Drama starring Glenn Close as a man is a sad but brilliant oddity April 26, 2012 FILM ALBERT NOBBS Cert: 15 **** What a queer treasure of a film this is. Starring Glenn Close in an Oscar-worthy turn as a woman disguised as a man in 19th century Dublin, the film is based on a book by George Moore, an Irish novelist and poet of the late 1800s, and directed by [...]
An Orwellian whorl of a film that’s unsettling and original April 26, 2012 FILM CLONE Cert: 15 **** Matt Smith, who plays Clone’s hero Tommy, is kinda handsome in a kooky way. More Easter Island statue than Michelangelo’s David. People fancy him, but they’re not sure why. It probably accounts for why his CV beyond Doctor Who is sparse to say the least. You feel he is going [...]
HANDBAGS LADBAGS April 25, 2012 Miu Miu leather shoulder bag, £550, netaporter.com Chic and luxurious, ideal for daytime and night, glam or casual. Zara Plaited shopper, £79.99, zara.com If you’re looking for chic and simple on a budget, this bag made from buffalo leather is the perfect fit. It’s large enough to stash all of your essentials for work along [...]
FASHION FORWARD April 25, 2012 If the UK had more businesses like Burberry, we’d be rolling in gold. Happiness. Success. No double-dip recession for us. Oh no. Although Burberry’s not the only global fashion mega-hit to come from these isles, it’s certainly the brightest right now, reporting an 18 per cent increase in revenues over the last six months. As [...]
Blue sky thinking April 25, 2012 GOOGLE DRIVE COST: 5GB: free; 25GB: $2.49 a month; 100GB: $4.99 a month; 1TB: $49.99 a month; 16TB: $799.99 a month PROS: It’s cheap, compared to rivals (the free part is twice the size of Dropbox’s offering). It allows users to create, sync, store and share files across platforms. It also syncs with Google’s other [...]
Google has yet again arrived fashionably late to the party April 25, 2012 The ice in the bath has already melted, Dropbox has left with the pretty girl and Microsoft is throwing up out of the upstairs window. Google is once again late to the party. Yesterday it launched its cloud service, Google Drive, promising mind-boggling amounts of intangible storage space. The highest option is 16TB. It’s just [...]
THEY DID THINGS DIFFERENTLY, BACK THEN April 25, 2012 The magnetic drum | 1932 Not the most practical device, the magnetic drum (like the IBM 650, above) featured a revolving cylinder. Individual words could only be recalled when the drum was in the right part of its cycle. It held around 10KB. The selectron tube | 1946 It may look like a torture device, [...]
CBRE earnings beat forecasts April 24, 2012 CBRE, one of the world’s largest commercial property firms, reported better-than-expected earnings last night, as the Americas offset sluggishness in Europe. Excluding $18.9m in charges related to its ING acquisition, CBRE reported first-quarter earnings of $45.9m, up from $40.6m in the first quarter of 2011. Revenue for the quarter rose 14 per cent to $1.35bn. [...]
A family car with a hell of a punch April 24, 2012 A wolf in sheep’s clothing is an overused adage in the car industry. Sometimes, though, it is justified: Audi’s new S6 doesn’t look much different to a regular A6 but is the hottest new A6 your money can buy. Equipped with a new twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 engine – good for 414bhp – the Audi S6 [...]
CAR TALK – BEIJING AUTO SHOW SPECIAL April 24, 2012 Beijing shows off beauties like the new Aston Dragon 88 The Beijing Auto Show is underway and if you were in any doubt about the importance of the Chinese economy to the car industry then you should see the roll call of cars unveiled there. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has just introduced its Phantom Extended Wheelbase [...]