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Freebies – at a Price
The price being that you have to go out and buy a copy of The Daily Express. I’ve just learned that this week’s running Express DVD giveaway is the complete set of Charles Edwards MURDER ROOMS films, along with Ian Richardson’s two outings in the role of Sherlock Holmes. Well, in purely selfish terms it…
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Future Proof
It’s not quite as bad as the days when companies were destroying assets to save themselves tape and space, but a certain short-termism still dogs the business. Richard Mitchell, who composes music for film and TV, told me, “A dubbing mixer recently explained that the UK TV industry has dug itself a hole which the…
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Ian Richardson
“An actor of astonishing power and magisterial presence on stage and screen; away from it, a humble, engaging, and truly likeable person. For any writer, it was an honour just to hear him speak one’s words.” Lines that I wrote for my website on hearing of the actor’s unexpected death earlier this year, and I…
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The Joys of Research
From the front page of a microfilmed 1903 newspaper in the Historic New Orleans Collection… not exactly the reason I was there, but too good to ignore.
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More Bones from the Kingdom
Tastes vary. I can remember going to see an afternoon show of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks with a group of friends and realising that, out of all the fellow-cheapskates and pensioners who made up the rest of the meagre discount-ticket audience, we were the only ones laughing. Looking around and seeing all those stony faces…
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Because we’re all out of Piano Players
Did you hear the story about the British director Mike Figgis? He arrived at Los Angeles airport on his way to take up a TV job for Fox/Sony. When asked the purpose of his visit, he supposedly said, “I’m here to shoot a pilot.” As the story goes, it then took him five hours to…
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Only in France
I went onto Amazon’s French site to source a link for the DVD of Bertrand Tavernier’s brilliant police thriller L.627 for inclusion in a forthcoming post, and here’s one of the books that came up amongst the site’s featured home-page recommendations. No, it wasn’t a recommendation based on my past purchases. I wasn’t even logged…
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The Kingdom of Bones: the first review
From the current issue of Publishers Weekly: The Kingdom of BonesStephen Gallagher. Crown/Shaye Areheart, $24.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-307-38280-1Set mainly in late 19th-century England, Gallagher’s ingenious horror thriller revolves around the extraordinary life—and death—of Tom Sayers, a real-life bare-knuckle fighter who, after retiring, briefly traveled the country staging reenactments of his most memorable bouts. While working…
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Birt Acres, Pioneer of the Cinema
I’m doing some story research (well, that’s what I call the hours spent wilfing around the internet) into the early cinema pioneers. One of them is American-born British resident Birt Acres. Acres was an engineer, photographer, designer of the Birtac amateur camera, and plenty more besides. I was immediately put in mind of Alan Burt…
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At Least it’s not the Show’s Fault
“Idol: The Musical” shuts down after just one performanceThe producer of the Off-Broadway production, which opened on Sunday night, blamed a lack of advance ticket sales, a lack of positive feedback from audience members and critics and a lack of sustainable financial resources. See? It’s never the obvious reason. (Source: TVTattle).
Hauling Like A Brooligan
Stephen Gallagher
