EAT, PRAY, LOVE The Movie Trailer
Saturday, March 20th, 2010The trailer’s just been released. The movie, starring Julia Roberts, arrives in theaters on August 16th.
Amazingly, some libraries still have holds of over 2:1 on the book.
Archive for the ‘Books & Movies’ Category
RUNAWAYS Featured in PEOPLE
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010The 3/29 issue of People features three of the members of the 70’s girl group The Runaways. Joan Jett, still a touring musician, was part of that group. The biopic The Runaways, opens in a limited number of theaters on Friday and for it’s full run on April 9th. It is based on Cherie Curry’s 1989 memoir, Neon Angel, recently updated as a tie-in.
The movie is also reviewed in that issue, saying “the script lacks substance, but the actresses deliver on style.” Kristin Stewart, (she plays Bella in the Twilight movies) plays Jett and Dakota Fanning, who is also in the Twilight movies, plays singer Cherie Currie.
Official Web site: RunawaysMovie.com
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Superheroes KICK ASS
Monday, March 15th, 2010This week Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass rocketed to the top of the NYT Graphic Books Hardcover Best Seller list. Heralded as one of the very few comics to treat superhero traditions realistically while also taking place in our world, Kick-Ass is a darkly humorous look at what might actually happen if a disgruntled teenager decided to don a costume and take to the streets to fight crime. Namely, he’d suffer horrifying injuries and have little, if any, success. The key is not giving up. The film adaptation (see trailer here) is due out in theaters April 16th, so the buzz on this first collection is high and gaining ground. Worldcat shows that only 19 public libraries own it, and in my system the reserves have been going steadily up.
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While only a handful of comics present superheroes in our own world, there are a number of series that should appeal to the readers of Kick-Ass.
Millar is famous for pushing boundaries in terms of violence, and he has a blast defying the conventions of superhero stories. The Authority, which Millar took on after the equally acerbic series creator Warren Ellis departed, takes the trope of a superhero team and mucks up their missions with fascist agendas, reckless destruction, and bitter infighting. The world at large begins to question just why these people are in charge, and realizes perhaps too late that The Authority dictates behavior precisely because they have the power and no one is capable of stopping them.
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Warren Ellis has created numerous series over the years that share that glee for flying in the face of expectations and reveling in dirtying up the perception of what people do with their superpowers. The most irreverent of these is the out-to-shock humor of Nextwave, a series that pulls a number of forgotten heroes from Marvel pages and unleashes them as one of the most dysfunctional teams yet portrayed on the page. The key to this series is humor rather than grit, but the series includes wonderfully rendered action sequences and a strong attitude.
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Akin to Ellis’s lighter side, Adam Warren’s manga-style superheroine comic Empowered has gained fans with every issue. Empowered follows the struggles of one young woman to be the best superhero she can be despite crippling self-esteem issues, a power-giving suit that barely holds together, and a less than stellar record of heroic saves. Her buxom form is frequently on display in her skin-tight, constantly ripping suit, so the sexy imagery is high and may keep readers from realizing how engagingly critical the series is. Empowered is a laugh-out-loud satire of female superheroes and Warren knows very well how to skewer the genre.
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Brian Michael Bendis’s epic superhero police procedural, Powers, mixes superheroes with noir and constructs true-to-life policies that would fall into place if superheroes existed. In the world of Powers, if have to have actual super-abilities to don a costume. If you don’t, masked heroism is illegal. The second collected edition in the series, Roleplay, takes a hard look at fans and what happens when ordinary folks get mixed up in trying to be superheroes without any true power or skill.
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If it’s teenage superheroes readers want, one of the best recent continuing series is Robert Kirkman’s Invincible, which covers Mark Grayson’s coming of age as both an ordinary teenager and as the super-powered son of Omni-Man. He’s inherited many of his father’s strengths, but he must also contend with his father’s secrets. Kirkman and artist Cory Walker display impeccable senses of comic timing and family dynamics.
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Special thanks to James Sime, of Isotope, the coolest comic book lounge I know, for help in brainstorming titles.
