Temporary failure in name resolution

Yep.. what the heck is that?! Temporary failure in name resolution...

I think this is why the Amazon links stopped working, it also explains what happened to a couple of the feeds.
This code:

$request = 'http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?
Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=xxx&
Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex=DVD&Actor=Brad%20Pitt';
$response = file_get_contents($request);
echo htmlspecialchars($response, ENT_QUOTES);

Gets this error:

Warning: file_get_contents(): php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /var/www/html/includes/amazon_cart_small.php on line 16

Here is the most annoying part.. NOT all the time. I google'd it, tried a few things, emailed support at our host.. still nothing. Any clues?

BFN