I’ve been live-tweeting the #bbcon conference in Sydney today (and tomorrow). I spent this evening working on my weekly newsletter though, so I haven’t had a chance to summarise everything I’ve learned. This excerpt from text expander will give you some insight into the note-taking I was doing in one session: If you’re here because …
Author Archives: cafedave
Movie – Star Trek Beyond
Movie – Star Trek Beyond (pronounced as per the Madness song) I really wanted to like this one, but there wasn’t too much there. Plenty of visual spectacle, and some laughs, some character interaction, but there were too many scenes where my response was to think “I know who is going to win this conflict: what’s …
how the viking ship came to be
After watching a short video about a guy who burned a viking ship to commemorate the end of his 20’s, I thought it would be worth jotting down its origin story.
DVD – Ponyo
Ponyo (dubbed in English) was a surreal, beautifully animated kids story of magic, oceans, and growing up. Watched with my 5-year-old, who loved it.
Stan – The Bridge
Stan: The Bridge I’ve watched two seasons of Bron/Broen, a 10-episodes-per-season Danish/Swedish police procedural where the overall story runs for the whole season, and the crimes take place on a spectacular scale. It’s a story (in the European style) of murder and betrayal, complex relationships and some fascinating characters. The subtitles were working so well …
turning 40
Ten years ago, I carved out a Saturday and invited whoever wanted to turn up to an all-day cafe crawl. For the transition from 39 to 40, life is a little differently structured. We had a couple of family events the weekend before my birthday, lunch with my coworkers on the day, an ice cream …
movie – Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice
Movie: Batman vs Superman Not as bad as I thought it would be. Loud, PG-13 in its relationship sensibilities, literate in its vocabulary (but shows a gala event in a library that has no books). Crammed and over-crammed with plot, visually spectacular; but hard to connect with emotionally.
why you should buy this photocopier
Recently I watched this TED talk about charity, and how to measure effectiveness of what’s being done in the not-for-profit space. There are some great ideas contained there. There’s a commonly held notion that the percentage of donation income that covers overhead the single number that you need to read, to know which charity is …
Movie: Spotlight
Spotlight is a Tom McCarthy (director of The Station Agent) film with an ensemble cast of seasoned Hollywood actors. Though not passing the Bechdel test, the presence of Rachel McAdams in the reporting team helped balance out what would otherwise be a throughly male-dominated environment. This movie seems like the logical, fictional successor to the 2006 …
Stan: Silver Linings Playbook
Silver Linings Playbook is one of those Oscar-bait films that’s an enjoyable journey, has a rare good performance from DeNiro, and (despite some over-zealous camera work) is an engaging character study of some flawed characters and their interactions.