Alexander Stuart

Original Article "Starman Over The Rainbow" Copyright  © 1972 Alexander Stuart; Photographs Copyright  © 1972 Mick Rock. Original Article  "Starman Over The Rainbow"  Copyright  © 1972 Alexander Stuart;  Photographs Copyright  © 1972 Mick Rock. In honor of my birthday week - and the release of David Bowie's wonderful new song and video, Where Are We Now?  - I am reproducing here one of the earliest pieces of professional writing of my career, Starman Over The Rainbow, a review of David Bowie's legendary Ziggy Stardust show on Saturday, August 19, 1972 at London's Rainbow Theatre - a show that introduced multi-media theater and mime to rock music, not to mention challenging the sexual, cultural and musical stereotypes of the day. I was seventeen at the time that I wrote this review. I had recently been invited by editor Robin Bean to write professionally (while still at the British equivalent of high school, Bexley Grammar School) for Fi

The War Zone Kindle Edition. The Kindle price of my novel The War Zone: 20th Anniversary Edition  is now $4.99. A dark, ironic, emotionally-charged novel about incest, adolescent fury and parental morality, the novel won Britain's prestigious Whitbread Prize for Best Novel (now the  Costa Book Awards ) when it was first published, only to have the prize snatched away amid public controversy when one of the judges politicked behind the scenes. Dubbed a contemporary  Catcher in the Rye  by Time Out magazine,  The War Zone  was turned into a powerful multi-award-winning film by Oscar-nominated actor-director  Tim Roth , which premiered at Sundance and went on to attract great acclaim at film festivals around the world.  The film can be  streamed  from  Netflix  and is available on  DVD  through  Amazon . The War Zone is available  FREE ON KINDLE TO AMAZON PRIME MEMBERS.

True, and very sad. Why not have the TSA regularly inspect everyone's guns, wherever they are? Guns are weapons of mass destruction. It is also sickening that the ranking of politicians in this country by the National Rifle Association has any significance at all. There should at least be a Second Amendment protection of the Right To Wear Shoes.

A truly extraordinary man and a beacon for those who believe in peace and equality: Martin Luther King, Jr. Happy Martin Luther King, Jr  Day (his assassination still saddens me deeply, so many years later) and Happy Inauguration Day to our wonderful president, Barack Obama , whose presidency MLK helped make possible. I am honored and proud to have a president who is a caring human being, intelligent, very hard-working and quietly ambitious to achieve so much in his second term. Washington has not defeated him - neither have all the ridiculous haters in this country who, from the start of his presidency (and for reasons which more often than not, I am certain, relate to racism), have tried to deny and defeat it. He is a two-term president, reelected by more than half of this nation. He is our president, we should respect him - and not allow the likes of the moron Donald Trump to be so offensive toward him. Photograph courtesy of Alex Wong/Getty Images (Gu

WARNING: THE ABOVE VIDEO CONTAINS HIGHLY DISTURBING AND VIOLENT MATERIAL, IN KEEPING WITH ITS SUBJECT MATTER. Anyone concerned about the ridiculous access to guns in this country should watch Gus Van Sant's remarkable 2003 film, Elephant, loosely inspired by the events at Columbine. The film, for the most part, has a strange semi-documentary yet almost lyrical feel to it (with some truly extraordinary Steadicam work throughout) - and captures high school life remarkably well. It also plays with time, subtly repeating events from different perspectives. The 10 minute extract here is pret ty much the culmination of the film - so if you want to watch Elephant all the way through, perhaps just stream or rent or buy it. But these images - all the more disturbing in the wake of the appalling tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown - capture something of the inanity, randomness and tragedy of mass shootings. And anyone who argues that guns don't