Alexander Stuart

The perfect way to watch Ang Lee's Life of Pi. I am totally entranced by this image of cinemagoers watching Ang Lee's magnificent Life Of Pi as they should, on the water, in boats. A friend, Jane Hart , Curator of Exhibitions at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood , Florida, posted it to Facebook this week, and I have been trying ever since to discover whether this is a "real" picture - of a physical location - or whether it is (beautifully) photoshopped. If it is real, this is where I should like to watch all movies in future. Please, no one throw popcorn in the water. And no one release any Bengal tigers into the audience!

The Shanghai skyline - one of the world's most beautiful. Shanghai is rapidly becoming one of the most exciting cities on Earth. It has undoubtedly one of the most beautiful skylines, and the pace of development is extraordinary.  As China positions itself to overtake the US economy within the next few years, Shanghai resembles Manhattan in the 1890s - a dynamic, modern, powerhouse city designed for the future, but with evocative echoes of the past, not least in what remains of its wonderful Art Deco architecture. Stunning Shanghai architecture. Shanghai's architecture is fresh and vital, a beautiful combination of the new, the functional and the decorative. Its city planners have a bold vision - and both the resources and support to accomplish what would be far more challenging in many of the world's major cities, where zoning laws and (albeit often warranted) protection of historical buildings make achieving major changes to the cityscape difficult.

www.davidtait.com My friend David Tait is busy preparing for his forthcoming expedition, starting March 29, to summit Everest for his sixth time, to raise money for the NSPCC and awareness of child sexual abuse, of which David himself was a victim as a ten year old child. British Mountaineer and NSPCC campaigner, David Tait. He was the first westerner to  traverse Everest North-South  in 2007 - he climbed the north side and descended the south side, along with  his  Sherpa  climbing companion,  Phurba Tashi , who was the first non-westerner to accomplish the north-south traverse. The North Ridge route, from the Tibetan side of Everest, involves spending longer periods at higher altitudes than the South Side (which Sir Edmund Hillary first climbed in 1953 - please see below), and also involves using ladders and more challenging rock climbing on the steep steps of the North Ridge route. In fact, when David achieved this remarkable feat, his original intention

Extract from  The Guardian Questionnaire  with Alexander Stuart, compiled by Rosanna Greenstreet for  The Guardian   newspaper in Britain: What is your greatest happiness? Being home with my wife and children. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Hatred. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? I'm more interested in vice. What would your motto be? Breathe slowly and enjoy. How would you like to die? With a sense of bliss. Do you believe in life after death? I believe in continuity. How would you like to be remembered? With a smile. What is the most important lesson life has taught you? To love.

Ang Lee's Life of Pi, courtesy 20th Century Fox. My record of picking Oscar winners (apart from Slumdog Millionaire in 2009) is so bad that I might as well predict It Happened One Night as tomorrow's Oscar triumph (if you've never seen it, do - it more than deserved the "Big Five" Oscars it won in 1935). Before this year's Oscars, though, I want to say a word about Ang Lee's Life of Pi , which without doubt deserves the Oscar for Trippiest Film of the Year. Life of Pi is the first time that I have watched a movie and felt that 3D made a profound difference to the creative success of the film. There were sequences in James Cameron's Avatar that really used 3D well, but almost every shot in Pi seems to have been composed with the extra dimension in mind. Elements float at various depths, whether it is the astonishing hummingbird shot at the beginning, or the levels of swimming pool and sky shortly after, or the astonishing cosmic depths