Buzz Worthy News: April 17, 2017

17 April, 2017 Buzz Worthy News 1 comment

Welcome to Buzz Worthy News where the stories are awesome (or at least fun to read). Need your book industry news? Never fear, Kate Copeseeley is here to give it to you straight.

In this week’s Buzz Worthy News:  #TheLastJedi Trailer, Casting News For Fantastic Beasts, and The Raven Cycle Optioned for TV.  All this and more!

Buzz Worthy News is Cuddlebuggery’s weekly news post bringing you all the best information about the book and blogging world, particularly for the venn diagram of people who overlap between the two.


Thor: Ragnarok Teaser

Omg!! This looks freaking hilarious!

Wizard of Lies Trailer

Watching this trailer really made me want to read the book.

Carrie Fisher Tribute

Don’t mind me over here, crying buckets of tears.

The Last Jedi Teaser

What? It’s a book series, so I can link this! 😛


Jude Law Is Young Dumbledore

 

I don’t know how I feel about this.  I love Jude Law, I do.  But is he Dumbledore?  I have no clue!  I’ll let you decide.

Jude Law has been tapped to play young Dumbledore in the “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” sequel.

David Yates is returning to direct and Eddie Redmayne will be back to star alongside Johnny Depp, who will play the villain Grindelwald.

Albus Dumbledore is one of the most iconic characters in J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world. Richard Harris made the role famous in the first two “Harry Potter” pics. Michael Gambon later took over the part after Harris’ death in 2002.

The two-time Academy Award nominee will portray Dumbledore long before the wizard became the headmaster at Hogwarts and Potter’s mentor. Set decades before the original “Harry Potter” films and books, Dumbledore is still serving as the wizarding school’s transfiguration professor in “Fantastic Beasts 2.”

“Jude Law is a phenomenally talented actor whose work I have long admired, and I’m looking forward to finally having the opportunity to work with him,” Yates said. “I know he will brilliantly capture all the unexpected facets of Albus Dumbledore as J.K. Rowling reveals this very different time in his life.”

I do think that Johnny Depp and Jude Law would make a lovely couple, so I guess that helps? 😀

Source


Josh Brolin To Play Cable in Deadpool Movies

Okay, I’ll be honest here, I don’t read these comics!  But I did love the Deadpool movie, so I’ll trust that this will be great casting and will result in another awesome movie!

Josh Brolin has nabbed the hotly contested role of Cable opposite Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool 2, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The production has been on the warpath to find the right actor for the role for months, with Michael Shannon almost nabbing the role and Stranger Things star David Harbour on the shortlist. (There were even rumors of conversations with Russell Crowe and Brad Pitt.)

In the end, Brolin emerged as a surprise contender, notching his second Marvel Comics character in the process; the actor plays the villain Thanos in the Marvel Studios movies. Sources say Brolin’s deal is for four films.

David Leitch is directing the sequel to Fox’s surprise blockbuster, with the movie heading toward a June production start in Vancouver.

Cable was co-created by Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld and writer Louise Simonson and is described as being in many ways the opposite of Deadpool: a man who is a leader and used to being obeyed, and who is very controlled — but with an aura of simmering violence. In the comics, Cable was from the future and was the adult son of Scott Summers, also known as the X-Man Cyclops.

I’m so curious about this storyline!  Who was Cable’s mom?

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Ron Howard to Direct Film Version of Hillbilly Elegy

This book was widely discussed when it came out.  It will be interesting to see a filmmaker’s take on the story.

Imagine Entertainment has emerged from an auction with the film rights to the J.D. Vance’s NY Times bestselling debut memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Ron Howard will direct and will produce the film with his Imagine partner Brian Grazer. Grazer spearheaded the pursuit of the book with president Erica Huggins, and she also will be a producer. The memoir, which told Vance’s struggle-filled coming-of-age story, became a symbol for the disenfranchised Rust Belt contingent that rallied behind Donald Trump in the presidential election.

Although the memoir was specific to Vance, it was embraced as a personification of the everyday struggles of America’s white underclass, and it shone a light on issues including race and privilege in America. Raised poor in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, OH, and the Appalachian town of Jackson, KY, Vance grew up among the working-class “hillbillies.” He and his family members endured struggles including drug addiction and social and economic hardship. The youth mostly was raised by his larger-than-life grandmother, Mamaw, and he developed a deep appreciation for education. That laid the foundation for him to rise out of poverty and its cultural restraints.

After enlisting in the Marine Corps and serving in Iraq, Vance graduated from the Ohio State University and Yale Law School. He became a successful venture capitalist, has contributed to the National Review and recently joined CNN as a political contributor. The book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 36 weeks.

