Archive for the 'Media' Category

Gaston

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

…No one’s been like Gaston A king pin like Gaston No one’s got a swell cleft in his chin like Gaston… Brainworm alert: Gaston’s song from Beauty and the Beast: Oliver Sachs discusses the concept: Excellent.

Anathem

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

<klaxon noise!> There’s a new Neil Stephenson novel out next month: Anathem. Wired has a slightly too long feature. Snip: Set on a planet called Arbe (pronounced “arb”), Anathem documents a civilization split between two cultures: an indulgent Saecular general population (hooked on casinos, shopping in megastores, trashing the environment—sound familiar?) and the super-educated cohort […]

Reformat the Planet

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

For one week only, the chiptune documentary Reformat the Planet is available in its entirety at Pitchfork. Terrific, nostalgic stuff. More info here.

HD-DVD downfall

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Sy tips us off to this superbly topical parody / commentary on Blu-Ray’s all-but-victory in the high-def DVD format war: (profanity warning)

Heathrow crash conspiracy theory

Friday, January 18th, 2008

Can I be the first to go on record and state that I believe the Heathrow airliner crash yesterday was caused by a mistimed electromagnetic pulse weapon, intended to bring down the Prime Minister’s plane on take-off. It certainly would have killed all the electronics instantly in exactly the way the pilots describe, and they’re […]

Chemical Brothers

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

“Don’t hold back” As I sit in the balcony of the Brighton Centre, waiting with a heavily pregnant Lara for the Chemical Brothers to ignite, I recognise the opening strains of Galvanise. A smile spreads across my face. “Don’t hold back” I lean over and shout in her ear: “They’re sending us a message. They’re […]

The Trap

Friday, March 9th, 2007

Robotperson regulars will know what a big fan I am of Adam Curtis’ 2005 documentary The Power of Nightmares. It was a superb look at how American neoconservatism dovetails with radical Islamism (watch it here – that’s an order). This Sunday Curtis is back. The Trap – whatever happened to our freedom? is a three-parter, […]

10 best gigs

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

Last week JJ forwarded a message where an unimpressed Em queried the Observer’s 25 greatest gigs ever. She asked for top-10s in reply, and compiling mine turned into a nostalgic evening spent reminiscing. With added liner notes, and in no particular order, here they are: Leftfield – Liveism at Brixton, ’96. Famous as the gig […]

Space Invader

Friday, January 26th, 2007

Have you ever spotted an 8-bit style, mosaic tile space-invader, glued somewhere high up in your urban environment? These are the work of Space Invader, a mysterious (by dint of anonymity) French chap, who by doing so is making a commentary on invasion of our urban spaces. Or something like that. Since the new year […]

Uhura

Friday, September 8th, 2006

How come Uhura had a red uniform? She obviously wasn’t one of the science types on the Enterprise, like Spock or Bones, so blue wouldn’t have been right. But all the other bridge crew – Sulu, Chekov, even Kirk – had yellow tops. So why red for Uhura? Scotty had a red top, so red […]