Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 396

Travelled Paths

I'm on my last stop, staying in a Six Senses hotel, which is eco-friendly and comprises elegant bamboo houses built into a jungly hillside – although I stepped out of my zero-emission vehicle and stood on a frog, which wasn't a very eco-friendly start. Touring around by tuk-tuk, the view was more like this…

Well, you [...]

The Reality of Fantasy Islands

This morning I was in a reeking mangrove swamp looking up into a 'Blind My Eye' tree that drips poison sap, thinking about how vacations are sold on fantasies. A couple of years back I tried to sell a travel piece to the Sunday Times and was told 'it isn't what our readers want to [...]

Heroine of the Week

What a creep Michelina Lewandowska's husband must be. Noticing at his gym that there were prettier women, he decided he was bored with his wife, so he changed his Facebook status to 'single' and developed a plan to kill her. He and a mate zapped her with a 300,000 volt Taser stun gun, bound and [...]

4D Cinema

Last night I watched 'Avatar' in the jungle, projected onto a bed sheet from a presumably pirated DVD (not as glamorous as this picture, trust me) which added a surreal level of enjoyment to 'Avatar'. There was no 3D but instead you could be bitten to pieces by mosquitos (something Sam Worthington didn't have to [...]

The World According To Hancock

Some time back I wanted to write a book called 'Everything I Know I Learned From Tony Hancock', because the shows written by Galton & Simpson seemed to be filled with truthful (i.e. far from optimistic) lessons about life.

Hancock's life has been picked over until there's nothing left, but not quite true it turns out, [...]

Film It For Free

To celebrate the publication of my collection 'Red Gloves', I'm giving away options to new film-makers. If you'd like to make a short film from one of my stories, simply contact me and I'll give you a free option to film it. Normally film-makers have to buy a one-year option to a story before they [...]

Adventures In Fine Dining

I arrived in Thailand on the birthday of the King, which augers well, although the weather is wet and humid; Bladerunner-ish. Hitting a Thai night market looking for something unusual to eat, it seemed there were no grasshoppers or grubs, so perhaps they're regarded more as Malaysian or Cambodian delicacies, but I did tackle pig [...]

Re:View – 'Toryboy'

It's important not to be misled by the title of this terrific documentary, which seems to promise an attack on Conservatives but is in fact an evenly balanced study of voter apathy.

John Walsh is a London film-maker and lifelong Labour supporter who became disillusioned with Gordon Brown's party, and decided, against all his instincts, [...]

On The Move Again

I'm heading off for a few days R&R to a small island called Yao Noi, south of Phuket in Thailand. The Thais have better wi-fi in their remote rural areas than Birmingham for flip's sake, so I should be able to continue blogging. Quite why I am taking a car, a train, two planes, another [...]

The Return Of The Blimp

Martin Scorsese has recently been in London promoting his wonderful film 'Hugo' (see review on this site) and introducing another restored Powell & Pressburger film, 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp'.

Powell & Pressburger's films are impossible to define – each one is unique and special, and fits no clear demographic. 'The Red Shoes' (think [...]