David Mamet Will Adapt Anne Frank Story for Film

The January offices were closed for summer fun last week when the story broke that Pulitzer prize-winning playwright David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow) had been annointed by Disney (of all outfits) to write and direct The Diary of Anne Frank. The Guardian explains the book for the six people who might not be familiar with the work:

The Diary of Anne Frank records the teenager's experiences over 25 months while hiding out with her family in a secret annexe in a canalside warehouse in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. It became an international bestseller and made her an icon of the Holocaust when it was published in 1947, two years after she died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It has been translated into 60 languages and has sold more than 25m copies worldwide.

Because Mamet is not known for his delicacy and because the pairing seems odd on so many levels, spoofs of what Mamet’s script might look like are already beginning to surface. Here’s one from The Independent (scroll down). Another from The Village Voice. We’ll have to wait a while to see how far -- or not -- off the mark these jokesters were, though: the film is expected to be released in 2011.

History of Violence Director Will Make Cosmopolis

David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises, History of Violence) will adapt Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel, Cosmopolis, for the big screen. Paulo Branco’s Alfama Films will co-produce with Cronenberg’s Toronto-based Antenna. From CBC Arts:

Cosmopolis, which received mixed reviews for DeLillo upon its release in 2003, tracks an unconventional day in the life of a 28-year-old multimillionaire named Eric Packer.

The story follows Packer, a financial wizard, as he attempts to cross the city in his stretch limo which -- for reasons that include a presidential visit, a public protest and a celebrity funeral -- gets stuck in Manhattan traffic, and forces him to conduct his business and personal affairs from the vehicle.

CBC also reports that Cronenberg may write and direct an adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s The Matarese Circle, which would star Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise.

Time Traveler's Wife Leaps to the Big Screen

The film version of The Time Traveler’s Wife will hit a big screen near you on August 14th. Audrey Niffenegger’s novel was beloved by fans and reviewers alike when it was first published in 2003. At that time, January Magazine contributing editor David Abrams wrote:

Every so often, a novel lands in my hands as if it fell from the sky -- a happy surprise of literary delights, a book which transports and transfixes me, an original story which creates its own world with what seems like effortless artistry.

Audrey Niffenegger’s remarkable debut, The Time Traveler’s Wife, is just such a novel.

The full review of the book is here.

The film version is directed by Robert Schwentke (Tattoo, Flightplan) and stars Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams.

Doctorow’s Little Brother Optioned for film

Author Cory Doctorow has announced that his vastly entertaining young adult novel Little Brother (Tor Teen) has been optioned for film.

Early this morning, Doctorow blogged that “Don Murphy, producer of such films as Natural Born Killers and From Hell, has bought a film option on Little Brother. I’ve talked it over with Don and feel confident that if he makes the movie that he’ll do it justice -- I’m guaranteed a spot as a consultant to ensure that it all comes out right, too!”

Little Brother was among January Magazine’s picks for best children’s book of 2008. Here’s what January contributing editor Iain Emsley said about the book at that time:

Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother is a timely book which teases out the implications of the war on terror and comes in a year which Neal Shusterman’s Unwind was published in the United Kingdom. Both novels challenge us to ask “what type of world are we now living in?” Doctorow asks us to continue questioning the underlying logic of the post 9/11 world which has been presented to us. Marcus, a teen hacker, is caught up by the security services in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. His treatment leads him to start using technology to subvert the increasingly authoritarian environment and to link together with his friends and acquaintances. It is a call to arms but it does consider the implications of technology in a social context rather than just seeing it as a panacea. It is quite possibly his most thought-provoking novel to date.

Atwood at the Movies

It’s Margaret Atwood all the time this week at the National Film Board of Canada. The NFB announced yesterday that it would play an important role in bringing Atwood’s most recent book to the screen:

The National Film Board of Canada has just optioned the film rights to Margaret Atwood’s non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. Payback is an investigation into the concept of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature and the structure of human societies. The film will be directed by Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes) and produced by Ravida Din (Family Motel).

Perhaps to celebrate -- and certainly to highlight -- the cementing of this relationship, the NFB is currently screening Michael Rubbo’s 1984 film, Margaret Atwood: Once in August, right on their Web site. You can see the nearly hour-long film here.