NEON ANGEL To Big Screen
Monday, March 15th, 2010Coming to theaters April 9th (debuting in a limited number of theaters on March 19) is The Runaways, a movie based on Cherie Curry’s 1989 memoir, Neon Angel, recently updated as a tie-in.
The movie was previewed in the NYT this weekend,
…a new film about the trailblazing bad-girl rock band from the 1970s that spawned Joan Jett, is how authentic it feels…One reason may be that the movie partly based on Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (Harper Collins), a newly revamped autobiography by the group’s lead singer Cherie Currie, whose chillingly quick self-destruction is relived through Dakota Fanning.
Official Web site: RunawaysMovie.com
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Oscar’s Winning Books
Monday, March 8th, 2010Below are the movies either based on books, or with tie-ins that won Academy Awards last night (for the books, go to our listing of movies In Theaters Now — with Tie-ins).
Movies Based on Books
The Blind Side — Best Actress (Sandra Bullock)
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Crazy Heart — Best Actor (Jeff Bridges) and Best Song (The Weary Kind)
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Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire — Best Supporting Actress (Mo’Nique), Best Adapted Screenplay
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El secreto de sus ojos — Best Foreign Film — Eduardo Sacheri’s novel La pregunta de sus ojos (The Question In Their Eyes), Buenos Aires : Galerna, 2005.
Movies with Tie-ins:
Hurt Locker — Best Picture, Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing
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Avatar — Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects
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Star Trek — Best Makeup
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Up — Best Animated Feature, Best Music
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THE PACIFIC’s Robert Leckie
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010Like the movie The Titanic, the ten-part HBO series The Pacific, beginning March 14, is likely to make bestsellers of dozens of books by many publishers (as some said about The Titanic‘s effect on publishing, “it raised all boats”).
The producers based their earlier series, Band of Brothers, on the book of the same title by Stephen Ambrose. But they couldn’t find one single volume that gave them a story line that worked for The Pacific. According to the L.A. Times, screenwriter Bruce McKenna came up with the idea of following several main characters. He interviewed dozens of veterans and read nearly 50 books; one of the titles that emerged was the 1957 memoir by Robert Leckie, Helmet for My Pillow.
Leckie, who was a writer before the war, became one of the main characters in the series. ABC News singles out Leckie’s role as “perhaps the most pivotal… because of the insight the character brings to so many situations,” and gives actor James Badge Dale special note for his portrayal, “Not once does Dale falter.”
In the following, Tom Hanks calls Helmet for My Pillow “a magnificient piece of prose… almost like a long poem.”
Helmet for my Pillow, is being released as a tie-in (see earlier post, with other tie-ins and related titles).
Leckie went on to write 30 more books, including Okinawa, an account of that battle, which Penguin books is re-releasing to coincide with the series.
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eBook available from OverDrive
DeCapo Press is also re-releasing his Strong Men Armed, which Library Journal described as his “carefully researched history of the Marines from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.”
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ebook available from OverDrive
New Memoir Ties in to THE PACIFIC
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010HBO’s series, The Pacific, is based on memoirs that were published after the war.
A new memoir by a Marine who is featured in an episode of the series, was released yesterday.
It has not been reviewed. The publisher describes it as,
An unvarnished and moving memoir of a Marine veteran who fought his way across the Pacific Theater of World War II — whose story is featured in the upcoming HBO series The Pacific
This is an eyewitness — and eye-opening — account of some of the most savage and brutal fighting in the war against Japan, told from the perspective of a young Texan who volunteered for the Marine Corps to escape a life as a traveling salesman. R.V. Burgin enlisted at the age of twenty, and with his sharp intelligence and earnest work ethic, climbed the ranks from a green private to a seasoned sergeant. Along the way, he shouldered a rifle as a member of a mortar squad. He saw friends die-and enemies killed. He saw scenes he wanted to forget but never did-from enemy snipers who tied themselves to branches in the highest trees, to ambushes along narrow jungle trails, to the abandoned corpses of hara kiri victims, to the final howling banzai attacks as the Japanese embraced their inevitable defeat.
Burgin was one of the few surviving vets who attended the 2/24 premiere in L.A. where he posed for photographers with actor Martin McCann, who portrays him on screen.
