Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 355

What Are Words Worth?

It has become my mantra in the last year: Fellow writers, remember we own the well. If content provers want to grab themselves a bucketful, they have to pay for what’s in the bucket. So, now that newspaper websites are starting to charge for content, how do we feel?

Clearly there’s a problem, because subscription take-up [...]

Superheroes V Real Heroes

US film critic Marshall Fine recently got death threats after publishing a well-reasoned critical review of ‘The Dark Night Rises’, an enjoyable if somewhat pretentious and overlong film based on an old comic-book character. The backlash was so severe that Rotten Tomatoes had to shut down its comments section, and has repercussions for all websites [...]

Smells Like Teen Fiction

My mate Rick Drew sends me this, a ‘parfum des livres’ from Karl Lagerfeld that smells of freshly printed books. Naturally, it’s being flogged by Wallpaper, the magazine for anyone who’s thinking of living in an abandoned sawmill or a decommissioned Soviet Smelting Plant.

It reminds me of the scent being touted around a few [...]

Who Reads Short Stories?

I and most of my friends do, but we increasingly feel cut off from the general public, who would rather sit in front of ‘The Nation’s Fattest Teenager’ than pick up a book of short fiction. For the last few years – actually, longer than I care to remember – I’ve been writing columns for [...]

And Now, A Commercial Break

It’s okay, it was made for a movie suggesting the South won the American Civil War. But a lot of people thought it was real. Wait for the very end.

And Now, A Jaw-Droppingly Racist Commercial Break

It’s okay, it was made for a movie suggesting the South won the American Civil War. But a lot of people thought it was real. Wait for the very end.

Which Noise Annoys?

Noise! It’s the mot du jour after Westminster Council pulled the plug on Bruce Springsteen the other night, leaving him to continue without amplification because the concert’s licence allows amplified music until 10:30pm only. Now, I can see that Brucie has brought pleasure to millions of elderly deaf people around the world, but should he [...]

Welcome To The Olympics; Now F**k Off

The Guardian has published an amusing guide to English etiquette for incoming Olympics visitors here. There have also been warnings that Londoners tend to swear a lot. To that advice I can add;

Please remember that the word ‘F**k’ is used much as the verb ‘to go’. As in ‘So I f**ked off over the pub.’ [...]

Neglected Films No.8: ‘Sorcerer’

My father’s favourite film was Clouzot’s ‘The Wages of Fear’, but he had never seen it in its uncut form, with virtually another entire film placed at the start, explaining how the main characters ended up having to accept such a dangerous job – transporting a truckload of incredibly volatile nitro-glycerine through a series of [...]

Written On Water

There will come a time when we’ve forgotten what books did. Probably soon after EL James wins the Booker. Here’s a reminder – it’s a fountain in Budapest.