Austen Zombie Author Will Write About Lincoln

This is just annoying: Seth Graham-Smith, the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books) has inked a six figure two-book deal with Grand Central.

According to EW, “The author’s first book with the publisher will be Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a re-imagined biography of the president, if he were a vampire hunter.” Ummm.... hello?

EW also reports that Hollywood is expressing interest. Was there ever any doubt?

And who said we weren’t ready for escapism? Let’s go to the bat-cave and discuss it.

In case you missed it, we previously wrote about Graham-Smith’s book here.

No Solitude for Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Nobel prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez (100 Years of Solitude, Memories of my Melancholy Whores) is denying reports -- broadcast widely earlier this year -- that he has put down his pen. From The Independent:

“Not only is that not true, but what is true is that I do nothing else but write,” Garcia Marquez said at the weekend. The 82-year-old Colombian father of magical realism, who is probably the best known living author in the Spanish-speaking world, was pressed by the Bogota newspaper El Tiempo on whether it was true that he was to publish no more books.

The Independent also reports that Marquez recently completed an adaptation of his 1996 novel, News of a Kidnapping. The movie will begin production this coming fall and will star Salma Hayek “and possibly Benicio del Toro and Javier Bardem, the Argentinian director Eduardo Costantini said this week.”

Why the Movies Love Big Publishing

The Proposal, a new Sandra Bullock date movie, is set to open early this summer. The Guardian book blog’s Alison Flood and Lindesay Irvine want to know, “Why does Hollywood love working in publishing so much?”

Why is it, exactly, that the world of books exerts such an irresistible draw to the world of film? Not literary adaptations -- you can see why they’re so popular -- but the rather less obvious charms of publishing's back rooms.

The latest addition to the field is The Proposal, in which Sandra Bullock plays a “high-powered book editor” facing deportation to her native Canada (she looks amazing in her fitted black suit and high heels in the poster, but far more sharply dressed than any book editor I’ve ever met). It’s a romantic comedy, so naturally there’s a fake engagement to be dealt with, and “one comedic fish-out-of-water situation after another”.

And though they ask the question, at one point, they answer it in part when they say that creating Bullock’s character as an editor is a kind of storytelling short-hand. “Without having to go into details, it immediately presents her as intelligent, well-read, interesting.”

While this is certainly true, I think there’s something else, as well. Here’s the thing: as hokey as Flood and Irvine might know this to be, Hollywood loves publishing the way everyone else loves Hollywood. In either case, what’s the big attraction? Both Hollywood and big publishing frame our tomorrows, they package up our dreams.

The Guardian book blog piece is here.

Anthony Hopkins May Play Papa

The Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Business Blog says it’s possible Anthony Hopkins will play Ernest Hemingway in Hemingway & Fuentes, an upcoming indie film to be directed and co-written by Andy Garcia.

Garcia, who also will produce via his CineSon Entertainment banner, is co-penning the script with Hilary Hemingway, a screenwriter and author and the niece of Ernest Hemingway. The movie will revolve around the relationship between Hemingway and his longtime fishing-boat captain Gregorio Fuentes.

Annette Bening also could come aboard the project, Garcia said, in the role of Hemingway's wife and widow Mary Welsh.

Instead of functioning as a biopic, “Hemingway & Fuentes” will take the form of a historical drama, centering on the final, troubled chapter in Hemingway's dramatic life.

The Risky Business piece is here.

Where the Wild Things Are Now

The film version of Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are, will fill a screen near you this fall.

The screenplay was written by Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, with Jonze directing Forest Whitaker, Katherine Keener, Paul Dano and James Gandolfini.

Viewers who just can’t wait for the film to open can get a real solid tease from the film’s trailer, released today.



Where the Wild Things Are was published in 1963 and won the Caldecott Medal in 1964. According to Wikipedia, adaptations of the book have been numerous and have taken many forms, including an animated adaptation in 1973, a children’s opera, a failed Disney CGI project in 1983, a ballet and a stage musical.

