Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 79

Re:View – ‘US’

Horror films don’t have to make sense; in fact, it’s better if they don’t. Writer-directorJordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ was at its best while it was making everyone uncomfortable about racism and did so in an unexpected way, by making the white liberals appear to be trying hard to say the right thing. Those awkward exchanges […]

Let’s Go To The Pictures!

Let’s go to my local, the Everyman Cinema. It’s small and cosy and has just three screens, not 75. It has a snazzy bar. The staff are terrific. A waitress brings you food and wine in the cinema. You have little sofas and cushions. And it costs a fricken’ arm and a leg, transforming a […]

Stream Of Unconsciousness

Saudi Arabia is going online with an unlicensed nuclear reactor created from private business documents in the US. Labour and Tory are uniting to destroy both their parties. Things getting a bit too crazy for you out there? You don’t know crazy. We haven’t had an update from Maggie Armitage lately, so here’s a batch of […]

Jack The Lad

It’s a disreputable name, is Jack, a scallywag nomenclature from Ripper to Spring-Heeled, but Jack Sheppard (b.1702) is the best one. He’s buried in St Martin-in-the-Fields now, a lad who never stood a chance, but went down in London history. Raised in a workhouse and promisingly apprenticed to a carpenter, he switched to robbery and […]

Us & Them

Paradoxically, Londoners work, live and play in Europe. ‘It’s not like this in Europe. The cafés are open, the wine is pouring, everybody’s laughing and gay, ha ha ha ha – not over here though.’ – Tony Hancock, A Sunday Afternoon At Home  Now that the last remaining shreds of logic have fled from every […]

Transforming London’s Stations

After I had major eye surgery I was supposed to be collected from the hospital but my ride fell through and it was raining so hard that there were no cabs, so I did a dumb thing. I went by tube. In the rush hour. With only 20% sight. And to make matters worse, I […]

Our Forgotten Friends In The North

A mate of mine regularly bombards me with examples of bleak local humour, from the Manchester Evening News headline ‘Man’s legs stolen – wedding dream shattered’ to the York Evening Press competition to ‘Win a trip out with the city’s road gritting team!’ Northern journalists soon started writing novels with such a dark sense of […]

An Argument For High Speed Creativity

Last night I had the evening off so I thought I’d catch up with some movies. What would make a good double bill, I wondered. How about the latest releases from Lars Von Trier and Gaspar Noe? Never do an edgy art-house double bill when you’re feeling a bit fed up. I made it to […]

The Foofication Of London

Jacob’s Island was the roughest part of London. It’s where Dickens chose to send Bill Sykes to his death, a rookery of mud and sewage that was virtually in the river Thames itself. The filthy waters in the creeks that bisected it rose and fell, leaving silt and animal corpses, so the surrounding hovels were […]

The Writer Who Fell Happily Out Of Favour

Some authors are chameleons; they’ll write for decades and never produce a piece of work that defines them to a readership. Others create something so much from the heart that the work takes on a larger life and defines an era. Martino Crowley is from Vicksburg, Mississippi. Born in 1935, he grew up to love […]