Month: June 2010

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey – Live at the Royal Festival Hall and the See Further Festival

    2010 is the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society. We’ve had a special series of In Our Time earlier in the year, the president of the Society, Martin Rees has given the Reith Lectures, and there’ve been numerous talks and lectures. Over the weekend, the Royal Society’s annual summer exhibition moved to the Southbank Centre…

  • World Cup Coverage in the Middle East

    You may be sick of the World Cup now having seen today’s debacle. But I’m a bit confused about the coverage of the World Cup in the Middle East. From what I can gather, the rights to the whole Arab speaking region – with the exception of Israel of course – were sold to Al…

  • Ray Harryhausen and King Kong

    This evening Newsnight had a lovely little report about Ray Harryhausen, the film genius behind such films as One Million Years BC, Jason and the Argonauts, and Clash of the Titans (no – not the recent one). They are the films of my childhood – regularly repeated every Bank Holiday. You’d always happily watch them.…

  • Breaking The Code and Alan Turing

    Today, had he lived, would have been Alan Turing’s 98th birthday. Last night at the BFI Southbank, there was a great double bill featuring the excellent TV version of Hugh Whitmore’s play about Turing – Breaking the Code. Regular readers will perhaps recall that I saw a theatrical production of this play back in November.…

  • BBC Tennis

    You’re a news and sport radio station. It’s reached the stage in the World Cup where final group games take place simultaneously and you’ve promised listeners that you’ll cover all the matches. It’s Wimbledon fortnight and Andy Murray has his opening match. There’s an emergency Budget taking place in the Commons. [UPDATE] And an England…

  • Radio Drama

    I really like radio drama, although I’ll freely admit that I don’t get to hear enough of it. So the piece in today’s Guardian made for interesting reading. It highlights the fact that Radio 4 is losing the Friday Play, and the strain in general that radio drama finds itself under. What can radio drama…

  • To Watch and Listen To Between the Football

    A few things that caught my eye this week: By far the best World Cup package surrounding the games must have been the package that aired after the Italy v Paraguay game. It was all about the footballers of Robben Island. While they were locked up by the apartheid regime, football was one of the…

  • Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra

    I’m beginning to lose count of the number of times I’ve seen Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra playing their big band jazz, but it doesn’t really matter, as it’s a joy to see them every single time they’re in the country. This time around it’s an especially good treat as…

  • Sky’s Freeview Strategy

    Media Guardian is today reporting that Sky Sports News is coming off the Freeview platform. Up until now, Sky had effectively been using the channel as something to promote their premium sports services. That’s really why they never showed any action in full-screen. But now they’re pulling the service. I think they’ll get some very…

  • Robin Hood

    I saw this while I was away recently, and somehow neglected to note it here (mind you – I’ve been going to the cinema so infrequently recently, this isn’t entirely surprising). I suspect that the real reason that I’d not got around to mentioning Robin Hood thus far is that I’d completely forgotten that I’d…

  • Not Completely My Own Composition

    Over the weekend I read a really good piece in the new issue of Word magazine written by Eamonn Forde that detailed some of the more famed musical “squabbles” when it’s discovered that an artist has “ripped off” another artist, usually by sampling them without permission. The most recent example mentioned in the piece was…

  • Landscape Photography

    I spent today at Capel Manor on a Landscape Photography course, organised by Going Digital. Despite the fact that the course mostly took place in the middle of the day – just about the worst time to take landscape photos – I’m pretty pleased with my day’s pictures. Next I need to get myself some…