Month: November 2005

  • Current Word Of Our Time

    Juicy

  • Magazine Malarkey

    I love reading magazines, and buy far too many. But some of the marketing scams are beginning to really annoy me (As a small aside, people who call magazines “books” should be shot, and then frogmarched down to their local Ottakers, Waterstones, Blackwells, Borders or library and shown what a “book” looks like). I think…

  • Free DVDs

    While the newspapers continue to spend money on promotions like it’s going out of fashion, I’m happy to reap the rewards. So this weekend, on Saturday there’s Like Water For Chocolate in The Independent, which I haven’t seen for years, but enjoyed at the time. On Sunday, the Sunday Telegraph has the slightly strange Orlando,…

  • Talk to the Hand

    This time two years, Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves was the de facto gift for those people you hadn’t already bought a Christmas gift for. And yes, I do know that we’re not in any way close to Christmas yet. It really annoyed me seeing the “gift” sections of Waterstones and WH Smiths today.…

  • Good Night And Good Luck

    “Good night and good luck” was the sign-off given by Edward R Murrow, and it’s the title of an astonishingly good film directed by, and co-starring George Clooney which examines Murrow’s battle against the tyrant Joseph McCarthy. Clooney plays Murrow’s produced Fred Friendly, but the real star of the show is undoubtedly David Strathairn as…

  • The Sun Editor

    While spousal abuse is no laughing matter, there’s something ludicrous about this remarkable story. I did a double take when I saw it come up as “Breaking News” on Sky News (who, to their credit, ran the story as big as it deserves, despite being a fellow News Corp outlet). [Update] This story gets stranger…

  • Bach To The Drawing Board On Downloads

    It looks like the Beeb have backed down on the issue of downloads, and there won’t be any Bach Concertos, Suites or Masses available free of charge at the end of the year when the BBC plays his entire repertoire. I’ve argued before how this is exactly what the BBC should be doing – particularly…