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Shoppers handed retailers a healthy sales gain in October before Sandy pummeled the East Coast, but questions remain about how recovery efforts after the storm will affect holiday spending. Rising home sales and a rallying stock market have boosted consumers' confidence and willingness to buy, industry experts say. But retailers are waiting to see whether shoppers who must replace cars and repair or rebuild homes will still be able - or in the mood - to splurge on gifts during November and December.

In what may be an industry first, a cloud services firm is offering unlimited storage for less than $5 a month. Cloud Engines, a San Francisco-based company, has begun offering a new plan through its Pogoplug cloud service that lets users store unlimited files, and any type, on the company's servers for $4.95 a month. The new Pogoplug plan went live last week and lets users save files to the cloud that they can then access from any device. Cloud Engines CEO Dan Putterman said there is no limit to the devices on which you can access or save files.

The story of Tom Hanks' "Cloud Atlas" this weekend isn't its dismal box office. With the movie's complicated premise(s), extended length/reduced number of play times, and its not-quite-bankable-anymore stars , the Warner Bros release was always in for a rough ride. When the film received a number of high-profile unfavorable reviews, you knew the car would be skidding off a cliff. The more interesting question than how it performed is the film itself: what it means and, really, what it means that it was made.

David Mitchell came to Los Angeles because of an 8-year-old book. Thanks to the movie by Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer, Mitchell's novel "Cloud Atlas" has landed on American bestseller lists -- right behind the decidedly less literary trilogy "50 Shades of Grey. " Mitchell sat down with the L.A. Times' Carolyn Kellogg -- in this extended interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, he talks in detail about his writing process, what makes a book last and the "Cloud Atlas" adaptation.

No woman was ever ruined by a book, New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker famously said, but filmmakers are always being seduced by them, with unlucky audiences left to pay the price. The latest case in point is "Cloud Atlas," which has been turned into a film with muddled, frustrating results. It's not difficult to see why the filmmaking Wachowski siblings joined forces with Tom Tykwer to jointly write and direct a version of David Mitchell's hugely ambitious novel. It's a book that deals with, as Andy Wachowski has said, "the sum of human experience," that unabashedly investigates what is important in life.

I'm watching Kansas basketball players dancing across their court Gangnam Style. I'm watching Tom Izzo marching across his Michigan State court dressed like Iron Man. From all corners of the country, I'm hearing of screeches and laughs while feeling the joyful warmth that accompanies the start of college basketball practice. Yet, just down the street, amid the greatest buzz for a UCLA season in many years, the silence is chilling. Instead of players running giddily into the new season through theatrical billows of smoke, it is the team that remains stuck in a dark cloud.

No strangers approach David Mitchell for an autograph as he eats lunch at a Japanese restaurant on Sawtelle Boulevard. Nor does anyone bother him when he stops by Diesel Books in Brentwood to sign copies of his novel. The acclaimed British author of "Cloud Atlas" looks like a slightly hip literature professor, a lean 43-year-old in a wide-wale corduroy jacket. The $102-million movie version of "Cloud Atlas," directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, might just take Mitchell from well-regarded to widely known.

"Have you been to the loo yet?" Lana Wachowski asks just before a special screening of "Cloud Atlas" at the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in Hollywood begins. As we just met two minutes ago, it's a question that feels just a touch personal. Really, though, she's just looking out for her guest's best interests. "Cloud Atlas," the audacious, time-tripping, Big Idea movie Lana adapted and directed with her brother, Andy, and friend Tom Tykwer, clocks in at a sprawling 2 hours and 52 minutes.

"Cloud Atlas," based on the 2004 novel by David Mitchell, tells six nested stories spanning several hundred years and three continents. Cast members including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Jim Broadbent play multiple interconnected roles across the centuries. 1. In 1849 in the remote South Pacific, where the slave trade is flourishing, Dr. Goose (Hanks) administers medicine of dubious value to naive traveler Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess). Ewing's peculiar connection to a slave creates trouble aboard their ship.

NEW YORK - As they swept through airports while making their ambitious, risky new movie, "Cloud Atlas," directors Andy and Lana Wachowski got used to answering a surprisingly tough question from customs officials. "They'd say, 'What's your movie about?'" said Andy. "It's about the sum of human experience. They always look up and go, 'Oh, really…'" "Our target audience is customs officials," whispered Lana. PHOTOS: Scenes from 'Cloud Atlas' Actually, their target audience is grown-ups.