OZ, The Great and Powerful: Which Witch?

Who is this Witchy Woman?

 

OZ, The Great and Powerful is the  upcoming film directed by Sam Raimi. Inspired by L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the story works as a prequel to both the novel and the 1939 movie. This is NOT Wicked, the musical as a movie but that is coming in the next year or so too. If it was Wicked, I'm betting on Anne Hathaway to be Elphaba, especially if she is as brilliant in the Les Miserables movie musical as the trailer indicates.
The studio released the first trailer back in July, now they're set to release a series of posters featuring the three witches. The question is, who is this witch in the OZ, The Great and Powerful poster?
It's not Michelle Williams. She plays our gloriously good witch, Glinda. One look and you know this witch aint good. It's the sexually suggestive blacky rubbery wardrobe that makes that clear. The film also stars Mila Kunis as Theodora, and Rachel Weisz as Evanora.
The witch in this new poster must be one of them but which one? The Wicked Witch of the West or the Wicked Witch of the East? This is the first of three new posters being released and featuring the witches. Maybe when the others are released we'll know which sister this is. In the meantime I'm betting on Rachel Weizs as the Wicked Witch of the East.
And where is poor James Franco's poster? He is Oscar Diggs, the great and powerful "Wizard of Oz"...  I guess that's what you get for blowing the Oscar gig - just kidding!
The film will be released in March 2013, in traditional 2D, as well as in 3D.

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Unscripted: Stephen King

People want to know why I do this,why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy...and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

                      Stephen King

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George Clooney casts Hunky Men for Monuments Men

I blogged about Monuments Men here when I first heard that George Clooney was going to make the adaptation of the nonfiction book, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, by Robert M Edsel.  If the title isn't clear
enough :) the book is about recovering art stolen by the Nazis in World War II. Scroll down to read the full description from the publisher.

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Clooney and producing partner Grant Heslov co-wrote the screenplay; both will produce, with Clooney directing and starring. It's not always all about George - he and Grant are fresh from the success of Argo which they just wore their producer hats for. In fact, most of the Argo crew will be working on this one, including the genius Alexander Desplat,who is doing the score.

Clooney is confirming casting decisions for Deadline. So far he has cast three hunky men:

Hunk #1 Clooney himself plays George Stout, a U.S. Army officer and leading art conservationist, who repatriated thousands of works of art from the Nazis.


Hunk #2   The most brilliant casting choice: Daniel Craig. I don't even know what part he'll be playing - the news releases don't say - but whether he's an Allied Hero or a Nazi Thief you know he'll bring it. I'm betting on Nazi thief because George has the good hero role and Jean Dujardin will be some sort of operative in the French Resistance; somebody has to be the Nazi Thieves!








Hunk #3  Jean Dujardin, last year's Best Actor Oscar winner for The Artist - incidentally I read that he's the very first French actor to win one -  will play an unnamed supporting role.


Cate Blanchett will play the role of Rose Valland, an art historian and member of the French resistance.
Bill Murray and John Goodman have also been confirmed. Still listed on imdb.com as "rumored" is Paul Giamatti - not sure if he's in or out.

The film is shooting in Germany, Austria, Paris and England next spring.

THE STORY:

At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuehrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised.
In a race against time, behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Momuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture.
Focusing on the eleven-month period between D-Day and V-E Day, this fascinating account follows six Monuments Men and their impossible mission to save the world's great art from the Nazis.

The book focuses on the 11-month period between D-Day and V-E Day.

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Portrait of a Lady is 131 years old today

Henry James published Portrait
of a Lady 131 years ago today.
Nicole Kidman starred in the
1996 screen adaptation.

“Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.”

Henry James, Portrait of a Lady

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Sunday Snippets: 2 Films Newly Released on DVD

If you didn't get a chance to see them in theatres - or you didn't want to see them enough to shell out the increasingly large wad you need to get you through a movie - two films based on books came out on dvd and blu ray this week.

