Leisure

BBC News errors, is this the worst?

Hal

Normally known for its high quality reporting, the BBC News website appears to be suffering an attack of the gremlins today. Without commenting too much on the content of the story, which is undeniably appalling, just read this leading paragraph:

The sister of a man who died after confronting youths who threw litter into her car has sais she is finding ahrd to come to terms with her death.

I kid you not. This was on the website at 2pm today and the entire article followed with a string of errors, poor grammar and bad spelling abounded! Click here to read the article, but keep in mind that some sharp eyed editor may be just about to correct the mistakes. Unfortunately, I do have a copy of that page as it currently is… BBC News Article

Let’s assume that it was typed from shorthand notes, eh? Doesn’t seem to show much respect for the people in the story, mind you.

Lowestoft Air Festival 2007, Red Arrows

Hal

Red ArrowsI haven’t seen the Red Arrows perform for a very long time, probably over 30 years now, but I was completely unprepared for the sheer excitement of watching them fly on Friday 27th July in Lowestoft.

The Lowestoft Airshow is an annual event attended by tens of thousands of people from all over the East of England. The town copes as best it can with the massive increase in traffic as everyone pours towards the sea front to take in the sights and sounds of the day. The programme this year was started by the Red Arrows who soared and swooped in move after move of sheer brilliance. What made it even more special for me was the audio being fed over the loudspeaker system that was patched through from the cockpits of the pilots themselves. You can imagine this is a particularly exhilarating thing to be taking part in, but the whoops of joy from the pilots as they completed intricate manoeuvres at very high speed were brilliant to hear. These are clearly very highly skilled fliers who absolutely love what they do! Nothing else in the day quite came close to watching this group, although everything there was superb.

Other favourites from the day include (for me) the Lynx and Gazelle helicopters – the Lynx flies upside down – the beautifully graceful Catalina flying boat from WWII, the Blades (ex Red Arrows fliers) and the wonderful supermarine spitfire. The day was simply awesome, and the weather brillaint too – not too hot, just warm enough to be comfortable.

Also on show were a number of powerboats warming up for a race to take place the next day. Even at such a distance it was obvious how mad you have to be to drive one of those! Excellent fun, I expect!

Some images from the day are here…

Pizza Express Review Site

Hal

Anyone who has ever been to a Pizza Express restaurant will know that the quality is reasonably consistent from place to place, however, it isn’t always… A new website http://www.pizzaexpressyourself.co.uk/  is available where you can sign in and review your experiences of Pizza Express. If you have a small image taken on a camera phone, you can upload that as well to illustrate what you see.

Entitled ‘Date it, Rate it, State it’, you get to say what you want, but are encouraged to comment on the quality of the food, the service and the environment in Pizza Express restaurants. So far there are not many reviews… the site is new, so why not go in and add your review!

Film Review – Zodiac

Hal

This weekend I went to Chelmsford Odeon to see Zodiac. I was expecting a reasonably fast paced action thriller, but it really isn’t one of those! This film is based on a true story spanning a time scale from 1968 to 1991 and follows the hunt for the Zodiac Killer in the San Francisco region of California.

It details the frustrations that the police faced at the time and the problems brought about by a lack of communication infrastructure – information was generally posted (some places still didn’t have fax machines back then, remember) and often details were overlooked in the sheer weight of paper and high word counts.

The film depicts the characters supremely well and shows the attention to detail needed to track through the evidence to find the identity of the killer. It was a gripping portrayal of people determined to succeed but thwarted by the legal system at the time, although pretty much each of the main characters is portrayed as obsessive to some degree or another. Maybe that’s what it takes to track down a killer in the mire of miscommunication, fruit-loop wannabe killers, missing witnesses and alcoholic forensic experts! The film draws strong conclusions about the killer’s identity, but frustratingly it ends as an unsolved crime.

Whilst some may look on this film as too long, or not enough action, I found it deeply interesting and was pleased I went to see it. The obvious parallel to the real case is brought out well, when the detective in charge of the case goes to watch a movie… about a killer in California who goes by the name of Scorpio – yep – it was a Dirty Harry film! Clearly the plot for that mirrored some elements of the case.

The ending is one of those where blocks of text come up to tell you about what happened to each of the characters rather than a satisfying end sequence resulting in the police getting their man. Normally I would leave feeling cheated at such endings, but on this occasion it just works. There is nothing too much wrong with this film unless you are expecting it to be just like Dirty Harry, in which case go rent that instead of watch Zodiac. If you like docu-drama type films based on real life then don’t hesitate… go buy your tickets now! I loved it, but then again I am almost obsessive about getting things done ‘just so’!