Roman Polanski wins the Silver Bear for best director at the Berlin Film Festival for his new political thriller, The Ghost...

Bestselling thriller writer Dick Francis, famous for his horse-racing based novels, dies in the Cayman IslandsThe bestselling thriller writer Dick Francis, has died at the age of 89, his family said today.Francis, a former champion jockey, from Oxfordshire sold more than 60 million books and was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2000.He died early today in the Cayman Islands, where he spent his later years, his family said.His son Felix, who co-wrote Even Money with his father, which was published in September last year, said: "My brother, Merrick, and I are, of course, devastated by the loss of our father, but we rejoice in having been the sons of such an extraordinary man."We share in the joy that he brought to so many over such a long life."Francis was one of the...

This werewolf would-be thriller is less wild beast than trained poodle, says Xan BrooksXan Brooks...

Courtesy of the newly retired Len (too much time on his hands!), someone's "favourite christian thrillers" - there don't seem to be a lot of different story lines do...

This is an unusual crime thriller. It follows an unlikely hero, Charles Latimer as he crosses Europe trying to get discover the full story of the mysterious Dimitrios. Latimer is a crime novelist, and on a trup to Istanbul he is taken by a fan - a senior policeman to see the results of a real crime. This is the body of Dimitrios, now at the end of a long life of crime, doublecrossing...

Dan Brown's best-selling thriller The Lost Symbol tops the book charts for Christmas, beating Guinness World Records...

Find a magazine with a picture of Michael Jackson in it. Cut out the picture using a pair of scissors. Now the creative part: scan it into a PC and then mess around with the colors a bit using Photoshop.And hey presto: you have a masterpiece worth $812,500!A "Thriller"-era silk-screened portrait of Michael Jackson created by Andy Warhol has sold for $812,500 to an anonymous collector.The...

“Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.”- Clint Eastwood"I know things about pigeons."- Clint EastwoodWe have had a few questions about the filming taking place in local cemeteries. BC regular "M" reckons Nunhead Cemetery was taken over for Clint Eastwood's new film Hereafter (a claim supported by the Popbitch forum, for what that's worth), about which Variety says this:Matt Damon will star in "Hereafter," Clint Eastwood's next producing-directing project for Warner Bros., with lensing on the thriller set to begin this fall. For Eastwood, the project's a move into supernatural territory. Warner Bros. is keeping the logline under wraps beyond describing the project as a thriller in the vein of "The Sixth Sense."Eastwood's last...

Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson and Brenda Blethyn star in crime thriller Dead Man RunningXan BrooksHenry Barnes...

The tragic loss of their unborn child has devastated Kate and John, taking a toll on both their marriage and Kate's fragile psyche as she is plagued by nightmares and haunted by demons from her past. Struggling to regain some semblance of normalcy in their lives, the couple decides to adopt another child. At the [...] Read the full post at shaolintiger.com....

Further to my rant about clueless DJ’s replacing proper producers, here are a couple of funny little animations about the horrors of being a mastering engineer to today’s “talent”: Mastering: The Movie Part One and Part Two. And, from an interview this month’s Sound on Sound magazine, here’s Bruce Swedien, studio engineer for Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall and Thriller albums on Quincy...

Hugo Colace scores the winner as Barnsley knock last year's semi-finalists Burnley out of the Carling Cup in a thriller at...

The murky tale behind Dominique de Villepin's...

Troy Kennedy Martin’s death is a reminder of the importance of a tradition of popular and risky television drama over the last 50 years. From his six-part anthology Storyboard (1961), produced by his co-conspirator James MacTaggart, Troy’s aim was “to tell a story in visual terms”, breaking free of a theatrical naturalism in which stories were told by actors talking while the camera looked on. “We were going to destroy naturalism, if possible, before Christmas.” His article for Encore in 1964, Nats Go Home!, was a manifesto for a television drama that mattered, experimented, and aspired to be bigger than the box that contained it. The creative edginess of Edge of Darkness lies in a narrative in which something real is at stake; a script that takes...

“What is to stop me, if I am diagnosed with a debilitating illness now, from shooting a critic who has panned one of my books, knowing that I’ll be able to get away with it?” - thriller writer Ian Rankin, who believes that the release of the Lockerbie bomber ‘on compassionate grounds’ was tantamount to granting authors a licence to kill critics....

  Just begun this novel and delighted to find it in the library after my new thrift policy eschewing spending lots in Tesco or Amazon! Very atmospheric from the first page. There is a rhythm perhaps to thriller writing in particular that emanates from the play on 'fatedness' in such narratives. For retrospect in a thriller is loaded with tension and implication. The 'clue' is a gateway to disaster as much as enlightenment and this novel by McDermid begins with a doomladen Prologue whose last sentence contains the word 'vengeance'. Perhaps too, there is a correspondence between a medical history and a thriller, for both are involved in the act of 'reading' and the problematic possibility of diagnosis. What may seem illegible becomes legible. What is a symptom afterall? Indeed all...