Sendak, who will be 81 in June, is also the writer/illustrator of In the Night Kitchen, often listed among the most frequently banned books of the 20th century. At the time of his birthday last year, The New York Times’ Patricia Cohen offered up a dark portrait of Sendak:

That Mr. Sendak fears that his work is inadequate, that he is racked with insecurity and anxiety, is no surprise. For more than 50 years that has been the hallmark of his art. The extermination of most of his relatives and millions of other Jews by the Nazis; the intrusive, unemployed immigrants who survived and crowded his parents’ small apartment; his sickly childhood; his mother’s dark moods; his own ever-present depression — all lurk below the surface of his work, frequently breaking through in meticulously drawn, fantastical ways.

He is not, as children’s book writers are often supposed, an everyman’s grandpapa. His hatreds are fierce and grand, as if produced by Cecil B. DeMille. He hates his uncle (who made a cruel comment about him when he was a boy); he hates anything to do with God or religion, and Judaism in particular (“We were the ‘chosen people,’ chosen to be killed?”); he hates Salman Rushdie (for writing an excoriating review of one of his books); he hates syrupy animation, which is why he is thrilled with Mr. Jonze’s coming film of his book “Where the Wild Things Are,” despite rumors of studio discontent.

“I hate people,” he said at one point, extolling the superior company of dogs, like his sweet-tempered German shepherd, Herman (after Melville).

He is, at heart, a curmudgeon, but a delightful one, with a vast range of knowledge, a wicked sense of humor and a talent for storytelling and mimicry.

The New York Times piece is here.

Jonez’ film will open October 16th.

Spielberg and Jackson Tag Tintin

Eighty years on, an iconic Belgian character is getting ready for his close up. The Los Angeles Times’ Henry Chu reports:

He turns 80 this year but still looks 18, with the same fair-haired quiff. Like Madonna and Sting, two other famous blonds, he goes by one name. Mention him and a European is likely to cheer, while an American is more apt to go, “Huh?” But that’s destined to change now that Steven Spielberg is making a movie based on his life.

He is Tintin, intrepid cub reporter and nemesis of evildoers, whose long career in numerous cartoon strips and comic books, with faithful dog Snowy at his side, has made him one of Belgium’s most celebrated exports (up there with chocolate and waffles).

With everything factored in, this looks to be huge. Look, for example, at the theatrical muscle behind the production:

And amplifying all the buzz -- the Tintin-nabulation, you might say -- is a big-budget 3-D adaptation (using a high-tech motion-capture process) from Spielberg, who bought the movie rights to Tintin's adventures more than 25 years ago. Joining Spielberg on the project, envisioned as a trilogy of films, is director Peter Jackson of “Lord of the Rings” fame. The first part of filming just wrapped in L.A.

The Los Angeles Times piece is here. MTV weighs in here. Previous January Tintin reportage is here.

Cancelled Jericho Will See New Life as Comic

Are you still sad about the cancellation of Jericho, the nuclear disaster-themed nighttime soap? If so, help is definitely on the way. You might have already heard about the feature film version that is planned but there’s even better news yet: your favorite characters are headed for a comic book near you. From the MTV Movies blog:

Nothing can keep the folks of “Jericho” down. Not a nuclear holocaust. Not living in a violent police state. Not even being canceled — twice. In the spirit of Joss Whedon’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” series (which continues at Dark Horse Comics), the CBS television series “Jericho” will relocate to comics, courtesy of Devil’s Due Publishing.

Apparently, a good portion of the original creative team will have a hand in the creation of the comic version. The full story is here.

Nothing about the movie version of Jericho has been finalized yet, though around the middle of January, series executive producer Jon Turteltaub told iFMagazine he was working on putting a film deal together:

“We’re developing a feature for JERICHO,” says Turteltaub. “It would not require you to have seen the TV show, but it [would] get into life after an event like this on a national scale. It would be the bigger, full on American version of what’s going on beyond the town in Jericho.”

That story is here.

And, of course, for those who need their Jericho fix right now, the entire series is available on DVD.

New This Month: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Think 50 First Dates without all the zany antics or Memento without the buckets of blood and you have the central conceit of The Housekeeper and the Professor (Picador) the latest translation from contemporary Japanese literary icon Yoko Ogawa.

The title’s Professor is a brilliant mathematician whose mind is stuck in the 1970s and whose short-term memory is only 80 minutes long. The Professor shows the Housekeeper the poetry in numbers and the magic in the everyday.

