Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 295

Back & Forth

I know that nipping to the Netherlands for dinner was extravagant, but hardly more expensive than a taxi across London (I justify the carbon footprint by pointing out that I never drive anywhere and don’t have children) but an evening in Amsterdam, or what Fox News’s sad, bitter Bill O’Reilly calls ‘The cesspool of Europe’ [...]

The Greatest Sitcom Ever Written

My taste in all-time favourite sitcoms is pretty wide-ranging, including ‘The Simpsons’, ‘Malcolm In The Middle’, ‘My Name Is Earl’, ‘Community’, ‘Green Wing’, ‘Father Ted’, ‘Black Books’, ‘The Worker’, ‘Soap’ and ‘The Brittas Empire’.

‘The Simpsons’ had been written for the video generation and changed comedy writing forever by speeding it up out of all recognition [...]

Peregrinations

There’ll be no post tomorrow as I’m on a bit of a schedule. Having delivered the second draft of ‘Nyctophobia’ (my agent is delighted but worried about there being too much gore in one scene) I’ve taken three days off. Brighton yesterday (cockles on the pier, the town looking like Cole Bay, the setting for [...]

Bookshops VS Online: Who’s Winning?

If you write a book and nobody gets to hear about it or read it, was there any point in you writing it in the first place?

I ask myself this after talking to a very talented writer friend who has repeatedly sold his excellent work to a small press company. They produce beautiful books but [...]

Ride A Bike In London? Are You Insane?

Amsterdam, yes. Beijing, good luck to them. Brussels, of course, anything to make their lives less boring. But London?

London’s cycle lanes appear and vanish with what can only be described as caprice. You might coast a corner and find that the road is suddenly squeezing four lanes into two. Aman in Archway just became the [...]

Europe At Night

This amazing video, ‘Nightvision’, reminds me of the thrill of visiting European cities at night.Over the course of three months Luke Shepard journeyed with a friend through 36 cities in 21 countries with the ambition of capturing some of the greatest European structures in a new and unique way. Comprised of thousands of carefully taken [...]

It’s Not Laid Down In Black & White

Just one in 10 Britons has a best friend from a different ethnic background, according to research which reveals that racial segregation is still a major issue in the UK.

The polling for The Challenge Network, which aims to encourage integration through youth and community groups, found that Britons are in fact 8 per cent more [...]

The Strangest Films Ever Made No. 1

Who in Hell’s name thought it was a good idea to dress children in gay fetish-wear? The makers of the expensive megaflop ‘Can’t Stop The Music’, that’s who.

The film had been commissioned because disco had taken the world by storm, and one of the biggest acts was the Village People, an assembled band that [...]

Corporate Failure In A Nutshell

The first part of this is a palimpsest condensed from the US online mag Business Insider, suggesting that corporate business culture has gone very badly wrong.

‘Twitter user named Daryl Tremblay (above) was appalled by the suggestion that McDonald’s should increase the wages of its restaurant workers and pay for it by making a bit less [...]

Re:View – ‘La Cara Oculta’ (‘The Hidden Face’)

Occasionally I stumble across a genre movie that’s so much fun I almost don’t want to share it with anyone. I felt that way about ‘The Loft’, which is due to appear as a Hollywood remake any day now (groan), and ‘Sleep Tight’. Now comes another Spanish language winner. (You have to ask, what is [...]