CHRIS REVIEWS: Chris Riddell and John Vernon Lord (in conversation, 2018)

CHRIS REVIEWS: Chris Riddell and John Vernon Lord (in conversation, 2018)

We saw Chris Riddell and John Vernon Lord in conversation this evening at The House of Illustration, in Granary Square, behind King’s Cross. They sat side-by-side at the front of a small gallery. Hung about the gallery’s walls, and layed out with care in many cases, were samples of Lord’s work—illustrations of *Ulysses* and *Finnegan’s Wake* and *Alice in Wonderland* and *Humpty Dumpty*, among others. There was an overhead projector between them and on this Riddell flipped through some of Lord’s sketches, pausing to let Lord talk of his work and to ask his own questions.

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CHRIS REVIEWS: Kaveh Akbar and Richard Scott (a poetry reading at the london review bookshop, 2018)

CHRIS REVIEWS: Kaveh Akbar and Richard Scott (a poetry reading at the london review bookshop, 2018)

"Kaveh is a tall, floppy-haired man, all lank and torque, who often appears folded up in himself. He seems not always entirely comfortable in his being in this particular body at this particular moment, sort of how a compressed spring always seems to be waiting to explode."

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CHRIS REVIEWS: Risky Business (dir. paul brickman, 1983)

CHRIS REVIEWS: Risky Business (dir. paul brickman, 1983)

Risky Business opened in 1983, and it features, more or less, all of the hallmarks of an 80’s slasher flick. Ominous synthesizers, empty streets, shadowed faces, terrifying phone calls, autumn leaves skittering across the front lawn. Also, there is a preponderace of teenagers. And a confusion of sex and death and guilt.

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CHRIS REVIEWS: Amélie (dir. jean-pierre jeunet, 2001)

CHRIS REVIEWS: Amélie (dir. jean-pierre jeunet, 2001)

Amelie (Audrey Tautou) knows a great deal about the world but very little about how to live in it. Her favorite things include: skipping stones across the St. Martin canal, turning around at the cinema to look at the faces of the audience lit by the screen, and, while buying vegetables from the irascible grocer Collignon, secretly dipping her fingers ever so slowly into his plump bags of legumes. She lives alone with her cat and her dreams of pleasure in a small apartment in Paris. Her neighbors include a delicate old man she imagines to have bones made of glass and a wailing woman lost still in her grief from a love lost long ago.

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