Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 387

Not Struck On The Donkey Jackets, But Apart From That…

Am I the only one who found this rather wonderful and oddly touching? The shot was taken in the Olympic Park to recreate Georges Suerat's 'Bathers at Asnieres' and uses construction workers from around the project with the bathers replaced by landscape gardeners, engineers, designers and security staff.

The original iconic painting was created in [...]

More Choice From Less

With Netflix and Lovefilm, Sky and Virgin filling our screens with movies, the more choice we have the less of any interest we get to see. Sky is particularly slapdash about its scheduling, which is filled with no-hoper rom-coms and US flops.

It's not just our attention spans that suffer but the fact that the [...]

The Bryant & May Graphic Novel Finds A Home

After much perseverance I've struck a deal for the Bryant & May graphic novel – and the result could not have been a better one. It will be published here in the UK by PS Publishing, as their first modern comic. PS are the producers of the great big beautiful 'Red Gloves' volumes – this [...]

Hauntings and Nail Bars

I've mentioned documentary maker Adam Curtis here before, and over the last year I've managed to track down all of his extraordinary polemics-on-film that seem to have a very polarising effect on his viewers (argument is a good thing – there are too many tentative opinions on websites).

Now he's assembling a vast amount of [...]

Oi! No More London Gangsters!

Okay, it's a tad too long but this fake trailer makes the point nicely. I particularly liked 'Wot's all this space over my head?' 'It's overly stylised.'

Getting The Horn

What's going on here then?

This is Cuckold's Point, Rotherhithe, at a sharp bend on the Thames near the church of St Mary and the Angel pub. The name came from a post with a paid of horns on it that marked the starting point of the riotous Horn Fair, a carnival that end from [...]

The Mosques Of London

I wanted to post this after reading the depressing remarks on YouTube that accompany films of old London streets about 'how nice London looked when all the residents were white'.

London is famous for its churches (and its pubs) but people rarely talk about its mosques. Historically, London has a strong connection with the Islamic faith.

The [...]

London Skies Get Weirder

First we had this at dawn the other day in Trafalgar Square (it turned out to be advertising something), and now we've got the Aurora Borealis visiting for a few days, although I sat out on my terrace last night and failed to spot it. Presumably when it does appear it will be accompanied by [...]

Why Men Care Less About Fashion

Givenchy were rightly fearful of menswear from Paris Fashion Week being ridiculed. This outfit wasn't even the silliest on the catwalk, but it did have the most hilariously understated caption, which read:
'It's difficult to imagine Givenchy's latest looks making the transition to the high street.'
Although if you're intent on looking like a cross-dressing Albanian clog-dancer, [...]

On The Inside Looking Out

There are so many quotable lines in the voiceover of this gruesome Rank 'Look At Life' short, suggested by Mark Valentine, one hardly knows where to start. This one's about London members' clubs, and how depressing were they? How badly lit, dull and vaguely grubby everything was!

Watch any of these short films on YouTube, [...]