In the Bookroom

October 6, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

He’s already turned Charlie and the Chocolate Factory into a freak show, and now director Tim Burton may be performing a similar act with another long-time kiddie fav, Alice in Wonderland. Variety reports that Burton will use a combination of Live action and animation (the film will be in 3-D) and is reteaming with favorite star Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. The biggest reason for Burton’s take on Charlie being so mondo bizarro is Depp’s interpretation of Willy Wonka as a combination of Michael Jackson and an Internet predator (give me Gene Wilder any day), so since Burton loves freaks, Depp’s Hatter will probably give people LSD flashbacks to the ‘60s.

October 3, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

I hold in my hot little hands a galley for The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia by Steve Sansweet & Pablo Hidalgo with several contributors that hits shelves December 9. Sansweet first tipped me off to this title last April at the New York Comic-Com, and I;ve been anxiously awaiting it. The review galley is a 450-page sample of the final 1200-page, three-volume A–Z encyclopedia that draws from the six feature films and the hundreds if not thousands of novels, graphic novels, and other resources in the Star Wars expanded universe. Starting with the A-1 Deluxe Floater and ending with Zzzanmxl (that was a new one on me, too) this covers anything and everything from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The text is riddled with tons of illustrations of characters, ships, weapons, you name it (click through for pix. Trust me it's worth it.)
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October 2, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

Forbes has a piece on the “The Worlds Best Paid Authors.” Looking at the list, the first thing that came to mind is that people really are reading a lot of crap these days—including me—but at least they’re reading at all. Not surprisingly, Jo Rowling is top gun, having raked in $300 million between June 2007 and June ’08. Yes, I said $300 million in a year!!! She’s brought joy to countless people worldwide and seems like a genuinely nice gal (just don’t infringe on her copyrights or she’ll sue your arse off), but it still makes me want to puke (according to a post on Bookninja, $300M in a year equals $571 ...Read More

October 1, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

So much for being non-biased: Nobel Prize judge Horace Engdahl has crapped all over American literature to the Associated Press, so if you’ve got money on Philip Roth or John Updike to be the next winner, you’re going to lose. Engdahl thinks that American authors are “too sensitive to their own mass culture…the U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.”

What American books has this huckleberry read recently? The Swedish Academy seems to be run by a pack of snobs who’ve decayed the Nobel into a political prize, so if you’re not criticizing some government you don’t stand much of a chance of winning. The prize will continually...Read More

September 30, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

We got an advance copy of the 2-disc special edition of Indy IV yesterday. I popped Disc 2 into my DVD player for a quick look at the Special Features. Some pretty cool stuff on there, including the typical making of featurettes and galleries of screen shots, production stills, and concept art, plus interviews with Spielberg, Lucas (George, you have no right having that much hair at your age, you bastard), and the cast.

What immediately caught my eye was the “Iconic Props” featurette. Alas, not as iconic as I hoped since it’s all Crystal Skull stuff and nothing from the previous Indy films except the Ark of the Covenant, which makes a cameo appearance. Still there’s a lot of great reference shots that prop heads are going to love.

It’s a no brainer that you’re going to have to stock this title. I’ll write...Read More