Why do great films get such crappy releases?

Two films I wanted to see this month, both by great directors, both with rave reciews - The Prestige and Pan's Labyrinth.

We have two 10+ screen multiplexes in our wee city (one Showcase, one Odeon) and another just down the road in Burton (Cineworld), so I thought I might at least be able to catch one of them.

Nooooo such luck.

The week before least I was a training course in Bath, and the Odeon there had The Prestige, and their little arthouse cinema had Pan.

So I settled for Guillermo Del Toro's labour of love, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

It just wound me up that I couldn't see it at home.

Grrr...

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Verbal showed me this yesterday, and I just couldn't believe what I was seeing... well, hearing... well, not hearing.

You'll get the idea.

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Hello one and all... this little blog of mine seems to have been neglected somewhat recently. (Not that anyone noticed)

So here's a summary of my past month, in a handy set of bullet points, to save all that tedious reading-type-stuff.

• Got my Mac Mini replaced by Apple - everything is fine now
• Been ridiculously busy at work, but calming down now
• Got loads done in the house, we now have a virtually completely new living room
• Went down to London to meet my cousin's new baby

Hmm... That's not much, really, for a whole month of news, now, is it?

Oh, and don't expect an instant return to daily bloggerage, I'm disappearing down to Bath later today for a three day training course.

It's a tough life, but somebody's got to do it.

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Well, after many hours on the phone to Apple, it turns out after trying 2 different ipods on 2 different cables on 2 different users with 2 different iTunes libraries, all having the same problem (albeit intermittently), the only consistency was my new Mac Mini. So Apple decided it must be faulty, and have arranged a replacement.

Which is scheduled to arrive today...

Ignoring the fact that they forgot to tell TNT where I lived, so they were all set to send it back to the depot for re-attempted delivery next week, despite being scheduled to pick the faulty one up from me this afternoon... Cue an hour of frantic phone calls to Apple (getting cut off three times), to TNT call centre, and to TNT Nottingham. As it happens, they were able to talk to the driver, sort the problem out, and told me hed be with me in 20 minutes... not bad!

Now lets just hope the darn thing works!

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Well I got my spangly new Mac Mini last Thursday, and have been fighting with it ever since.

Not literally, of course, but the unfortunately the delivery of my new Mac, coincided with Apple releasing a buggy version of iTunes.

Grr.

So now, iTunes will happily fill my iPod up with all my music, but the next time I try, it says "ooh, no, I can't read that iPod. You'd better wipe it and let me put everything on it again from scratch".

So you do, and the next time you get "ooh, no, I can't read that iPod..." etc... etc...

I've tried downgrading my iPod firmware to an older version, but the consensus on t'internet is that iTunes 7 is a bit, well, crap.

It's rather ironic, that on my PC, before I made the switch,"it just worked".

PS - I emailed Apple's Executive Relations yesterday, and a very nice young man called Colin called me back this morning, who has arranged for a technical person to ring me at 9am tomorrow to sort things out. I'll keep you updated later... Rather amusingly, he said he could arrange for an "out of office hours" call, but (he rather tactfully put) "he wouldn't be able to guarantee the quality of the call"...

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