Fall Of The Machines

You could almost have seen this one coming, couldn't you? The very first movie to be officially premiered online is hyped, raved about and finally delivered, only to have the site go down. It's a well-known technical fact that electronic equipment will invariably fail during events where they are utterly indispensable and, at all other times, will work just fine. This is Not a Love Song from The Full Monty writer, Simon Beaufoy, enjoyed a few brief seconds of its online debut on Friday evening before servers crashed, mainframes sizzled and the gremlins that live in all electrical devices, worked their wicked work. A subsequent message urging users to be patient and insisting that service would resume did little to help the thousands who had logged on to see the film as it launched. Approximately 75,000 people are thought to have logged on to see the film and it is thought that the sheer volume of traffic is what brought the site whimpering to its knees. Frustrated by the failure, organisers were nevertheless thrilled by the number of people who tried (and failed) to see their movie. "We are working to restore the site and the good news is that it has proved there is an audience and distribution channel for this work," said Film Council spokesman, Ian Thomson. "It means people have watched the film and we are hoping it will encourage others to see the benefits." Budgeted at a mere