Bony buoyancy

Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of Alice Sebold’s best-selling novel The Lovely Bones though “murderous is also optimistic”, headlines USA Today. For all the violence and grief of The Lovely Bones, Jackson believes the movie need not be a downer. In fact, he says, the film version of Sebold’s novel about teenager Susie Salmon, who watches from heaven as her family collapses after her murder, is downright uplifting. “I found the book to be curiously optimistic,” Jackson says by e-mail from New Zealand, where he’s finishing the film. “I felt inspired by Susie’s struggle to come to terms with her own death. In the face of overwhelming grief, she finds hope.” Jackson’s interpretation of heaven has been released in the first official image from the film due to be released in New Zealand on Boxing Day.