Steve Bowbrick

GROSS is a materialist critique of the immaterial joys of cinema.

Header: It Happened One Night, 1934

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

In 1913, in the USA, somebody decided to keep track of the rental income the movies were pulling in. This came to be known as the GROSS. I'm telling the story of Hollywood through the top-grossing film of each year since then. It's a FREE newsletter:
https://t.co/Q8n5H2YLxE

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

He's been debased https://t.co/7TYEjSA4dG

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

@AndrewOrlowski @izakaminska My list of concepts we will come to regret adopting is growing: openness, interoperability, decentralisation, disintermediation, nudge, design-thinking, user-centred, end-to-end, frictionless. All quietly catastrophic.

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

This is it, the whole AI/techbro/acceleration story. Obviously in some kind of literal, dessicated way true but also at the same time the opposite of the whole post-enlightenment human story.

[alz @alz_zyd_]

There is nothing special about books. You can become arbitrarily smart without ever reading a book

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

@CapitalistCrus1 @echetus Are you an editor? It's just that I keep hearing about these psychopathic nerds but have yet to actually meet one. Where do they hang out?

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

@ATRightMovies Honourable mention for the Jesus-Christ-they're-going-the-wrong-way-on-the-freeway chase in To Live and Die in LA (also by Friedkin I just realised!).

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

@exitthelemming The button in the app will be labelled 'RUIN EVERYTHING'.

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

There are, you might be surprised to learn, still plenty of people bothering to update local blogs (remember we used to call this stuff HYPERLOCAL?) and holding authority to account. Here's @RadlettWire's latest very deep analysis of the local MP's extra-Parliamentary income…

[Radlett Wire @RadlettWire]

Every now and then we fire up the blog. These days it's usually either a) Hertsmere's data centre (more about that soon) or b) Sir our MP Sir @OliverDowden's booming extra-Parliamentary income. Deep analysis, charts and A SPREADSHEET https://t.co/G2NP6sQa5Q

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

I can't claim this one is a best-seller but it obviously appeals to someone's weird sense of humour because I've sold several since I put it up a couple of weeks ago. It's the 16x9 hedge that I came across in St Albans recently: https://t.co/Si9q51WB3E

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

My top-selling design, by a mile. How to explain this? Are we all Jacobins now?

What would Robespierre Do?

(a still from Abel Gance's 1927 Napoléon, with the wildly brilliant Edmond Van Daële as Robespierre, in his dark glasses)

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

Number 3 best seller. An absolute wildcard. I mean who knew that Cornelius Cardew's turn against European avant-garde music would turn out to resonate with 21st Century hipsters! I think Stockhausen Serves Imperialism might turn out to be a bit of a cult brand around Xmas time! Buy it printed on practically anything here: https://t.co/ZWVAvEUToO

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

@electricfelix Changing lanes at 500kmh

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

@JoshuaBarzon Weirdly excludes Mark Wahlberg

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

@rorysutherland Have you noticed how many advertisements are still sung? And how many rhyme?

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

"David Lean did that, and even Brecht. And you'll do the same…"

[VIKARE @vikare06]

Herzog worked with Kinski precisely for this reason

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

@daveg I bet it's in demand as a film location!

[Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick]

I found a book of his marvellous paintings here the other day - I'd owned it for about thirty years before I realised they were by the same David Jones

[Ian Duhig FRSL @ianduhig]

Happy Birthday David Jones! This quotation from 'In Parenthesis' I always felt cried out loudest for its own stele.

Pic from Graeme Rigby