Most Famous Man

One day many years ago at a school in South London a teacher said to the class of 5-year-olds, "I'll give $20 to the child who can tell me who was the most famous man who ever lived."

An Irish boy put his hand up and said, "It was St. Patrick." The teacher said, "Sorry Alan, that's not correct."

Then a Scottish boy put his hand up and said, "It was St. Andrew." The teacher replied, "I'm sorry, Hamish, that's not right either.

Finally, a Gujarati boy raised his hand and said, "It was Jesus Christ." The teacher said, "That's absolutely right, Jayant, come up here and I'll give you the $20."

As the teacher was giving Jayant his money, she said, "You know Jayant, since you are Gujarati, I was very surprised you said Jesus Christ."

Jayant replied, "Yes, in my heart I knew it was Lord Krishna, but business is business!"

Funny Jokes

Ex-Sugababe Mutya Buena on Big Brother

Ex-Sugababe Mutya Buena has walked out of the Celebrity Big Brother house just hours after Tina Malone was evicted.

Mother-of-one Buena, 23, left after saying she did not want to spend another day away from her family.

She had been nominated for eviction, along with outspoken Liverpudlian Malone and had threatened to go anyway if she was not picked.

But the "Shameless" actress was ousted by the public after receiving 39% of the vote.

Family reasons

The pair, along with TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson and former Liberty X singer Michelle Heaton, had faced the chop.

But when they found out Malone was leaving, Buena said: "No way am I staying a day longer, I've already told them I don't care what I lose.

"If they want to fight me they can. I'm not unpacking my suitcase and that's it. I'm going."

Afterwards she went to the Diary Room and said she had been thinking about leaving for several days.

Buena, who has a three-year-old daughter Tahlia-Maya, left at 2338 GMT on Friday.

She said: Thank you for the experience and making me realise what is important!

"I'm after a good night's sleep and want to go home."

Malone, who plays Mimi Maguire in the Channel 4 drama, screamed "Yes!" when her name was announced.

The 46-year-old told presenter Davina McCall the experience had been "cathartic" and she had been brought in to play the role of the "fat bird".

Malone said she was "incredibly relieved" that she was out and admitted she was fond of using strong language - something she gained a reputation for in the house.

She said she had toned down her personality for the show but added: "I use expletives not because I have a lack of vocabulary but because I am very passionate. I actually like them."

'Intimidated'

She had been nominated by Heaton, former A1 singer Ben Adams, and Austin Powers star Verne Troyer.

Heaton said she felt "intimidated" by the outspoken actress and accused her of creating a bad atmosphere in the house, while Troyer said she was "full of herself".

The eviction comes as media watchdog Ofcom confirmed it was investigating complaints about the behaviour of 1990s rap star Coolio on the reality show.

He has been accused of bullying female housemates, including one occasion where he teased Heaton about being in love with fellow contestant Ben Adams - reducing her to tears.

Meanwhile, Terry Christian has moved into second favourite position to win this year's series - with odds of 7-2, according to Ladbrokes.

Austin Powers star Verne Troyer is still the bookmakers' choice to win, on odds of 8-13.

Beautiful Models

Santa and Banta were looking at a catalog and admiring the models.

Santa says to the Banta, "Have you seen the beautiful girls in this catalog?"

Banta replies, "Yes, they are very beautiful. And look at the price!"

Santa says, with wide eyes, "Wow, they aren't very expensive. At this price, I'm buying one."

Banta smiles and pats him on the back, "Good idea! Order one and if she's as beautiful as she is in the catalog, I will get one too."

Three weeks later, Banta asks Santa, "Did you ever receive the girl you ordered from the catalog?"

Santa replies, "No, but it shouldn't be long now. I got her clothes yesterday!"

Stumbleupon

BBC Sound of 2009: White Lies

London rock trio White Lies have come second on the BBC's Sound of 2009 list, which features the best bands and singers to watch in the next 12 months.

One act from the top five is being unveiled every day this week, counting down to Friday, when the number one will be revealed.

