Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 474

Re:View – 'Agora'

The cinema of ideas seems doomed to fail these days. I'm not entirely surprised, then, that this astonishing big-budget film about the death of intelligence and the birth of religious extremism flopped at the box office.

It tells the story of Hypatia of Alexandria, and recounts one of the greatest acts of vandalism in history, the [...]

Missed Again!

It was the Lord Mayor's Show today – 140 organisations in a parade three miles long, led by Gog and Magog, the wicker guardians of London, climaxing in a huge fireworks display.

But it was another No Show for me again this year. I forgot.

The last time I went I was a kid and Dick Van [...]

Still Divine

Re:View – 'Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Pt1′

First it must be said that the film is genuinely sumptuous to look at.
But it's now Episode 74 and Harry has just turned 58, or perhaps it just seems that way, because once again Harry has to find things, get chased by things and fight things. I'm not being facetious – the series feels like [...]

The Horror. The Horror.

For a while now I've been disappointed with kids. They're meant to be shocking. They're meant to outrage us middle-agers. We're meant to be half-scared/ half-appalled by them. Right now kids should be up in arms, dressing crazily and behaving badly. But instead what happens? Nothing. It's a crummy time to be a kid from [...]

Grimly Funny Up North

'Don't tell me you don't want something doing about those round shoulders,' the lady from the dieting club tells Julie Walters, 'I'd love to get you on the floor with a broom handle some Tuesday evening.' Victoria Wood wrote three TV screenplays (remember plays on television, before the marketeers and advertisers pushed them off our [...]

Writers' Tips No.1: The Ball

This is a new series which will feature odd or surprising things which can help you to become a happier writer.

Workplace comfort is an underrated problem. I sometimes sit here for a sixteen hour stretch working solidly at the computer. It can give me blinding headaches, because the average blink-rate drops to a couple of [...]

Who Ordered The Puccini?

Bel Canto, the restaurant where waiters double up as opera singers and turn the restaurant floor into a stage as they perform operatic excerpts throughout the course of the meal, has moved to premises at Lancaster Gate. Less showy than the Paris branch, they've been quietly bellowing The Pearl Fishers into diners lugholes for a [...]

Gleefully Back

Speaking of guilty (really guilty) pleasures, just when you thought 'Glee' couldn't get any happier, here comes yet another superb mash-up in Season 2. I have mentioned this before, but good dialogue is not conversation, it's artfully crafted language. Anyone who doubts this should watch Glee's 'Power Of Madonna' episode, with its machine-gun wit and [...]

Guilty Pleasures

We've been talking about what the general public chooses to read, see and do (see Simple Dismal comments).

It's incredibly important for anyone working in the public arena to understand that the public does not like what we may like, and to understand why. 'Popular appeal' is a phrase that holds a lot of meaning. Katie [...]