While The Housekeeper and the Professor lacks some of the controlled madness that spiked Ogawa’s previous translation, the short story collection The Diving Pool, there is a certain sweet delicacy here -- a sure hand, a subtle touch -- that gives this novella more resonance than its slight stature would indicate.

The Housekeeper and the Professor was first published in 2003 in Japan where it has sold 2.5 million copies and been adapted into a feature film.

Ang Lee Might Bring Life of Pi to Screen

Is it just me or does it seem like there are more big, big, big book-to-film adaptations being talked about right now than is usually the case? The latest: Canadian novelist Yann Martel’s “unfilmable” Man Booker Award-winning novel Life of Pi. From The Telegraph:

Many had thought Yann Martel’s best-selling fable of a boy cast adrift on the ocean with a Bengal tiger for company to be 'unfilmable', and several Hollywood treatments have fallen by the wayside.

However, studio Fox 2000 is hiring a new screenwriter and Lee is seriously considering the project, according to Variety.

Life of Pi is the best-selling Booker Prize winner of all time and became a global phenomenon after its 2002 win, translated into 40 languages.

Lee is the director of Brokeback Mountain, The Ice Storm, Sense and Sensibility, just to name some of his literary adaptations.

Lee’s involvement, however, is not yet a done deal and The Telegraph points out that “M Night Shyamalan, director of The Sixth Sense, and Harry Potter’s Alfonso Cuaron were previously linked to the project.”

Several Ludlum Thrillers Head for Big Screen

Protothriller writer Robert Ludlum died in 2001. Eight years on, he’s never been more popular as news of possibly four more of his blockbusters head for the big screen.

According to 411mania, this is likely due in part to the fact that Captivate Entertainment, who control the screen rights to Ludlum’s novels, made a deal with Universal last year:

Run by Jeffrey Weiner and Ben Smith, Captivate’s new deal gave Universal exclusive rights to continue the “Bourne Identity” series, and gave the studio first look at all Ludlum titles, 25 of which haven’t yet been optioned for the screen.

Universal is working on a fourth “Bourne” film for Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass based on an original idea, and Universal and Strike Entertainment are prepping an adaptation of Ludlum’s “The Sigma Protocol.”

The early talks for “The Parsifal Mosaic” come in the wake of Tom Cruise entering negotiations to star with Denzel Washington for director David Cronenberg in the Ludlum thriller “The Matarese Circle” at MGM. The “Matarese” deal was made before Captivate landed at Universal.

The Guardian confirms the scuttlebutt around Matarese:

Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington look set to play rival spies forced to team up in David Cronenberg's forthcoming adaptation of the Robert Ludlum thriller The Matarese Circle, Variety reports.

Cruise is in talks to play one of the spooks, while Oscar-winner Washington is understood to have already signed on to play the other. Ludlum's 1979 novel is set during the cold war era and centres on rival US and Russian spies who have been vieing for supremacy for several decades. The screenplay for the new film, by Wanted's Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, will bring the story up to date, but will still focus on the elite group of the title, an organisation that has infiltrated every layer of society.

More book-to-film news in that same 411mania piece: Clive Barker talks about the possibility of releasing the movie version of Tortured Souls from development hell (“I think it'll happen. I think it'll happen probably only when I've got back into the swing of directing. There's a script I like very much.”)

Da Vinci Code Author Holds Key

It seems likely that January Magazine’s readers won’t really care that Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, has written a follow-up Robert Langdon novel. Especially when you consider the source: Entertainment Tonight Online. We’re going to repeat it anyway. Even if you don’t want to know, you can remember that you saw it here first:

ET breaks news from the 'Angels & Demons' set in Geneva. Ron Howard tells ET that The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons author Dan Brown has completed a third book featuring Professor Robert Langdon.

Unsurprisingly, The Los Angeles Times seems more excited about the news than we are:

There is no word yet from Brown’s official website or from his publisher, Doubleday, though Brown has given some information about his "Da Vinci Code" follow-up on his website, assuring readers there that "the next Robert Langdon novel ... is set deep within the oldest fraternity in history ... the enigmatic brotherhood of the Masons." The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey Trachtenberg reported in January of last year that the new novel even carried the tentative title, "The Solomon Key."

