Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 399

The Myths Of Romantic Cities

I've never liked the whiny world of Woody Allen, especially when he's in analytical mode (which is most of the time). Even the 'early, funny ones' aren't that funny, although I'd keep 'Hannah And Her Sisters', 'The Purple Rose Of Cairo' and 'Everyone Says I Love You' – but the new film, 'Midnight In Paris' [...]

London Eccentricities: The Three Devils

St Peter Upon Cornhill is the oldest church site in the City of London's Square Mile. In the nineteenth century its vicar, clearly a vindictive old sod, noticed that plans for the building next door extended by one foot onto church territory, so he forced the architect to redraw his design and added three leering [...]

Skydancing

Don't try this at home. This July, the 24-year old Seanna Sharpe climbed 285 ft above the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City to perform a joyful, albeit illegal acrobatics show hanging from a double-silk cloud swing she created. Having danced across 26 countries, she moved to New York and graduated in 2010 with the [...]

Re:View – 'Hugo'

Martin Scorsese's new family film in 3D is a wonder on every level, and there are a lot of levels to be navigated. It isn't really for children but for the children we might wish to have, literate, smart, kind, healing – I imagine a lot of middle-class English families will be dragging their kids [...]

The Alternative Bryant & May

I love the UK Bryant & May covers, but in the early stages we lost our original artist, who suddenly retired after the first beautiful cover for 'Full Dark House'. Consequently, 'The Water Room' had an odd hardback visual that didn't work, and the paperback became known as 'the Simpsons cover' because for some [...]

Everyone's A Critic

Recently the press started slimming its review pages across the board, cutting back on their critics. My own reviews have been hit – everyone's have, and it's almost impossible now for younger writers to get into the broadsheets.

In one sense the system needed shaking out now that there's so much good online critical writing. There [...]

Re:View – 'The Last Circus'

Actually titled 'The Ballad Of The Sad Trumpet', this is director Alex de la Iglesias at his most bombastic and bizarre. This story of a clown's son who follows his father's footsteps, taking revenge for the old man until he goes insane, is so extreme that it is impossible to tell what might happen from [...]

London's 'Missing' Areas

Do you ever find yourself in an unfamiliar stretch of street in your home city, unable to see how it fits with other parts? It happens to me all the time, and I know London pretty well. Yesterday I was in the odd little section between Leather Lane and Mount Pleasant in order to buy [...]

The Dark Musical Gene

I listen to an insane amount of music at home. This comes down to personality type; I'm an annoyingly perky fidget, which makes me hell in the mornings and a sucker for musicals. I know all the words because the cadence of language is very important to me. I don't like conspicuously camp shows or [...]

I Say, Mind The Gap!

We have a rare chance coming up to tour the disused Aldwych underground station. Originally named Strand, the station became a public air raid shelter during the Blitz and is now mostly used for training and as a location for films such as 'Atonement' and 'V for Vendetta'. The station has no working lift and [...]