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typewriters
I love this image that I just came across on The Well Appointed Desk; it combines my love of old technology with some of my favourite authors.

There is one striking omission for me; that of my favourite author William Gibson who wrote the cyberpunk classic Neuromancer on an manual typer writer of 1930s vintage. Of this typewriter William Gibson said:

Neuromancer was written on a “clockwork typewriter,” the very one you may recall glimpsing in Julie Deane’s office in Chiba City.

This machine, a Hermes 2000 manual portable, dates from somewhere in the 1930′s. It’s a very tough and elegant piece of work. Cased, it weighs slightly less than the Macintosh SE/30 I now write on, and is finished in a curious green- and-black “crackle” paint-job, perhaps meant to suggest the covers of an accountant’s ledger.

Its keys are green as well, of celluloid, and the letters and symbols on them are canary yellow. (I once happened to brush the shift-key with the tip of a lit cigarette, dramatically confirming the extreme flammability of this early plastic.)

It amuses me that such a prescient story was written on a typewriter so old it could not be repaired when it broke a short time after Neuromancer was published.

It amuses me even more that I wrote this post using an app that in essence recreates a typewriter on shiny new technology.

In the words of Neo “whoa”.

I can’t believe it’s ten years since The Matrix was released.

I can remember seeing the “What Is The Matrix?” teaser trailers and knowing from those that I had to see this film. But even the brilliant teasers and trailers couldn’t prepare me for just how cool this movie was and still is.

As a big William Gibson fan it felt like the closest thing to Neuromancer I’d seen on screen and sadly still is.

I love the style and innate coolness of the movie; the kung fu and bullet time sequences are just brilliant. Keanu Reeves plays the slightly mono-dimensional Neo perfectly, but Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith is the performance of the film.

I think it’s high time I watched it again.

I finally watched Atonement over the weekend and though it a deeply moving and beautifully tragic story. I’d been putting off watching the film as I wanted to read the book, but a friend recommended it so strongly I decided it was time.

I’m so glad I did – it is a stunning film. The film is directed by Joe Wright and is a masterpiece: not words I use lightly.

James McAvoy is absolutely fantastic; delivering a powerful and riveting performance, and for the first time Keira Knightley really impressed me giving a glimpse of the great actress I think she will become.

There is one scene in particular that is simply brilliant; James McAvoy’s character arrives at the Dunkirk beach for evacuation and the camera follows him and his two colleagues around the beach for five minutes. A single, constant steadicam shot that weaves around the beach picking up the three characters at different points as it moves around.

This scene was shot on Redcar beach with over a thousand extras in just one day; they took just four takes of the steadicam shot using the third.  A fantastic piece of film making and cinematography. You can watch this fantastic scene on YouTube – sorry but I can’t embed it here.

If you watched the clip or have seen the film you will  have heard the wonderful, and at times haunting music by Dario Marianelli; a soundtrack (Spotify link) so perfect that it is as important as the actors and director.

If you haven’t seen Atonement I can’t recommend it highly enough.