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Review: Vicious (ITV1)
Time travel is possible and it’s here as a working scientific phenomenon. That’s the only explanation I can find for Vicious, ITV1′s latest situation comedy, which is barely a ‘sit’ and contains no ‘com.’
Starring Britain’s two foremost theatrical knights, Sirs Ian McKellen (The Hobbit, X-Men) and Derek Jacobi (Henry V, Underworld Evolution) as an elderly gay couple, with guests Frances de la Tour (Hugo) and Marcia Warren, Vicious is based on the idea that two high-camp gay pensioners can be as waspish and bitchy as they like and everyone will scream with laughter.
Sadly the high-camp bitchiness in Vicious is less American sitcom Will & Grace (from which writer Gary Janetti graduated), and more a horrible travesty of limp 1970′s sit-coms such as Are You Being Served. It’s false in every note and gesture, made worse by the inexplicable laughter track, the gales of laughter merely blowing the tumble-weed across the screen at high speed. Unlike the gags. Continue reading
Everything Express
With Windows XP support coming to an end and many older PC’s, laptops and net-books struggling to cope with newer software, you might want to think about going Open Source and switching to a free upgrade: namely Ubuntu versions supporting older processors.
You may have read that from version 12.x onward, many Ubuntu users thought they had hit the end of the line on their older hardware; the newer versions appeared not to support older processors, which put new versions beyond the Celeron and Pentium chips.
But you can install a version of 12.04 -namely Ubuntu on non-PAE capable hardware – remembering that’s an LTS or Long Term Support release that has another two years life in it for software patches and updates.
Since early April, the Firefox web-browser comes with a new Download Manager; with the indicator and progress icon now embedded in the Firefox toolbar, you get an aggregate view of what’s currently downloading and how long is the remaining time to completion.
Click on the icon and you get a Show all downloads button. Hit that and the Library window opens onto your download queue and history.
I hardly see how Mozilla believes “you can monitor, view and locate downloaded files without having to switch to another window…” since that’s exactly what you need to do! Continue reading
Originally posted by Christopher Finke, on the official WordPress.com blog Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
Since the dawn of time, humankind has yearned for control. While we can’t give you more control over most of your life, we can give you more control over your widgets. And today, with the new widget visibility tool, you can configure your widgets to be shown or hidden only on certain pages.
Widgets are a way to add new content (like your Twitter stream, a tag cloud, or a link to your blog archives) in the sidebar, header, or footer of your site. To see the widgets you have available to you, log in to your WordPress.com dashboard and click on Appearance » Widgets. To add a widget, simply click on it and drag it up and over to the right of the widget screen, into the Default Sidebar, Header Area, or Footer Area section of your site. Then, to control visibility, expand the widget and click the Visibility button next to the Save button. Continue reading
Originally posted at Catling on Film.
I’ve been watching movies as long as I can remember.
Silent clowns Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton; classic Westerns (all of them!), visionary science fiction from Forbidden Planet to The Day the Earth Stood Still.
I thrilled at Errol Flyn as Robin Hood and the Sea Hawk; Jimmy Stewart maturing from honest everyman to gritty cowboy. I was captivated by Connery as Bond, touched by John Mills in Great Expectations.
I laughed at the sublime Gregory’s Girl and Ealing-comedy inheritor The Tall Guy.
I remember becoming aware of great directors; Kubrick, Coppola and onto International films with Kurasawa. I am not Spartacus and the thought of a Space Odyssey gives me travel sickness, but I will watch them over and over. Continue reading
Originally posted at: Random Subjects Made Simple No. 57 – Hay fever – Not something to sniff at, by Educare, Tuesday, May 14th, 2013
As many of us know, hay fever is more than just an excuse not to mow the lawn, in fact, with 20 per cent of people in the UK suffering, it’s the country’s most common allergy. So who or what is responsible?
Allergic rhinitis is an allergic inflammation of the nasal passageways. When caused by any plant pollen the condition is called pollinosis, but if caused specifically by grass pollens, it is known as hay fever. It occurs when an individual with a sensitised immune system inhales an allergen – such as pollen. The allergen starts a bit of a chain reaction: the body reacts to the allergen by producing antibodies, which binds to mast cells. This kicks off a release of histamine, which is what causes the sneezing, the itchy and watery eyes, and all that mucus. Continue reading
Duncan Jones’ superb high-concept second feature eventually sinks under the weight of its’ own pseudo-science nonsense, but not before Jake Gyllenhaal turns in a star performance.
Implanted into a dead man’s last eight minutes of life, air-force pilot Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) has to find a terrorist bomber on a train in order to stop an even worse atrocity; over and over until, like Groundhog Day, he gets it right.
Following the success of Moon, Jones sets about Source Code with ambition and self confidence for this sci-fi action adventure that sits somewhere between a virtual reality and time-travel thriller. Continue reading
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Review: Star Trek Into Darkness
I will stand up and confess to having been a bit of a Trekkie [Trekker?] since I was eleven, and am hugely enjoying JJ Adams’ re-booting the Star Trek universe into a second time-line, allowing for a lot of references, homages and in-jokes, and why not. So, to the good [mostly], the bad [a few minor kvetchettes] and the ugly [an unfortunate uniform style choice].
Catapulted into a near-disastrous adventure at the beginning, the zippy pace is set, although I found the level of violence coupled with the extraordinary amount of crying a rather uneasy blend.
Chris Pine (Unstoppable, People Like Us) is the young action hero personified, and in certain camera angles he is Kirk – maybe it’s the nose – and his performance is heartfelt, energetic and entirely true to the character. Continue reading
Review
Review: Phoenix Foundation – Fandango
The unusual fifth album from psychedelic indie-folk-prog-rock New Zealanders consists of a double album of 2 cd’s or vinyl; two short volumes that add up to that rare thing these days; a Concept Album.
Fandango surrounds you with it’s dreamy, ambient quality, a rich layered sound, swinging between Pat Metheny harmonies and Ray Davies witty ditties, all wrapped in modern production. Continue reading
Review
Review: Depeche Mode – Delta Machine
The band that bought us Personal Jesus and Enjoy the Silence back with a new album to celebrate thirty years in music.
Recently asked on a chat show what their songs are about, Gore and Gahan replied “death, pain and suffering.” It’s been a winning formula and Depeche Mode see no reason to change now. Settle back for an incongruous mix of guilt, regret and religious imagery in the monastic cloister of the penitent libertine that is Depeche Mode’s dark soul. With the occasional glimpse of redemptive sunlight. Continue reading
Allan J. Smithie
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