Spielberg gives War Horse author Michael Morpurgo a chance to live his dream
Michael Morpurgo's bit part in Stephen Spielberg's film version of War Horse revived his ambition to follow his parents into an acting career, writes Dalya Alberge
Hobbit forming: will Peter Jackson give Tolkien’s story a new ending?
Ben Child: The dark arts of film demanded Jackson ham up the love story in LOTR, but bringing the Necromancer – later Sauron – into The Hobbit's denouement could break the story's spell altogether
Charles Dickens has been ruined by the BBC
You don't have to like him. But, Howard Jacobson asks, if Dickens gets up your nose, why don't you simply leave him alone
Dickens on screen: the highs and the lows
There have been more than 400 film and TV adaptations so far, and counting, writes Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, some brilliant, some memorably awful
My favourite film: The Age of Innocence
Andrew Gilchrist continues our writers' favourite films series with an elegant Scorsese adaptation of an Edith Wharton classic
Elijah Wood: ‘I was thrilled to play Frodo Baggins in The Hobbit’
Since Lord of the Rings, the actor has avoided big-budget epics. But now he's reprising his hobbit role and starring in a lavish Treasure Island adaptation
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey trailer lets the darkness bind it
Ben Child: On this showing, Peter Jackson has managed to maintain the tone he took in adapting Tolkien's much icier Lord of the Rings
Get the alternative Harry Potter experience
Tickets for the Warner Brothers' Harry Potter tour will set you back £83 for a family ticket. But there are other, less obvious ways to follow the Potter trail
Douglas Booth: Lines of beauty
You could spend a lifetime gazing at pictures of Douglas Booth, so the Observer fashion team cast him as Dorian Gray, the man who sold his soul to remain gorgeous. Is this 19-year-old actor the most beautiful boy in the world?
China banks on bloody blockbuster to win friends … and Oscars
State partially funds Zhang Yimou's The Flowers of War – starring Christian Bale and set during 1937 Rape of Nanking – to boost nation's film industry
Gilbert Adair obituary
Witty, self-deprecating writer with a passion for cinema whose work shone 'like sparklers in the autumn gloom'
Now Wait for Last Year dusts off a Philip K Dick tale … again
Ben Child: Do execs dream of Philip K Dick stories? His novel of a humanity embroiled in inter-species war is the latest to be optioned
Gilbert Adair: a man of letters for the cinema age
Peter Bradshaw: In another era, Gilbert Adair would have written on Herodotus. As it was he focused his energies on an exciting young medium
My favourite film: The Night of the Hunter
Peter Kimpton tops up our writers' favourite film series with an ode to Charles Laughton's 1955 thriller, a tale as dark and disquieting as a half-forgotten dream
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo producer blasts film critic over early review
Scott Rudin bans New Yorker reviewer David Denby from future press screenings for breaking film's embargo