What teachers can learn from cinemas

This is what a Texas cinema did with a complaint from a woman kicked out for persistently texting during a film.



At the university, I used to make a fuss when students did this. Now it's rife and I've given up. Reckon I should boot people out for disrupting other people's learning? After all, a lecture's far more important than a movie.

Alice in Blunderland?

I saw Tim Burton's Alice last night. For the first hour and fifty minutes, it's an aesthetically beautiful, charming and interesting film - slightly Disneyfied Tim Burton.

The last ten minutes is a disaster: a rushed and formulaic climax followed by some vomit-making self-help bullshit. Though as Alice ends up spearheading her deceased father's company's push to trade in China, roughly in the 1860s, I think it's safe to assume that she's pushing opium on the Chinese (historically accurate).

As to the 3D: entrancing for a few minutes, but then it generally faded in my interest, with the occasional annoying moment where a shot is composed solely to show off the technology rather than because it's integral to the plot.

I did enjoy it, but it's definitely not up to Burton's usual standard. Helena Bonham Carter's in it though, and she's always worth watching.

Talking turkey

My one union meeting turned into two, and work fades into the distance. My new computer isn't here yet (boo).

Meanwhile, Empire  readers have listed what they think are the worst films of all time:


1. Batman and Robin

2. Battlefield Earth

3. The Love Guru

4. Raise The Titanic

5. Epic Movie

6. Heaven's Gate

7. Sex Lives Of The Potato Men

8. The Happening

9. Highlander II: The Quickening

10. The Room

What do you think? I only seen Raise The Titanic and Highlander II and can't really argue with those choices, but there are others I'd think are contenders. How about Drop Dead Fred? The Smokey films? Holiday on the Buses? Any thoughts?

Square Eyes

If anyone's in Wolverhampton tomorrow, The Light House cinema is showing The Third Man, one of the best films of the 20th-century - a great British noir-thriller starring Orson Welles. See you there?

Also, Moon, a return to 1970s philosophical science fiction is on next week. There's a clip here.