 

You can read my take on the Abraham Lincoln; Vampire Hunter movie. Check out the trailer here                                                                               Fair warning and full disclosure: my husband worked on the film based on Seth Grahame Smith's book. I may not be unbiased. :)  The movie, directed by Timor Berkmambetov and produced by Tim Burton and Jim Lemley, stars Ben Walker, Anthony Mackie, Dominic Cooper, Rufus Sewell and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

 

 

Check out Savages reviews here     Or see the trailer here.
I'm not sure why but  SAVAGES is the most searched book/movie title of my blog. Is it because the first chapter of the book was one word and that word was the F-bomb?
Savages, directed by Oliver Stone, stars Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Benicio Del Toro, Emile Hirsch, and Blake Lively.
Don Winslow, the book's author co-wrote the script with Stone.
There's an interesting interview with Winslow here



PS  There's a fascinating tidbit from The Playlist: "Winslow is teaming up with author Chuck Hogan, who wrote the crime novel “Prince of Thieves” -- upon which writer-director Ben Affleck’s “The Town” was based—the pair are working on a currently untitled script that is a contemporary crime thriller set to be produced by “Savages” producer and co-writer Shane Salerno. The plot will revolve around two men set to collide amidst the sort of nefarious supporting characters that tend to populate the creative worlds of Winslow and Hogan. The pair will each focus their attention on one of the two lead characters, and eventually turn it into one comprehensive script that Salerno will then shop around to studios. Could be an enthralling crime caper or one exciting writer’s workshop, we’re eager to see"

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See To Kill a Mockingbird on the Big Screen

 

This is so cool. In celebration of their 100th birthday, Universal is releasing a newly restored print of the movie version of Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird for a ONE DAY ONLY SCREENING on November 15th.  I've never seen this very special movie on a big screen so this is a date I plan to keep! I look forward to seeing the glorious Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. It's been too long...I even have time to reread the book!

Click the link below to see if there's a theatre near you.
 Kill a Mockingbird screeninglocations.

CONTEST!
Thanks to Meg at A Bookish Affair for bringing this to my attention. She's hosting a contest; to enter to win a copy of the To Kill a Mockingbird book and tickets visit her at
Meg at A Bookish Affair

Just for fun, I pulled some cover shots off the net. Do you think they tell the story?
   

 

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Saturday Snapshot

My son Russell at two.                               Russell as the bat.

He's always loved a good caped crusader.

 

STAY SAFE and HAVE A HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

 

Visit Alyce at At Home with Books. She's the one who hosts the fun Saturday Snapshot meme.

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Hey Girl ... Sorry I can't stay but I gotta run...

                                                  Run, Runner Run!

 

 

If you're waiting for Ryan Gosling to strut his stuff in the futuristic finery of Logan's Run, you can forget it. He's just officially dropped out of the remake of the classic book which he'd planned to star in for Nicholas Winding Refn, his director in Drive. Justin Kroll at Variety tweeted the news but no one seems to know why for certain. The most likely scenario is that Gosling has decided to focus on How to Catch a Monster, his directorial debut. The film is based on Gosling's own script and is set to star Christina Hendricks who Gosling worked with on Drive. The current buzz is that with Gosling gone from Logan's Run, Refn can't be far behind. 

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5 Habits of Successful Film Adapation: David Mitchell

There is an awesome article online at BBCAmerica about David Mitchell's take on the screen adaptation of his book, Cloud Atlas.

Go to the BBC link to read it but the gist of it is Mitchell says 'if the movie was structured like the novel it would suck'.

He also acknowledged: "Each art form does bring certain limits to the table,” Mitchell said, and those making adaptations ignore them at their own peril."

Paul Hechinger, the BBC America reporter notes that Mitchell even came up with a list of five “habits of successful film adaptation” from an article in The Wall Street Journal called “Translating Cloud Atlas Into the Language of Film”

 

5 Habits of Successful Film AdaptationFirst, “bagginess” is great in a novel, but a movie has to “deliver plot more quickly.”

