Cuppacafe

One of the richest areas for mining movie material has always been literature. It is probably a safe bet to say that more prose books have been translated into movies than any other previously-published source material. Still, perhaps the most (shall we say) "unusual" form of translation is when a writer takes a previously-published source and then spins it sideways to have it come out as something, well different than the original form.

A couple of prime examples of this are when Rogers & Hammerstein took Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, and turned it into West Side Story or when Amy Heckerling took Jane Austen's novel Emma and (re)made it into Clueless.

Anyways, very soon, there is yet another tome that will be added to these films, it is a epic fantasy adventure involving Dragons, and is based on one of the most seminal works in all of English literature.

Herman Melville's Moby Dick. No, really, I'm not kidding. check it out after the jump.

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Personally, I'm more of a Robert A. Heinlein kind of guy, but with him being dead and all, after watching this video, I just want to say that Ray Bradbury is probably the luckiest Golden Age SciFi Master who is still alive.

The following video (F*ck Me, Ray Bradbury) is just plain fun, but given the nature of the lyrics the soundtrack is most assuredly NOT SFW. Bookmark the page and then watch it at home.

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OK, it really isn't the phone book, but well, as it turns out, Marvel Comics collected all of the Spidey entries from the first volume of The Official Index to the Marvel Universe into a bound volume and issued them as a softcover edition. (To be sure, they also collected Iron Man & the X-Men, but I didn’t contribute to those entries, so I care less about them, as you could guess.)

I'm mentioning it now because, well, I just got my (comp) copies (two of ‘em!) today, so I’m pretty pumped. Further, if I had realized that Marvel was going to issued them as a book, I probably would have contributed entries to the other series as well (Iron Man & X-Men), that way I would have gotten my name in the other volumes as well. Needless to say, for the second series (out now) I’m contributing to not on the Captain America entries, but to the Thor entries as well (Maybe I should do a couple of Avenger entries just so I can get that book when it comes out as well, eh?)

OK, enough fooling around, back to writing my Thor entries for Volume #2.

If you wanted a copy of your own, you can always score one from Amazon.

The Perfessor

Recently James Cameron indicated that he was going to write a book based on his blockbuster 3D flick, well, we have happened across the possible film sequel to the CGI-laden event.

Yeah, it starts out slow and a tad predictable, then turns disturbingly funny, so you know we totally liked it ourselves.

The Perfessor

Having successfully beaten back one copyright infringement lawsuit against them, J.K. Rowling, and Bloomsbury Publishing (which printed Harry Potter books), were named this past June as defendants in new lawsuit regarding the property.

Well, It seems that the estate of Adrian Jacobs just figured out that they were ripped off (13 years later).

The estate of the deceased author of a children's book has accused the author of the stunningly successful Harry Potter books of plagiarizing concepts and themes from Adrian Jacobs' The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: No 1 Livid Land, which was published in 1987.

You seriously have to wonder about people who want a piece of your pie, long after your pie has been served to millions of people (we are reminded of the fellow who waited until after Seinfeld went off the air to sue NBC over the fact that he felt George Costanza was based on him).

Still, now that I think about it, there are elements of the book that are similar to a dream I once had...(now where is my lawyer's number?).

The Perfessor

Yeah, you read that right, the king of CGI SPFX is going to turn his latest blockbuster into a prose novel.

Cameron said he first considered writing the book when he was filming the movie. “I told myself, if it made money, I’d write a book,” the director said.

All of which simply begs the issue of how he plans on doing that. Well, we here at Cuppa have an idea or two in that regard...

Can you say Pop-up"?

Yeah, we have plenty of time on our hands too.

The Perfessor

P.S. Here is the list of his "source" material for the film (and one would guess) the book as well.