A Clockwork Orange - The Musical?

Indeed and the author, Anthony Burgess, even wrote some songs for it.

From a piece in the Guardian...

Burgess, who died in 1993, started working on a stage version of A Clockwork Orange a decade after Stanley Kubrick's controversial 1971 film adaptation. "The reason why Burgess wanted to make his own stage adaptation, quite a long time after Kubrick made the film, was to assert his ownership of the story," Dr Andrew Biswell, director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, told BBC News. Although the Royal Shakespeare Company premiered a production based on Burgess's script in 1990, his songs were replaced with compositions by U2's Bono and The Edge.

Despite his dark tale of delinquency, Burgess's songs aren't so grim. "It's pretty close to West Side Story," Biswell said. "That's one of the obvious influences." It's a sinister image: droogs snapping their fingers and singing about Maria. "There's this scene in prison, where one of the prisoners is kicked to death, which is throwaway and jolly," Biswell explained. "That's completely different from the corresponding episode in [Kubrick's] film, which is gloomy and depressing."

Shakespeare's "Richard III" Like You Haven't Yet Heard

Top Ten Animal Adventure Stories

The list, care of the Guardian.

How Much is a Librarian Worth?

It depends where they are in the world. More, here.

Happy 50th, Catch-22

The book is discussed properly on the Smart Set.

From the post...

Though it seized the public imagination with a force that is rare in literary fiction, Catch-22 was not unanimously praised when it first appeared in 1961. Whitney Balliett, writing in the New Yorker, declared the novel a facetious mishmash: “Heller wallows in his own laughter and finally drowns in it. What remains is a debris of sour jokes, stage anger, dirty words, synthetic looniness, and the sort of antic behavior the children fall into when they know they are losing our attention.” Similarly, a reviewer in the New York Times described the novel as “an emotional hodgepodge” and declared that it “gasps for want of craft and sensibility.” Of course, these were just the initial reactions of those whose job it was (and is) to churn out short reviews on deadline, a discipline that doesn’t always favour the kind of high-end literary novel that reveals its riches gradually.

But even today there are many critics, some of them of no small reputation, who regard Catch-22 as grossly overrated. Of these, perhaps the most distinguished is the American critic Harold Bloom, who, in his preface to a collection of essays dedicated to Heller’s novel, wrote: “It is neither apocalyptic nor a masterpiece, but a tendentious burlesque, founded upon a peculiarly subjective view of historical reality.” (In a later edition of the same book, he added: “It will not last, and there’s an end on it.”) Nevertheless, Catch-22 has sold millions of copies and gained the endorsements of many fine critics. Why, then, does this remarkable novel elicit such divergent reactions?

The answer is partly literary and partly ideological, and is bound up inextricably with what we think Catch-22 is.

Vanity Fair also revels in the work, here.

Starman

A new biography of David Bowie is reviewed by the New York Times.

From the piece...

I’ve since caught up, a bit, with Mr. Bowie’s earlier and best music, and I looked forward to “David Bowie: Starman” to hit the reset button on my sense of the man and his work. On that level this book works. It pursues a number of galvanizing themes. It argues for Mr. Bowie less as an instinctive rocker than as a shape-shifting cabaret singer and composer writ large, a performer working in the tradition of Harold Arlen, Frank Sinatra, Hoagy Carmichael and Bertolt Brecht as well as the blues. Mr. Bowie was an outsider. Before him, the author writes, “pop music had been mainly about belonging.” His music meant so much to so many because it presented “a spectacle of not-belonging.”

The book depicts Mr. Bowie as charming but calculating and ruthless — a man who made few close friends and cared mostly about tending to what the author calls “Brand Bowie.” The singer Morrissey said about him: “He’s a business, you know. He’s not really a person.”

Mr. Bowie was not a natural singer or songwriter and toiled for his success. He has a good ear, so good that some of his best material, the author argues, pickpocketed the work of others. Mr. Trynka notes how closely Mr. Bowie’s song “Starman” resembles “Over the Rainbow.” Mr. Bowie’s hit “The Jean Genie” pilfered a riff from Muddy Waters’s “I’m a Man.” The song “Life on Mars” borrowed a chord sequence from a French song called “Comme d’Habitude,” later reworked into English by Paul Anka as “My Way.”

Mr. Trynka was the editor of Britain’s classic-rock magazine Mojo from 1996 to 2003; his books include the biography “Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed.” He interviewed more than 250 people to write “David Bowie: Starman,” and although Mr. Bowie himself did not cooperate, this book feels close to definitive.

Comic Book Covers...in Stained Glass

Enjoy!

The Beckhams Suddenly Spark Sales in a Classic Book?

'Tis true!

Under the Banner of Heaven - The Movie

Ron Howard's next project?

From a small piece in the Hollywood Reporter...

One day after their high-profile adaptation of The Dark Tower was tumbled by Universal, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are leading the charge of another adaptation, Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer.

The rights to the book is in the process of being acquired by Warner Bros. and the plan includes having Dustin Lance Black, who wrote Milk and Warner¹s J. Edgar, pen the screenplay.

Imagine would produce and Howard would direct.

Bridget Jones's Diary - The Musical

The Telegraph takes note of the coming production.

From the article...

Renée Zellweger has become synonymous with Bridget Jones after playing the perennial singleton in two highly successful films.

Helen Fielding, the author of Bridget Jones’s Diary, says we will, however, have to rethink the character when a West End musical opens next year starring Sheridan Smith in the title role.

“It’s going to give a new perspective,” Fielding says at The Spectator summer party in Westminster. “Lily Allen has just completed the songs and they’re fantastic. The music is a really catchy, unusual mixture of all different styles of music. I think people will love it.”