Second, details and atmosphere can be “suggested” in a novel; in a movie, “it’s either shown or it isn’t.”

Third, novels can have dozens of characters, but movies have to pare them down, or most viewers will be confused. He gives this habit the name, “Honey, I Shrunk the Cast.” Mitchell views the upper limit of major characters somewhere around eight.

Fourth, never underestimate the power of music. Novels may have figurative music, but the actual music of movies is transformative.

Fifth, books can leave lots of aspects open-ended. In movies, as a general rule, “all roads lead to closure.”

I don't know if I agree with number five. There are lots of open-ended films aren't there? Any favorites?

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"Your life amounts to one drop in a limitless ocean.

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"

David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

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Cloud Atlas Review: My Take on the Movie

Last night, I was lucky enough to see a screening of Cloud Atlas,  the film based on David Mitchell's acclaimed book, which opens this Friday.  Cloud Atlas, the movie, is definitely not Cloud Atlas the book. It's as if the filmmakers took the novel, ripped it from its spine, tossed it up in the air and waited to see where the pages would land. Except that would be a haphazard result rather than the organic way the storyline has been woven together for the screen. (I shared a bit about the filmmaker's process during the writing stage in yesterday's post).

Tom Hanks as Dr. Henry Goose, Keith David as Kupaka
and Jim Sturgess as Adam Ewing in 1849

There are 6 different storylines, taking place in 1849, the 1930's, the 70's, current day, the very scary corporate controlled world two hundred years from now and finally, the apocalyptic 24th century.  Rather than having each story play out in the long dense blocks of action in the novel, the  filmmakers happily cut in and out, sending us from one storyline to another in order to deliver their message. I've never seen a film which zips from place and time and even genre and back again so blissfully.
You might think it would be too odd and too sharp a tonal shift to go from a ship in the south seas in 1849 to a nuclear plant in 1973 to a book release party in present day to Seoul, Korea in the 22nd century, a 'corpocratic' future where fabricants are created only to serve consumers and back again and again.

Doona Bae (center) is Sonmi 451
a fabricant in Korea in the 22nd century

If we are initially jarred, it takes just a couple of time swipes to fall in with the format and we begin to get the gist of the movie's message. We are all connected. The events of our lives and times are linked to the past, in ways we're not always aware of, and if we don't get with the program and learn from our spiritual history, we are most certainly doomed to repeat our mistakes again and again.
The filmmakers are helped in the delivery of this message with their genius re-use and recyling of actors in a range of roles in different time periods and even genders. Given director Lana Wachowski's transgender status, I would suspect this material had tremendous personal power and impact for her.

Jim Sturgess as Hae Joo Chan

Almost all the actors play multiple roles including tiny parts where we don't even recognize the actors playing them until the credits roll - I promise you will be delighted with Hugh Grant in a whole series of parts, and not a one of them the blinking, charming, self-effacing Hugh Grant you know from his films!
The directors made the point in last night's q&a that rather than objecting to playing multiple roles, the actors like Hugo Weaving who plays parts in each of the stories, including the role of a female nurse, embraced this stage tradition. And the audience's understanding of that theatrical tradition enhances and informs the production. That's a nuance that intrigues me because it's true, in the theatre we are used to seeing actors don beards and wigs and old age makeup. We applaud it. But in film we tend to see on the nose casting. In other words the 30 something male Asian actor will play the part of the 30 something male Asian character or eyebrows are raised. I think it was brave to use this ensemble approach, to have actors mix it up,  to help tell the world 'I am you and you are me and we are all together. Koo Koo Kachoo.'

Halle Berry as Meronym, Hanks as Zachry
 in a scene from 24th century Hawaii

And catch Halle Berry, when she's not the beautiful Luisa Rey to Tom Hank's engineer in the 70's, or the elegant  Meronym the elite healer to his Zachry the goatherd in the 24th century, as a little old Asian medical man, if you can. That kind of thing takes place again and again.
The whole point of this isn't just gimmick and trickery. It's a real effort to melt the lines between the genres and expectations which serve, in their opinion, to limit and constrict us. It mostly works. Tom Hanks has said he wanted to do something unexpected, Cloud Atlas is certainly that.