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HBO Series — THE PACIFIC
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010Coming in March is a ten-part HBO series, The Pacific, the follow-up to Band of Brothers. It debuts on March 14th, continuing on Sundays through May 16. Like Band of Brothers, it is produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.
The series interweaves the stories of real-life Marines who were involved in various parts of the war and is based on two first-person accounts; Robert Leckie’s Helmet for My Pillow and Eugene B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. A companion book, The Pacific: Hell Was an Ocean Away, is coming out on 3/2.
Official Web site: HBO.com/The-Pacific
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Tantor Audio:
Trade; 9781400110506; 9 Audio CD; $34.99Library; 9781400140503; 9 Audio CD; $69.99MP3; 9781400160501; 1 MP3-CD; $24.99
eBook available from OverDrive
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ebook available from OverDrive
An earlier paperback edition notes in a burst on the cover that it was “used by Ken Burns for The War on PBS.”
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In addition, two new titles have been published about the third major figure in the series, John Basilone.
Hero of the Pacific is the final book by James Brady, known for his books about the military, who died shortly after the book was published. Basilone, “Manila John,” is from Raritan, New Jersey where the library has a small museum honoring Sergeant Basilone. Library Director Mary Paese told Wiley Public Library rep Trudy Lindsey (who writes the newsletter Trudy’s News and Views) that the author did some of his research there. HBO will hold a special screening of the series at the libray.
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Oasis Audio; UNABR; 9781598595970; $29.99
Audio and ebook available from OverDrive
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In addition, St. Martins is publishing an authorized biography of Basilone. The Web site outlines his short and amazing life,
Sgt. John Basilone held off 3,000 Japanese troops at Guadalcanal after his 15-member unit was reduced to three men. At Iwo Jima he single-handedly destroyed an enemy blockhouse, allowing his unit to capture an airfield. Minutes later he was killed by an enemy artillery round.
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The series is likely to bring interest in other books about the war in the Pacific. Newmarket is re-releasing one about the sinking of the Japanese battleship, the Yamamato, told from both the American and the Japanese points of view.
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A Complete EDUCATION
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010One of the ten nominees for Best Picture in the Oscar race is An Education. Carey Mulligan, who plays the 16-year-old lead, has also been nominated for Best Actress and Nick Hornby up for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Hornby wrote the screenplay based on the first chapter of a memoir by British journalist Lynn Barber, a fascinating and well-known figure in the UK, where she is called “The Demon Barber” for her no-holds-barred interviews. The screenplay is the official tie-in to the movie, but the full memoir was not available in the U.S.
That was rectified last month when Atlas & Co. published it in the U.S. for the first time. Editor James Atlas describes it on the publisher’s web site,
…when I got my hands on the book, which was published in England last year to great critical acclaim, I was surprised to discover how much more there was to it than the story of a bookish adolescent seduced—and “educated”—by an older man. The memoir, by the fearsome journalist Lynn Barber, whose acerbic profiles have made the teeth of the chattering classes chatter, tells her story from beginning to . . . well, not end, but what is now tactfully called late middle age. Along the way are stints at Penthouse and (ill-fatedly) Vanity Fair; cameo appearances on a TV show called Grumpy Old Women; and a complex marriage that endures. It’s a classic British memoir, and we’re proud to bring it to an American audience.
As a further inducement, the publisher has also made a sample chapter available:
Download a sample chapter [pdf]
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| An Education |
| Nick Hornby |
| Retail Price: | $14.00 |
| Paperback: | 208 pages |
| Publisher: | Riverhead Trade – (2009-10-06) |
| ISBN / EAN: | 1594484538 / 9781594484537 |
The Battle of the Ex’s
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010The Oscar race now has a narrative that the organizers can only dream of; the two leading contenders for Best Picture, Avatar and The Hurt Locker, are directed by former spouses.
The current issue of the New Yorker assesses each movie’s chances. Conclusion; don’t overlook the much lower-grossing Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, James Cameron’s former wife. There are a lot of ex-wives in Hollywood, who may be voting.
We probably don’t need to point out that, if Hurt Locker wins, it will be the first time a movie directed by a woman wins Best Picture.
