Archive For The “Review” Category
A while ago I went to the launch party for Edward Hogan’s second novel, The Hunger Trace and was very lucky to get a copy of the book. There’s something quite majestic about holding a fresh hardback in your hands, more exciting to me than holding a new…
Doctor, my sides are splitting! This is reality tv as you’ve never seen it before, baroque, brightonesque and utterly bonkers. The cakes are magnificent and the characters are extraordinary – especially Christine the creative director and Dave, the head chocolatier. Add to the mix supercool cook Jim and “ambitious assistant” Tom, stir, stand back and [...]
Andrew Neil’s polemic about the influence of the public school system on english politics and the evaporation of the meritocracy ushered in by the likes of Harold Wilson on the left and Margaret Thatcher on the right offered up some truly staggering statistics. Try this one for size – 75% of the coalition cabinet are [...]
If the definition of Art is that it leaves the viewer with a different point of view then this is Art with a capital ‘A’. As uncomfortable a film as I’ve ever seen, Black Swan takes Powell & Pressburger’s ‘Red Shoes’ and ‘Black Narcissus’ as its starting point, throws in a large helping of Roman [...]
Like an irritating, hyperactive teenager, Rockmelt will not be ignored. Alerts from Facebook, Twitter and a host of rss feeds allow this browser to barge into your consciousness at will. Is this progress or a recipe for a nervous breakdown? It’s taken a while for the browser landscape to settle down. Internet Explorer, cumbersome, slow [...]
If a spontaneous round of applause from a packed Brighton Odeon is anything to go by, this film will figure in the Oscars this year. Two absolutely outstanding performances, Colin Firth as the reluctant King George VI and Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, the speech therapist, are supported more than ably by Helena Bonham-Carter as [...]
In an unusual flash of foresight, I have made a decision that may well save my life this Christmas. I see now that my choice of a Sony PS3 as a principle gift for my girlfriend, even with the addition of Gran Turismo 5 and FIFA 11 may leave me open to accusations of insensitivity, [...]
Channel 4 commissions grown up TV shock! Once a bastion of intelligent documentary making, recent offerings have failed to engage the audience in any kind of discourse. It has even seemed at times as though the ground rules of observational documentary making were being jettisoned in favour of the kind of jeopardy obsessed nonsense served [...]
Holidays in hell are never a pleasant experience and this one was by a distance, the worst value for money I’ve ever encountered. The problems started at 6am in Gatwick. I treated myself to the ‘Breakfast of Kings’ at the normally reliable Pret a Manger. A rock hard crusty roll smeared with the blackened remains [...]
If Heineken made cordless phones, odds are they would look like this. A veritable Rolls Royce amongst telephones, this device addresses the single most irritating feature of the cordless phones I have owned to date. It is capable of copying directory information from the Outlook directory on the PC, and propagating it around multiple handsets. [...]
