I was saddened to learn that aspiring screenwriters everywhere have lost one of the most widely-read and recognized mentors of recent years -- Blake Snyder.
Save the Cat!
Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies
Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Osama Van Halen
The trailer for Wes Anderson's stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox has just hit the web.
Ron Howard is hoping to combine the success of his Dan Brown adaptations with the robust action of The Bourne series by signing on to direct The Parsifal Mosaic.
Variety reports:
"David Self will adapt the Ludlum novel about a CIA operative who thinks he witnessed the execution of his lover after she was identified as a KGB double agent.
Imagine Entertainment's Brian Grazer will produce."
More Ludlum adaptations appear to be in the works. Which would you like to see make it to the big screen?
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The team behind the Resident Evil franchise will be taking on Peter V. Brett's debut fantasy novel The Warded Man.
From The Hollywood Reporter:
"The book is set in an undetermined future where mankind is beset by nightly attacks from demonkind and has been thrown back into a feudal state. Three young people emerge with the potential power to turn the tide, including the title character, a man who has wards (spells) tattooed on his body."
"Tremendously readable...a great adventure novel." Charlaine Harris, New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series (aka True Blood)
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After The Grinch, The Cat in the Hat, and Horton, we all knew who would be next:
"Dr. Seuss' The Lorax will be co-directed by Chris Renaud and Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio, with Paul & Daurio writing the script.
Though published in 1971, The Lorax has a timely 'green' theme. It is narrated by a greedy entrepreneur who, despite warnings from the tree-loving Lorax, strips a forest of its stock of Truffula trees to manufacture clothing. The results are catastrophic as all the animals leave and nothing’s left.
The picture is targeted for a March 2, 2012, release, which falls on the birthday of Theodor Geisel, who died in 1991."
It'll be hard to hear someone other than Bob Holt as the Once-ler.
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Read 'em now -- and know the spoilers before everyone else!
Have you pre-ordered your copy of the new Thomas Pynchon book?
No? Then get on it!
Or better yet -- come on down to Book Soup at 12:01 am on August 4th, when we'll be staying open late to give you a jump on picking up a copy of Inherent Vice -- Pynchon's latest psychedelic satire of "surfers, hustlers, dopers, and rockers".
You'll be the envy of all your well-read friends...
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Dream Street by Douglas McCulloh
"[A] classic tale, recast for Southern California." Los Angeles Times
Carolyn Kellogg makes mention of Stephanie Covington Armstrong's new book, Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat, in a recent post on the Jacket Copy blog. The memoir is a chronicle of the author's struggle with bulimia.Bulimia, an eating disorder, includes a range of dieting behaviors taken to extremes: fasting, exercise, use of diuretics and laxatives and self-induced vomiting.
It is this last behavior that the cover portrays, with two fingers jutting up from the bottom edge. As if there is a hand inside the book, ready to induce vomiting in the reader.
[....]Are those too fingers as immediately recognizable as a vomiting-tool to you as they are to me? In the context of this book, aren't they horribly graphic? "
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What are your thoughts? Post them below -- or bring your questions to the author herself when she reads at the store on August 1st.