We finally caught Luis Piedrahita and Rodrigo Sopena's brilliant mathematical thriller, Fermat's Room (La habitación de Fermat) at the weekend. A taut clever thriller, it brings four maths geniuses together ostensibly to solve a complex enigma, but in reality to subject them to a terrifying ordeal. Hercule Poirot may not be amongst them, but there are enough false trails to energise the little grey cells, all served up with the chilling horror of a room that has no obvious exit but is gradually reducing in size, and will crush them if they don't solve a series of problems. This is an excellent debut by the Spanish directors, and if it is still around where you are, don't miss it. It may be the most gripping 90 minutes you experience all...

You might have seen posters for a subway thriller starring Denzil Washington & John Travolta on the London Underground. It's a remake of the 1970's film which starred Walter Matthau, about a group of gunman who hijack the carriage of a New York subway train & threaten to kill a passenger for every minute the ransom is not delivered.James Cridland took the picture below & said "I was at a press screening of it a few months ago, and can thoroughly recommend it; New York subway-based action thriller, where the action starts in the first 60 seconds and continues until the end if the film. Never a dull moment."I remember enjoying the original film, which really played on the claustrophobia of being trapped in the carriage & the tense negotiations taking place in the subway control room. It's...

The Wikipedia page on Torchwood, Children of Earth, summarises Day Five thus: It is revealed that the 456 abuses the chemicals in children as a type of drug and that the whole operation is basically drug trade. While the government prepares the children, Frobisher places Jack into custody while Gwen and Rhys are escorted back to Cardiff to inform Ianto’s sister of his death. Lois is also under arrest for espionage. The prime minister informs the country that all children can go back to school and some will have an inoculation against the sinister effects of the 456 (including staring into space and speaking in unison); just a ruse, as these selected children will in fact be handed to the 456 “as a gift”. Then the 456 began charging its lazor, the sun began to shine and...

So there I am at the party where we are planning a re-creation of Michael Jackson's Thriller and someone says "does anyone have the video to hand?" So I think I'll just look it up on my Nokia 5800 or whatever forgettable name has been given to my new crappophone. First off I fire up the browser - takes an age and the first page is some rubbish from T-Mobile that tries to cram in so...

Keith Senior caps his 500th career match by scoring his 230th try as Leeds withstand a tremendous Hull...

I don’t believe that it has taken me this long to mention the death of a certain king of pop on this site. I guess I am still coping. All child-molesting charges aside, Michael Jackson was a musical icon and had a lot of talent. I suppose the height of his popularity was the 1982 Thriller album. Every song on that album was in the top ten, and the album itself sold more than any of its time. You might think this deal is some sort of sick marketing ploy to make some money after the death of a huge pop icon. I don’t think this was ever the reason why this 2GB USB drive was made, as it celebrates the 25th anniversary of Thriller, which would have been in 2007, not this year. However, the timing feels a little weird, as the demand for MJ’s work is clearly going to spike. Yet...

Andy Murray earns a dramatic floodlit five-set win over Stanislas Wawrinka in Wimbledon's latest-ever...

“…and Gordon Brown will probably moonwalk into Prime Minister’s questions.” To understand the cult and martyrdom of Michael Jackson, we need to go back to Thriller, the... [Visit boris-johnson.com for the full post and more information about Boris!]...

In all the sadness of the death of Michael Jackson, there's been loads and loads about the best of his hits. The consensus is that the "Thriller" album was ultimate Jackson, but for me,"Off the Wall" in 1979 was Michael Jackson at his best, and best of all - 'Rock With...

Does Michael Jackson's music begin to justify the extraordinary degree of attention that has been paid to his death?I think not.He was clearly outstandingly talented as a boy, and next to the Osmonds the Jackson 5 sounded like the Amadeus Quartet. But they were pretty much in the Motown mainstream, and if you like late Motown then Stevie Wonder is greatly to be preferred.I liked his Off the Wall album. It was at the time the best-selling album by a Black artist ever. And it showcased Michael Jackson as good-looking, stylish young Black man.But after that something terrible happened to his music as well as to his face.Thriller was simply not an album for grown ups. Aided by the rise of MTV and the pop video, Jackson's music was from then on aimed principally at children.The former child...

I wasn’t going to say anything about this, because I’ve been quite irritated by the general level of hysteria (and news service obsession) with Michael Jackson’s death. But Tomasky has a good take on the phenomenon: even pop icons who did not turn out to be geniuses usually had some cool about them. At least, they weren’t circuses sideshows. I look at the Jonas Brothers, and I think, well, they’re kinda cool-looking young guys, I can see how a 12-year-old girl would want to scream at that. But the sustained Jackson adoration – and I understand that he lost some fans, but it seems he retained most – was able to overlook completely his deranged personal life. This remains a deep mystery to me. It must have something to do with the media culture and with...

Being of a certain age my music collection is in 4 formats vinyl, tape, cd and electronic. Trust me I'm constantly trying to get it all unto one/two but there is always so much more good new stuff and only so little money. Yeah as someone who gets the odd little copyright payment I will not rip off another artist. Therefore sometimes some of the older scratchable (vinyl) or chewable...

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