Thirty years ago, when I was seven years old, several very important things happened tome that changed my life. They involved two high-profile Stevens, a pen and paper, my fighting parents and an “escape” visit to the local flea pit cinema to watch a gentle, big-eyed alien melt my heart.

Around the same time “E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial” came out in theaters in 1982 – spreading its wonderful, timeless, fairytale messages to the world of childish innocence and the intense, emotional bond of a magical friendship – I had started understanding just how much I loved stories.

Thinking about this month being “E.T’s” 30th anniversary jogged memories of the first time I watched it and how, as a young boy of a similar age to Elliott (Henry Thomas) in the film, I desperately wanted a special...

In the past week "The Hobbit" director Peter Jackson has had to explain his choice of new technology for filming the two latest "Lord of the Rings" prequels: his choice being to shoot the movies at double the usual 24-frames-per-second filming speed to “improve” audiences’ cinema-going experience.

Personally, I love the innocent, heightened experience of unreality that comes from the feel of watching a film at 24 frames per second. I’m preaching to the converted mostly here, I think, as we all know 24 fps oozes magic because it’s visually different from the blaring starkness of how we view our normal day-to- day reality.

The look of film – as well as the characters, story, script, action, special effects, dialogue, music, cinematography, lighting and scenery – ensures...

How ironic – or poignant, perhaps – is it that the movie slate for 2012 is full of dark, twisted horror films, Armageddon-drenched fantasies, "ultimate baddie" superhero movies and gruesome re-imaginings of our favorite fairytales? 

Are we to read that Hollywood has correctly tapped into the world’s current economic gloom, providing us with a mirror of how we all feel right now? Filmmakers, after all, have historically been best at doing this: spotting a global psychological feeling and exploiting it, commenting on it, challenging it.

But what makes 2012 any different from any other year? 

Only that – looking at a round-up of upcoming films – there appears to be a core thread of dark fantasy, fables and fairytales being released throughout next year. Movies that seem to cry out to an...

In the past few weeks I’ve been back in the U.K. working in London on the BBC’s flagship sci-fi, time-travelling, monster-drenched space opera series "Doctor Who."

But, before I get hundreds of emails asking me for “contacts” at the show, as it’s even more popular in the states than it is in the U.K., I have to point out I wasn’t working on the show itself. Not yet, at least.

No, as someone who appears to have become (by design rather than accident) an expert on children’s writing, I’ve actually been writing for the BBC Worldwide children’s magazine "Doctor Who Adventures." This has been a ‘hard’ freelance gig. It involved watching every "Doctor Who" episode over and over again, creating puzzles about season six, designing pages, writing...