Simon Crook

28 Years Later was the opposite of the lazy nostalgia-bait legacy sequel - risky, unpredictable, emotional & utterly unhinged. Loved the way it switched to a picaresque narrative half way, Boyle's eye for the English countryside & zombie 'alphas' straight out of a William Blake etching. Loved it

Guardian Q&A with Sparks Russell Mael:

What's the closest you’ve come to death?
Watching Bergman’s The Seventh Seal
How often do you have sex?
Monday thru Friday, four to six times daily. Then I spend Saturday and Sunday prepping for the next week
Would you rather have more sex, money or fame?
Yes

COYS !!!! At bloody last!

Amazon are selling the final fancy embossed hardcovers of my #horror anthology Silverweed Road for a ridiculous £5.86. That's roughly 1p per scare. It's currently being adapted for TV, so grab 'em while you can 😱😱😱

www.amazon.co.uk/Silverweed-R...

What a truly excellent drawing. Spooky artist in the making right there. (I had that book and Robot too - wore the popups down to shreds)

Congrats Paul 😱😱😱

Missed a trick not going with the headline 'Jurasqueak Park'

Anora sweeps the Oscars, and what does The Guardian do? Instantly posts a meanspirited piece on why it didn't deserve it, is "hollow, muddled, dull" and comparing it, of all things, to Father Ted. Not linking. It doesn't deserve the clicks. What on earth has happen to their film coverage?

Tragic news about Angie Stone. What a voice and what a loss. Wish I Didn't Miss You is and will forever be a smouldering soul masterpiece. RIP

youtube.com/watch?v=9PWz...

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Bond movies aren't my thing at all but I feel for those who love it. Also: Bezos is such a Bond villain name. Bet you 5p Amazon HQ is in a volcano

The usual route into the arts nowadays is wealthy parents. I can genuinely count the new crop of working-class actors on one hand. Where's the new Tim Roth, for example? Where are those voices? Same applies to music, art, etc etc. It's really sad - and criminal tbh

My path into journalism was launching a listings mag with a bunch of friends, all working class. Was on the dole, no savings, no pay, & we somehow made it work. DSS knew, let us claim benefits. No kid could do that now. Makes me seethe those opps have been stolen because it's 'only the arts'.

Prepare for Bond to get truly content milked. Expect a Q spinoff series, Blofeld origin prequel, Moneypenny girlboss show, Rosa Klebb shoe fashion special, Knot Tying With Le Chiffre etc etc etc

Michael Bay's A Passage To India

Unfamiliar with Harry Lawtey but all for his primal screaming into the valleys. Cheers for the tipoff - will be inhaling it too!

Bloody marvellous! No, I wasn't aware of it. Looks like they've based at least some of the script on Burton's interviews about his early life (Dad: "Which one are you then?"). Looks good, no?

This wkend, Anora won Best Picture at Writers Guild, Critics Choice, Directors Guild AND Producers Guild, plus, of course, the Palme D'Or. The Oscars have left me cold for years, but Sean Baker's movie so deserves The Big One. Seen 3 times. Still recovering from that final shot. Masterpiece

Aja, Steely Dan: a lifetime's listening in exactly 8 minutes & still discovering something new in the mix

Notorious clickbaiters, and increasingly so. High bar for journalism, Opinion pieces a limbo dance to the bottom.

Lisa Sterle's incredible Ten of Swords tarot card from the Modern Witch tarot, depicting a woman with long hair lying on a jagged landscape under an ominous sky. She's stuck full of swords and looking at her phone. It's captioned EVERYTHING IS FINE.

I'm glad it worked for her but it sounds like such an effort. My advice would be read.
Read a lot and read widely. To be a writer, you have to be a reader.

I'm calling my next novel The Boney Bones

☠ (I can't find a bone emoji)

Ha!

Other words are available. Please make it stop

It's endless. Bones everywhere you browse. Enough bones to build a hundred skeletons

Author: My book doesn't have a title.
Publisher: Think of some words and put 'Bones' in there. Bones sell. People like bones.
Author: But there's no bones in my story.
Publisher: PeOplE LikE BoNeS

For the love of god, will publishers please stop doing this. #booksky

Never seen that, thankyou! I mean, along with the eyes, the voice, the presence, he was so eloquent in his interviews (and bloody frightening in that clip). Genuinely had it all (his performance in My Cousin Rachel is a personal favourite)

Look forward to inhaling that. I've survived him three times, all in his Greek Street HQ with his deliberately uncomfortable journalist-eating sofa and constantly purring, very knackered fridge in the corner. The trick I eventually learned is to argue back when he goes off on one. Still love him.