I’ll admit that I haven’t been keeping up with The Simpsons as much as I once had. I made a point to tune in Last Sunday night to see author Neil Gaiman and laughed non-stop. It was easily one of the best episodes. Ever. The episode hilariously spoofs Ocean’s 11 and blows the lid off the kid lit scene. It is comedy gold. Blow off your Cyber Monday shopping plans and watch the whole episode now:
The episode has lots of great visual gags. There is a blink-and-you-miss-it salute to a Far Side Cartoon (The Real Reason Dinosaurs Went Extinct) and plenty of great gags at the Springfield Book festival. I also had to pause and rewind the show to be sure to catch the titles of Homer’s sister-in-law’s fantasy-laden bookshelf, which includes both Lev Grossman’s The Magician King and Maile Meloy’s The Apothecary.
In case you missed it, the first trailer for The Hunger Games movie was released yesterday morning.
I recently read the trilogy to see what the hub-bub was all about. I’ll have a review sooner or later, but the short version is – I thought the series was excellent. Unlike some, my world would not have ended if the movie didn’t get it exactly right. Based on what’s shown here, it looks like the filmmakers nailed it. This is good news. I’ll be seeing this on the big screen with a few million teenagers.
There’s a new trailer for The Raven starring John Cusack as Edgar Allen Poe. I’m no Poe scholar, but this may not be entirely historically accurate. Still. Cusack as Poe. I’m in.
Salman Rushdie announced last week that he is creating a reality-based sci-fi drama series for US cable Showtime, because he believes that “quality TV drama has taken over from film and the novel as the best way of widely communicating ideas and stories.” It is interesting to see someone of Rushdie’s stature take this position. The idea might seem blasphemous if so many critics hadn’t already been floating the idea of the “HBO drama” (whatever channel it’s on) as literature.
A quick review of TV drama of recent vintage, suggests we may be in the midst of a golden age of televised story telling.The Wire has been compared to Dickens; The Sopranos were compared to Shakespeare. David Simon’sTreme is celebrated “for showing how artists make art, and what it actually means to make a living from creative work.” Mad Men, Six Feet Under – the list goes on.
A recent surprise for me has been the dramatization of George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy novel series A Song of Ice Fire, Game of Thrones. I have not read any of the novels in the series and have had my viewer’s expectations upended week after week. Last week’s episode, Baelor, took such a dramatic turn that it prompted a discussion between my wife and I titled What Happens when Every Accepted Fantasy Story-Telling Trope is Thrown out the Window. This piece in Grantland nicely sums it up:
Because that’s what a generation of underbaked trilogies had taught us fantasy was all about, right? The good guys winning?…When [giant spoiler] in the final moments of last night’s shocking episode, a lot of our television preconceptions dropped with it.
But back to Rushdie. Does his involvement in television signal yet another round of “death of the novel” conversations/blog posts? Probably. Story telling seems to be doing just fine though.
Over the weekend someone brought their video camera to the movies to film the new trailer for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (the Hollywood version). Holy smokes. The music in the trailer is Academy Award-winning Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) and Karen O (The Yeah Yeah Yeahs) covering Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song.
If our site stats are to be believed, that question (rhymes with salt) has lead several folks to our blog via their favorite search engine over the last few weeks or so. I guess the question has been creeping up in frequency to coincide with the new movie, Atlas Shrugged Part 1. (In Atlas Shrugged Part 2: Electric Boogaloo, John Galt denies strips the funding for the local community center, and local children must resort to a break dancing competition to defeat him.) I’m not sure why searching for John G*** leads readers here. Maybe it’s because we mock Ayn Rand and her poorly written, morally bankrupt world view at every opportunity. Even then, BGB doesn’t show up in the first 20 pages of Google results for that term, so I have no idea how long you have to click through to find us. Persistence. Whatever the reason, here’s a spoiler alert: John G*** is a douche. And a fictional one at that.
This is all a roundabout excuse to link to this article by Maureen Dowd on Ayn Rand.
In other YA news, I also stumbled across this hilarious video review of Frank Portman’s King Dork by the “Lazy-Ass Librarian.” (Thanks, Kathleen!) This begs the question – where, oh where is our King Dork movie?
