According to The Hollywood Reporter, Guillermo Del Toro is in talks to direct the movie of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Although studios New Line and MGM didn’t want to risk losing moviegoers due to Peter Jackson not being involved in the movie, Jackson will not write or direct the movie due to scheduling conflicts with other projects he’s been working on. However, Peter Jackson will be executive producer and both he and Del Toro will oversee the writing and creative elements of the movie. It’s not yet decided who will adapt Tolkien’s 1937 fantasy novel for the big screen and turn it into a screenplay.
Currently, Del Toro is in post-production of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. Other movies Del Toro has directed are Mimic, Hellboy, and Pan’s Labyrinth, which was, in my opinion, among the best movies released in 2006.
Duma Key is Stephen King’s new novel, to be released on January 22, 2008. The story is about a construction worker who is involved in a terrible accident and loses his arm. He then has paranormal phantom limb sensations. His wife divorces him. He thinks about suicide because of his pain and the loss of his family. However, he later discovers that for some reason he has become a very talented painter since the accident, so he moves to Florida where he starts painting beautiful pictures. This is a King story, so, of course, strange things start to happen with these pictures. You can read about 30 pages of Duma Key for free by clicking on the image below, which leads you to the Amazon product page:
Published October 24, 2007
in Books.
Published August 27, 2007
in Books.
List of the 10 most expensive books that were sold at auction in 2006:
10-Geography (Geographia), by Strabo, published in Rome in 1469. Price: $470,640.
9–Cosmography (Cosmographia), by Ptolemy, published in Ulm in 1486. Price: $553,520.
8–Geographical Works of Ptolemy (In hoc opera haec continentur geographiae cl. Ptolemaei…), by Ptolemy, published in Rome in 1507. Price: $636,000.
7–A Season in Hell (Une saison en enfer), by Arthur Rimbaud, published in Brussels in 1873. French poetry. Signed copy. Price: $644,000.
6–Journey of Discovery to Port Phillip, New South Wales, by William Bland, published in Sydney between 1825 and 1831. Price: $689,000.
5–Institutes of the Christian Religion (Christianae religionis institutio), by John Calvin, published in Bale in 1536. Price: $720,000.
4–Antiquities of the Russian State (Drevnosti Rossiskago Gosudarstva), by Feodor Grigoriev Solntsev and F. Dreger, published in Moscow in 1849. Price: $748,000.
3–Atlas, by Gerard Mercator, printed in Duisburg in 1595. Price: $781,000.
2–Cosmography (Cosmographia), by Ptomely, printed in Bologna in 1477. Price: $4 million.
1–Comedies, Histories & Tragedies (aka First Folio), by William Shakespeare, printed in London in 1623. Considered by many to be the most important book of English literature. Price: $5.1 million.
Source: Forbes, Wikipedia
Finally a new Stephen King novella, and it’s long: 21,000 words or 23 pages. King’s novella “The Gingerbread Girl” will be published in the July issue of Esquire (it will not be made available on Esquire.com, unfortunately):
Need a good scare (as opposed to the bad ones you get every day)? A new Stephen King thriller appears in its entirety in the July issue of Esquire, due out today. King’s “The Gingerbread Girl” is a 21,000-word novella covering 23 pages. “Over the last year, we’ve been trying to breathe life back into magazine fiction,” Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger said Monday in a statement. “The best way to do that is to publish nothing other than event fiction.” He means long stories by people you’ve actually heard of.
According to Esquire, “The Gingerbread Girl” tells “the story of Emily, who flees to the secluded Vermillion Key off of Florida’s coast after the death of her infant child. Her new neighbor also enjoys the privacy of the key, but the women he brings with him never return home.” They check in but they don’t check out. Kind of like a roach motel for people.
Stephen King novella in Esquire
Sehr zu empfehlen: Roverandom ist ein Märchen von J.R.R. Tolkien. Ursprünglich erzählte Tolkien diese Geschichte seinen Kindern, nachdem einer seiner Söhne seinen geliebten Spielzeughund am Strand verloren hatte.
Das Märchen erzählt vom kleinen weißen Hund Rover, der die wunderbarsten Abenteuer erlebt. Er begegnet zum Beispiel Zauberern, einem netten Jungen, fabelhaften Wesen und reist sogar auf den Mond und auf den Boden des Meeres.
Roverandom ist wirklich bezaubernd. In jedem Satz spürt man Tolkiens Freude am Erzählen und seine Liebe zu fantastischen Geschichten. Sowohl die Geschichte selbst als auch die sprachlichen Mittel sind für Kinder ebenso geeignet wie für Erwachsene. Das Märchen enthält zwar einige Fremdwörter, aber wie Tolkien schon damals sagte, Kinder müssen auch mit Worten konfrontiert werden, die sie noch nicht kennen, um dazuzulernen. Roverandom ist ein wunderschönes Buch, das man in wenigen Tagen und auch immer wieder mit Freude lesen kann.
Außerdem enthält das Buch ein erläuterndes Nachwort, das interessante Einblicke in das Werk und seine Entstehungsgeschichte gewährt.
Link: Roverandom
