Just as the wave of broadway’s newest runaway success begins to crest, another beloved musical from years back is stepping into the spotlight once again. Wicked, the dynamic retelling of L. Frank Baum‘s certified-classic children’s story from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West, has officially been given a release date for its film adaptation: December 20th, 2019. We’ll give you a second to put that in your calendar app. In the director’s chair will be Stephen Daldry, a Tony-winning director who has already shown off his adaptation chops in The Hours, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and The Reader. Unfortunately, no …
If you’re familiar with the “sacred day” that is Bloomsday, you’re probably already celebrating the writings of James Joyce and Irish culture, and have been all day. If you haven’t, you’re missing out: every June 16th, lit-fans and proud Irishmen and women dress up in Edwardian fashion and walk the same path in Dublin the characters in Ulysses do on this day in 1904. All along the route, throughout Ireland and across the world there are commemorations in the form of full Irish breakfasts, marathon readings and dramatizations of the book (and yes, pub crawls). June 16th, 1904, the date in which Ulysses takes place, has many …
Lois Duncan, the author whose suspenseful young adult novels were a major force for the development of teen-centered thrillers, died in her Albuquerque, New Mexico home last night, June 15th. She was 82. Duncan’s most well-known work is indisputably I Know What You Did Last Summer, the story of a teenager with a guilty-conscious that attempts escape a gruesome fate at the hands of an unknown slasher. The book, originally published in 1973, received a second life when it was adapted into a blockbuster movie in 1997 starring Jennifer Love Hewitt. Another, less-known YA book by Duncan, Hotel for Dogs was also adapted into a family …
Admit it: You’ve lived an awesome life all your own, on your own. You’ve learned your lessons through experiencing as much as you could, and the people in your life are characters in themselves. The question is: who could embody your voice if your life story were an audiobook? Actors and celebrities are knocking down your door, begging you to let them lend their voices to you. Who should you choose? Featured image courtesy of the Project Casting.
Chuck Palahnuik has had a pretty busy 2016 so far. He recently hit his fundraising mark for an indie adaptation of his magical-realism novel Lullaby and finished a run of comic-book sequels to Fight Club. If you didn’t think that was enough for one year, the novelist-turned-everything-else has found yet another new medium in which to creep us out: adult coloring books. This fall will see the the release of Palahnuik’s hybrid short-story anthology/coloring book, Bait: Off-Color Stories for You to Color. The book features eight new stories of predictably grotesque situations (such as a man on the Titanic “who finds a surgical solution to the obstacle …
