See Coraline in 3D NOW!

This is my IMDb review of Henry Selick's remarkable 3D animated movie, Coraline, which a friend of mine, Bill Mechanic, fought long and hard to get made. (Producers rarely get the credit they deserve for the commitment and passion they bring to their projects...their days do not exist solely of torturing writers in dank dungeons.) The movie is wonderful, fresh, funny and visually unique, go see it in 3D while you can!

Coraline: Original, beautiful, funny...and remarkable 3D

First, this film is excellent with or without the 3D. It is beautifully written and designed,

brilliantly directed by Henry Selick, the characters are totally engaging, the tone is

perfect animated-suburban-teen-goth with a sardonic edge, and the whole movie feels

fresh and funny and dark and satisfying.

Visually, it is stunning...and in 3D it is even more stunning. The circus mice alone (a

relatively minor element, but quite unforgettable) make it worth seeing in 3D, and the

decidedly trippy garden in the parallel world (eat your heart out, Alice In Wonderland)

made a friend of ours long for the days of 1990s rave culture!

One word of warning: it is fairly scary by children's movies standards, but a lot depends

on the child, and although at times it seems to echo (in a fairly gentle way) Japanese

horror movies of late, there is probably nothing more disturbing here than Cruella de Vil

in Disney's original animated 101 Dalmatians.

Even the score feels fresh, much of it performed by the Hungarian Radio Orchestra (if I

remember correctly from the credits) but with contributions, too, from Bruno Coulais and

They Might Be Giants (who made one of the best children's CDs, No!).

See Coraline and make every effort to see it in 3D. And if you do, sit through the entire

closing credits, for there is a nice little kicker right at the end.

Oscar Tweeting

Even though I work in the film industry, there are years when I don't watch the Oscars, but this was not one of them.

Danny Boyle is an old friend of mine - we worked together for eighteen months on an adaptation of my novel, The War Zone, before Tim Roth took over as director - and Danny's amazing Slumdog Millionaire was produced by Film4, the company for whom I am currently adapting Toby Barlow's remarkable book, Sharp Teeth.

So all in all there was good reason to watch this year's telecast and I thought it might be fun to "tweet" it on Twitter as well.  Here is my record of the night - a great one for Danny, Film4 and Slumdog - including the epic struggle with our four year old son, Hudson, to watch it at all.  Hudson is being raised in the Waldorf/Steiner philosophy and does not watch TV, with the notable exception of Wall-E on DVD - so a night with the TV on was unusual for all of us.

Because of the nature of the Twitter feed, you have to read these entries from the bottom up! (The times of the postings are a little random as they reflect when they were saved as PDF pages.)

YESSSSSSSS! Slumdog and Danny and Film4 and everyone

else. What an amazing night!

about 2 hours ago from TwitterFon

Fabulous for Danny...and love the Tigger jumping:-)

about 2 hours ago from TwitterFon

Slumdog's music ROCKS...but I love the Peter Gabriel song

from Wall-E, too (we have watched Wall-E 50 times). Go

Slumdog, to the biggies!!!

about 3 hours ago from TwitterFon

Another win for Slumdog, amazing. They should use Segways

for everyone to reach the stage at the Oscars!

about 3 hours ago from TwitterFon

You can't fail with Grease...or All That Jazz...or Lady

Marmalade. But where's the Slumdog closing number?

about 4 hours ago from TwitterFon

Another win for Slumdog, fantastic...the cinematography and

editing were outstanding.

about 4 hours ago from TwitterFon

That was Joaquin, iPhone keys close together:-)

about 4 hours ago from TwitterFon

Had a DVR freeze for dinner, catching up now. LOVE Ben

Stiller as Joaquim Phoenix...I thought Joaquim was really

funny on Letterman.

about 4 hours ago from TwitterFon

YAYYYYY...great win for Wall-E, it really deserves it.

about 4 hours ago from TwitterFon

Love the Wall-E Oscar animation.

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

And great to hear a shoutout for Tessa Ross of Film4.

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

Fantastic to see Slumdog win the first of many Golden Boys

tonight.

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

Hope Slumdog wins Adapted Screenplay... I like the way

they're presenting the clips with text over.

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

Great acceptance speech for Milk.

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

Milk is a great film, a testament to the human spirit. Glad to

see it win.

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

I loved Milk, too...a tough choice.

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

Time to make some tea, like a good Anglo-American. Hope TimeTraveler-FlyingSquirrel

Wall-E wins, I love it and so does our 4 year old, Hudson (he

of the epic battle).

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

YAY for Penelope Cruz!!!!!

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

Like the 20 minute delay line for Mickey Rourke.

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

Just survived an epic battle with our four year old who didn't

want to watch the Oscars. Amazingly he liked the musical

number.

