mini iPad the latest Apple rumour

here’s an extract from my latest column at goldcoast.com.au:

Perhaps the bigger and more exciting rumour coming out of Taiwan is that Apple are planning to launch a ‘mini iPad’.

That won’t happen at the September 1 launch, but both Taiwan’s Economic Daily News and the Digitimes are reporting that Apple are working on a 7-inch iPad for those who find the current 9.5 inch model just a tad too bulky.

That’s not why Apple are thinking about a smaller model, of course.

What’s really driving them is that a bunch of competitors are concentrating on producing similar tablet devices in the mid-range, all of which are starting to come on the market, and will accelerate in the new year.

Word is Apple’s ‘mini iPad’ might be on the market by Christmas — just in time to earn a bucketload of cash.

You can read the whole thing here.

technology not always the best answer

here’s an extract from my latest column at goldcoast.com.au:

THERE are times when technology causes more trouble than it’s worth.

Yes, really.

Take voting, for example. Please.

Seriously, you only have to think back to the 2000 US Presidential elections to know that there are times when the supposedly time-saving devices we love so much are just ticking timebombs ready to go off.

Remember the hanging chad?

For those of you too young to recall the chad, let me recap.

You can read the whole thing here. It comes complete with a silly little video.

two films, highly-touted, but complete crap

good grief. really, matt damon? really? you really want me to believe that a chief warrant officer in charge of one little patrol on the streets of baghdad, can just go ‘off mission’ and work for the cia, taking whatever of his men he wants with him, using whatever army equipment he feels like taking, without talking to or telling his CO, without having to report back for duty.

please. what a bucket of shit. look, i’m all for the suspension of disbelief, okay? otherwise i’d never watch anything but documentaries. but, honest to god, there’s a limit. and that limit is squarely when you’re producing a film set in historically real, and supposedly realistic settings.

give me a break. tell the real story. or don’t. but don’t give me stuff that takes the bounds of credibility and tosses them in the crapper.

worst film made by either damon or paul greengrass.

*sigh* … i cannot tell you how many people said to me, ‘omg you HAVE to see this kick-ass!!’

why i listen to grown men who spend their lives face first in comicbooks is something i have to re-examine about myself but consider this a(nother) lesson learned.

kick-ass is … well … nothing special, that’s for damn sure. if watching an 11-year-old girl killing people in ways that have already been done a gajillion times and a lot better in movies like Kill Bill … if that’s what defines a great film for you … well, enjoy. if watching said 11-year-old girl say cunt and motherfucker is your definition of plot, awesome … enjoy.

me? not so much. i thought it was pretty lame. plus it had nicolas cage in it, so you know it’s going to be a bucket of fuck.

don’t waste your bucks on these two films. seriously. NOT. WORTH. THE. $5.

film review: ‘beneath hill 60′

best australian film i’ve seen in years. not that that’s saying much, really, let’s face it. possible exception being wolf creek. but i digress.

by all accounts jeremy sims is a bit of an arseclown as a person, but he’s a pretty bloody good director. he’s brought together a very good cast of aussies and has recreated one of the most little-known and true-blue aussie moments of WWI.

digging a deep tunnel under a hill full of germans in the middle of the hellhole that was Ypres in 1917 sounds like something only a pack of aussie miners would do. and they did, very successfully.

of course, like all things WWI, it was an ultimately futile exercise. despite creating the largest manmade explosion in history at that time — it could be felt in London and Dublin — and killing thousands of Germans, the enemy had regained Hill 60 not so many months later and it was all for nothing.

top yarn, though. and well told. brendan cowell is great as captain oliver woodward, the CO of the 1st Australian Tunnelers. also featured are gyton grantley, who seems to be everywhere lately, john stanton, and stephen le marquand.

maybe it’s just my fascination with all things WWI, but this film felt genuine to me. it came as close as any film i’ve seen to portraying the sheer bloody obscenity of the Western Front.

well done, jeremy sims. not such an arseclown after all.

IN A WORD: Gripping.

numbers tell a story for media

an extract from my latest column at goldcoast.com.au:

In brief the numbers show that in 1991, 160 newspapers were sold per 1000 head of population. Today that number has dropped to 110 per 1000.

Bear in mind that Australia’s population has grown by about 25 per cent in that time.

In short, newspaper circulations are dropping across the board.

It’s debatable whether that slide can be stopped, or if, indeed, newspapers in their current form will survive.

So you can understand why newspaper publishers are sweating quietly in a corner.

Add to that the enormous dilemma of how to make online news websites pay the wages of the journalists who populate them, and you can see that the media industry has good cause to be running around like headless chooks.

You can read the whole thing here. Please do.

film review: a single man

Fashion designer Tom Ford takes a stab at directing and does a bloody good job of it. and not just because everything looks gorgeous, from the props through to the wardrobe through to the actors themselves.

Ford has a deft touch. this could have been a maudlin piece. instead there’s plenty of humour — gentle and sophisticated to be sure — and stillness, always a bonus with actors the calibre of colin firth and julianne moore.

set in 1962 it’s the story of a gay guy (firth) whose long-time partner is killed in a car crash. george is struggling and has decided to kill himself. the film takes him through what is planned to be his last day and evening.

details, details, details. the cuban missile crisis playing in the background. the clothes are — god, immaculate. the makeup is perfect — one scene where all you see of moore is a closeup of her eyes as she makes up. one made up, one bare — a gorgeous little vignette that says so much.

the cigarettes, the music, the hot, smoggy cityscape. perfect.

firth says in the making of doco that the fact his character was gay was incidental — that he didn’t do anything to ‘camp up’ the portrayal. and for the most part that is true. in only one scene, where he is playing against moore in a slightly drunken dialogue, do his gestures … flounce … just a little. but i forgave him for it, because everything else about this performance is spot on.

a surprisingly uplifting film. gorgeous to look at.

IN A WORD: Satisfying.

has joe hockey killed the internet filter?

an extract from my latest column at goldcoast.com.au:

This is the age when kids are ‘digital natives’ — born and raised with a smartphone, a terminal and a wifi connection connected to them like extra limbs.

If you, as parents, are not prepared to learn and keep up with the technology your kids are using, if you are not prepared to monitor and police what your kids are doing online … then what the hell are you doing having kids?

The left wants freedom of expression and freedom from censorship. The right wants less government involvement in our lives and less government spending.

The solution is to give the power and the responsibility back to parents to look after their children.

The enforcement should lie in pursuing the criminals who peddle their wares on line and in punishing the parents who neglect — and I use that word deliberately — their childen’s online welfare.

It doesn’t lie in punishing all internet users with enforced filters that don’t work.

you can read the whole thing here. please do.