These shreds of information about the next book resulted in plenty of preemptive marketing: I can't even tell you how many books about Masons, secret societies and the hidden meanings of Washington, D.C., landmarks have arrived in our offices over the last few years. In the wake of "The Da Vinci Code," there was a billion imitators. Now they aren't even waiting for the new book.

If nothing else, word about the new book should help get some butts into seats when the Dan Brown-penned, Ron Howard-directed Angels & Demons opens on May 15th.

Ponzi the Musical

Ever since the Madoff incident erupted late last year, I’ve been wondering about the term “Ponzi scheme.” In The New York Times yesterday, Patrick Healy explains it, while also letting us know about a musical retelling of the story heading to a stage or theater near you.

“Ponzi’s Scheme” tells the story of Charles Ponzi, a charismatic charlatan who came to Boston and fleeced investors for millions of dollars in the 1920s by promising them huge, swift returns on their money — then used the money to pay big sums to earlier investors and repeated the cycle with tier after tier of investors to convey the appearance of earnings.

Jean Doumanian Productions, who produced August: Osage County and several films by Woody Allen, will develop Ponzi’s Scheme, a 2005 non-fiction book by Mitchell Zuckoff, into a musical.

The New York Times piece is here.

Funke Demanded Fraser for Inkheart

Though authors get notoriously little say about who gets cast in movies made from their books, Cornelia Funke put her foot down when the time came to cast the film version of Inkheart. From the Arkansas Democrat Gazette:

A film studio, says author Cornelia Funke, “doesn’t want the writer to say who the leading man should be” in a film adaptation of the author’s book. That didn’t stop her from insisting Brendan Fraser be cast in the leading role of Mortimer Folchart in the film - in theaters Friday -- based on her hugely popular novel Inkheart by threatening to withdraw her book from the project if she didn't get her way.

Funke told Newsday we’re in a “golden age of children’s books.” The author, who has been called the German J.K. Rowling, is certainly in a position to know:

The bestselling children’s author has sold 15 million copies since beginning her career as a writer, published 47 books of varying types in 43 countries and seen six of her stories turned into movies -- including “Inkheart.” “Book eaters” are what she calls people like herself, for whom literature is as essential “as chocolate” and whose numbers may even be growing.

“I think we want the feeling that life has a beginning and an end - and a center,” she said. “We want to feel that everything falls in place. It’s a classic way of dealing with our existence.”

The film version of Inkheart will open January 23rd. It is directed by Iain Softley (Hackers, The Wings of the Dove, The Skeleton Key) and stars Fraser, as well as Helen Mirren and Paul Brittany.

Meyer and Harris Give Vampires a New Stake

Young fans of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series (Little, Brown Young Readers) will be unsurprised to hear that the first movie based on one of Meyer’s books is expected to be an unqualified hit with its target audience. From Newsday:

The love-after-death movie “Twilight” is going to be so huge it would take a stake through the heart to stop it. And the reasons seem so obvious they make you say, "D'oh!": A heavily computer-generated, blood-flecked, teenage soap opera set in the hormonal chaos of high school. A ready-made fan base of rabid Gothic/chick-lit readers cultivated by Stephanie Meyer's four-book series. And a not-so-secret weapon named Kristen Stewart.

Back in August, Meyer’s fans celebrated the publication of Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in the Twilight series, with the kind of enthusiasm that hasn’t been seen since Harry.

Despite the extreme success of the series, Meyer recently told Entertainment Weekly that her next project might not be in the world of Twilight at all:

I have two projects I want to work on. But the movie has been so time-consuming — all the publicity and the merchandise to approve. But I want to get in and write something totally different, a whole new world, and lose myself in that. I think that will be the most healing thing for me. So that's my goal.

By the time the movie opens on November 21st, media interest should have reached a frenzy. Shoot a silver bullet in any direction and you’ll hit a story about Twilight, Stephanie Meyer or one of the much ballyhooed cast of the film. Business Week brings a different angle, however, sharing the Cinderella story that led to the making -- and well-timed release -- of the film.

All of this comes on the heels of the success of Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Series, recently reimagined as the hit HBO series, True Blood. Writing for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, back in October, Oline Cogdill wrote:

In her novels, vampires have come out, so to speak, thanks to a synthetic blood manufactured in Japan. But not everyone is so accepting of vampires who have been know to, well, be vampires. Sookie Stackhouse, however, is sympathetic. She’s a waitress in a small town and, because of her ability to read minds, she knows what it’s like to be different.