Neither movies are based on books (although MTV News reports that Cameron plans to write an Avatar prequel – not as a script, as a novel), but there are tie-ins.
Abrams published a companion book to Avatar.
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And Newmarket has the shooting script for The Hurt Locker:
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Wimpy Kid Movie Diary
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010The next big kid’s movie is around the corner, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, opening March 19th.
Rather than a traditional tie-in, author Jeff Kinney is releasing a “diary” of the making of the movie, which includes storyboard sketches, costume designs (that t-shirt, shorts and back pack must have been a stretch), script pages and photos.
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CRAZY HEART The Book
Monday, February 15th, 2010It may come as a surprise that the Oscar-nominated movie Crazy Heart, starring Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal, is based on a book. Director Scott Cooper had been planning to make a biopic about Merle Haggard, but couldn’t get the rights. So, he turned to “an obscure novel” (The Salt Lake Tribune), Crazy Heart by Thomas Cobb, published in 1987.
Cooper was going to debut the movie at last month’s Sundance festival, but distributor Fox Searchlight decided to try for an Oscar nomination and released it in a limited number of theaters in December (those with a cynical streak will enjoy New York magazine’s article “The Red Carpet Campaign“, which begins by detailing the studio’s effort to get the nods from Oscar).
HarperCollins released a tie-in edition of the book this month (with an audio coming in a couple of weeks). How does it compare to the movie? Dwight Garner wrote about it on the NYT Arts Beat blog, saying,
It’s not the great country music novel the world’s been waiting for – well, I’ve been waiting for it, anyway – but it’s got a deep kind of weatherbeaten charm that can’t be faked, and the love story at its core is genuinely moving. I was sorry when the thing was over…[it] has an amiable, crooked charm that is impossible to deny.
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Unabridged Audio, Harper Audio, 3/16; 9780062006226; $24.99
Heigl Gets PLUM Role
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010It can be a very long time between a book being signed for the movies and it actually appearing on the screen.
This is proved once again with Janet Evanovich’s One for the Money, which was signed in 1994, before the book was published. For a while, it was rumored that Reese Witherspoon would star as lingerie-buyer-turned-bounty-hunter Stephanie Plum.
According to Variety, Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy) has just signed for that role and the movie is “back on the fast track.”
The 16th book in the series, Sizzling Sixteen, is coming in June.
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Evanovich is also releasing a graphic novel in July, written with her daughter. It’s the third in a series, after Metro Girl and Motor Mouth, neither of which are in graphic format. The NYT wrote about it today as well as the forthcoming manga version of Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (see our earlier story).
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The True Story Behind EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010The movie Extraordinary Measures starring Harrison Ford is about a real-life father, Jonathan Crowley, played by Brendan Fraser, who will do anything to save his two children from a life-threatening disease, even quitting his job to form a biotech company.
The true story first caught Harrison Ford’s eye when Geeta Anand wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal. She went on to write the book The Cure, which is now the trade paperback tie-in to the movie.
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Crowley has written his own book, Chasing Miracles. He appeared on the CBS Early Show this morning.
Watch CBS News Videos Online
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DEWEY the Movie
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
Meryl Streep signed to star in the movie of Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, back in November of 2008. Since then, there hasn’t been much news.
Dewey author and former library director, Vicki Myron’s hometown newspaper, the Spencer (Iowa) Daily Reporter was on the scene at a recent Spencer Chamber Tourism Committee meeting where Myron revealed that the movie is now “hanging in the air,”
Screenwriter Pamela Gray, who toured Spencer in May, submitted a second script to five producers recently. Once studio executives accept it, Myron said they’ll return to actress Meryl Streep, who had already signed on to star in the adaptation of her book, to see if she’s still interested in portraying her. If Streep decides to not pursue the role, the movie’s current director and budget will also go with her, Myron said.
“[The studio] is not planning anything until they have her signed and have a director,” Myron added.
This is just another reminder that it’s often a long way between a movie being signed and its appearance in theaters.
Meanwhile, Myron is moving ahead with plans for a Dewey Readmore Books bookstore in Spencer.