Month: October 2005

  • The Avengers on BBC Four

    Have I told you how much I love BBC Four? Truly, madly, deeply – that’s how much. I’ve just seen a trailer to say that The Avengers are coming soon on the channel. Fantastic news! From the looks of the stylish trail, they’re starting with the Emma Peel episodes. Roll on the re-released DVDs…

  • Sky News Again

    I’m not entirely convinced that Sky News have quite got their new widescreen system sorted out. Viewed on a 4:3 TV, there are some strange distortions in some clips, in particular, people appearing wide and fat (as opposed to the tall and thin you might expect). It means that close ups of Adam Boulton become…

  • Funland Scheduling

    OK, what genius scheduled BBC Three’s new comedy thriller Funland? Heavily trailed across terrestrial channels, it premiered with an hour long episode on Sunday at 10.00pm. The next episode followed tonight, except that it was actually two episodes back to back. In fact, they could easily have edited out the end credits and opening credit…

  • Pulp Fiction In Breach

    This really annoys me. Basically BBC Three (a channel I’ve railed against before, but Funland was quite good last night, and Stuart Murphy’s going, so who knows), has been found in breach of showing Pulp Fiction too soon after the watershed. In the past the BBC has played the film from 9.45pm which is seemingly…

  • Sky News

    Sky News have relaunched today, and I believe it’s true that their “news wall” is now so big that it can be seen from space.

  • Dione

    I know that The Guardian published this picture of Dione in their double-page spread on Thursday, but it’s still worth a look. It’s spectacular. And this video from the flyby is also worth a 10MB download. Just wait until Cassini flys past Dione.

  • Hotel World

    I read this because it was slim, and came for just 99p with a copy of the Telegraph in WH Smiths this week. I knew next to nothing about the book, and having it read it now, I’m not entirely sure that I know a great deal more now. The book is presented from the…

  • Fleshmarket Close

    My second Ian Rankin Rebus novel, and unlike the first, I liked this a lot more. A the theme of the novel is race, and we get everything from overt racism in our inner cities to Morecambe Bay-style cockel pickers. There are several stories going on simultaneously, that may, or may not be interlinked. A…

  • Twitchers

    I don’t know why, but it annoys me when generic bird-watchers are described as twitchers. Twitchers are that special breed of bird enthusiast who chases around the country looking for exceptionally rare speicies of birds. They’re a relatively rare breed themselves. Anyway, this is all just an excuse for me noting that there are an…

  • Newsnight/Gattaca

    Someone in a Newsnight editing booth has obviously been to see Michael Nyman recently because Susan Watts’ piece on nanotechnology this evening was packed full of Gatacca music. Fantastic.

  • Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit

    As a long time fan of Wallace and Gromit, it was only a matter of time before I had to drag myself along to the cinema to see this. One of the key reasons for not going immediately was the prospect of being in a cinema packed to the rafters with kids. I’ve got no…

  • Dogfight Over Norfolk

    Out in the distant parts of Norfolk, you often see fighter planes out on manouevres flying low over the landscape and off over the North Sea. But today I saw something I’d never seen before: a pair of fighters, possibly F16s from Mildenhall, but they could have been Tornados, in a mock dogfight over the…