While the novel was for me, too dense and mystifying at times,  the film shakes off the murky clouds and finds a way to shine through. It's a trans-genre, transgender and even transformative film, soaring this way and that. Somehow or other we go along for the fast ride and despite a guffaw here about this prosthetic (check out Hank's teeth as Dr. Henry Goose) or a gasp there over that very graphic bit of violence (watch for the tooth flying through the air) we arrive at our final destination feeling pretty good considering our 2 hour investment.  I think a lot of people will dislike this film, calling it pretentious and overreaching - there is something to be said for more linear story telling - but when I compare the film versus the book, no question I would rather see the film again instead of finishing the novel. And I actually think the film helps explain the book.

James D'arcy as Sixsmith, Whishaw as Frobisher

The actors all do a first rate job - pay attention to the delicious Ben Whishaw as Robert Frobisher (you'll see him next as Q in Skyfall) and James Darcy as his love, Sixsmith. Jim Broadbent is fantastic as Vyvyan Ayres, the composer who takes credit for writing the Cloud Atlas sextet (written in reality by Frobisher), the musical score that runs through the actual film. In actuality Tykwer wrote the music - a huge multi talent - along with Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klemack. And it sings. I say see it. You may not absorb the entirety in one sitting. I'm actually already thinking about seeing it again.

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Q&A at Cloud Atlas Screening at the Directors' Guild of America

Tom Tykwer, Lana, Andy Wachowski

I planned on getting Cloud Atlas read in time for the opening this coming Friday. Except my husband took me to a screening at the DGA (the Directors Guild of America) tonight, well last night now.  I ignored the fact that I wasn't finished reading and went because the DGA theatres are extremely high quality so you know you're seeing the film as intended to be seen. And also because the three directors - siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer were going to be there for a Q&A afterwards.
I'll do my take on the movie manana; in the meantime just wanted to note how cool that part of the evening was. We weren't allowed to use cameras or cell phones so I couldn't take any pictures; I nabbed some from Google just to give you an idea of what everybody looked like.


In case you didn't know, Lana Wachowski used to be Larry Wachowski. She was still Larry when they wrote V for Vendetta, they were billed as the Wachowski Brothers - but had a sex change along the way. And yes, her hair is that deep pink color. It was amazing how much she exuded feminity, not in her clothing which was more that funky unisex thing but in her gestures and her demeanor. The way she smiled and opened her eyes wide and gestured with her hands. It wasn't effeminate; it was female. Fascinating.

James McTeigue, the Australian director of V for Vendetta which was written by the Wachowski duo, introduced the team and acted as moderator.

Lana Wachowski and Halle Berry, watched over by
Tom Hanks and Andy Wachowski

It's clear that the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer share a passion for Mitchell's novel and a deep respect for each others work; often referring to their collaboration as a relationship, a marriage even. Writing the script, they even moved in together to break the novel down. Tykwer said they each had a huge stack of index cards and went through the book writing down every single scene they found interesting.  Then they arranged them all out on the floor and began to prune and pare from there.

Lana shared that Thomas had taught them the round earth theory of scoring vs the flat earth method she was used to. Huh? What she meant was she always thought there was only one way to approach the music; she was used to doing it afterwards using temp mixes that gives an idea of the kind of music you'd like. It's the industry norm. It's how it's always been done. Flat earth. Lana said Tykwer taught them the Round Earth way of doing it which is before. Before you start filming, when you're still talking about tone, and how the film will look and feel and sound, she came to see, is the best time to design the score. And the score, I will say is truly stirring. The Round Earth method at work!

