Ray is a biopic-by-the-numbers. Depicting the life of Ray Charles, Jamie Foxx does a competent job of portraying someone blind (it’s of course hard to tell how close he is to Charles). The film lurches from one scene to the next, and portrays Charles as a fun-loving but flawed man (cynics might point out that this is what most biographical films of entertainers do). There’s nothing that particularly stands out, but no part of the film that’s truly awful either.

Last Tuesday, I attended Bill Clinton’s ‘Leadership for the Future’ seminar at the Royal Albert Hall. Although I don’t necessarily agree with his politics (he obviously sits somewhere around the centre-left and I’m some undecided variety of libertarian), I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see a former world leader speaking. The tickets (£60 - £300) weren’t cheap for the hour and a half’s presentation, and the occupancy of the hall seemed to suffer accordingly, but it was worth it.

Starbucks didn’t exactly get where they were by accident. I recently saw this sign in a branch on Gloucester Road (it says ‘Coffee Grounds for Your Garden’). Starbucks are giving away some of their waste coffee grounds for free. The cost of packaging is probably almost equal to the cost of disposal saved, plus it benefits their green credentials. It’s also another good reason to go to Starbucks rather than another coffee shop down the road.

It appears PlusNet have finally resolved the issues with my broadband; although they never really explained what it was, apparently ‘BT corrected a fault on the network’. I was without for about two weeks: given how bad they were at sorting it out, I’ll be sending them a letter requesting compensation. We’ll see how well that’s received.

Apologies for the shortage of posts recently; it’s been a very busy week - I should be back to normal posting behaviour by the weekend.

Just so it doesn’t seem like I’m always grumbling about poor customer service, I’d like to point out that Canon have recently been very good. I got some dirt into my S80 digital camera when in Edinburgh about a month ago. I sent it back to Canon’s UK repair centre, half-expecting an argument about mistreatment. They cleaned it, readjusted some things, and sent it back to me, good as new. It took a month, which was a little longer than I’d hoped for, but they didn’t charge either, which I was expecting.

Presumed Innocent is definitely imperfect. The premise is good; the American-legal-system-based-thriller has been done before several times, and well: A Few Good Men, The Pelican Brief. But Presumed Innocent is great in concept, poor in execution. Harrison Ford is miscast as the star, a lawyer with a silly haircut and a silly name (Rusty Sabich). The film relies heavily on flashbacks, but they don’t fit well, and the whole plot is poorly managed and as ill-fitting as Rusty’s suit.

I’m still having problems with my PlusNet broadband. Not only are they not interested in talking to me (phone line queues over an hour, website queries often take days), but when they do, we go round in circles discussing basic settings on my router rather than addressing the problem (my protestations that I haven’t changed a sausage are seemingly ignored). So please, if you’re looking for an ADSL provider, and value customer service, don’t go with PlusNet.

I’ve just finished reading Seth Godin’s book All Marketers Are Liars (yes, I know I was reading something different a few days ago; I’ve got a short attention span). His book taught me a lot about marketing and convinced me it doesn’t have to be fake and cynical. But perhaps the most important personal lesson I’ve taken away is to understand worldviews better. One of Seth’s basic principles is that each person has a set of worldviews: marketing that doesn’t match them is rationalised away in our brains, even when that’s illogical.

Naqoyqatsi is a second-rate final film in the trilogy that also includes Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi. I think Godfrey Reggio thought he was branching out into something new here by using digitally manipulated archive material and CGI, but actually the film comes across as tired and pedestrian. Five minutes of it might be tolerable in the Tate Gallery out of curiousity at the ‘pretty patterns’, but it’s nothing compared to the ground-breaking Koyaanisqatsi or its first sequel.