WELLS, Simon 1961-

PERSONAL:

Born 1961.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Enteraction TV, 8 Park Place, Lawn Lane, Vauxhall, London, SW8 1UD England.

CAREER:

Director. Films include An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Universal City Studios, 1991; We're Back!: A Dinosaur's Story, Universal City Studios, 1993; Balto, Universal City Studios, 1995; The Prince of Egypt, Dreamworks SKG, 1998; The Time Machine, DreamWorks Pictures, 2002. WCRS, London, England, former board member; Enteraction TV, London, England, head of branded programming division, 2002—.

WRITINGS:

(With Ali Catterall) Your Face Here: British Cult Movies since the Sixties, Fourth Estate (London, England), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS:

Simon Wells, the great-grandson of famous author H. G. Wells, worked in the film industry for many years before writing his first book, Your Face Here: British Cult Movies since the Sixties. After directing several animated features, Wells made his live-action directing debut with a film adaptation of his great-grandfather's novel The Time Machine in 2002. This was not Wells's first experience with time-traveling motion pictures: he was inspired to make movies after seeing the first Back to the Future film, and then he actually worked on the sequels, Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III.

Your Face Here is a book for people who are already devotees of the cult classics it covers, including, among others, A Hard Day's Night, A Clockwork Orange, and Trainspotting. Although the book does include plot summaries of the movies, the bulk of it is "an enjoyable and largely uncritical homage to the selling power of the cult movie and patriotic spirit," Michael Caines remarked in the Times Literary Supplement. Wells and his coauthor, Ali Catterall, made pilgrimages to the places where the movies were shot and collected anecdotes about the filming process from the actors and others who were involved. Wells and Catterall "clearly loved doing this book," a reviewer noted in the Guardian. "It shows on every page."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Singer, Michael, Michael Singer's Film Directors, Lone Eagle Publishing (Los Angeles, CA), 1992.

Wallflower Critical Guide to Contemporary North

American Directors, Wallflower Press (London, England), 2000.

PERIODICALS

Campaign, June 7, 2002, "Simon Wells Joins Enteraction TV," p. 3.

Daily Variety, March 8, 2002, Todd McCarthy, review of The Time Machine, pp. 12-13.

Esquire, March, 2002, interview with Simon Wells, p. 64.

Film Journal International, April, 2002, Doris Toumarkine, review of The Time Machine, pp. 32-33.

Guardian, September 28, 2002, review of Your Face Here: British Cult Movies since the Sixties.

Hollywood Reporter, March 8, 2002, Kirk Honeycutt, review of The Time Machine, pp. 12-13.

M2 Best Books, March 15, 2002, review of The Time Machine.

Nation, January 11, 1999, Stuart Klawans, review of The Prince of Egypt, p. 35; April 1, 2002, Stuart Klawans, review of The Time Machine, p. 44.

New Media Age, June 6, 2002, "Enteraction TV Opens Branded Content Arm," p. 12.

New York Times, November 22, 1991, Stephen Holden, review of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, pp. B10, C21; April 5, 1996, review of Balto, pp. B14, D17; December 18, 1998, Janet Maslin, review of The Prince of Egypt, p. E17; March 3, 2002, Lewis Beale, review of The Time Machine, p. AR18; March 8, 2002, Elvis Mitchell, review of The Time Machine, pp. B14, E12; March 15, 2002, Peter M. Nichols, review of The Time Machine, pp. B10, E8.

Parabola, spring, 1999, Shanti Fader, review of The Prince of Egypt, p. 135.

Premiere, March, 2002, Anna David, review of The Time Machine, pp. 60-62.

Sight and Sound, January, 1992, Kim Newman, review of An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, p. 40.

Times Literary Supplement, April 12, 2002, review of Your Face Here, pp. 30-31. US Weekly, March 18, 2002, Andrew Johnston, review of The Time Machine, p. 69.

Variety, November 25, 1991, Joseph McBride, review of An American Tale: Fievel Goes West, p. 40; January 1, 1996, review of Balto, p. 83; December 14, 1998, Glenn Lovell, review of The Prince of Egypt, p. 130; March 11, 2002, Todd McCarthy, review of The Time Machine, pp. 31-32.

Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2002, Joe Morganstern, review of The Time Machine, p. W1.

ONLINE

About.com,http://www.about.com/ (September 9, 2002), "Exclusive Simon Wells Interview."

Canoe,http://www.canoe.ca/ (May 11, 2001), "Director Too Ill to Finish 'Time Machine.'"

Filmforce,http://filmforce.ign.com/ (July 25, 2001), "Simon Wells Talks Time Machine."

IFilm,http://www.ifilm.com/ (September 9, 2002).

Internet Movie Database,http://www.imdb.com/ (December 10, 2002).

Northern Rivers Echo (Lismore, New South Wales, Australia), http://www.echonews.com/ (September 9, 2002), Evelyn Gough, review of The Time Machine. *