Pat Benatar's Jesus Christ Novel?

Glory be!

The Amazing Spider-Man

How to Undress a Victorian Lady in Your Next Bodice-Wripping Victorian Romance Novel

Now we know how, thanks to the Wall Street Journal.

From the piece...

For most people, giving a presentation in skivvies to 100 professional peers sounds like a bad dream. But Ms. Gist was giving a workshop on Victorian clothing at the Romance Writers of America's annual convention this summer. The romance novelists had gathered in New York to learn how to dress—and undress—heroines in their novels.

It took an hour for Ms. Gist to squeeze into a dozen layers that a lady would have worn in the 1860s—stockings, garters, bloomers, chemise, corset, crinoline or hoop skirt, petticoats, a shirtwaist or blouse, skirt, vest and bolero jacket. By the end, workshop attendees were skeptical that seductions ever occurred, with so many sartorial barriers.

"How did they ever have hanky panky?" asked novelist Annie Solomon.

With great effort, it turns out. Women wore blouses under their corsets—making actual bodice ripping fairly pointless. Corsets fastened in front and laced up the back and couldn't be undone in a single passionate gesture. "You'll see pictures of corsets on bare skin. That's completely historically inaccurate," Ms. Gist told her audience.

Footage of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Top Ten Iranian Books

The list, compiled by Kamin Mohammadi, from the Guardian.

Video Games and Book Covers

The greatest video games of our lives introduced us to spellbinding stories and otherworldly beings from the Mushroom Kingdom and beyond, so why shouldn't they have the honor of book covers designed like full-fledged and respected novels?

A gallery of artwork by A.J. Hateley, care of Comics Alliance.

Dolly Parton's Quest to Get Kids Reading

For over 15 years Dolly Parton's been spearheading a campaign to get kids reading.

From a piece in the Guardian...

The fact that the scheme carries Parton's name has led some to think that Parton herself funds the library; in fact, while her Dollywood Foundation pays for all the administration costs in maintaining the database, it does not pay for the actual books. It is, however, able to ensure that the books are bought at a hugely discounted rate: Penguin, which supplies all the books, sells them to the scheme for an average price of £2, which is up to a quarter of their usual cost.

In Rotherham the cost of the scheme is met through donations from the Chamber of Commerce, the NHS and, this year, the local authority. In Luton, the scheme is being paid for by the Wates group and it is anticipated that around 24,000 books will be sent out each year.

While the scheme is undoubtedly laudable, is there any need to spend money giving families free books when they can easily visit their local library? "Not everybody is that way inclined", says Lilburn. "The difference with this scheme is that the book is addressed to the child and, based on all the parental feedback we get, the children are really excited when that book comes through the door."

Photos of 19th Century Vaudeville and Burlesque Performers

Enjoy!

Graphic Elvis

USA Today takes note of a new book highlighting Elvis Presley's love of comic books.

From the piece...

Artists from all over the world have been commissioned for Graphic Elvis, from Japanese animé to Indian artists to famous comic illustrators such Paul Pope and Greg Horn. "It's about a global icon being celebrated by global artists," Devarajan says.

"It's exciting to see people who are this talented take Elvis and do their own spin on him to create something new," says Scott Williams, vice president of marketing for Elvis Presley Enterprises.

Many of Presley's loves have been documented over the years — from his affinity for peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches to his passion for karate and hip-shaking. Graphic Elvis is the first project to fully explore his penchant for comics, which Al Wertheimer and others captured in photos that will appear in the new book.

When he was named one of the Jaycees' Ten Outstanding Young Men in 1971, Presley told the crowd: "When I was a child, I was a dreamer. I read comic books and I was the hero of the comic book. … So every dream I ever dreamed has come true a hundred times."

Sons and Fathers

Frank Miller's masterwork, The Dark Knight, is discussed by the Los Angeles Review of Books.

From the review...

For a variety of reasons, Batman has always appealed especially to those who want to distort the superhero ethos. First MAD, The Realist, and underground comics published funny, derisive, lewd versions of famous daily comic strip and comic book characters like Batman and Robin, allowing the backroom cynicism of politics, the newsroom, and showbiz to invade our youthful entertainments. Then, there was the infamously campy, Zeitgeist-grabbing Batman television show, starring Adam West and Burt Ward, which ditched the vestigial noir elements for a leap into pure pop idiocy.

Such sacrilege demanded a reformation, and Batman fans got it in the 1980s with the work of Frank Miller. Miller, a Gotham lover of the old school, gives his Dark Knight Returns a nod to its pulp sources with a reference to Commissioner Gordon’s “sketchy” early days as a Chicago cop. Miller picked the right superhero to revisit. Not only could the 60s devolution of Batman be improved: so could the original.

Miller is a classicist; he loves the melodrama of the comics form. He speaks of forcing his readers to slow down, to work against the impulse to race along with the storyline, in order to appreciate the art. A story chopped into a procession of frames colliding and sparking off each other is a perfect illustration of Eisenstein’s theory of montage, but there is a limit. When a comic book is reprinted as a bound book — much less in an extravagant, large, boxed, hard cover glossy re-framing of form like this edition — its cheap glory is corrupted by promising too much. The graphic-novelization of comics is a wrong turn as sure as Cinerama was for cinema. I never saw the first printing of Miller’s work, and I’m sure those who have seen the original art value the high-tone reproductions now available. Nonetheless, this deluxe treatment shifts focus from storytelling and the normal porn of form to the distracting fetish of printing specs.