La internacia televida projekto ITV prezentas kelkjan indikojn ke ĝi vivas. Oni eldonis prov-filmeton kiun oni nun povas spekti ĉe la ĉefa TTT-ejo.
Tamen, min tre malfeliĉigis lerni ke ili uzis " Windows Media Player'n". Mi ne sukcesis spekti ĝin per mia Makintoŝo, kvankam teorie mi ja havas tiun eblecon (mi ne scias kial ĝi ne funkcias). Espereble oni povas konvinki al ili uzi pli malferman sistemon.
The Radio 4 program You and Yours had a good piece on the the National Novel Writing Month this morning. The whole program is available (probably only until the next program is aired tomorrow morning) as a RealAudio stream from the You and Yours website.
I remember reading about the Nanorimo project at the beginning of the month, when the novel writing shenanigans began. It will be exciting to see the final outcome in the next few days.
I am blogging in the wild. Its quite a mesmorising experience. I've got a borrowed Zaurus in the BagelFactory at Canary Wharf. A few clicks and I'm away. The wonders of modern technology.
I think next time I'll bring my laptop though. Why don't they make PDAs with screens that are wide instead of long, so that you only have to scroll in one direction? The keyboard is working out well though.
Note: This post contains some mild spoilers, if you don't want to know anything about the story of the final film just yet, then you should probably read this post later.
I finally went to see the The Matrix: Revolutions yesterday. After reading a number of critical reviews of the film, I went in expecting to be disappointed. However, after leaving the theatre, I just kept asking myself, "What the hell were these reviewers on?" I cannot understand how this film could have been so universally slated, while I found it to be a superb climax to the trilogy.
One of the frequent complaints which I have heard is that it is dissapointing simply because it does not provide the same innovation that the first one did. However, I am unsure exactly what people who suggest that were expecting. The way I look at it, this film is merely the third chapter in the same story, and its aim is solely to present the events which occured following the previous two. The revelations around which the story is based were presented in detail and discussed in the first two installments; the job of the final chapter is to examine the effects of these revelations, and how they touch the lives of the human beings involved. There is a real feeling of progression across the trilogy: a sense of beginning, middle and end, with the end providing a feeling that something has been resolved. That is the recipe for an 'epic'. We are used to sequels which create a new story set in the same world as its predecessors; films which are related but ultimately stand up on thier own. I don't think that was the Wachowski brothers' goal with his series: I see the Matrix trilogy as a six-hour whole.
The most memorable scenes of the final film for me are those depicting the siege on Zion perpertrated by the robot hoards. It was a moving, and genuinely frightening, portrayal of hopeless warefare. Most prevelent was the determination of the lead charecters to survive and fight on despite the obvious realisation that they had little chance of victory. I could not help but equate this with some of the sadder chapters in human history (on an emotional level of course, I do not wish to undermine the memory of people's suffering by comparing it to an ephemeral science fiction film).
The fact of the matter is, that I left the cinema with a genuine feeling of satisfaction: I think this film duely completes the story, providing us with a sense of closure, and a feeling that we have really seen something happen. An event which streches right from 1999 to the present day. There will undoubtedly be more films in the Matrix series, which will most likely form a sequal in the traditional sense, a sequel to the inital trilogy. I'll look forward to these. Ultimately, however, everyone must make up thier own mind.
An interesting parody of The Matrix, with a moving political agenda. Makes you think, without being entirely unamusing.
Personally, I haven't eaten meat for around six years. I've been doing this for so long now, that it has ceased to represent an aggressive action but has become instead merely a passive habit. There are rare occasions when I see some horrible manifestation of the meat trade (such as the link which prompted this post) and think to myself how glad I am that I don't participate in it, but on the whole it's wider implications are something that I really don't think about.
If, when I had abandoned meat, I had passed into a totally meat-free existence, that is to say I was never again exposed to the notion of eating animal products, I can say with conviction that I would have never missed it. In no way do I feel that my life is missing something because I don't indulge my carnivorous tendencies. On the contrary, the thought of eating meat is in many ways repulsive after all this time. However, being vegeretarian, and by extension being the member of a minority, does have its inconveniences. Food and eating in general are concepts which are so integral to the human experience, that a signifant alteration of the way one experiences them must have an effect on one's life as a whole. So many cultural anchors are centered around food: hardly a week goes by when I don't meet a friend for a meal or have a hungover fry up after staying around someone's house. If I am the only vegetarian on such occasions, I become an outsider and am labelled as such by having to force people to choose a resteraunt which serves something I can eat, or having to wait outside the kebab shop while everyone else partakes in the ritual of post-club gorging because there is no meat-free option.
Those inconviences will never be enough to make me abandon vegetarianism: it's a habit that is too deeply ingrained in my make-up. However, it's the only thing that sometimes has the power to make me question it.