Channel 4 clips

Channel 4 (Full disclosure: where I work - allegedly) have launched what looks at first testing an excellent clips viewer full of Channel 4 programmes. This is a Brian Potter from Phoneix Nights clip. Where most TV companies fail in putting their videos online is that they make it harder for people to watch them than it would be to go to YouTube etc. Maybe a corner has been turned.

John Humphrys on Facebook

Pretty much every morning I listen to the Today programme while I lie in bed drinking tea. I switched on today in the middle of an item about Facebook. The report was fine - my take is that it's a slow time for news so we're getting lots of Facebook items (they're easy to do) - but the best bit's back in the studio after the report. John Humphrys is handing over to the sports reporter Gary Richardson, and asks him if he's on Facebook -
JH: Are you on Facebook, Gary?
GR: No. Are you?
JH: (The briefest of pauses) What do you think?
That'd be a no then.

William Gibson on BoingBoing Podcast

Regular readers will know that I went to see William Gibson talk about his new novel Spook Country. There's an excellent interview with Gibson on BoingBoing that you can find here.

Atonement: includes mild plot spoiler

Director Joe Wright's adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement is beatifully made and probably fully deserves the standing ovation it received in Venice. Having said that while I enjoyed seeing it - it's a much better film than most I'll see this year, an experience that was enhanced by the intelligent Bafta-organised Q&A with the director, Keira Knighley and James McAvoy, the over-riding emotion for me on leaving the cinema is one of detachment. So why is it with some films, when all the film elements seem to be more than in just in their place - the characters, the storyline, the acting, the camera-work are flawless - the whole isn't quite the sum of its parts?

I don't really have an answer, but here for me, the interior monologue and motivation of Briony wasn't sufficient. The first half of the film feels like Cecilia and Robbie's film with Briony an incidental character but the second part makes a radical shift, focusing on her tortured existence living with what she's done. I think the issue for me is that it's her single mistaken action that determines the course of these people's lives and there's just not enough put into this moment.