While Coldplay and Arcade Fire have been writing and recording albums in churches, White Lies sound like they've recently emerged from a crypt.

Their doom-laden rock is full of references to plane crashes, murders, funerals, kidnappings and nervous breakdowns.

Even their most romantic song - new single To Lose My Life - has the refrain: "Let's grow old together and die at the same time."

And it's taking a toll on the band...

Vocalist Harry McVeigh says performing the group's bleak songs in concert can be "pretty draining".

"It's not always the most uplifting," agrees bassist and lyricist Charles Cave.

Reviewers seem to agree, too. Last October, the Guardian's Maddy Costa said watching the band was like living through "a horror movie in which a pre-pubescent choirboy, radiating innocence, becomes possessed and starts singing in a rumbling bass dredged up from five fathoms deep".

But, counters Cave, White Lies are not "dark people".

"It's really important for us to maintain a level of humour on tour," he says. "Because if we lived through the songs, we'd be basket cases."

Indeed, the trio - completed by drummer Jack Lawrence-Brown - are surprisingly upbeat in person, sharing a relaxed bonhomie that stems from having been childhood friends in west London.

They finish one another's sentences, correct each other's mistakes and joke that Cave should write a song called Butt Out to persuade McVeigh to give up smoking.

But there is no disguising the fact that White Lies take being in a rock band very seriously indeed.

They killed off their previous art-rock incarnation Fear Of Flying in 2006 and chose the name White Lies because, like their new miserablist sound, it represented something "seemingly innocent" with "very dark undertones".

Their conversation is peppered with references to the "integrity" of their lyrics and the importance of "working in isolation".

In fact, the group spent half a year labouring over their first five songs, and practiced for three months before their debut gig.

That sparked a record label bidding war, which eventually led to the band signing to Fiction records - home to Elbow and Snow Patrol.

Almost inevitably, this sparked a backlash before the band had released so much as a guitar riff, with one blogger complaining the group were "contrived" as a "PR man's dream".

As a result, the group are now wary of being tipped as the next big thing.

"I don't think there really should be lists that predict people's success," says Cave.

"I think we'd all rather turn up next year and win a bunch of awards for the album that we've made."

Foreboding

All the same, Cave is "very confident" in the band's debut (also called To Lose My Life), which is a lean, muscular rock album full of stadium-sized guitar lines and deep, foreboding vocals.

It has already been compared to 1980s gloom rockers Echo & The Bunnymen, Joy Division and The Teardrop Explodes.

"I genuinely think that the only real similarity is a foreboding overall sound and the fact that Harry sings in a baritone," protests Cave.

In any case, McVeigh believes the comparison is flawed "because in most of the songs the chorus is up an octave".
"There are some songs which I actually struggle to sing, because they're so high. But people pick up on the fact that a lot of the verses are very low and deep."

If the band have a formula, it consists of dark, portentous verses which build slowly to a euphoric chorus.

But the music does not come easily. "We won't finish a song if we don't think it's going to be really good," says Lawrence-Brown.

"We never write for b-sides. There's only 10 tracks on the album."

The band's writing skills were severely tested when they were forced to come up with "five songs in three weeks" in order to finish their record.

"It was really stressful," says Lawrence-Brown. "But the best songs on the album were written in that period.

"You can hear that nervous energy. To Lose My Life, which is the next single, is really instant and that came together in a few hours, basically."

The group reckon they became "more confident" as a result - but the experience hasn't punctured their perfectionism.

"Eventually, we'll get to the point where we're able to have a couple of months in the studio," says McVeigh.

"I think that'll probably be a massively creative time for us."

By Mark Savage
BBC News entertainment reporter

Film restoration- Mission possible

Spencer Kelly visits the Warner Bros archive in Los Angeles to meet the people painstakingly restoring old films using the latest technology.

All film deteriorates, end of the story. The 1962 epic How the West Was Won is a case in point.