Harris’ novels re-imagined as a series has become a perfect fit for HBO, with Sookie Stackhouse played by Oscar-winner Anna Paquin and the executive producer Alan Ball, who created the hit Six Feet Under and won an Oscar for the screenplay of the 1999 film American Beauty.

True Blood airs Sunday nights on HBO with numerous encores.

Midnight’s Children Reaches for Silver Screen

Though Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie’s Booker-winning 1981 novel has been called “unfilmable,” the author has recently hatched a new plan to change that.

According to The Guardian, he will work with Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta to co-write a film adaptation for a movie that is expected to begin production in 2010. Mehta will direct.

With its bravura mix of historical events and inventive flights of fancy, the 650-page novel has long been seen as unfilmable.

Reached at home in Toronto, Mehta rejected any such concerns. “If I was doing it myself it would be rather daunting,” she said. “The fact that we like and respect each other is a good foundation for collaboration.”

The pair will begin writing the screen adaptation in mid-March, with Rushdie and Mehta's partner, David Hamilton, acting as co-producers. Hamilton said he had had preliminary discussions with two Hollywood studios, both of which were keen to see the fruits of the Rushdie-Mehta pairing. But, he added, the script would dictate the ultimate response.

The Guardian calls Midnight’s Children a “panoramic 1981 allegory of the birth of modern India.” The book has twice been named the Best of the Booker: in 1993 at the time of the Booker Prize’s 25th anniversary and again earlier this year as the prize -- now known as the Man-Booker -- turned 40.

Dance, Psycho, Dance!

There aren’t a lot of big laughs in the only mildly funny The Tall Guy (1989) starring Jeff Goldblum and Emma Thompson. Some of the biggest ones come when the film spoofs what was then a new trend of turning unlikely books and plays and ideas into musical productions. In The Tall Guy, we’re faced with what at the time seemed an unlikely concept: Elephant Man: The Musical. It was so ridiculous, it could almost not be thought about.

We have, of course, come a long way in 18 years. So far, in fact, that we can read an announcement that Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel American Psycho is slated for musical treatment and regard it with only widened eyes, not open-mouthed shock. From The New York Times:

He sings, he dances, he commits horrific acts of torture, murder and cannibalism: Patrick Bateman, the disturbed protagonist of “American Psycho,” is slated to slice his way onto Broadway in a musical adaptation of the 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel, Variety reported. Rights for a musical version of “American Psycho,” about a 1980s-era investment banker turned serial killer with an abiding affection for the music of Phil Collins, were acquired by the Johnson-Roessler Company; the Collective, a management and production firm; and XYZ Films.

The book has, of course, already been reimagined for visual media. You’ll recall a very good-though-disturbing film in 2000 starring Christian “Bat-Dude” Bale. Though the film version was notably devoid of singing.

Let’s think about this, if we dare: Can a warbling Dexter or honestly operatic Hannibal really be so very far behind?

Tip of the hat to GalleyCat.

Women’s Murder Club Coming to A Computer Near You

If you just can’t get enough of Women’s Murder Club, the inane television series starring Angie Harmon and based on a book by James Patterson, the evil Microsoft might just have the answer.

Microsoft and I-play today released “Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet” which they’re touting as “the first interactive game based on a story and characters by best-selling author James Patterson.” (Of course it’s the first. Would there need to be more?) It will be available exclusively on MSN Games until May 29th. (Not being a gamer, I don’t get why that’s a good thing but, hey: I don’t make this stuff up.)

While none of sounds terribly fun to me, the Microsoft publicists have other ideas and you can tell how excited they are from all the en-dashes:

The game, which features the characters from the “WMC” books and an all-new, never-before-seen storyline, is a thrilling seek-and-find adventure designed by award-winning game designer Jane Jensen in collaboration with Patterson. Its storyline lets fans experience the suspense of James Patterson’s stories interactively for the first time as they solve a chilling series of murders in San Francisco.

“The opportunity for casual games built around intriguing stories and compelling characters is largely untapped, and who better to lead the way than America’s No. 1 storyteller, James Patterson?” said Kevin Unangst, senior global director of Games for Windows in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. “We’re thrilled to partner with James Patterson and I-play to debut a game of this caliber on MSN Games.”

