Category: Reviews
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Review: The Girl Cut in Two
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Who’s Watching You?
First episode of the BBC’s documentary Who’s Watching You in which Richard Bilton uncovers the hidden world of surveillance in Britain. Quite wide ranging in its scope it takes in everything from RIPA abuses by local councils to surveillance carried out by unmanned drones.
It was a little disjointed as it tried to be balanced in its approach and show both the good and bad sides of surveillance. I think the very fact that the BBC has produced a documentary like this is great and hopefully it will spark some debate amongst the general public about the need for blanket surveillance.
Do the benefits to society outweigh the costs? I think in many cases that the answer is no. For example public CCTV which many people are in favour of because they believe that the cameras reduce incidence of crime. If we consider just in financial terms and ignore possible infringements of civil liberties does spending hundreds of millions of pounds make sense when there is evidence that they have a negligible effect on reducing crime although they are useful in catching criminals after the fact. So the question must now be are our CCTV systems in Britain worth the massive cost just to catch and convict the number of criminals it does. Could the money not be better spent by putting more policeman on the beat?
I think viewers may have had their eyes opened with the part of the programme about ANPR (Automatic number plate recognition). I’d be surprised if the majority of the public knew that ANPR even existed let alone how extensive it was and how long the data that was collected by systems across the country was retained for.
Two more episodes to follow, but on the evidence so far this seems like an interesting and important documentary.
Angels & Demons is a good but flawed thriller that revolves around the quest of Robert Langdon a Harvard University professor to unravel a plot to annihilate Vatican City by the secret society called the Illuminati using antimatter stolen from CERN.
I think that this is a very good adaptation of Dan Brown’s book and is my opinion an improvement over the book. The film is an action packed and pacey thriller whose main flaw I feel are due to the source material. As a sequel it is also an improvement over the movie of The Da Vinci Code as there is significantly less standing about and spieling off of expository bits of dialogue. Also where the end of The Da Vinci Code seemed to fizzle out to nothing Angels & Demons has a very explosive finale.
The one flaw with the pacing of the film is that the structure of the plot with rigid deadlines to be met means that variations in pacing become noticeable where one hour between events passes quickly the next hour can pass much slower.
There have been a a number of changes made in the adaptation which tighten up the story. There is much less set at CERN although it looks like that they really did film the LHC there. the character of the Camerlengo has been altered slightly and is here portrayed as a Northern Irish priest by Ewan McGregor. The character of the Hassassin has been changed to become more of a mercenary than a zealot.
The acting is excellent with McGregor and Mueller Stahl as stand outs amongst the cast. Tom Hanks reprises his role as Robert Langdon and is more believable as an academic turned reluctant action hero than Nic Cage in the similar National Treasure.
This is a far less controversial film than some Catholic organisations might have you believe, the premise of the story is this supposed battle between science and religion but this is merely misdirection. The Vatican and the Catholic church come out of this relatively unscathed, they were guilty of the persecution of scientists in the past most notably Galileo but they haver admitted their mistakes in that regard already.
To conclude this is a good thriller and is a fun ride that is best enjoyed with your brain turned off.