Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 356

Re:View – ‘Sleep Tight’

If you’re ever beset with the nagging suspicion that Hollywood has lost its cojones when it comes to nail-biting thrillers, check out Jaume Balaguero’s ‘Mientras Duermes’ (‘Sleep Tight’) and spend the rest of the night awake…it hinges on such a simple idea, I’m staggered no-one has thought of it before.

Cesar (beetle-browed Luis Tosar) is the [...]

A London Secret Too Well Kept

The Pleasance Theatre is above a huge pub in an industrial courtyard off a one-way system that’s virtually impossible to get to if you’re driving. It’s near Kentish Town and the Cally Road, and although it has plenty of flags outside proclaiming its presence, nobody I know has ever heard of it. This is no [...]

Welcome, Olympians!

So, the welcoming committee for the arriving 2012 Olympic athletes got off to a suitably bonkers British start with dancers throwing themselves off bridges, revolving on ladders in Trafalgar Square and generally displaying a touch of Monty Python about their hales & Hellos. I think it’s all going to get a bit silly.

Back Off, Alec!

There was a time when we knew who our enemies and allies were, but times change. Now the very people we once trusted – the captains of industry – are often those who seek to harm us.

‘Alec’ is short for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful lobbying group that bankrolls climate change sceptics and [...]

Corpses & Suicides: Strolling London

It had stopped raining for half an hour so I walked into the West End the other day, and ended up taking a rather circuitous route. I’d started at a friend’s place by Columbia Flower Market, and was on the lookout for unusual things. I knew that London’s smallest statue was in Eastcheap, on the [...]

Neglected Films No.7: ‘Brainstorm’

This column is about ‘neglected’ rather than ‘obscure’ films (if I started on those we’d be here all night), but ‘Brainstorm’ flopped in cinemas and has not been seen in its correct aspect ratio for years. However, Douglas Trumbull’s SF film has recently been released on Blu-Ray, although I returned to it with great trepidation [...]

Stop Me Before I Write Again

The other day it occurred to me that I was blogging too much. I’m definitely spending too much time on the inter webs doing social networky. It has now spread to seven days a week and I have no life. Today, however, I finished a new book – a standalone thriller that I’m really hoping [...]

Neglected Films No.6: ‘Run Lola Run’

My brain is clearly running on the same tracks as Andy Nyman’s, as the actor/writer just featured this on his website (his doppelganger film ‘The Glass Man’ needs to be released – it’s a genuine knockout).

I worked on this for charismatic German director Tom Tykwer, who has only made one bad film so far (‘Three’). [...]

Munch & Hirst @ Tate Modern: All and Nothing

I took a stroll down to the Tate Modern yesterday and caught a double art bill for a quick bit of Compare & Contrast…
The (invisible) elephant in the room at the Edvard Munch show was the absence of ‘The Scream’, and yet in many ways it’s already there in so many of his later paintings. [...]

They’re Not Lovin’ It

It says a lot about the British attitude to sport; the biggest Olympics story today is about chips.

More specifically, Olympics sponsor McDonalds, the well-known purveyor of health foods, who ‘own’ those sugar-drenched sticks they laughingly call fries and don’t let any other foodstuffs into the grounds. But following an outcry from disgruntled ground staff they’ve [...]