Although only one book has been written (and not yet published), The 39 Clues is already mapped out to include a ten book series, as well as a set of collectable cards and an online adventure game set up to give participants a shot at a $10,000 prize. It only makes sense, then, to adapt […]

 
“Notes on the Making of ‘Apocalypse Now,’ ” Eleanor Coppola’s 1979 production diary of husband Francis’ audacious, flawed film released that year, remains one of the best accounts ever written of the insane difficulties involved in shooting a big-budget movie on location. Nearly 30 years later, she brings the same scrupulous honesty and lucid, thoughtful […]

“Basic Instinct” director Paul Verhoeven has written a book that contradicts biblical teaching by suggesting that Jesus might have been fathered by a Roman soldier who raped Mary.
An Amsterdam publishing house said Wednesday it will publish the Dutch filmmaker’s biography of Jesus, “Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait,” in September.
Verhoeven is best known as the […]

 
Britain’s most famous secret agent, James Bond, was in many ways a product not of his homeland but of Jamaica.
It may not have been my most arduous assignment as a security correspondent, but walking around Bond’s birthplace, Ian Fleming’s former home Goldeneye, I understoood how important the exoticism, escapism and glamour of Jamaica in the […]

 
Twenty years ago, when I was a geeky teenager addicted to the Uncanny X-Men, comic books meant melodramatic tales of implausibly proportioned superheroes. Ten years later, they were still viewed by most “serious” writers as the opposite of literature. A few - Maus, Palestine, Sandman - had transcended their humble origins. Some of the more […]

 
One day in the mid-’90s, the lanky and sometimes manic James Ellroy walked into the brownstone New York office of his publisher, Otto Penzler — the two were going to a fight that night — and broke the news: He had just sold the film rights to his novel “L.A. Confidential.”
“We were laughing so hard […]

Arthur C. Clarke, the U.K. science- fiction writer and futurist visionary best known for the novel adapted for the film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” has died. He was 90.
Clarke died in his adopted home country of Sri Lanka early today from respiratory complications, according to a statement from his office there. He had suffered from […]

 
Would you see more movies in the movie theater if it cost nothing?
You might not know who Chris Anderson is. Some people know him as the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. Others know him as some sort of tech futurist, having coined the term The Long Tail in an acclaimed Wired article, which he expanded upon […]

 
When Marjane Satrapi enters a room, it looks as if she has just walked off the pages of a comic book. Her wildly energetic hand gestures and exuberant voice illustrate her fiery passion better than any artist could.
It’s only natural that Satrapi has turned her life into literature, the acclaimed graphic novels Persepolis and Persepolis […]

 
A film by … who? Though the fury — usually spurred by screenwriters — over that pesky creature known as the possessory credit has calmed a bit, it remains a complicated topic that can stir up as much argument as can be found inside an Iowa caucus group. In one corner are directors who are […]