Monday, 14th September 2009

Auto-tune, finally put to good use

11:06am

One of the most irritating inventions in the world finds its true role in life.

[Via James Fallows]

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Not so real

10:32am

Microsoft embarrasses itself with a crudely doctored publicity photo. This Looks Shopped can't help chortling, and casts an admiring eye over an NYT primer on the history of dubious images. Robert Capa's Spanish famous civil war snap heads the list. The shot of Mussolini and his horse is a mini-classic too. (Yes, I know I've linked to it before, but it's a perfect summing-up of his illustrious career.)

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Sunday, 13th September 2009

Finale

11:01am

David Robertson conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra during the Last Night of the Proms. [Photo: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images]

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The good cookbook?

10:34am

Thanks to Nora Ephron, Julia Child's recipes are all the rage in America again. The Crunchy Con is pleased:

What a terrific thing it is to have as our new cultural hero of the moment a frumpy Francophile with a funny voice who cooked like an angel.

Food writer Regina Schambling is less ecstatic:

Consider the boeuf bourguignon depicted so romantically in the movie, which has had restaurant chefs and amateurs alike breaking out their "9- or 10-inch fireproof casseroles" in the hottest month of the year. The ingredients and instructions for its recipe span three pages, and that is before you hit the fine print...And this is considered an entry-level recipe. Everything in the tome looks complicated, which of course guarantees the results will work but also makes cooking feel like brain surgery. Even simple sautéed veal scallops with mushrooms involve 18 ingredients and implements and two pages of instruction.

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Friday, 11th September 2009

Looking for the girl

6:08pm

I can't say I was desperate to see how Nabokov's masterpiece would work on the National's stage, and after reading Charles Spencer's review of the new production of "Lolita", I'm even less inclined to make the journey to the South Bank:

This is the theatrical equivalent of a Reader’s Digest condensed book, and if that sounds a touch insulting, it’s meant to.

Much better, I reckon, to sit back and enjoy this vintage CBC interview - unearthed by Terry Teachout - in which the novelist swaps aphorisms with another giant of the age, the critic Lionel Trilling. Teachout has posted the first part. Here's the second, with the two heavyweights getting down to the serious business of talking about passion, Tolstoy and literature's most famous nymphet.