CHECK OUT A PREVIEW OF THE CLOUD ATLAS SCORE AT MY POST HERE

They also talked a lot about (actually Lana Wachowski talked and talked as did Tykwer. Andy just came in with a sharp or funny comment now and then.) how long it took to make, how hard it was to get anyone on board with the film. It was four years in the making at a cost of $100,000,000, money you see all over the screen.
That's all I can remember for now; I'll post if anything comes to mind.

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Cloud Atlas Coming This Friday October 26

Natalie Portman Reading as Usual

I think how producers come to option books for adaptation is really intriguing. Think of the enormous volume of books out there, both novels and non-fiction; let alone original scripts; how do you possibly choose material?  The directors of the upcoming Cloud Atlas, the Wachowski siblings, discovered David Mitchell's book via Natalie Portman, who was reading Cloud Atlas on the set of their 2006  "V for Vendetta." The siblings then recommended the novel to Thomas Tykwer, and the three collaborators spent years and years bringing this sprawling saga to the screen. Funny that Natalie Portman is not even in the movie!  Ironic when you consider how many characters there are - at least in the book. The $100 million project condenses that whole slew of characters into just six stories that span about 500 years.

Lana Wachowski (formerly Larry) told the Huffington Post "The book seemed almost like a revolutionary act in and of itself.  David has said since that they did have trouble with, do you put it in science fiction, do you put it in drama? Where do you put it on the shelf in the bookstore?"

I'm in the middle of the book and while the concept is fascinating, some of the reading is sheer agony. In addition to creating some absolutely brilliant new words and spellings, Mitchell LOVES writing in dialects and accents. Right now I'm reading Zachry's story which is full of dropped d's and unusual grammatical constructions.
 For example:
"I was pleased our dammit crookit guest'd teached ev'ryun to step slywise an' not trust her, nay, not a flea, but I din't sleep none that night, 'cos o' the mozzies an' nightbirds an' toads ringin' an' a myst'rous someun what was hushly clatt'rin' thru our dwellin' pickin' up stuff here an' puttin' it down there an'  the name o' this myst'rous someun was Change."

I'm exhausted from just typing all those apostrophes! I prefer that kind of thing when it's done subtly as opposed to being every word out of the character's mouths. I get it because ZACHRY is
part of the post apocalyptic future where presumably if you have to start civilization from quasi scratch, your language may be both basic and creative. Regardless, its' tough to read.


In the movie the actors are playing multiple parts as well as characters in different time periods, even occasionally changing race and gender, as each individual "moves upward, downward or sideways on the karmic plane." On IMDB.com, Tom Hanks is listed as playing six parts: first as Dr. Henry Goose sailing the South Pacific in 1849, a Hotel Manager in the 1930's,  Isaac Sachs, a nuclear scientist in California in the 1970's ,  an angry thuggish writer who throws a critic off a London balconey,  a  Look-a-Like Actor  and Zachry in the post apocalyptic 24th century.
Whew!

Halle Berry is likewise playing a sextet of roles: including a Native Woman, a white adulterous in
the  1930's,  Luisa Rey - a journalist in the 1970's, and Meronym - part of the elite ruling class of Zachry's post apocalyptic world. She even plays Asian male medical expert at one point. Having seen Halle Berry's body in a fair amount of films, I can only say this I gotta see!   I actually am interested to see what she does with these characters, especially Luisa Rey and Meronym as written in the novel.

I don't even know what to say about Tom Hanks. He looks so odd in these pictures. But maybe I'm just being a Tom Hanks hater due to a couple of imho bad casting choices ala  DaVinci Code, Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud. I can say for certain I'm not looking forward to hearing Hanks spouting Zachary'  gobbledeegook. In this case, it's not Hanks who's to blame,  it's Zachry's dialogue as written in the book, which I imagine will be in the movie. Unless of course I'm totally wrong and Hanks brings Zachry to life which is completely possible when you think about the bulk of Hanks career. An actor, who when properly cast can bring it whether he's a romcom hero in Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail or the man in more serious straits as he was in Philadelphia or Saving Private Ryan. ... Or, or, or they changed it in the movie. Which is also possible when you consider this. Mitchell, the book's author, who also helped script the adaptation said "The book is unfilmable, but they haven't quite adapted the book. They sort of disassembled the book and reassembled it in the form of a filmable film by having actors recurring, and implying therefore it's the same soul on this sort of ethical journey – or, no pun intended, a matrix of ethical journeys."