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

Answer to the Danny Boyle/Trainspotting quiz: first 2 words

were, "Choose life."

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

I LOVE Penelope Cruz, one of the nicest and most beautiful

people in the film industry.

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

Great to see two accountants unconcerned (at least tonight)

by the bailout...unless the Kodak Theatre floods!

about 5 hours ago from TwitterFon

Danny Boyle quiz: what were the first 2 words of the amazing

opening voiceover to Trainspotting? A trip to the 90s for the

winner:-)

about 6 hours ago from TwitterFon

Love the Slumdog cast welcome to the official Oscars

telecast.

about 6 hours ago from TwitterFon

It will be Slumdog's night, I feel it in my bones!

about 6 hours ago from web

Oscar excitement building...and Hollywood is as cloudy as it

is here a few miles away in Topanga:-)

about 6 hours ago from web

Songs To The Human Spirit

Three films this year have stood out to me as songs to the human spirit, each very different.

The first is my friend Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, which is a remarkably tense and ultimately uplifting love-story set amid the striking poverty and the glitz of contemporary Mumbai, as astonishing in its kinetic energy - and wonderful soundtrack - as in the humanity of both its themes and its outstanding performances.

Slumdog and Danny, I truly hope, will walk away with a huge clutch of this year's Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

The second film that moved me hugely and that stands, as much as Slumdog, as a testament to the human spirit and to the universal cry for human dignity and civil rights, is Gus Van Sant's wonderful Milk, which I reviewed more fully earlier on this blog.

The third of my chosen trio is perhaps a little less likely: Pixar's astonishing Wall-E, which thanks to our four year old, Hudson's passion for it, we have viewed perhaps 50 times or more (as well as seeing it originally in the movie theater), each time finding additional details that just make us love it more.

To create an animated film that communicates the immensity and wonder of space - and more remarkably turns a love story between two robots into the most human and emotionally moving tale imaginable - is a very great achievement, and I think that on every level, including its uncompromising mix of dystopia and hope, Wall-E is a remarkable achievement and Pixar's most satisfying and greatest film to date.

May we all - like the children running through the slums of Mumbai in Slumdog, or like Harvey Milk graciously fighting for the right to live his life as he wishes, or like Wall-E and Eve harmoniously circling the Axiom spaceship in an inspirational space-waltz worthy of 2001 (to which Wall-E pays great homage) - dance through both the triumphs and great challenges of our lives, in the faith that love and courage always win out.

Bamboo: A Plant I Love

Watch this inspiring YouTube video about bamboo, a plant I love.

For those of you lacking patience, plant Buddha's Belly bamboo. It is remarkably fast-growing and will take over a corner or anywhere else in the garden in a year or two (it is also beautiful in pots, in fact pots make the shoots curl and twist in remarkable patterns)...but it is CLUMPING (in terms of its root system), so can be controlled by pruning new shoots around the edges.

Avoid planting RUNNING bamboo anywhere near your home or pool or anything else you wish to remain standing. Running bamboo (such as the beautiful Black Bamboo) can extend its roots as far as 2 miles or more (yes!) and break through concrete, cause walls to collapse, break pipes, damage foundations, etc.

Bamboo is beautiful but it is strong and it lives longer than we do, so treat it with love and respect! (Gardening is one of my greatest passions.)

Thank You to FT.com

A brief word to thank personnel at the Financial Times Online for their very kind and helpful response to some emails of mine recently.

I have always admired the Financial Times as a newspaper, for its political and arts coverage as much as its business coverage (I used to know their outstanding film critic, Nigel Andrews, very well when I lived in London, and my ex-partner, Ann Totterdell, deputized for him from time to time), and FT.com is a wonderful resource for news of all kinds, especially to those of us who live in the US.

It is worth noting that the newspaper was an early foreign admirer of President Obama and is much more liberal politically than its US counterpart, the Wall Street Journal.

Anyway, many thanks to the FT.com personnel. You know who you are!

A Vision of Hope (Revisited)

As we sink farther into the economic mire, as Obama speaks eloquently but frighteningly of the risk of turning "a crisis into a catastrophe," and as conversations with friends take a darker turn - although hopefully often leavened by lifeboat humor - I thought I would run this post again, despite the fact that it was written specifically in response to an earlier NIC (National Intelligence Council) report warning of a pretty bleak future for us all.

Hope seems more important now than ever, and even if hope may sometimes seem "woolly" - alone, it is rarely a solution to any problem - one thing is for sure: it is better to live in hope than not.

When I started this blog a year ago, I originally called it A Wolf At The Door, because from reading the financial media (which I do regularly, although my wife and various friends tell me quite firmly that I should stop if I wish to live a happy life), it seemed even in February 2008 (indeed even in 2007) that we were headed toward a very serious recession and possibly even a depression.

