Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 362

The Real Arthur Bryant

Further to the post about Arthur Bryant writing in the Daily Telegraph in 1953, reader Marc sets me on the trail of the gentleman himself, who turns out to be a knight. According to Wikipedia:

Sir Arthur Wynne Morgan Bryant, CH, CBE (18 February 1899 – 22 January 1985) was a British historian and a columnist [...]

Films You Missed 1: ‘Starsuckers’

Want to see something genuinely horrific? I urge you to watch ‘Starsuckers’ – a documentary from BAFTA-nominated director Chris Atkins about celebrity and the media that will confirm our worst fears about the new world order. We have entered an age of informational chaos, where news gathering has become a celebrity-driven pay-per-story farce, where former [...]

You Couldn’t Make It Up

Although I did. Still, a friend on Twitter spotted this in the 1953 Daily Telegraph.

What Happened To Edge?

A few years back, comedy was incredibly edgy.Then we hit wave upon wave of recession, and retro warmth replaced the forward thrust of cutting humour. Now you can’t find any sharp comedy writing on TV. It’s still there in popular literature; ‘How I Became A Famous Novelist’ by Steve Hely is a knife in the [...]

Just How Dodgy Is Digital Publishing?

You can always tell when someone is trying to pull the wool over your eyes – they don’t give you a straight answer. It seems that habit has spread to ebooks.

‘I became a superstar from digital publishing!’ some dubious ‘writer’ regularly screams in the press, until you do a bit of fact-checking (remember that, journalists?) [...]

Ten Reasons Why I Like A Proper Haircut

Here’s why I want my hair cut here…

And not here…

1. Mr Aaron Biber has been cutting hair in his Tottenham salon for 78 years, and still uses the scissors his father gave him when he was twelve.

2. I have Bloke Hair. So long as I get my neck shaved and I don’t end up [...]

Re:View – ‘Iron Sky’

It’s what everyone secretly suspected; there are Nazis on the moon and they’re about to come back and wage war with Earth. It’s a silly idea on a par with ‘Snakes On A Plane’, but despite all the goodwill from audiences dying to see a stormtroopin’ space invasion, an uneven tone stops ‘Iron Sky’ short [...]

Time To Drink Some Dandelion Wine

Like many others I was sorry to hear of the death of Ray Bradbury, America’s finest short story writer, and also surprised to hear him written off as ‘a science fiction writer’ in several obituaries. Bradbury was unique in that his stories could not have been written by anyone else. In a time when so [...]

Be Part Of The Cool

Here’s a rare bit of advertising from me, really because I like Joel Meadows’ magazine, which is pretty unique. Over the last twenty years Tripwire has been the comic, film and TV fanatic’s bible. To mark its twentieth year, they’re using Unbound are to crowd-fund a fill-colour, 200-page bound hardback edition of the magazine.

Tripwire [...]

Bizarre Movies: ‘The Valdemar Inheritance’

Spain is currently going through a gothic revival that parallels Hammer in the sixties; like their English counterparts, some films are burdened with cheesy dialogue, all are beautifully art directed, the plots tend toward over-complication and are packed with gothic tropes. So we get put-upon heroines, evil aristos, grand buildings, sinister supernatural storylines and bizarre [...]