The famous author tells his son and their cat the story of Jesus in this mixed-bag family animation, voiced by an impressive cast

This syrupy cartoon account of the life of Jesus (voiced by Oscar Isaac) is narrated, with consummate weirdness, by Charles Dickens (Kenneth Branagh). It’s in fact based on a story Dickens wrote for his children (and wasn’t published until 1934, decades after his death). The idea is that Dickens is telling the story of the New Testament to his young son Walter (Roman Griffin Davis) and Walter’s impish cat, explaining to the King Arthur-obsessed Walter how Jesus was the real King of Kings and all that. And so we see Walter and Charles, in their mid-19th-century garb, wandering through scenes of JC’s life nearly two thousand years earlier, from the nativity to the crucifixion – much like Scrooge and his spectral buddies in A Christmas Carol as they wander through past, present and future Christmases. It rather drags out what is already a pretty long running time given the attention capacity of its target audience.

On a technical level, it is a pretty mixed bag. The backgrounds and rendering are richly detailed and full of compelling texture, and the lighting is lovely. But the character animation is really ugly: Jesus is given a disturbingly long neck that holds aloft a bobble head with smooth, classically white Jesus long silky hair – he looks like his own action figure. The disciples and ancillary characters are similarly caricatured and exaggerated, with the evil “Pharisees” who persecute Jesus (the word Jewish is barely ever spoken here) designed with pronounced noses.

Traders leaving the New York stock exchange were trying to make sense of another day of volatility – what comes next?

Traders leaving the New York stock exchange after the bell closed on Monday were sanguine about what had been, by an measure, a day of mood swings on Wall Street, as waves of volatility shook the stock markets, each one created by another deluge of headlines around Donald Trump’s trade war and global economic uncertainty.

“The markets opened down a lot, then there was a rumor that the tariffs were off, and they went back up, then all bets were off again and it went down,” said Steve Kos of Option Circle, who offered a series of trading day comparisons as he walked out on to Broad Street in lower Manhattan.

This richly detailed and exhaustive biography of the maverick 60s British music producer reveals a sonic visionary whose brilliance concealed a tragically violent temper

Joe Meek first tasted success as a record producer when he created the eerie backdrop for John Leyton’s gothic teen melodrama, Johnny Remember Me, which reached No 1 in the British pop charts in the summer of 1961. A mere six years later, on 3 February 1967, Meek’s name entered the mainstream consciousness in the most darkly dramatic way imaginable, when the news broke that he had killed his landlady, the elderly Violet Shenton, before turning the shotgun on himself.

In the time between, as Darryl Bullock notes with characteristic understatement in his richly detailed biography Love and Fury , the producer’s chaotic, but hugely creative, life was “directed by his passions and obsessions”.

From planning ahead and avoiding freezer burn to creating flavour bombs in ice trays, here are some expert tips

Preparing meals in advance and portioning out meat, fruit and vegetables to be frozen can save money, avoid waste and cut the time you spend cooking.

The Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool has recently opened a unique exhibition, No Iconic Images , in partnership with the Guardian and Magnum Photos. The exhibition visualises the editorial decisions made by Guardian news picture editors when selecting conflict images, displays work by a new generation of Magnum photographers and also presents the investigation by Forensic Architecture and the Centre for Spatial Technologies on the 2022 attack on the Kyiv TV tower. Here are a few examples of the work on display

Many dash across this Welsh island en route to Ireland, but it’s worth lingering to explore its historic houses, pristine beaches and thriving restaurant scene

In 1826, the opening of Thomas Telford’s Menai Suspension Bridge connected mainland Wales to the island of Ynys Môn (Anglesey) for the very first time. The bridge was critical to creating a fast road link to the port of Holyhead and so improving communication links between London and Dublin.

Today, motoring tourists take advantage of Telford’s vision every day (albeit linking up with the A55 North Wales Expressway) as they head to Holyhead to board ferries to Ireland. But in doing so, they bypass the many meandering, slow lane charms that dot the coastline of Ynys Môn.

Beijing accuses US of blackmail and adding a ‘mistake on top of a mistake’ as Wednesday deadline for latest levies looms

• Tariff market reaction –live updates

China’s government says it will “fight to the end” if the US continues to escalate the trade war, after Donald Trump threatened huge additional tariffs in response to China’s retaliatory measures.

On Tuesday, China’s commerce ministry accused the US of “blackmail” and said the US president’s threats of additional 50% tariffs if Beijing did not reverse its own 34% reciprocal tariff were a “mistake on top of a mistake”.

The married couple jump into cold water in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Plus: Ben Fogle encounters stone-age living. Here’s what to watch this evening

8.30pm, BBC Two
In case you’ve missed it in the Guardian’s pages over the past 10 years, wild swimming is really good for you! Julie Wilson Nimmo and Greg Hemphill are testament to this – they have been married for 25 years and seem very happy. In this six-parter, they explore the best cold water spots across Scotland, starting with urban locations in Glasgow and Edinburgh. But first, they must “warm up” by plunging into an ice bath for something “colder than you’ve ever experienced” for more than 10 minutes. Hollie Richardson

Exclusive: Scale of looming job losses prompts NHS leaders to ask Treasury to cover costs

Hospitals in England could axe more than 100,000 jobs as a result of the huge reorganisation and brutal cost-cutting ordered by Wes Streeting and the NHS’s new boss.

The scale of looming job losses is so large that NHS leaders have urged the Treasury to cover the costs involved, which they say could top £2bn, because they do not have the money.