Review: An Iliad

An Iliad, Homer’s Coat The Opera House, until March 14 Like the Ancient Mariner, the Poet who tells the story of the Trojan War is driven to tell it but, unlike the Mariner, he finds no solace or forgiveness for the sins of man. “Every time I sing this song”, he says, “I hope it’s the last time.” But we know all too well from just the first 14 years of this century, as well as the litany of wars from ancient Troy to modern Afghanistan, that when the Poet recites towards the end of An Iliad it wont be the last time he tells it.

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Bluray review: Life Of Pi

LIFE OF PI 3D (20th Century Fox) Director: Ang Lee Starring: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall, a tiger Ang Lee won Best Director at the most recent Academy Awards. I’m not sure how or why, because so much of the film is based on computer effects that it’s hard to know exactly how much influence Lee might have had on the look and feel of Life Of Pi.

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Special-effects master dies

When Ray Harryhausen was 13, he was so overwhelmed by King Kong that he vowed he would create otherworldly creatures on film. He fulfilled his desire as an adult, thrilling audiences with skeletons in a sword fight, a gigantic octopus destroying the Golden Gate Bridge, and a six-armed dancing goddess

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Trailer: Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium

The first trailer from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp’s new political sci fi thriller Elysium has been released. It takes us to the year 2154, where just two classes of people exist: the very wealthy, who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth.

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Bacteriologist ALEXANDER FLEMING

The improbable chain of events that led Alexander Fleming to discover penicillin in 1928 is the stuff of which scientific myths are made. Fleming, a young Scottish research scientist with a profitable side practice treating the syphilis infections of prominent London artists, was pursuing his pet theory–that his own nasal mucus had antibacterial effects–when he left a culture plate smeared with Staphylococcus bacteria on his lab bench while he went on a two-week holiday.

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