The Thursday before last I went to see a play that was being performed that evening in a London theatre. I was in Swindon. This was the NT Live presentation of The Audience . The play itself was on in London, but we were watching it beamed into our local cinema. I have to say, the experience was excellent. The play was very good and the visuals were excellent. They even had programmes, not to mention wine and beer for sale in the interval. And the staff were unusually attentive as we went out more like... well, a theatre than the local multiplex. So many thanks to Joe and Sarah for organizing it, as we would have never have got round to it. It got me to thinking about the nature of seeing something live. With some kind of events, there is definitely something special about seeing it live, even if it is via a video link. It was interesting that someone I know online saw the same production from a cinema on the Isle of Man - and I had a real sense of shared experience, far more th...

It sometimes feels like I'm the penultimate person on earth to see the movie Avatar. I've certainly left it late, so anything to be said about it has been said before. Won't stop me, though. You may not want to read this if you are the last person not to have seen Avatar. Yes, there are *SPOILERS* . Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first. Storyline? Full of holes and derivative. It's not an original observation, but this was Pocohontas in Space . Boring. To be fair, the way the indigenous people defeated the hi tech invaders wasn't as preposterous as it seems at first sight. We've plenty of real life examples of temporary setbacks when a big powerful hi tech nation takes on the locals. But the chances are high their victory would be short-lived. And there were far too many opportunities for the baddies to interrupt the avatar controlling process that weren't taken. Etc, etc. Oh, and where was this Pandora? Six years away in a sub-light ship? No...