It’s 2007, before teen audiences would learn that Kristen Stewart was to be their Bella Swan. There’s so much acclaim for her tiny role in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, you’d be forgiven for thinking the former child actress was being prepped for major stardom.
Earlier this year I read Lion, the true story of a little boy who survives the streets of Kolkata before being adopted by an Australian family. Years later, he tracks down his mother in rural India using Google Earth. It became a hit movie, which inspired me to get cracking with more novels destined to reach our screens!
The search for a male star who can replace Harrison Ford continues. As the eponymous Valerian, Dane DeHaan is supposed to be a happy-go-lucky, square-jawed hero and roguish galactic agent.
To the Bone opens with two alien stick figures walking down a bright corridor. It’s peaceful, as the beings glide from the light towards the camera….and into a group therapy session/art class, where a girl is feigning righteous anger at magazines for promoting thinness.
The Girls was one of the biggest, most hyped books of 2016. Debut author Emma Cline’s manuscript sparked a bidding war and was optioned by a powerful Hollywood producer before it even reached shelves.
Are you glad it’s back? And by ‘it’ I mean the TV phenomenon that’s as big as Star Wars, Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings?
In the summer, my cat makes me sit outside where I can’t get any WiFi. Apparently she is too scared to stay in the garden by herself, and just feels safer when I’m there.
There are certain things you just know about yourself – like whether or not you’d be cut out for daring interplanetary exploration. Personally, I can confidently say I wouldn’t be much good.
The live-action Ghost in the Shell is a box office dud then, and there are people who are really happy about that. Not necessarily because they are die-hard fans of the original Japanese manga and anime, but because of so-called “whitewashing”.
Between 1989 and 1999, Disney released some of the most successful animated films of all time. Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film ever to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination. Known as the Disney Renaissance, it created a lifelong obsession for many ’90s kids who took the characters and songs to their hearts.
There was a monumental flub at the Oscars ceremony this year: I wasn’t invited! The organizers obviously read my blog and know I don’t like travelling. Yes, yes, that must be it.
In 1980s India, five-year-old Saroo, like many small children in poor communities, looks after a younger sibling; he has special responsibility for his baby sister Shekila. He washes and feeds her, and plays games of peekaboo. Saroo’s streetwise big brothers, Guddu and Kallu, take care of each other and little Saroo.
Where The Crown was a soothing, nostalgic view of Britain’s unique greatness, new BBC drama SS-GB – based on Len Deighton’s alternate-history potboiler – is set in a dystopian 1941 where the Nazis won the Battle of Britain.
Who in their right mind would want to live in the White House?
Luke Skywalker got all the glory for destroying the Death Star in A New Hope. Finally we get the true story of the previously unsung band of rebels who swiped the crucial plans.
Netflix’s new show, The Crown, cost around 100 million dollars to make, which would cover nearly a third of the cost of the Buckingham Palace renovations. It’s got great reviews, too – the series, not the building plans, which are proving quite controversial. (And all for a palace that according to this series, nobody wants to live in.)
The newly-elected Pope Pius XIII dreams he’s emerging from a pyramid of sleeping human babies. He awakens, decides what to wear, greets his flunkies and prepares to make his first address from Saint Peter’s Basilica.
Ransom Rigg’s YA fantasy Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children sold millions and has been translated into 40 languages. Now Tim Burton’s adaptation has found a perch at the top of the US and international box offices.
Soap actress and Doctor Who sidekick Jenna Coleman made her bow as Queen Victoria in ITV’s new eight-part series about the monarch’s reign. The first two episodes were screened together as a feature-length debut at the end of August.
As soon as I started writing about Eva Green, I find myself changing the font to ‘Century Gothic’.
The otherworldly Miss Eva covers the latest issue of The Edit, Net-A-Porter’s online magazine. She is promoting her new movie, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, directed by Tim Burton. She will be leading a strong cast, including Samuel L. Jackson and Judi Dench.
