Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 441

Betty The Blue-Eyed Wonder

Have audiences become too strait-laced for Cameron Mackintosh? Just up the road, the delightful 'Umbrellas of Cherbourg' has already crashed and burned. Mackintosh's first new musical in a decade, 'Betty Blue Eyes', has a song set in a urinal, an animatronic pig and a a big number filled with animal corpses. The fact that it's [...]

Will Betty Be A Blue-Eyed Wonder?

Have audiences become too strait-laced for Cameron Mackintosh? Just up the road, the delightful 'Umbrellas of Cherbourg' has already crashed and burned. Mackintosh's first new musical in a decade, 'Betty Blue Eyes', has a song set in a urinal, an animatronic pig and a a big number filled with animal corpses. The fact that it's [...]

Learning The Lingo

I hope he was happy with the drawn part of the tattoo, at least.

I know I'm going to turn into one of those old geezers who complain about language. I believe language should live, breathe and change, but this one's really bugging me.

'According to investigators, the mother purposefully drove her car off a dock' – [...]

Another Great British Invention

We'll probably get a medal for it in the upcoming Olympics, worse luck.

Weird Double Bills 3

Remember when B-movies didn't come with ironic air-quotes around them? Before Tarantino made them boring? Here are two neat little wonders, both sharp road movies starring Peter Fonda.

'Race With The Devil' has Fonda, Warren Oates and their wives travelling across America in their motor home and accidentally witnessing a ritual witchcraft murder. Chased by [...]

Happy Now?

A new group called Action for Happiness has some facts for us that, paradoxically, will make you feel bad.

Despite massive material progress, people in Britain are apparently no happier than they were in the 1960s. Since then, society has become increasingly competitive and selfish, with a culture that encourages us to pursue wealth, appearance, [...]

Missing London Myths

I can hear local schoolchildren singing from my study (their playground is on a nearby roof) and reading about a supposed 'plague pit' in the local press – seemingly any piece of unclaimed land attracts the notion that it's there because it was once a plague pit – reminds me that the 'Ring a ring [...]

London's Old & New Alleyways

The city's Square Mile lost a lot of courtyards and alleyways in the building boom of the eighties and nineties, but architects finally seem to be discovering the use of courtyards and alleys again. The centres of public buildings both old and new are being turned into small public thoroughfares.

I would like to think [...]

Re:View – 'Source Code'

Every SF film has to pass what we here at Admin call the 'Ming Mong' test, after Victoria Wood's parody of Dr Who in which the hero blusters over the scientific explanation by referring to the complicated science as 'interplanetary ming-mongs'.

Well, 'Source Code' certainly has more than its fair share of techno-ming-mongs – dense gibberish [...]

What Royal Wedding?

I spotted these today in 'Aria' in Islington, part of a line of alternative naff wedding plates celebrating the forthcoming nups of some ginger posho and his bint. I'm particularly taken with the one that describes the event as 'Wills & Kate: the Four-Day Bender'. (Click to enlarge)

The nice thing is that you get the [...]