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 the up and coming franchise into a movie as well, with the possibility of one of Hollywood’s biggest names involved.

DreamWorks/Paramount has picked up the film rights to The 39 Clues, reports Variety, which is scheduled to become a phenomenon this fall by Scholastic Books.

(Cinema Blend)

“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 prose to her memoir “Notes on a Life.”

Ranging episodically over several decades, Coppola offers a poignant self-portrait of middle age — she’s just turned 50 as her text begins in 1986 — thinking about the choices she’s made. “I am an observer at heart,” she writes, and we see her mingled admiration and envy of those who fling themselves into action. Francis and daughter Sofia direct movies while Eleanor shoots “making of” documentaries about them.

(LA Times)

“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 director of blockbuster films including “Basic Instinct” and “RoboCop,” but he is also a member of “Jesus Seminar,” a group of scholars and authors that seeks to establish historical facts about Jesus.

(Reuters)

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 1950s were to Fleming’s work and to its enduring appeal.

In February 1951, Fleming sat down in Goldeneye and began to write what would eventually be his first book, Casino Royale. The house offered him an escape from war-weary Britain, and Fleming went on to write every one of the Bond books there.

(BBC)

 

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 more clued-in might even have known of eccentric British genius Alan Moore. But by and large, comics were seen as a squalid literary ghetto.

No more. Today, thoughtful, complex work such as Louis Riel and Persepolis attract acclaim from all quarters; Moore is so sick of Hollywood adaptations that he has deliberately made his latest work unfilmable; and many authors who made their name as novelists (such as Jonathan Ames and Mat Johnson) have of late turned their hands and minds to comics. So when Vertigo Comics asked me to script a graphic novel for them, my initial reaction was - pure trepidation.

(The Guardian UK)

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 we were crying,” recalls Penzler, who had published Ellroy on his Mysterious Press. “I was incredulous – we both agreed it was unfilmable.”

They were right, of course. And they were also wrong. The 1997 Curtis Hanson film of “L.A. Confidential” became an enormous critical hit (if only a moderate success at the box office). It also won two Oscars; one for Kim Basinger for supporting actress and another for Hanson and Brian Helgeland for adapted screenplay.

Only the most die-hard Ellroy fan resented that the film resembled his labyrinthine novel — with its dozens of characters, thick historical context and overlapping subplots — only slightly. It’s considered one of the finest films of the ’90s and one of the greatest film noirs since the genre’s 1950s heyday.

But since then, when it comes to movies, it’s been more crying than laughing for Ellroy fans.

(LA Times)

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 post-polio syndrome for the last two decades of his life and was confined to a wheelchair. Clarke had lived in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, since 1956 and held citizenship there.

The author, scientist, space expert and underwater diver was one of the most prolific and renowned science-fiction writers, publishing more than 30 novels, at least 13 short-story collections and 28 works of non-fiction. He was honored with a British knighthood in 2000, and his work inspired the names of some spacecraft, an asteroid and even a species of dinosaur. “2001: A Space Odyssey” was adapted in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film of the same name.

(Source: Bloomberg)

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 in the 2006 book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. His newest book, due out in early 2009, is called Free. It examines the rise of pricing models which give products and services to customers for free.

(Source: Slash Film)

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 2.

Together, they span 16 years of Satrapi’s life as her childhood in Iran is interrupted by the Islamic Revolution. As she grew older, she discovered punk rock and heroically stood up against the fundamentalist repression overtaking her country. Eventually, at age 14, Satrapi was exiled and forced to leave her family, and her past, behind.

Her story has now been made into a film, Persepolis, directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. It won the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and has now received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature. Satrapi recently spoke with The Chronicle about the experience of turning memories into art, and how her film is a reaction against repression across the world.

(Source: Columbia Chronicle)

 

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 perfectly happy (as far as we know) directing. Period. Their latest films, awards contenders all, don’t send off the whiff of bland collaboration made by an industrial machine, but rather hit the viewer with the strong imprint of an artist at work — alongside others, including the screenwriter.

(Source: Variety)