The disordered mad of a brain man

Does anyone else have a problem with accessing live.com (now annoyingly used for hotmail.com too)?

I can see it here (WinXP64+Firefox and Ubuntu 6.10+Firefox) and at work (Win2k+IE6 over Citrix) but not on the client PCs at work (Ubuntu 6.06 and 6.10+Firefox).

The latter has a different link to an ISP, and works with 'nearly all' other sites. (Someone with a similar problem has pointed me towards a Dutch site – www.geenstijl.nl – neither of us can get to work with no obvious similarities to live.com.)

It'll resolve to an IP address, and trying to access Hotmail will cause the URL to redirect to login.live.com/etc, but apart from that, nothing.

Annoyingly, live.com doesn't respond to pings from anywhere, so I can't use that to help decide what's going on.

.. is very very good. Aardman claymation visual style plus a very British sense of humour done with Dreamworks computer animation.

I see Pixar are doing a 'rat' film: their's have beautifully animated fur, while these don't even have combed plasticine 'fur'.

I saw the trailer for both afterwards and there's an interesting difference between 'FA – the trailer' and 'FA – the film'. Not so much a spoiler as a comment

The Prestige

The original book is magnificent. I liked the film… but it isn't.

Interestingly, for once a film adaptation has made the main characters nastier and less sympathetic. The book's Angier and Borden are tied into a rivalry in which people get hurt, but don't come near to playing the trick that's done here. The structure and ending's very different too.

L's comment was that the film presents the same central magic tricks, both men's versions of the Transported Man, but with a different image. What else to expect from a film from a book about illusion and the efforts needed to sustain them?

Having read the book helped because you can happily look for the clues to the two central secrets – I was amused to see various explanations going on in the audience when it finished.

I'm not sure how much they liked it. It certainly engages the brain, which can only be a good thing, but I'd have stayed truer to the original.

For those who've seen it without having read the book – when did you get the two secrets?

The Host

Apparently the largest grossing Asian film ever, this is a South Korean 'creature feature'. It breaks several rules, like showing the monster really early on, and has a nice political edge – the American dumping of formaldehyde into the Han river over Korean objections is true, and the one family which is particularly affected by the resulting (fictional) creature is given a hard time by the government.

The version at Frightfest was apparently the longest one and was, to be honest, a bit too long. I'd be interested to see what was lost, but seeing it once is really enough for me. Don't let that stop you if it's a genre you like: again, there's intelligence in the script here missing from most Hollywood monster films, and it's not afraid to avoid a happy ending for the innocent.

This may just be me being dim, but what on earth makes YouTube worth so much money to the otherwise usually sensible Google?

To be sure, it currently has lots of users, but there's nothing special about the technology (see clones like pornotube.com) so the only barrier to entry is the bandwidth bills.

Is this the new way to get rich? Get other people to steal content (much of what's on YouTube is of doubtful legality), run up some enormous bandwidth bills and hope that someone comes along with an offer before the bank calls in the overdraft?

As a rule, most modern operas are crap. The composers are too frit to write anything with a tune, in case someone accuses them of writing – horrors! – a musical. Some of the people responsible for the book and librettos need shooting too. And it's usually an hour too long.

So while I try to see every production at ENO there are some I avoid. The Silver Tassie was one a couple of years ago. It won an award, but having seeen it on TV, I can say "crap" for all the reasons above. The footballers singing (well, not singing, wailing) "We have triumphed by the odd goal in five" – 'Three – two!!' in English – was a particular lowlight.

So it was with some nervousness that I went along to Gadaffi, A Modern Myth tonight.

But it's fabulous. It's intelligent, it moves along, and the production's great. For once, the book and lyrics are witty, cynical and moving. The music, part orchestra and part Asian Dub Foundation, is danceably good. The on-stage dancing is good. No-one sings _{very low} then ^{very high} for no reason. It's dangerous – when was the last time you saw signing and dancing IRA members on stage?

From that description, you could imagine Springtime With Hitler, and in a bad way. But it's as complicated as the character of Gadaffi himself, with both his good points (like the idealism) and the bad on display. It's as good a repost to the braindead musical rubbish like Daddy Cool – The Boney M musical on elsewehere as you could find.

Saturday's the last night. Call the box office and quote 'Metro Offer' at them and a stalls seat is £20, not fifty-something.