The last 46 years have not been kind to the reels of film making up the multi-Oscar winning epic - the colour has faded, the landscape is marred by dirt and scratches, and there are strange vertical lines in every shot.

Ned Price is part of Warner Bros technical operations team and he said he is usually dealing with films which are turning to "powder".

"I'm dealing with film which is dehydrated, shrunken and buckled," he said. "As that happens the film shrinks and warps at an inconsistent rate.

"We're now working on digital techniques to actually record it as it moves and morphs and then digitally, after the fact, sort of stabilise the image itself."

Rewind time

For all film studios, it is important that old classics look pristine when they are resold on DVD and Blu-ray.

The digital remastering process begins by scanning the reels of film, frame by frame at 2,000 pixels across, about the resolution of high definition TV.
At this resolution the machine can scan 18 frames a second, meaning the film moves through the scanner at about two thirds of the true speed. Every single frame can generate 13MB of data.

Increasingly, the studios are scanning at 4,000 and even 6,000 pixels across, in order to prepare the films for even higher resolution.

Scanning at these resolutions generates immense amounts of data - a typical 4,000 pixel film will take up at least 12TB, before any work is done on it.

Luckily, Warner Bros has a rack of machines which provide one petabyte (1000 terabytes) of storage.

Blemish spotter

One of the first people to see the scanned film is Cathy Quiroz, who spends her days looking for dirt and scratches in every single frame of film.

It is a semi-automated process - she spots the spots and the computer then borrows pixels from the frame before and after to mend the blemish.

Considering what is involved, it may be tempting to program a computer to take over from Ms Quiroz completely.

But Bill Baggelaar, a Warner Bros engineer, said the human touch is still very much needed.

"We can use computers to automate the process of dirt and scratch removal but we find that people tend to do a better job," he said.

"In The Wizard of Oz the computers wound up removing Dorothy's slippers from the shot entirely because they sparkled and were different on every frame. We wound up having to put them back into the shot."

Cinerama bother

How the West Was Won was more difficult than most to restore - three times as difficult in fact.

In order to dazzle audiences with super-wide vistas, the movie was filmed on three cameras positioned side-by-side, and then the resulting three rolls of film were stitched together and run through three adjacent projectors.

It is an effect called Cinerama and it has given colourist Ray Grabowski something to really get his teeth into.

Each frame is 6,000 pixels wide and since the three rolls of film have all aged differently, each third of a frame has faded or warped to a different degree.

Sitting at a desk that could have been ripped out of the Starship Enterprise, Mr Grabowski uses colour curves, scopes, and his keen eye to match the colour and contrast of each part of the frame.

"The first thing we'll do is adjust contrast to even out the blacks and whites so they're not clipped or just a weird colour," he said.

"From there we'll start to enhance the picture with colour saturation. We'll also work on skin tones, because those are very important."

The stitches between the three parts of the image also need to be removed. Using techniques familiar to the photoshoppers among us, he blurs the offending area of the image using a particular shaped mask.

Digital future

Digital restoration is certainly breathing new life into old timers, but will today's films ever need the same treatment?

More and more films are being shot digitally and even though most are still shot on film, these are routinely scanned to digital in order to edit and add CGI.

Carolyn Giardina of The Hollywood Reporter said many in the industry feel "film negative is still the only proven archival medium".

"With digital cameras there are films now which don't have any elements in film," she said.

"So there is enormous concern when they're looking into digital archiving. They feel none of the digital techniques are proven at this stage of the game."

Updated effect

It must be tempting to use computers for more than just clean up - maybe even to improve old special effects that are less than convincing by today's standards?

Chuck Dages, who works in Warners' emerging technologies department, said they were able to remove the strings operating the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.

"Bad special effects are different than correcting or changing the story. In some instances it's just a natural thing: now we can do it, let's do it," he said.

The debate about how much technology should be used to improve on old masters is one that is likely to grow in the future.

Right now, it means that we can meet the Wizard with no strings attached, and Dirty Harry is not quite so dirty.

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