Are you too stupid to operate your computer? Are you too dim to realise that $19.95 is just 5 cents less than $20? I love infomercials. I love them. It’s the heady, intoxicating delight of a new love, too. I could sit up all night watching them. I have sat up all night watching them. ...
A project which involved giving a variety of different (but equally experienced) film-makers the same screenplay and as much of the same crew and set as possible, then seeing how different their films were, would be fascinating. It wouldn’t just illuminate how different their styles as film-makers were; it would also ...
[A rant I wrote a while ago. Unfortunately, this stuff never stops being relevant.] I’m not a violent person. Trust me, I’m not. A couple of weeks ago, however, I was idly channel-surfing when I happened to land upon something which made me want to reach through the screen and shake someone warmly by the ...
So I was surfing the other day and happened upon ‘Elimidate’, which turned out not to be a programme called ‘Eliminate’ for people with head-colds. Anyway, my spanko radar whoop-whooped, and sure enough, one of the girls competing for the attentions of cute dimbulb guy announced it was her birthday ...
So I was in a Los Angeles university building the other day, looking for a particular office and not even sure that I was in the correct building. On the wall there was a nice big map with a key of all the buildings. Cool. I traced my finger down the list, looking for the ...
The IMDb is currently running a banner ad for Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow which consists of an image of the Statue of Liberty being engulfed, and the huge tagline, ‘Watch Lady Liberty Get Wiped Out’. And that’s entirely as it should be. The Day After Tomorrow is a much older film than it ...
I’ve dabbled somewhat with depression during the past few years. Well, I think what I’ve done is realise/accept/learn/whatever that I’ve had a tendency towards depression for most of my life. It’s just had a chance to take hold a little more during the past few years. So I was reading this piece in ...
So I’m on a train — one of the 225s that run between London and the north-east, or up to Edinburgh. It’s shooting along, smooth and sleek. But then, for some reason — it doesn’t matter what — the brakes engage, with their characteristic smell of burning rubber. It takes miles for the beast to ...
Whatever happened to reality? It seems to be deeply unfashionable these days. For that matter, whatever happened to fiction? The zeitgeist seems to be something that might be referred to as ‘Reality’. It’s a wonder that it doesn’t come with a trademark attached. Survivor, Big Brother, American Idol, ...
You can take a user to a ‘net protocol, but you can’t make them use it. Protocols are being blurred like crazy at the moment, and it’s not clear what’s going to be left when the dust settles and the metaphors are unmixed. Google’s new gmail service is basically web-based (i.e. HTML across HTTP) ...