Hauling Like A Brooligan

Stephen Gallagher

Author: Steve

  • Crude, but Effective

    Every little community has its in-jokes, and each community has its bottom-of-the-pecking order geek who catches on late and then fails to realise when everyone else has moved on. In the world of Doctor Who – which has become a big world again, due to the success of the TV series’ revival – the fast-track…

  • Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn

    I can’t remember when I last walked into a bookshop and paid full price for a book. Well, I can, because it was this afternoon. Before that, I mean. This afternoon I was in London with a train journey ahead of me and nothing to read on it. The Tube strike was in full swing,…

  • The Count of Monte Cristo

    I just watched the 6-hour Gerard Depardieu version of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO over four nights, and I think I maybe found some useful lessons there. The special power of the story lies in the way that Edmond Dantes remakes himself as a machine for vengeance and then reappears to engage with his enemies,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…