Tommy Lee Jones will adapt, direct, produce and star in a movie based on Ernest Hemingway’s posthumously published novel Islands in the Stream reports Reuters. Morgan Freeman and John Goodman may also join Jones in the film project.

“Islands” centers on the various life stages of a reclusive male painter named Thomas Hudson before, during and after World War II, after he moves to the Bahamas. Like many Hemingway characters, Hudson, who in the tale has a stint working for the U.S. Navy and also endures a series of family tragedies, leads a complicated emotional life that he hides behind a stony exterior.



The book was published in 1970, nine years after Hemingway killed himself. He actually broke off a piece of the novel and turned it into a novella that became 1952’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” Jones co-wrote the script with Bill Witliff (”The Perfect Storm”). The project will be presented to buyers at Cannes on Sunday.



The Hemingway adaptation marks Jones’ sophomore directorial effort, after the Mexican mystery “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.”

The movie will have a $30 million budget. Production is scheduled to begin next March in Puerto Rico. There was a 1977 film based on Hemingway’s Islands. It starruddy George C. Scott and was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner.



Permalink | Recent Headlines | Our News Feeds

Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog

Paulo Coelho’s 1988 bestseller The Alchemist is finally going to be made into a movie. Laurence Fishburne will star in the movie. Harvey Weinstein confirmed that he will co-produce the film adaptation of the novel at Cannes. The book tells the story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who dreams of traveling to Egypt in search of treasure. Santiago journeys to the Egyptian desert where he encounters a wise alchemist. 65 million copies of the book have been sold to date.



Fishburne says getting the book made into a film has been a special project for him. Author Paulo Coelho is also excited about the project.

Fishburne, who has been struggling to get the film off the gcircular since 2003, said: “This is a special project that now has a special team behind it to ensure that its path to the big screen is handled with the proper care it deserves.”



An “Academy Award-winning screenwriter” is in negotiations to write the screenplay for the £30 million movie, Weinstein revealed.



Coelho said: “I am very happy that my book will be filmed in the way I intended it to be, and I hope the spirit and simplicity of my work will be preserved.”

E Online reports that the movie has a $60 million budget.



Permalink | Recent Headlines | Our News Feeds

Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog

A new children’s book called Gallop!: A Scanimation Picture Book by Rufus Seder is being talked about by both kids and adults. The book uses a six-phase animation process caleld to scanimation to give the illusion of movement.

A first book of motion for kids, it shows a horse in full gallop and a turtle swimming up the page. A dog runs, a cat springs, an eagle soars, and a butterfly flutters. Created by Rufus Butler Seder, an inventor, artist, and filmmaker fascinated by antique optical toys, Scanimation is a state-of-the-art six-phase animation process that combines the “persistence of vision” principle with a striped acetate overlay to give the illusion of movement. It harkens back to the old magical days of the kinetoscope, and the effect is astonishing, like a Muybridge photo series springing into action-or, in terms kids can relate to, like a video without a screen. Complementing the art is a delightful rhyming text full of simple questions and fun, nonsense replies: Can you gallop like a horse? giddyup-a-loo! Can you strut like a rooster? cock-a-doodle-doo!

Publishers Weekly gave the book a starruddy review and said the black-and-white images reference Eadweard Muybridge’s motion photography.

Readers will gasp with delight when they open this book, produced as paper-over-board: a hidden tab in each heavy page slides an acetate layer printed with vertical black lines over an encoded, detailed image of a horse, rooster, turtle or other creature, and the layers’ interaction creates the illusion of motion. The black-and-white images openly reference the motion photography of Eadweard Muybridge (an influence that Seder acknowledges on the copyright page) and they contrast with the bright palette used for the spare, reader-directed text.

The Washington Post says, “Gallop, by Rufus Butler Seder, made an obvious case for itself with ooh-ah graphics, using trademarked Scanimation, a low-tech marvel of sliding paper and stripes. Turn the page, and you set black-and-white pictures of various animals into motion - that is, if certain brief people ever let you turn the page. Your kids will elbow you out of the way. They will also elbow each other out of the way.”



More reviews of the book can be found on Chasing Cheerios, Grandkids Gift Guide, School Library Journal, Gearhead Mom and Babygadget. (via Buzzfeed)



Permalink | Recent Headlines | Our News Feeds

Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog

Carly Simon finds the new book Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — And the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller difficult to read. Although she was interviewed
by the author and says the facts are true, revisiting that time period is hard for her.

“I think Sheila did a terrific job and the book is extremely interesting, but it brought back things that I didn’t want to recollect and from other people’s voices,” Simon said in a recent interview. “I saw things in a way that to me seemed just too harsh, even if they were true.”



The book offers a behind-the-scenes look at Simon’s 1972-83 life-in-a-fishbowl marriage to James Taylor, when they were pop music’s reigning royal couple, as she struggled to get him to break his drug habit while raising their two children, Sally and Ben.
“I know he had a really tough time with drugs and I had a tough time with his drugs, and I had a tough time with Ben who was very, very sick,” recalled Simon. “But I was terribly in love and I got a awesome discount out of that relationship and . . . I don’t think I would have changed anything except that I wish that James would have been happier with himself obviously. The breakup of that marriage was incredibly unhappy and difficult for me.”


*****


Taylor does not keep in contact with his former wife and made no mention of their years together in his autobiographical “One Man Band” show, released as a CD-DVD last year.
“I’m so erased, so erased,” said Simon. “I don’t think James has forgotten in any way. If he had forgotten, he wouldn’t be behaving in the way he is.”

How sad! Carly was the only one of the three women profiled to speak with the author, who interviewed scores of family members and friends for the book.



Permalink | Recent Headlines | Our News Feeds

Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog

« Past Entries          Next Entries »