Talking Damages with Jenny Diski
When I mentioned at Facebook this spring that that I was gearing up to start into Damages, writer and LRB critic Jenny Diski urged me to stockpile food beforehand. It was good advice. The Maud household barely stirred from the couch for two consecutive weekends.
Normally we’d be well into Season [...]
One hundred years of modern British intelligence
I probably won’t be able to resist Gordon Thomas’ Secret Wars: One Hundred Years Of British Intelligence Inside MI5 And MI6, a book Simon Maxwell Apter calls “such a rollicking good read, Thomas can almost be forgiven for his supercilious attitude toward ‘human rights lawyers’ and his somewhat sycophantic approval of any action pursued, legally [...]
The Battlestar Galactica debates
The intensity of the argument linked above, if not the content, is awfully familiar. I’ve been so insufferable this weekend on the disappointments of the Battlestar Galactica series finale that I owe everyone I know who also watched the show an apology. I wasn’t allowed much access to [...]
The Prisoner has finally escaped the village
Actor Patrick McGoohan, best known for his role on the eerie and surreal 60’s TV show The Prisoner, has died.
In the show, McGoohan played an agent who’s kidnapped, imprisoned, and interrogated in a village that would look a lot like Disney World were it not guarded by Rover [...]
Notes following The Wire Season 5 Premiere
Few things have the power to draw me out of the hermitage on winter weekends, but when Lizzie invited me down to Baltimore for The Wire’s Season Five Premiere, I packed my bags and hopped on a train.
Of course the party was fun (more photos here). But watching the show on the [...]
A.L. Kennedy meets Dr. Who — maybe — and my nerd flag unfurls
This weekend A.L. Kennedy explained her move into stand-up comedy.
A reader passed along the article — and a tantalizing rumor that Kennedy will write an episode for the new Dr. Who.
Google neither confirms nor denies, but does reveal that Kennedy’s a Tom Baker girl. Just like Ursula LeGuin. And any other discriminating [...]
BBC plans season of Waugh tributes
Later this Spring, the BBC will begin airing “a season of shows dedicated to the Waugh family.”
Fawlty Towers stars Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs are working together in an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s “Mr Loveday’s Little Outing.” The color of Ms. Scales’ wig has yet to be decided.
The Master and Margarita televised
The first Russian screen adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita began airing on TV in Russia Monday night after years of setbacks.
There have been other attempts to adapt the novel but no director has ever achieved a faithful rendition in the eyes of the public. A Polish version focused on the story’s bible [...]
Wolfe, at death, thinks only of suit
The Miami Herald has the skinny on an upcoming Simpsons script featuring Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe, Jonathan Franzen, and Michael Chabon. All but Vidal are crushed to death by a boulder.
“Franzen’s scream has a hint of falsetto; Chabon writhes as he lets out an anguished moan.” As for Tom Wolfe?
“Aaaaaaaahh! Wait, no, [...]
A sidekick for Tulkinghorn
Dickens fans are considering a protest, possibly in costume, of the BBC’s new Bleak House miniseries, which contains a sidekick character that doesn’t appear in the novel.
Mixed media
Pending adaptations: Love in the Time of Cholera, I Am Charlotte Simmons, Bleak House, and Paradise Lost. (Final link via a gushing Michael Schaub.)
Twice today, and several times over the coming weeks, the Sundance Channel will rebroadcast Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man, a “film about George Whitman and his famed Shakespeare [...]
Okay, I’ll stop with the Doctor Who after this
Zoe Williams, horrified to find herself part of the nostalgia generation, eagerly awaits the new Hitchhiker’s Guide film (and provides yet another opportunity for me to mention the new Doctor Who series):
you get used to being too young for culture to take your nostalgia needs seriously, and then suddenly you get Hitchhiker’s, Doctor Who and [...]
Multimedia
Ralph Fiennes and Emily Mortimer will appear in Who Killed Norma Bates, “a dark tale of sexual obsession based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot.”
Kate Winslet may star in the adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s Little Children. My doubts about the screen version of Zoe Heller’s What Was She Thinking? apply equally here, especially given the [...]
Next reality TV sensation: books?
Reality TV deviates completely from reality by promising to make some lucky writer a celebrity Book Millionaire:
Eight people with dreams of seeing their book ideas become published and being the next author launched to best selling and celebrity status will meet Book Millionaire’s Publishing Committee during July 2005 to start filming of Book Millionaire Reality [...]
Because dammit, we need more awards shows
MobyLives alerts us to a new made-for-TV book award:
Reed Business Information – the conglomerate that owns Publishers Weekly – and NBC Universal Television (which is owned by the conglomerate General Electric), have combined to launch a new book award, to be called the Quill Awards, which “will be presented at an October ceremony in New [...]