Two new movies based on books to look forward to. The first is The Time Traveller’s Wife based on the book of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger. The book was absolutely beautiful, one of my all time favourites and the movie doesn’t look like it will be terrible so that’s promising. What isn’t promising is that this film was supposed to have been released last December but got pushed back soo many times (with the excuse that they were waiting for Eric Bana’s hair to grow back in order to finish filming–which begs the questions why didn’t he wait until he finished filming to cut his hair) I’m afraid it might be terrible. Check out the trailer here:
And, The Road based on the book of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, also looks quite good. I haven’t yet read the book, but I do own it and plan on reading it before the release of the film this coming fall. Check it out:
1. Fig Newtons
Do you remember these? Do people still eat them? Were they ever even good? I can’t remember.
Fig Newton dominoes
Speaking of newtons,
2. Wayne Newton
This man is a legend, I can’t for the life of me figure out why. But I do love the song Danke Schoen.
I bet he glows in the dark.
3. Magnum P.I.
My dad looks like him.
Who is who?
4. Deluxe Hugs
5. Virtual Stan
Just click it. And then click everything, preferably not all at once.
6. That episode of the Simpson’s where Homer says “You can run, but you can’t glide’
Have you ever read anything by Jodi Picoult? no? well get on it. She’s great! (many thanks to my gal Milene for introducing me to this fantastic author).
Need a place to start? I recommend My Sister’s Keeper. It’s heart-wrenching, and will make you cry, kind of like this year’s season finale of Grey’s Anatomy made me cry. You have to read it quick though. Why? because the movie comes out June 26th, and it looks good (at least the two minutes of trailer I watched).
So has anyone else noticed that all of Beyonce’s videos (Ego, Single Ladies) feature her singing while two other chicks dance? Doesn’t it remind you of something, like…oh I don’t know Destiny’s Child maybe. Just saying.
My favourite day of the month is always “new magazine day”. This is the day that my Vanity Fair (or ELLE) arrives in the mail. This past Thursday was new magazine day, and after quickly leafing through the pages of this month’s Vanity Fair, I settled in for the slower actually-reading-the-stories-that-interest-me leaf-through. This is when I stumbled upon a short feature on Reif Larsen. Larsen is a first time writer whose manuscript was so in demand ten (that’s right!) publishing houses were bidding for it. Penguin ended up buying it, and the manuscript of the book titled The Selected Works of T.S Spivet sold for just under $1 million. Another testament to the fact that the publishing industry is not dead. The book is to be released May 5th, for a little more on the bidding war click here.
Here’s some gems of comforting news for all you publishing peeps:
1. Defying reports that most publishing houses are in the poorhouse, the New York Times recently reported that Audrey Nieffenegger author of The Time Traveller’s Wife was given a $5 million advance on her second novel. Turns out there is money to be made in trade publishing, it’s just not for editors.
2. The New York Times also reports that reading is on the rise, especially fiction reading. Granted it’s not as high as it was in the 1980s, reading rates have risen nearly 5% in the past four years. What does this mean? It means we should probably all move to the U.S. and try and find jobs there.
And now for some discussion, The New Republic: A journal of Politics and Arts is insisting that magazines and newspapers should maintain their Book Review sections as, “Book reviewing is a training for controversy, without which no open society and no open individual can flourish.” Further arguing that said sections should be considered “an honor”. Read the full article here: The Battle of the Book.
What do you think? Should magazines and newspapers maintain their book review sections? How do you find out about new books? Does one person’s opinion (someone you don’t even know) really influence whether or not your going to read something?
Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, one of my favourite children’s books, is being made into a movie.
Check out this star studded sure to be a hit lineup:
Director: Spike Jonze
Featuring: Catherin Keener, Max Records, Mark Ruffalo, Lauren Ambrose, James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, and Forest Whitaker
And if that doesn’t have you excited, check out the movie poster:
Are you as excited as I am?
Do you have a favourite children’s book you’d like to see made into a movie?
UPDATE: There’s a trailer now! Click here to watch it!
This past weekend I finally got around to watching Confessions of a Shopaholic, (judge me, I know you want to) and while I didn’t expect to be pleased by this film, because I quite enjoyed the book, I also didn’t expect how dissapointed I was.
It’s simple (or at least in my mind it is), this was not a difficult book to turn into a movie. This was not Jose Saramago’s Blindness (which while in movie format wasn’t fantastic, it wasn’t terrible).
This is what should have happened in this film:
Things I like: Kate Winslet, crimes against humanity, drawings, other people’s misery, and zombies
This is a lovely list of books I’ve purchased in the last week that I can’t afford to buy and don’t have time to read. click HERE to see them, you know you want to.
Props to Web 2.0:
Get StumbleUpon you won’t regret it. Hours of mindless fun await you. And, because most things are better when they are packaged deals, for the low low price of accepting the fact that not all of this stuff is useless, also get a Delicious account and bookmark the awesome shit you find on Stumble, so you can find it again.
