Month: January 2006

  • Walk The Line

    Prior to a couple of days ago, what I knew about Johnny Cash could have been written on a very small postage stamp. I knew a couple of his more famous lines, and also knew about his some of his latter sounds when he recorded songs by such artists as Depeche Mode and even Nine…

  • Classical MP3s Again

    I just thought I’d post here, the comments I left over at On An Overgrown Path in relation to free mp3 downloads of classical music: My question is this? What proportion of the UK population (and I’ll limit this to the UK for simplicity’s sake), currently purchase classical music CDs? Unfortunately, the BPI, who’d probably…

  • The Mind Washing of a Big Brother World

    Sadly, I’m talking about the TV programme, Big Brother – in particular, Celebrity Big Brother. Now I know that this is futile exercise, and no matter how much I say or write isn’t going to make a single iota’s difference, but sometimes the coverage that this programme gets infuriate’s me. In a weekly email, Newsnight’s…

  • Horizon Tackles Intelligent Design

    This week’s Horizon squarely took on creationism “Intelligent Design”, and in many respects it’s a shame. A shame that a science programme had to give up an episode to explode the myth of something that’s propogated by fundamental Christians. The programme didn’t shirk its responsibility to the subject, and the programme took a familiar structure:…

  • Free Mozart podcasts

    Record companies may have scared off the BBC from doing more classical downloads following their Beethoven symphonies last year, but the idea seems to have taken hold in Scandinavia where both Swedish and Danish state radio services are offering free Mozart downloads to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth. Swedish Radio is offering a…

  • Order Online, Buy In-Store

    The other week, HMV Group’s chief executive is leaving the company after a disappointing Christmas, citing the growth of the internet etc. as reasons for HMV’s poor Christmas period. There is no way that an outlet like HMV can really compete with the interenet when they have all those leases to pay for in areas…

  • Spectrum

    As Ofcom hurries to switch off analogue TV and get us all over to digital, the question is, what’s going to happen to all that free spectrum? This week’s Broadcast magazine reports that the BBC is trying to interest the other terrestrial analogue broadcasters into joining it to persuade the government that they should hand…

  • Brokeback Mountain

    I’ve got a lot of time for Ang Lee, although I’ll fully admit that I’ve still yet to see The Hulk, but I’m reasonably sure that I’m not missing an awful lot. Brokeback Mountain is a great return from someone who hasn’t made a proper film since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Based on a short…

  • Munich

    Let’s have another attempt at this, since my first review from a couple of weeks ago seems to have disappeared from the site. Munich, the latest Steven Spielberg film, is much more Schindler’s List than War of the Worlds. A few years ago, there was a fantastic documentary feature, One Day In September, that examined…

  • Hidden

    Hidden, or Caché, as it is in French, is a very strange film. I think the only previous Michael Haneke film I’ve seen is The Piano Teacher, which a very disturbing film. But this is probably more unusual. Overtly, it’s something of a thriller, with a couple (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) receiving strange video…

  • Davos/Davros

    Am I only the person who sometimes confuses Davos with Davros? Do they, in fact, stand for similar ideals?

  • Google in China

    I’m sure that all that needs to be said has already been said about Google’s decision to censor their own offering. I suppose I find it sad that even one of the biggest companies on the planet with unparralleled power in the supply of information, still feels that it needs to bend over and do…