16 November 2007

Adults in need

I shan't be online for the rest of the evening because the adults in the house are fleeing, while the non-adults watch "Children in Need" which, apparently, lasts all evening. One of the many items I have seen in the past week or two but not got around to blogging about is a rather nice graphic in this article: BBC NEWS | Special Reports | 629 | 629 | Our first 10 years. The graph shows the striking growth of visits to the BBC News website in the past decade, with pictures of what was happening at the "spikes".

Enjoy! Back tomorrow.

16 Nov 2007 18:44:22 | Media

2 Comments

Susan Balée

What exactly is "Children in Need"? My child, now 14, is agitating to be taken to see the new "Beowulf." I think Angelina Jolie getting naked -- even in cartoon form -- is the big draw.

Posted by: Susan Balée | 16 November 2007 at 22:23

Maxine

Susan -- Henry (Gee) says the new Beowulf is excellent, very good rendition of the original up to death of Grendel, and then an imaginative interpretation of the rest of the story that is consistent with the text. Drop him a comment at End of Pier Show to find out more.

Children in Need is an all-night charity fundraiser with guest spots -- maybe you'd call it a telethon over there......say no more.

Posted by: Maxine | 17 November 2007 at 19:38

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The pain of chocolate From End of the Pier Show (Henry Gee at Nature Network): ".....In the office I googled ‘pain au chocolate’ and instead of receiving the usual error – ‘Did you mean “pain au chocolat”?’ – I got scads of recipes for the fictitious pastry with the extra ‘e’. Had the world gone mad? To check, I bearded my colleague Oliver Morton, Nature’s respected Chief News and Features Editor, a man who combines wit, a forthright manner and urban sophistication with an ability to spell. He reasured me that, no, I hadn’t gone mad, and that the superfluous ‘e’ was (and I quote) “a sad reflection on the world in which we live”.... " Read on for thoughts on spelling, careers and the fragility of trust -- not to mention train journeys even more insanely early than mine. Though my train doesn't have a buffet. Hence no hurtful product of the cocoa bean, no "almost coffee", and no excuse for a blog post. (Debra, if you are reading, please note with, I hope, approval, the last comma in that list in the previous sentence.)
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Francis Drake was robbed Elizabeth: the Golden Age was presumably better than Children in Need, but nonetheless disappointing. The acting was superb, particularly Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth) and Samantha Morton (Mary Queen of Scots). The first half was atmospheric, beautiful and involving, as Elizabeth fends off various suitors and Philip of Spain and Mary Q of S plot to remove her. But the second half is, well, weedy. The plot disintegrates into Elizabeth's mooning over Clive Owen's Walter Raleigh -- a handsome rake indeed, but it doesn't work to try to turn him into Johnny Depp/Captain Jack Sparrow and at the same time have him impregnate and feel obliged to marry a lady in waiting -- a predictable event but not carried out with much enthusiasm on Clive's part -- he is much more convincing when he talks about the joys of sailing off to America. I don't understand why the director and writer decided to focus on the love triangle aspects (boring and hackneyed) and skip over the aftermath of the failed conspiracy and barely feature the dramatic story of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Francis Drake hardly figures at all: he has a couple of late scenes in a ship's cabin with...

Maxine

Science editor who likes reading crime fiction

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