I watched the new movie Howl over the weekend. (On Demand for current movies is the greatest thing to ever happen to parents with small children. I saw a new movie that was not rated G and didn’t have to pay a babysitter!) I thought James Franco was magnificent in channeling Allen Ginsberg. Check out this scene recreating the fabled San Francisco first reading of the poem:
As a reader who is against censorship, I thought the judge’s ruling at the end was especially moving. The movie distills it down to its best bits, but the Internet is always open if you want to read the entire decision.
I just stumbled across this trailer for the new movieHowlstarring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg. Wow. And Don Draper is his attorney! Is there anything that guy can’t do?
After spending over 12 hours of the first part of my weekend immersed in baseball (Go Yankees!!), my boys and I tore ourselves away from our home screen and headed out on Sunday to the big screen to see Where the Wild Things Are.
There has been so much hype (much on this site) and I had read so many reviews that I almost expected to be disappointed. To my delight – the movie exceeded my expectations and and was truly one of the best family movies I’ve seen in years. When everyone in your family (ranging in age from 9 to 40something) gives the movie a 9 out of 10 rating – you know it’s good.
For those of us that are Dave Eggers fans, his writing style and depth of emotions are front and center in the screenplay. The movie expertly depicts how deeply children are filled with emotion through the main character, Max, but even more so through the Wild Things. Carol, the “lead” monster who is voiced by James Gandolfino is such a complex character – wild and crazy one minute and deeply hurt by his monster friend’s abandonment in the next scene – that you can almost hear your own child’s voice in the dialogue.
The hopes and desires that the Wild Things have for their king are what most humans want in life – stability, friendship and fun. Where the Wild Things Are is as much an adult movie as it is a children’s movie. About 20 minutes into the movie – I was concerned that it would be over my kids’ heads. Not only did they completely get it but afterward wanted to talk about why the different characters behaved the way they did. When was the last time you saw a kids movie and actually had something to discuss afterward?
The costumes were fantastic and overall the movie is visually stunning and a complete joy to watch. It was worth the admission price to hear my own son, Max, get out of the car this morning and turn to me with an impish grin and say “Let the wild rumpus begin!
***Great post, Nicole, and Ima let you finish, but because we are a blog that explores the intersection of books and music (and film) – be sure to check out the excellent soundtrack to the movie by Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and the Kids — Tim****
We were recently accused of being a blog that is interested in the intersection of music and literature. Guilty. We’d maybe also throw film into the mix, too. Here’s an example of what I mean. I’m excited that there’s a documentary coming out tomorrow about Jack Kerouac and his novel Big Sur.
The movie features commentary, readings, interviews, and remembrances by Lawrence Ferlingetti, Patti Smith, Tom Waits, Sam Shepard, S.E. Hinton, and others. Here’s the trailer:
A soundtrack for the movie was recorded by Jay Ferrar (Son Volt) and Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie). I would check out anything that these two particular guys worked on together. The lyrics for the songs are taken from the text of the novel. Very cool.
If you run over to NPR, you can listen to the whole soundtrack for another day or so.
I am a huge Dave Eggers fan (as many of us are at BGB) so it really didn’t take much to convince me to dash out to my local indie movie theater as soon as Away We Gostarted showing. This movie met all my expectations. It is quirky, sweet, funny and has a great soundtrack. After the movie, my husband asked me “What was the movie really about?” Upon discussion, we realized that it was about life, being a parent, making decisions on how to raise your kids and that ultimately there is no right answer.
There are five different segments in the movie each of which portrays a family with very different beliefs on family and particularly child-rearing. Some are hilarious, some are pathetic but mostly it demonstrates that you can only do your best and hope that your kids turn out okay. The two main characters, John Krasinski from the Office and Maya Rudolph from SNL are in their mid 30’s, expecting their first child and feel that they just don’t have their shit together. In one of the more poignant scenes of the movie – they are debating whether they are really “fuck-ups” or not. That is one conversation that all of us have had at some point in our lives.
Eggers and his co-author wife, Vendela Vida, have denied that the movie was autobiographical. Even if it is not exactly a story of their lives, I felt that Eggers was in his comfort zone with the themes from his other books: loss of parents, childhood, family, etc.
This is a perfect movie for a date night with your spouse especially if you want to reminisce about that magical yet crazy time in your life when you were pregnant for the first time and trying to figure everything out.
Books, Comedy, On Screen | Tim | 
November 28, 2011 9:23 am | 
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