Category: Film
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“You’ve got to ask yourself, would you risk brain surgery just to be able to order a pizza on your phone?”
You’ll probably have seen the news this week: Musk’s company Neuralink have implanted their chips in humans for the first time, and the patient is apparently doing fine, with the chip managing to read neuron spikes with some success. Typically for him, there’s a lot of marketing hype and not a lot of detail… and…
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Theology and Fiction: Telling Stories of Order Amidst The Chaos
I just this week finished John Yorke’s book Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them. It was recommended by a good friend who’s a director in theatre and is also now writing for television. She insisted that I read it before I began any more writing. I’m really glad I did, for…
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Monsters vs Aliens | Immigration, Space Travel and Becoming Syrian
Through a discussion club I run at school I got to thinking about the coincidence of two recent major news threads: immigration and space travel. I know, never a dull day in teaching. In the back of my mind were good friends in a sea-side village about 200 miles from London who have been getting…
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A Gandhi for the West?
I watched Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi this week. I remember being taken to it by my parents back in 1982. There was an intermission half way through as the reels were changed. I was 10 years old and as the film opened with his assassination, then jumped back in time, I remember being blown away by the…
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Manchester by the Sea | American Men and Emotional Shut-Down
I went to see Manchester by the Sea yesterday evening. Central London cinema. Quite excited. Heard lots of great stuff about the film. Really thought I’d love it. Didn’t. To be clear, I thought the performances were excellent. I thought the cinematography was great. It’s just that the drama left me cold. I wanted to care.…
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The Circle
Very excited about the forthcoming film of one of the best – and most important – books of last year. Dave Eggers’ technological vision in The Circle is, I think, absolutely spot on, and resonates with a lot of what I’ve written, especially in chapter 6 of Getting High.