Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 481

Murder, Mystery and Madness For Next Year

Next year I'll have been in the writing business for 25 years. I know, thank you, I've worn well. To commemorate this dubious distinction, there will be a collection of strangeness from me featuring 25 new stories. At the moment the collection is entitled 'The Horrors' but if anyone can think of a dark/funny title [...]

Basically Brilliant Channel

Celebrity 9: Internet Power

There was a time when you'd slap a few handbills on the wall of the theatre and wait for passing drunks to fall into your auditorium. In the last few years, though, theatres have grown wise, posting clips and storylines on the internet to promote their plays.

We can't do that. We're fringe. We haven't built [...]

Art Deco London – The Books

Naturally, there had to be one. After all, there's a book on every other aspect of London life, so why not this? But then I found two different books in Foyles, (still my favourite bookshop in the world) and there are glorious photographs of everything from the dressing tables in the Savoy to pie and [...]

When Subtitles Can't Carry It

I'm watching 'La Horde', an uber-gory French zombie flick. The scene; thugs gun down cops in grotesque sprays of blood. One super-hard dude looks to the other.

The subtitle; 'Let's scram!'

Later on a thug complains about zombies. 'They ate the Czech!'

Any other examples of crap subtitling?

Hackney Shouldn't Hate Hipsters

Well come on, there hasn't been a new London tribe anyone could hate in like, three or four weeks now, and along comes the Hackney Hates Hipsters group, who have caused a fuss by shooting and slaughtering Hipsters on their site here.

Personally I like Hipsters, with their 1950s ironic hair and fascinators and pink socks [...]

Deep Dark Fun For Halloween!

What goes on under the city, eh? Find out with me this Halloween (well, Friday 29th October) at the London Metropolitan Archive, 40 Northampton Road, Clerkenwell, London, EC1R 0HB from 7pm onwards, and check out these activities on a night that promises to be as mad as a bag of cats…

Rat Catcher Man / Whack-a-Rat [...]

The Half-Finished Hat

Very rarely do I reach out with small baby-grab motions toward a book, moaning softly. Trust me, it's not a good look. But this one – oh, I've been waiting to get my mitts on it for months, and there it was in Foyles, ahead of Amazon! Sondheim's dissection of his writing is enlightening, riveting [...]

Talkback 1: Do Arts Cuts Affect Creativity?

A new column where you and I discuss popular topics of the day.

Today, a subject that's all over the press.

Provincial arts funding means fewer kids learn the skills to be productively creative. However, friends who are teachers tell me that this is not what art funding does. They feel that the money often gets diverted [...]

Don't Tell Me My Stories Are Far-Fetched

A pizza delivery guy was fitted with the above bomb collar and forced to rob a bank before it went off. But the police caught him after the heist and called the bomb squad, who were too slow. The device detonated, blowing his head off.

Seven years after the events of 28 August 2003 at the [...]