3 Idiots, A Single Man, Bank Charges Fightback Part 2, Talk To Your Computer and Short Web Addresses

iPad and Up In The Air

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK

OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus, Nowhere Boy, and Oyster cards now valid on National Rail

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK

Molière, Buñuel's Milky Way, Lidl Orange Juice up in price, and 60s photos at the National Portrait Gallery

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK

Film Review : Molière
Much to my surprise over Christmas I discovered that you can now watch films again on BBC iPlayer. I guess when the beeb buys films now they are getting clearance for the UK internet broadcast. One which I watched this way was a dramatisation of the life of French playwright Molière. According to wikipedia the story only vaguely reflected his actual life, but nevertheless it was an entertaining package.

Romain Duris, the guy who plays Molière, a.k.a. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, was great at conveying contempt (for his vain patron Monsieur Jourdain, played by Fabrice Luchini, who hires him to teach him to act) and passion (for his patron’s long-suffering wife).

The conceit of the film is that eventually Molière’s most outrageous comedy is a faithful representation of this episode of his life. Whilst in his way rather bumbling, and almost Chaplin-esque with his moustache, Molière cleverly thwarts the worst ambitions of a fraudulent nobleman who is swindling Jourdain, and intertwines romance, comedy and tragedy in his anonymous love for Madame Jourdain, whilst ineptly pretending to be a priest staying with them to instruct their daughter.
Overall Review: Thumbs firmly up. A clever funny film.

Buñuel's Belle de jour, Parsley not on Big Brother, tvcatchup.com, google sites and don't ask intalink.org.uk for fares

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK

Film Review: Belle de jour (Buñuel)
Gradually moving through the Luis Buñuel box set I arrived at this legendary sexual fantasy film from 1967. Catherine Deneuve plays a bored wife who slips into prostitution of a rather masochistic kind. By subsequent film standards the action was tame, and sometimes almost slapstick (Deneuve being splattered by animal excrement in one fantasy sequence), but at the time it fulfilled the twin roles of sophisticated thoughtfulness and titillating salaciousness.

Stephanie Beacham on Big Brother, Buñuel's Chambermaid, Lidl's Orange Juice, Borehamwood's Sci-Fi shop and NYE at Lady Luck

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Gdansk Poland and Tom Tom SatNav

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Travel Review : Gdansk, Poland

Made my first trip to Poland last week. It was my first real foray into a former Soviet Union country and I was intrigued to see what it would be like. Ironically, it is ‘like’ Germany. Ironic because the Polish have a rather bitter historic enmity with the Germans who have invaded and claimed Polish territory from time to time. It is not a comparison they like to hear, although there is a large tourist trade making the Germans welcome.

The Zombies Odessey & Oracle 40th Anniversary Concert at the Hammersmith Apollo

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK – NORBERT J. HETHERINGTON REPORTING
Concert Review : The Zombies, Odessey & Oracle, 40th Anniversary Concert, Hammersmith Apollo, 25/04/09

‘Nothing succeeds like success’, or so the saying goes. Try telling that to The Zombies, a five piece UK band whose sixties’ tenure spanned barely five years from 1964 to 1968. Their ‘success’ was their first single ‘She’s Not There’ which was a worldwide number one in 1964 from July in the UK to October in the US. Their label Decca booted them out after nine failed attempts to emulate that success.

Fast forward forty years on, and here I am watching them playing one of those ‘album’ concerts, recreating their April 1968 second and final album Odessey & Oracle, a record whose quality and success still seem respectively to inhabit different solar systems.

The band’s reformation has been a slow genesis with members guesting alongside lead singer Colin Blunstone from the early days of his rejuvenated gigging career in London clubs in the 1990s. Perhaps it is their likeable innocent appearance, perhaps the simple beauty of the songs they perform, perhaps their incongruously macabre name; Colin Blunstone’s angelic and powerful vocals, Rod Argent’s bluesy Hammond-rooted keyboard manner, Chris White’s melodic bass riffs and Hugh Grundy’s metronomic stutter; maybe the combination is too good to be true. It could be the academic weight of their combined 50 exam qualifications, maybe the God of Record Success just got peed off with them for not employing a cover designer who could spell Odyssey.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Mobile Phone

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Technology Review: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Mobile Phone
I realised just how little my life meant, when I felt how totally eclipsed it was by my new mobile phone. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Mobile Phone, henceforth referred to as ‘my new phone’, was given to me free by Orange in return to signing up for a new 18 month contract.

Actually the most significant element in that decision was the free broadband, including internet telephony free to landlines in most countries of the world. But as they reduced my talk plan price to around £15 a month, and gave me unlimited UK texts, they happened to mention that receiving a new handset would not influence the deal.

I asked for something ‘wizz-bang’ that would make me feel less embarrassed in front of the iPhone-owning world, and they came up with this or a better-featured Samsung. However, the Samsung had some suspicious battery life statistics, so I went for the market leader Nokia, and all my expectations of their reliability and performance.

To my mind they must be bricking it about the way the iPhone has swept the popular imagination, redefining expectations about mobile phones and touch screens. If I were them I’d have moved hell for leather to come back with a decent answer, and then price it/make it available in such a way that it could become the new default phone.