Dude, do you know how many books Patterson sells? Why wouldn’t you be thrilled? The i-Play people are also understandably thrilled:

“MSN Games is a great place to debut a high-profile casual game with a powerful brand like James Patterson, based on the strength of their audience and the scope and reach of the MSN and Microsoft networks,” said Don Ryan, head of I-play. “We’re excited to work with them and are looking forward to an incredible debut for the first ‘Women’s Murder Club’ game.”

It probably won’t hurt Patterson’s book sales either. However, it seems it will be too little, too late to help the show: earlier this week, ABC announced that the series had been canceled.

Fleming’s Pornography

Expect Bondmania to move to fever pitch between now and May 28, when James Bond creator Ian Fleming -- who died in 1964 -- would have turned 100 years old.

Crap Towns author Sam Jordison recently got into the action at The Guardian book blog:

As the 100th anniversary of his birth approaches, it’s tempting to characterise Ian Fleming as The Man With the Golden Pen, as a calculatingly commercial author of absurd misogynistic fantasies. Even his own wife Ann icily described him as “hammering out pornography” when he spent his disciplined three hours a day writing the books in their Jamaican home.

Later in the piece, though, Jordison loses me--and possibly you--when he says that “just like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett before him, Fleming is slowly being adopted into the literary fold.”

The Bond books were often fun, the storytelling competent, and a few really good films have been based on those tales. But let’s face it, folks, as a writer Fleming was never in the same league as Chandler and Hammett.

The Guardian blog piece is here.

The Stone Angel to Open at a Theater Kinda Near You

Though it opened at both the Vancouver and Toronto Film Festivals last year, I’m still stoked about the May 9th Alliance Films limited release of Kari Skogland’s film adaptation of The Stone Angel by Canadian author Margaret Laurence (1926-1987). From the Alliance Web site:

Based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel is the story of feisty firecracker Hagar Shipley (Christine Horne, Oscar Winner Ellen Burstyn). Her passionate heart has always ruled her head and her choices have put her at odds with family and friends. With her life nearly behind her, she sets out in search of a way to reconcile herself to her turbulent past. Through her reflections we come to know a passionate and rebellious young bride, her love for her two sons, the freedoms she claimed, and the joys she denied herself.

Alliance’s PR-speak sounds as though the film might be a lamed-up version of Laurence’s powerful novel. (I mean “feisty firecracker”? WTF?) You can tell Alliance figures the movie is destined for the arthouse circuit because the Web site tells us The Stone Angel will be “in cinemas” on May 9th.

I love, also, how everyone keeps talking about “Laurence’s best-selling novel.” (They break it up like that too: “best-selling.”) But, check it: the book was published in 1964. Was it a bestseller? Maybe so, but whatever gauges they used to count such things are long gone. The Stone Angel is beyond bestselling. It is important, beloved and, when it isn’t being contested, it is taught in schools.

Kari Skogland is one of Canada’s hottest young directors and was named one of The Hollywood Reporter’s 10 Directors to Watch in 2001. Since then she’s put in a lot of miles, including writer/director on 2002’s Liberty Stands Still with Wesley Snipes, Linda Fiorentino and Oliver Platt; director on 2005’s Chicks With Sticks and she is currently in post-production on Fifty Dead Men Walking with Jim Sturgess, Rose McGowan and Ben Kingsley.

But for our purposes, The Stone Angel is the one that matters. Back in October, Variety summed the film up thusly:

A tastefully reverent, fundamentally sincere treatment of Margaret Laurence's 1964 Manitoba-based novel, a staple for Canada’s 12th graders, “The Stone Angel” plays precisely as expected from a incident-laden, multigenerational and metaphorical book crammed into a conventional running time. Local auds may thrill at this visual embodiment of literary treasure, but the story won't resonate elsewhere beyond fests and some ancillary.

But, hell: it’s Laurence, right? It’s Skogland. Someone just tell me where to sign; where to stand.

Meanwhile, check my fangirl stats: here's a review I did of an anniversary republication of The Stone Angel back in 1998. You read that right: a decade ago. Fortunately, the book has changed not at all. That’s the beauty of reviewing classics.