demons beckoning him to heed his unabashed impulses. As a doting but baffled father there is little I can do, I have come to realize, to mute or redirect such impulses.

His world is largely a fantasy world of 'secret gardens', witches, ghosts, animated cartoons, superstars and entertainers. His room is cluttered with posters and mementos of his idols: Roald Dahl, C. S. Lewis, Anjelica Huston, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Fred Astaire, the Bangles, Expose, Debbie Gibson, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Belinda Carlisle and, off and on, Madonna. As of late, in fact, Madonna has been more off than on. Somehow, the notoriety over her shows 'Blonde Ambition' and 'Truth or Dare' has cooled Ramzi off. When I inquired about the soured relations with his one-time idol, he replied that he is now 'old enough to understand what she is all about'!

With or without Madonna, Ramzi's fanciful world, a figment of his own imagination, remained until recently largely intact. Scarcely little has happened since his exile from Lebanon to challenge the props and symbols that endeared and sustained his attachments to its wonders.

An episode a few days ago signaled the first symptoms of a change in his self-image, with portents perhaps of a more felicitous reshaping of his interests and loyalties. We had gone to the Lebanese Consulate in New York to renew our expired passports in anticipation of our trip to Lebanon in August. The encouraging upturn in security conditions after 17 years of turmoil prompted us, like throngs of other expatriates, to revisit our beleaguered country. We harbored no illusions other than the faint hope that, by exposing our two boys to the few as yet unravaged features of their country - its captivating scenic beauty and geography, the warmth and compassion of family and friends, its prehistoric sites, colorful folklore, delicious produce and cuisine - we might rekindle their longing for Lebanon's threatened and defiled legacy. Alas, to them Lebanon has been reduced to an ugly metaphor, a mere figure of speech applied to the most threatening situations elsewhere in the world. The mere word 'Lebanon' or the term 'Lebanonized' is invoked by the media to conjure up images of the grotesque and deadly.

It is immensely sad that the Lebanese have been maligned and humiliated by words and deeds that make the things that were once sources of national pride and resourcefulness seem futile, trivial and pathological. Consider what happens when a child's most precious possessions - things around which he weaves fantasies and that make him a bit different from all others - are redefined as worthless. In a sense, this is what has been happening to the Lebanese. Their country's geography, its plural and open institutions, which, as sources of tolerance and co-existence. had once set it apart, for better or worse, from its adjoining repressive and monolithic political cultures, are now dismissed as aberrant.

We didn't have to wait too long for Lebanon's image to be partly redeemed, at least in Ramzi's eyes. The moment he walked into the Consulate and saw posters of Lebanon - the usual glossy mounted portraits one sees in tourist offices and travel agencies - he was overwhelmed with amazement and wonder. There was a sudden sparkle in his eyes, as dazzling as when he is dancing or simulating the fantasy world of his favorite fairy tales.

The scenes from Lebanon, juxtaposed against the ordered, flat, dull, antiseptic milestones of America (at least the America most familiar to him: the America of suburbia, manicured lawns and parks, shopping malls, mega-highways, etc.) seemed out of this world and much closer to Ramzi's world of make-believe. The ancient Roman monuments of Baalbek, Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, Anjar; Phoenician mosaics and amphitheaters, Crusaders' castles; Ottoman souks and bazaars; feudal estates; fortresses, caverns, tombs and quaint villages with their picturesque red-tiled roofs huddled in deep gorges, on hilltops or coastal towns hugging the Mediterranean shore… all seemed like idyllic backdrops to the fantasy world he conjures up and plays out in the backyard of our Princeton home.

He was captivated and awe-struck. The Lebanese Consul, touched by Ramzi's reaction, graciously volunteered to give him a poster. He picked the compelling view of Sannin, with the highest snow-capped peaks and ridges of Mount Lebanon standing out in splendor against the blue skies. It is incidentally this same view that captivated generations of Orientalist painters and engravers (e.g. Roberts, Taylor, Bartlett, Wilson, Van de Velde, Harper, Woodward) and inspired native poets and writers. It is also this view that is etched vividly in the memory of emigrants and speaks to their longing for the old country.

When Ramzi got home he furtively dismounted one of Madonna's portraits and replaced it with his new acquisition, which represented his reawakened longings to reconnect with his disinherited past. He now counts the days to the moment he will behold the same riveting view from the window of the plane taking him back home.

Ramzi's rediscovery of his country's natural and historic endowments should not be dismissed as an infantile gesture. It carries an instructive message. Just as an intuitive young boy is willing to part with his ephemeral symbols to embrace those of a higher and more enduring order, so his besieged compatriots in Lebanon (young and old) can do likewise. Now that many are in fact revisiting parts of their country previously inaccessible to them, they too have the chance to renounce all the alien and borrowed ideologies they embraced to sustain their belligerency. They could at least begin by disarming themselves of the instruments of collective violence.

Lebanon has long been plagued by disharmony between the beauty of its natural endowments and its boisterous political culture. An awakened sense of geography, sustained by an ethos for preserving and enriching the edifying features of their habitat, could be life-enhancing, enriching and, especially in the post-war period, a means of bringing tranquillity and vitality. Ecological and environmental concerns, for legitimate reasons, are also becoming generational issues. It is the so-called 'eco-smart' children who are today most incensed by the damage done to their environment. It is, after all, their future abode that is being violated. For the disinherited children of Lebanon, almost half the victimized society, such concerns could well serve as the rallying call for their active reintegration and involvement in pacifying and healing their damaged environment.

Other than being homogenized by fear and grief, little else today holds the Lebanese together. But geography can be an antidote to fear. Stripped of their bigotry and intolerance, territorial entities could become the bases for the articulation of new cultural identities. With visionary leadership and enlightened spatial planning, communities can be re-socialized to perceive differences as symbols not of distrust, fear and exclusion but of cultural diversity and enrichment.

Herein lies the hope, the only hope, for transforming the geography of fear, which has beleaguered Lebanon for so long, into a new political culture of tolerance.

[This essay is by Samir Khalaf, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Behavioral Research at the American University of Beirut, and was originally published under the title 'Madonna and Mount Sannin: A Boy's Rediscovery of His Lebanese Identity' in Cultural Resistance: Global and Local Encounters in the Middle East (London: Saqi Books, 2001, pp. 299-301).]

Dish Network To Air RFD-TV in HD Nationwide

DISH Network is the first to air RFD-TV in HD nationwide:
DISH Network announced that RFD-TV's high-definition channel, RFD HD, is now available at no additional cost to all DISH Network customers who subscribe to the America's Top 200 programming package or above.

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Spanish TV - We can consider ourselves the world leaders in telebasura – trash TV

In Spain, reading levels are very low, educational failure very high and public contempt for culture colossal. However, not everything is lost: we can consider ourselves the world leaders in telebasura – trash TV. Broadcasters have a complete disregard for taste or decency, airing material unsuitable for children at all ours of the day, profiting from scandal and violence, exploiting sex in true