Don’t you just hate it when a film you haven’t seen gets nominated for an award? While a trip to the cinema may answer your problems for the feature films, what about the shorts? We have one for you today – Shaun Tan’s Oscar-nominated short film, The Lost Thing.
Based on Tan’s 2002 kids book with the same name, the story sees a boy discover a strange creature at the beach while out collecting bottle tops. After spending the day with it, he realises it is lost and sets about finding a place where it belongs. While it’s essentially a children’s story, it will appeal to young and old alike.
What’s funnier: award-winning Washington Post book critic Ron Charles’s creative, entertaining video book reviews—or their runaway success?
By Dan Ozzi
The great media layoffs of 2008 hit book reviews like a nuclear blast. Stand-alone book sections folded at many newspapers, book editors and critics were laid off or took buyouts, and in the worst cases, newspapers like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer shut down their printing presses but stayed online, while some, like the Rocky Mountain News, closed altogether. Consequently, the competition for the remaining, coveted spots in reliable bookselling media has intensified. After all, how many authors can Jon Stewart interview in a given week? For many, the book review is in dire need of a savior, or at least some hope, a tiny green sprout poking out of the tattered, yellowing rubble of the postprint landscape. Enter a middle-aged man with slices of raw bacon draped over his head. …read more
In what may be his zaniest “Totally Hip Video Book Review” yet, the Washington Post’s Ron Charles picks his five favorite books of the year…more
