Channelzine

Synopsis: Innerspace tells the tale of an experimental procedure to shrink a human being and a small vehicle to a size where they could enter the bloodstream of a rabbit.  The experiment goes awry, and the soldier - played by Dennis Quaid - ends up being injected into Martin Short. Together they attempt to overcome a number of obstacles - a bad doctor with a British accent, a wealthy landowner, a Russian cowboy played by Star Trek: Voyager’s Doctor - and try to find a way to restore Dennis Quaid to his normal size.

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Don\’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes by Perry Como

I sense that Perry wasn’t an astronomer, as he seems unsure of how big the stars are.  But that’s barely important! What matters here is his ability to play fast and loose with phrasing and tempo, and to really mess with the listener’s ability to predict what’s going to happen in the song next.  It’s like there is a chorus you keep expecting, but the ability to actually say when it is going to happen is next to impossible.  The song is a train, Perry standing on the back of one of the carriages, plucking stars from the sky – defying everything, music and science be damned! – and serenading all the women in the buffet car.  

Outside Of Heaven by Eddie Fisher

“I pass your house with misty eyes,” sings Eddie Fisher over cod-standard musical motifs, like some sort of mystical stalker.  I think he’s suggesting that he can’t have the woman he loves until they are both dead and, nowadays, we’d assume that he’s going to kill her to have her.  Are we cynics? Or is Eddie there already? We’re told that he watched the Her of the song on her wedding day, and “could hardly keep from crying out loud”.  Eddie, get a grip! She’s not interested etc.  Move on! “Why was I meant to walk alone outside of Heaven?” he asks as the song swells to its conclusion.  Well, I think I know: you scare women, Eddie.

Comes-a-long-a-love by Kay Starr

Well. Kay Starr was, I reckon, a handful.  Based on this, she entertained.  You know: entertained.  I can picture her, almost Liza Minelli-ish in her stage flirtation.  Whilst being neutered – God, could you be anything else in the early 50s if you sang pop music? – there’s something innately sexual about this. The beat is quick, the horns… well, they horn.  And there’s only so many times you can hear “Comes-a-long-a-love” before it sounds a bit sexual.  And the end! The song positively climaxes, with Kay singing her hardest as the horn section put a full stop after every single syllable. 

Phew.

You Belong To Me by Jo Stafford
A perfect contrast(ish) to the last one. Al Martino began things with his singing, and Jo Stafford – has there ever been a less assuming name for a pop singer? – instead leaps in with tuneful noises. “Waaa waaa weee waaa” she sings, with a chorus of voices, like some weirdly tuneful baby, whilst the music does that almost-Caribbean-sounding xylophone thing. There’s actually not much music here, just a steady beat, some occasional horns, those damned xylophones. Jo carries this, and the melody is always curiously familiar, just a little niggle at the back of the head. That chorus? I know it. Can’t tell you where from, but I do. And then the song ends, and there’s no second visit by the tuneful baby.

Synopsis: Minority Report is the story of John Anderton, a policeman (played by Tom Cruise) in Future-Washington DC’s Pre-crime unity. In Pre-crime they predict the crimes that will occur and stop them before they happen, ably aided by three bald mutants named after crime fiction writers. When Anderton pops up as a future murderer, he goes on the run in an attempt to clear his name, escape the law, and try to stop the murder he’s seen predicted from ever happening. But is the science in the film equivalent to a think-tank of geniuses predicting what is going to happen, or is it a big bath full of photon milk? Here, in the pilot episode of Science Or Fiction, three scientists and a layman attempt to decide.

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Here In My Heart by Al Martino

The first ever recorded UK Number One Single starts as these things probably should: with a swell of strings. “Here in my heart I just yearn for you, only,” sings Martino, and you believe him, in that way you always believe singers like him, singers for whom the only reason you don’t sing something louder is because you physically can’t. His song is like a wave, echoing that swell from the beginning, and there’s a moment at the 2 minute mark when it sounds like he, and the orchestra, are going to burst, when they play and sing louder, stronger. And how does it end? With him repeating the most repeated line of the song again, with more gusto, and the Orchestra playing the final notes of the film soundtrack that they’ve condensed into their three minute timeslot. 

I almost wish that this song was more symbolic of what was to come, that I could sum up the Beatles and the Queen and the Spice Girls that will follow over the next fifty years through it, but I can’t; and somehow that’s more appropriate, really. It works best that it’s nearly fluff, that it sounds like hundreds of soundtracks to Golden Age Musicals, that it sounds like the music played over the logo of a Film corporation, that it sounds like the closing performance at a show for Royalty. It’s fluff, but the most brilliant kind, the kind that stays there without you even noticing it.

Podcasts, editorials and blog posts will soon start to appear on Channelzine. Science or Fiction, The Web Quiz and Number Ones should all be updating this week. The website itself is still growing and filling out so please let us know of anything you’d like to see.t.

Channelzine should be rolling along nicely in early 2009, once the hangovers and indigestion have subsided. In the meantime. enjoy the podcasts and other content.

The Science or Fiction podcast will begin this week and although we are busily editing and recording we’d like some input - namely what should we talk about?

In each episode of the podcast we will be discussing a different movie or TV show that is, in some way, related to science. For example, our first few podcasts will discuss Minority Report, Innerspace and Event Horizon.

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Louis Fonseca, Pete Cottell, Vicki Simpson and James Smythe play games set by Robert Simpson. We discuss Harry Potter, raisins, turducken, China, china, Lapland and pencils.

Websites of the Week: Tag Galaxy, Pets or Food, Sexy People Blog, Hoodthong.

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