Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 358

Hitting The Swede Spot

At the end of the month, London’s uber-cool Roxy Cinema in Borough is hosting Swede Dreams here.

‘Star Wars Uncut’ plays next weekend in this mini-festival of homemade tributes to Hollywood titles. Alongside numerous shorts, the line-up also includes Night of the Living Dead Reanimated, an all-animation equivalent of Star Wars Uncut, Flooding with Love for [...]

I’ll Be The Judge Of That

For the past two years I’ve had the honour of being one of the six judges for the Gold Dagger. Created by the Crime Writers’ Association, this is one of the world’s highest awards for excellence in crime writing, and is presented to the best crime novel written in the English language (there are other [...]

Nearly Winners

Who better to knock out an Olympics song than the very wonderful Pet Shop Boys? Their traditional melancholy tone has somehow made this sound as if the song is about someone who came close to winning but not quite close enough, and is still happy about it. You know, like Andy Murray. (Although I really [...]

R.I.P The Plank

Eric Sykes was really about the last of the great comedians left, and has died at 89. Despite being barely able to hear or see, his comic timing stayed with him to the end. There was something very Dad-like and logical about his frustrations and obsessions, a mild-mannered, exasperated everyman whose low-key high moments included [...]

Sites For Sore Eyes

Last night, I watched lasers and searchlights shooting out across London’s sky from the top of its newest landmark, the Shard. They’re getting ready for the big launch tonight, to celebrate the completion of the outer structure of Europe’s tallest building.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra will entertain guests including the Prime Minister of Qatar and [...]

Fifty Shades 2

With regard to the post about ‘Fifty Shades of Gray’ below, I want make my intentions a little clearer.

I know many of the marketing and PR companies in the UK who shape writers’ personal stories for public consumption; There’s a reason why everyone has an image of a penniless JK Rowling writing notes in [...]

Filthy Shades Of Rich

I nicked that heading from mate Rick Drew, who points out an ‘article’ (i.e. reworked press release) in the Daily Mail mentioning that the combined total global sales of EL James’ porn trilogy is already 20 million. The books are now selling at a rate of one million paperbacks and ebooks per week. According to [...]

Bowlers, Berets & Bullfights

A few days ago the Chinese told David Cameron that if he wanted to encourage Chinese tourism we’ll need to build more cottages with thatched roofs. At the same time, an interesting article came to light in (I think) Paris-Matin, suggesting that French culture was losing its way because of exactly this kind of conservative [...]

Welcome To The Home Of The English Language

A new welcoming sign has been put up by the chimps in charge of such things at King’s Cross Station. Is it being too picky to expect the correct use of apostrophes? Or should we all just not bother?

Neglected Films No.4: “Savages”

Here’s a really lost movie. I remember seeing it at the Curzon Mayfair and being unable to get it out of my head for ages, even though it didn’t seem to make a shred of sense to me at the time. What I didn’t realise then is that it was in part an homage to [...]