Alexander Stuart

A quick update on my Kickstarter campaign to raise funding to complete my noir love story and thriller, Chinatown Nights - the longest and most complex novel I have written in my career. Please watch the brief (two minute) video above and consider contributing, if you can. At the end of the first week, contributions to Kickstarter have already raised $1,470. Thank you to everyone who has been kind enough to pledge! [Please note that, as of August 23 2012, I have now started a new Kickstarter campaign for Chinatown Nights , and the links above now connect to the new campaign.]

I know I've posted this before ( John Boswell's Astonishing Symphony of Science Music Videos ), but this particular autotuned song,  We Are Star Dust , has been lodged in my mind, because it is so extraordinarily inspiring and beautiful. I can listen to it over and over again - and watch the video repeatedly - because it speaks not only to my heart, but to some cosmic core within me. 

We are all very disappointed that Hudson's mid-2007 Mac Mini, running Lion, won't upgrade to Mountain Lion, because it is too old (although it has an Intel dual-core processor and runs Lion with no problems). Hudson (who was eight on Monday) was so excited about Mountain Lion that he had been posting video updates as its release approached - and had saved his own $20 to pay for the Mountain Lion upgrade. This is his first MAJOR disappointment with Apple. He may well be spending more time with Windows 8, a developer version of which he has been running on his netbook for almost six months.

All photographs 2012 Alexander Chow-Stuart. We're in Monterey to celebrate our beautiful, magical son Hudson's eighth birthday. It is so astonishing to us that eight years have passed since he was born - and so wonderful for me to be back by the ocean, waking to the sound of the waves pounding the beach. I feel as if I've come home, perhaps because my father was born in a tiny Scottish fishing village, Rosehearty, near Aberdeen. Hudson flies his kite - before opening his gifts! It was also incredible playing in the (very cold) surf with Hudson and Paradise. Hudson enjoys bodyboarding - and Paradise enjoys being carried over the waves and scooped up as the biggest ones approach. A wonderful day, an important occasion for us as a family - and a perfect place to celebrate it. Many thanks to the extraordinarily kind folks at the Best Western Monterey Beach Resort , especially the manager, Hugh Hedin, and Genevieve, on the desk, who helped arrange a special b

I have just launched my Kickstarter project - my novel, CHINATOWN NIGHTS - Blade Runner meets The Maltese Falcon - an explosive love story and thriller set in 1919, interweaving real-life and fictional characters. It is the longest and most complex work I have ever written, one that has been in my life since it was first commissioned by Doubleday in the UK. I have written a substantial part of the book, but I would like to raise finance through Kickstarter to give me the ti me and space to develop its potential to its full, and to explore in a thrilling way the complex interrelationships and narratives between the characters. Please watch the VIDEO at the Kickstarter site above . I hope you enjoy it, I hope you're as excited by Chinatown Nights as I am, and by the incentives offered - and I hope you'll contribute at any level! Every dollar counts...I want this to be the most spectacular event in my life! Please be the first to contribute to my Kick

The Canyons, trailer image. Acclaimed author Bret Easton Ellis is making an original foray into filmmaking with his partners, director Paul Schrader (who wrote  Martin Scorsese's astonishing Taxi Driver and Raging Bull , and directed the classic, Giorgio Moroder-scored American Gigolo ) and producer Braxton Pope , with a project called The Canyons - set in contemporary LA and financed in part through Kickstarter , the radical new crowd-funding social platform. The trio set out to raise $100,000 to add to the money they were putting into the project themselves - in order to bypass the interminable Hollywood studio development process - and wound up exceeding their goal and raising almost $160,000. I know Bret a little, from a series of dinners we had a few years back, when I was interested in turning Bret's outstanding, self-referential horror novel, Lunar Park, into a film.  Several of his books have been adapted as movies - including both the zeitgeist-definin

Here's another stunning Lana Del Rey song and video. I have become such a fan. Her music really reaches me, and I love the filmmakers she works with on her videos (in this case, director  Yoann Lemoine ). This one looks especially great in black and white. Enjoy!

On Sunday, we picnicked and hiked at Lyons Lake Dam, one of our absolutely favorite spots in Tuolumne County.  All photographs and video by Alexander Chow-Stuart 2012. The forest around the lake has both a tranquil quality...and a subtle sense of a David Lynch silence haunting the spaces between the trees. The dam itself is magnificent and a thrill to walk across and to walk under. Our children love it here - and so does our dog, Husky Go-Go ("go-go" is Mandarin for "dog;" she is seen running in the video above), whose first major excursion off the leash led to a wild run back and forth through the trees and the water. Total abandonment and joy. A heartwarming welcome.

I have become so enamored of Lana Del Rey's exquisite songs and equally beautiful music videos.  This one, for Carmen , is quite extraordinary - please watch all the way through to the end, when the music changes and Lana dances to one of the most haunting classical piano pieces ever, Erik Satie's   Gymnopédie No.1 - just astonishing.

I'm rapidly becoming a fan of the work of Sean and Seng , who made this short film of model Frida Aasen for Dazed & Confused , as well as the Interview magazine film of Lana Del Rey , a few posts below.

Artwork by ACS 2012. I'm aiming to have a totally superficial day .

I LOVE every minute of this video for Lana Del Rey's National Anthem - and I love the song.

I'm falling in love with Lana Del Rey - and this short film by Interview magazine.

Please watch this beautiful short video, In The Land Of Blue Whales , about the wonderful work being done with magnificent blue whales by Sri Lankan marine biologist, Asha de Vos. Her passion and love for these gigantic creatures is self-evident. It is remarkable to think that blue whales are actually bigger than any dinosaur that we know of, including prehistoric sea creatures, because gravity makes it unlikely that anything as large as a blue whale could ever exist on land. Certainly no evidence has been found of a creature that is larger. So, in oceans around the globe, sharing the planet with us today, are living creatures bigger than any of the giant reptiles that so fascinate us. In fact, the main arteries of a blue whale are so big that a human could comfortably swim through them! Tragically, blue whales were hunted almost to extinction in the 20th Century. It is only thanks to the efforts of marine biologists and conservationists such as Asha de Vos that more attent

Wishing everyone a wonderful 4th of July, not least our beautiful lovebird Miso, who was hatched on this day four years ago. Sometimes known fondly as Generalissimo Miso, for his dictatorial tendencies, Miso has been a fantastic member of the family - and object of fascination and fun for Hudson, Paradise and their friends - since he first joined us. Viva Generalissimo Miso!