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Of Prams and Hallways
In today’s Guardian Frank Cottrell Boyce takes on Cyril Connolly’s much-quoted assertion that “there is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hallway”. The piece is accompanied by a picture of J G Ballard and his three small children, raised single-handedly after the death of his wife at a young…
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You CAN Go Home Again
Okay, I’ve been tagged, and this time I can’t dodge it. On his blog Between the Pavement and the Stars, Piers Beckley has listed those films that he’ll watch any number of times, and challenged me, Danny Stack and Jason Arnopp to do the same. It’s not supposed to be an objective greatness list, or…
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Johnny Hollywood, the Commentary
You may be curious as to why I appear to have a habit of interviewing myself, so the previous post could benefit from some explanation. The first Johnny Hollywood entry came about as a result of a freelance journalist contacting me through my publisher to request an interview for a well-known magazine. I said okay,…
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Johnny Hollywood Explains it All (2)
How do you stay motivated to finish a novel? How do you stay focused? I don’t start a novel unless I’ve got a story that gives me a little sense of awe whenever I think about it. Not out of vanity, I mean that sense of having lucked into something classical and timeless like a…
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Panning and Scanning
I was channel-hopping last night and came upon a comparative rarity; one of the digital channels, could have been ITV2, was showing a modern movie in 4X3 format, the almost-square ‘Academy’ ratio that was phased out in the cinema about 40 years ago and in TV at the beginning of this century. Like a Chav…
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Crusoe in Kent
I’m grateful to Scott Andrews for the news that the many of the sets, props and weapons created by Production Designer Jonathan Lee for Crusoe have been shipped from South Africa to the UK. The sets have been reconstructed as an adventure play attraction at Groombridge Place near Tunbridge Wells (these images are Jonathan’s concept…
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Disappointments and Discoveries
Two things to talk about, here. One, a movie I had some expectations for, the other a novel reminding me that literary fiction need not be the turnoff that so many literary novels have made it into. By which I mean the kind of literary novels you get when bad poets have access to too…
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Bitch-slapped Bimbos and Silent Engineers (2)
Monday’s Chimera screening had a satisfying turnout and the evening ran smoothly, with great atmosphere. There was an audience flyer which included the entirety of a long Time Out review from 1991 that I hadn’t seen before (Fliss Coombes and Naomi Phillipson, handling publicity for Zenith and Anglia respectively, had sent me all the cuttings…
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Bitch-slapped Bimbos and Silent Engineers
Read on and all will be explained. After a fashion. I promise. But first a reminder that this coming Monday (July 5th, 2010) they’re screening all four episodes of Chimera at the BFI Southbank, formerly the National Film Theatre, followed by a Q&A with director Lawrence Gordon Clark and me. The same day also sees…
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Happy Birthday, Uncle Ray
Ray Harryhausen is 90 today. It says so on my Simpsons calendar and my Simpsons calendar don’t lie. There was a suitably ‘star-studded’ tribute at BFI South Bank – formerly the NFT – last week, and there’s a cracking Harryhausen exhibition titled The Fantastical Worlds of Ray Harryhausen at the Academy building on Wilshire Boulevard.…
Hauling Like A Brooligan
Stephen Gallagher