So who knows how much the book and film will compare - beyond the saga spanning time. It's challenging material that I'm finding (yikes, still  not finished) sometimes riveting as in Sonmi's transformative tale and sometimes just tedious and sometimes just too murky (for me anyway) to wade through. I'm hoping it will be a little less cloudy when I finish - if I finish.  I do think the movie looks promising even if Tom Hanks does look like he's wearing a bunch of bad wigs. It's definitely a very ambitious effort. Practically speaking, the difficulties of shooting a mult - location, multi-period period piece with a core group of actors playing multiple parts, but also as far as the storyline goes which may be a tad too out there for some.

Tom Hanks vigorously defends the film in an LA Times article "There are going to be people out there who are going to say, `Who do they think they are to make this movie like this?' That's been the case with every great film. They said the same thing about `The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' in the silent days," Hanks said. "I think every audience is yearning to be surprised. I am bored when I walk into the theater expecting A, B and C, and a movie delivers A, B and C. I want to see something brand new that I never anticipated coming a hundred million miles away. And my God, that happens before the words `Cloud Atlas' appear up on the screen on this one."

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Saturday Snapshot: Untitled

 

My son Russell took my SATURDAY SNAPSHOT this week. He was sitting on my couch playing with a waterbottle. "What are you doing?" I asked watching him holding the bottle up near his iphone. "Trying to get this shot"  He got the shot and edited it with a photoshop app on his phone.
I think it's gorgeous and can't get over what we can do with our phones. What an age we live in!
To play along visit Alyce over at At Home with Books. Have a great weekend!

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The Rules of Civility: Can You Judge a Book by its Cover

Yes, sometimes you really can judge a book by its cover. Take Rules of Civility. This is a movie waiting to happen. You don't have to have read Rules of Civility to know the best seller is destined for the screen. Just one look at the cover and you know everything you need to know.
The overview just cements that notion.
"It's 1938 and twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent and roommate Evelyn Ross have moved to New York, determined to small-town Depression boredom with lively nights in the City That Never Sleeps. Determined to escape the clattering confines of a Wall Street secretarial pool, Katey searches for romance and advantage where she can find it; and find it she does, but in Amor Towles' polished debut, chance often trumps design. A stimulating look at a great city that no longer exists. (P.S. An early review justly predicted "Readers will quickly fall under its spell of crisp writing, sparkling atmosphere and breathtaking revelations, as Towles evokes the ghosts of Fitzgerald, Capote and McCarthy.")"

Don't we all love films that take place in the old glamorous New York? Whether it's the Jazz Age of the 20's and The Great Gatsby, or the late 30's early 40's war era of The Best Days of Our Lives or Woody Allen's beloved black and white Manhattan, the city and its strivers calls to us all.

Lionsgate's Erik Feig heard the call too and has been working to option this book since it was first published last summer. The producer who has been behind the adaptations of The Hunger Games, The Twilight series and Letters to Juliette among other projects, talked to Deadline about how he finds movies.

Nikki Finke writes:


Author Amor Towles

Erik Feig is on the far right

"Feig, who as Summit’s production chief always made books a staple of the production slate before he took over Lionsgate, tells me that he makes it a point to find what books people are reading by asking everyone he knows, and by simply walking down the beach or watching in the subway to eyeball book covers. This is what led him to Rules Of Civility, a book that has a ferocious female following. Feig was not the only one to knock on the author’s door, only to be sent away. A graduate of Yale and Stanford and the principal of a big hedge fund, Towles didn’t need Hollywood option money, and was wary of trusting Hollywood with the book he’d always wanted to write. Towles didn’t even really want to discuss it personally, routinely turning away suitors through his agents at WME.
Undaunted, Feig tried to find a connection to meet the author, and eventually discovered that his wife’s childhood best friend knew Towles. That got him a meeting with the author during the summer, but no deal. Feig told Towles what to insist upon to protect himself if he made a deal. That must have resonated because Towles finally reached out–insisting on the very terms that Feig suggested. Lionsgate closed the deal.
“There is a universality to this story of a woman trying to better her station in life, and it’s one you would find in anything from The King’s Speech, Silver Linings Playbook or Saturday Night Fever,” Feig said. “These are themes that, if Charles Dickens came back, he would understand.”

Doesn't that sound delightful? Katey (formerly Katya) Kontent is going to be a plum part eyed by a ton of twenty somethings. Emma Stone, are you available?

The studio is in the process of finding a screenwriter. Expect Rules of Civility to hit movie theatres in 2014. With Gatsby coming out in May of 2013 we'll be chomping at the bit for another New York period piece by then!

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Is Alex Cross based on a James Patterson novel?

No! The movie, Alex Cross which opens today, Friday October 19 isn't based on any one James Patterson novel. Rather, the film is based on James Patterson's Alex Cross character, a young- ish homicide detective slash psychologist. Cross is played by Tyler Perry taking a break from comedy.  Matthew Fox is his adversary.  Will you see it? 

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My Book as a Movie: The Summer of France by Paulita Kincer

I am so excited! Recently I read The Summer of France, a fast-paced novel written by my blogger buddy Paulita Kincer over at An Accidental Blog. Seeing the characters and action so clearly in my mind as I devoured the book, I wondered how Paulita would envision her book as a movie.
I asked the author if she would write a guest blog post and I'm so glad she said yes! 

Paulita Kincer

 Here, then, Paulita Kincer on her book The Summer of France as a film.

"With my first book now available in paperbackand on ebook at Amazonand Barnes and Noble, Sim asked me who I imagined playing the characters in a movie.

Oh, every writer pictures the scenes as her fingers tap-tap away on the keyboard. Sometimes authors dream of that moment in the darkened theater when the title splays across the wide screen and actors bring each character from the page into life. So, I was happy to take up the challenge offered by Sim.

First, you should know that my novel is about Fia, a woman from Ohio, who wants to create the perfect family. She jumps at the chance to go to France to run her great Uncle Martin’s bed and breakfast, dragging along her husband, Grayson, and teenage twins Kasey and West. Uncle Martin and his wife take off for a cruise the day that Fia and family arrive. Then the twins and Grayson begin gallivanting around the country, leaving Fia to run the bed and breakfast. The book is told through Fia’s viewpoint and in some chapters through Uncle Martin as he remembers how he traveled from Kentucky to Europe at age 17 to fight in World War II. While he battled in Italy, he made a decision -- a mistake – and has regretted it every day since then, especially because it is now catching up with him.

Let’s start with Fia. Okay, this may be a stretch, but I can see the energy and quirkiness of Kristen Chenoweth as Fia.

Or maybe Minnie Driver for more of a movie star type. Yes, I know she's British, but she plays American all the time.

Uncle Martin is in his 80s now, having married a French woman and lived in France since World War II. There are lots of fine actors in their early 80s, but I kind of picture a gruff James Garner.

Fia's husband Grayson is an accountant who's reluctant to travel overseas. I thought Greg Kinnear might fit this role, but he might be too nice.

And I'll throw you one other character. What book set in France would be complete without a handsome Frenchman? I'd love to see Gilles Marini play Christophe.

He ends up taking Fia on a motorcycle trip across the Alps to save her idea of family.

What do you think? Can you picture these actors traipsing across Provence? "

Thank you so much Paulita for sharing your thoughts on casting! If any of my readers have had a chance to read The Summer of France I would love to hear what you think too!
And for more info or to purchase a copy, visit Paulita at An Accidental Blog.

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