I had my doubts a year ago that we would face anything quite as severe as the Great Depression, and I am still hopeful that our knowledge of history - particularly the history of the Depression - will allow us to avoid so dark a path.

But things are getting tougher, and two friends last week made remarks that underlined just how much life has changed.  One talked of a highly successful friend who has been hard-hit by recent events, financially and in terms of his personal relationships and self-confidence, and whom she is very concerned about, in terms of his present psychological state.

Another mentioned the possibility of widespread breadlines, if things continue to decline in the coming months.  (Obama mentioned overwhelmed food banks in his speech tonight.)

It is almost impossible to imagine having that conversation here in America even twelve months ago when this was all beginning.  Obviously there have always been breadlines, and that is a sad fact, but the prospect of 1930s-style widespread suffering is something that hopefully is still far removed from reality.

Times are tough and are probably going to get tougher before they improve again.  But let us, as I say below, continue to live in hope.

Friday, November 21, 2008

A Vision Of Hope by Alexander Chow-Stuart

The CNN.com news story below, which reflects a report by the NIC (National Intelligence Council) predicting an increasingly unstable and unpredictable future by 2025, and the waning of American power, has been widely reported elsewhere.

While the world clearly faces extraordinary challenges in virtually every regard right now, whether it be financial instability, dwindling natural resources, global warming, poverty or domestic and international conflict, the words "thus it ever was" come to mind.

I remember reading media accounts of intelligence reports in the 1970s that predicted worldwide chaos and increasing violence by now, and while sadly there is always evidence of instability and violence, I am not sure that things are so much worse now than they were in the 1970s or certainly the 1930s.

The NIC, like any intelligence agency or any think-tank, has a job to do and its own existence to justify, and while I am no pie-in-the-sky idealist, I do believe that what President-Elect Obamabrought to the recent election, and will bring to the White House, is an overwhelming sense of hope: the "Audacity of Hope," to quote the title of one of his books.

If we focus on the negative, as we largely have for the past eight years, we are encouraged to live in fear and to temper our ambitions and our dreams.

If we live in hope, it doesn't mean that we deny the existence of the problems that surround us, but that we believe that we will find solutions, that together we will find greater strength, that if necessary we will shift our energy and food and manufacturing production into new directions - because we have to - and that while we may make mistakes initially, and while the balance of power, both political and financial, may change, ultimately we will make the right choices.

It is important that our new president be meticulously informed of the state of the world and of possible scenarios of the future, but my own hope is that Barack Obama doesn't lose his inspiring and empowering sense of hope amid the many challenges he will face as President and Commander in Chief.

He excited vast numbers of people - a 52% popular majority of the voters of this nation, as well as countless numbers of others around the globe - by offering, for the first time in memory, a political agenda based on a belief in our innate strengths and goodness as human beings.

As the parent of one young child, with another due in January, I pray for them and for all of us that President Obama's vision of the future will be achieved, that we will meet whatever challenges or disasters or attacks or dramatic changes in circumstance that may occur with ingenuity and imagination, with a faith in humankind and a belief that we can cherish our planet and build a better world for our children.

In the midst of the late 1930s and early 1940s in England, while Hitler was pressing Germany into an horrific war, and even as he served personally as a "watchman" during the Blitz of German bombers over London during that war, an American-born poet, T S Eliot, wrote one of the world's most beautiful and most spiritual books, reflecting on time, love, life, death, impermanence and permanence, and spirituality at its most sublime: Four Quartets.

As the world was falling into what appeared to be a vortex of destruction, Eliot wrote, among many other astonishingly beautiful passages:

"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor

fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance

is...and there is only the dance."

Let us all make it our responsibility each day to focus at least for a few moments on that still point and to hold to it - hold to the possibility of peace, both inner and outer, in this world, and of our role in this life as something to be honored and cherished and to be grateful for.

Let us continue to live in hope.

The Sun Behind The Clouds

Daily Dharma

The Sun Behind the Clouds
Samuel Bercholz on the enlightenment of the Buddha

This enlightenment of the Buddha's was profound and brilliant, accurate and powerful, and also warm and compassionate. It was like the sun behind the clouds.

Anyone who has taken off in an airplane on a grim and gloomy day knows that beyond the cloud cover the sun is always shining. Even at night the sun is shining, but then we can't see it because the earth is in the way, and probably our pillow also.

The Buddha explained that behind the cloud cover of thoughts--including very heavy clouds of emotionally charged thoughts backed up by entrenched habitual patterns--there is continual warm, bright, loving intelligence constantly shining. And even though in the midst of thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns, intelligence may become dulled and confused, it is still this intelligence in the midst of thoughts and emotions and habits that makes them so very captivating, so resourceful and various, so inexhaustible.

--Samuel Bercholz, Entering the Stream

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