Anyone would think writers were baby-phobic given how frequently newborns and childbirth are associated with evil or horror on film. Having been rather stingy with the DNA thus far, I have to make an educated guess that real-life nippers are half-way between the cuteness parcels and unappeasable demons they are portrayed as in the cinema. But I'm in a good mood today, so I've steered away from the junior Beelzebubs and gone in search of more positive progeny (but don't let that stop you):
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1. Nothing's left to nature these days - this is how the effects boffins created a smooth CGI delivery for the messianic bairn in 2006's splendid Children of Men.
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2. "What a time you chose to be born!" A former samurai ditches the child-rearing manuals and takes the hard route for single-parenting in Shogun Assassin. He has a very desirable ninja pram (3mins 10secs), though.
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3. Two innocents, starting out at very bottom and embarking on a great journey: Charlie Chaplin makes an impromptu dad in his first full-length feature, 1921's The Kid.
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4. Two bad dads (OK, one's a surrogate) undergo the bum-wiping, puke-mopping course in quick-sharpish self-improvement in recent foreign film standouts L'Enfant and Tsotsi.
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5. But you can't get too sentimental on baby matters - that's how Look Who's Talking happened. If there's one tot that ever was a deserving candidate for hillside abandonment, it's Bruce Willis' wisecracking infant.
Big love for all the considered suggestions last week for writer-directors. You pledged eternal allegiance to these maestros of motion:
1. Great to see that the lesser-spotted Malick is still highly prized on the film circuit - here's a recent sighting.
2. Shane Meadows is fast becoming the people's director - small wonder with his crafty, locals' way with on-screen banter.
3. Chan-wook Park's latest, I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK, is a minor disappointment, but he's got too much flair as a visual stylist and perverse panache to not deliver the goods again soon.
4. I believe Freud called it "the uncanny" - the start of Jan Svankmayer's Alice in Wonderland adaptation has it in spades (it's all that freaky stop-motion). I need to bone up on this guy.
5. They make 'em like Jim Jarmusch all too rarely these days. Indiewood's been subject to heavy deforestation, and it's not often a cool, careful, irreducible critter like Dead Man creeps out nowadays.