“Hillbilly Elegy is a powerful, true coming-of-age memoir by J.D. Vance,” Imagine’s Huggins said. “Through the lens of a colorful, chaotic family and with remarkable compassion and self-awareness, J.D. has been able to look back on his own upbringing as a ‘hillbilly’ to illuminate the plight of America’s white working class, speaking directly to the turmoil of our current political climate.”

It will be interesting to see what the response to this movie is like.

Source


 

The Raven Cycle Is Headed To TV

Fangirl time, readers! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!  *pinches self*  Is this really for real?  It seems so!  Someone leaked the news, then Maggie confirmed and suddenly it was all over the Twitter.

According to Publishers Marketplace, Universal Cable Productions has acquired the television rights to Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle, described as being “about four private school boys and a psychic’s daughter who quest for a sleeping king of Welsh legend in the mountains of Virginia, uncovering ancient magic, powerful dreams, and the devils in themselves.” Executive producers will include Michael London (Sideways, the upcoming HBO adaptation of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad) through Groundswell Productions; Andrew Miller, known for The Secret Circle, who will adapt the book series as EP and showrunner; and Catherine Hardwicke, who is also attached to direct the pilot, and who directed the first Twilight film.

Please don’t let them ruin it.  Please don’t let them ruin it!

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Big Little Lies Novelist Is Considering More Story

I’ve seen a lot of press for this show, but everyone is appalled at the idea of a second season.  I wonder why.  In any case, the novelist of the original book, Liane Moriarty is raring to go on a new book, if HBO says the word:

It seems that if HBO had its way, there would be even bigger and better lies in the future. In a new interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Big Little Lies novelist Liane Moriarty has revealed that producers have expressed a keen interest in Madeline Martha Mackenzie and the gang returning for another season of mischief on the Monterey coast. “I have started to think about ways this could continue,” she explained. “The producers have asked me to see if I can come up with some ideas.” Moriarty said, adding that she wouldn’t be interested in writing a sequel in novel form, and that if it were to happen, it would only be a follow-up story written for television. “I’m absolutely open to it because, once I started thinking, it was too much fun to see what I could do and to see these characters again,” she said. “And there’s definitely places you can go … I think everybody is pretty keen. They all loved working together but I think the thing is the story has to be right. So if it’s right, and if David E. Kelley is happy to get the screenplay right, then I think that’ll do it.”

Moriarty also said potential season-two plots that would need to be touched upon include those relating to Bonnie and Celeste — and she was particularly unenthused that the mini-series didn’t touch on Bonnie’s backstory involving domestic abuse, which was her central drive for killing Perry in the novel. (There were many other dropped plot points, as well.) “My original reaction was, what have they done? How have they left that out?” she explained. “But a lot of people have said that they could tell [what was Bonnie’s true story], there had been little hints and that you can take that away. It’s implied in her performances and some little lines. I think I might have preferred to have had it in there but I wouldn’t argue against it either. It also leaves open the possibility of season two.” Only time will tell if a second season will ever come to fruition, although Jean-Marc Vallée is looking pretty busy at HBO these days.

You can’t blame her for being frustrated with them for leaving stuff out, but such is the nature of adaptions.

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Indie #BookstoreDay

Are you participating in Indie Bookstore Day?  It’s on April 29th, people!!

Independent Bookstore Day is a one-day national party that takes place at indie bookstores across the country on the last Saturday in April.  Every store is unique and independent, and every party is different. But in addition to authors, live music, cupcakes, scavenger hunts, kids events, art tables, readings, barbecues, contests, and other fun stuff, there are exclusive books and literary items that you can only get on that day. Not before. Not after. Not online.

Why are we celebrating independent bookstores?

Independent bookstores are not just stores, they’re community centers and local anchors run by passionate readers. They are entire universes of ideas that contain the possibility of real serendipity. They are lively performance spaces and quiet places where aimless perusal is a day well spent.

In a world of tweets and algorithms and pageless digital downloads, bookstores are not a dying anachronism.  They are living, breathing organisms that continue to grow and expand. In fact, there are more of them this year than there were last year. And they are at your service.

More info at the source!

Source


Margaret Atwood’s Makes Changes to Handmaid’s Tale Audiobook

I recently read this book because of the TV show coming out and I have to say it was very powerful, if slow paced.  It turns out that the new audiobook version will be packed with even more Margaret Atwood goodness!

“The Handmaid’s Tale,” which was first published in Canada in 1985, is back: as I discussed with Atwood for a Profile of her that appears in this week’s magazine, the novel has reappeared on best-seller lists since Donald Trump’s victory in the Presidential election, its themes striking many as queasily prescient. On Trump’s very first day as President, he signed an executive order defunding overseas organizations that provide abortion services and information. The widely publicized revelation that Vice-President Mike Pence avoids dining alone with women other than his wife is an instance of neo-Puritanism that would not seem at all out of place in the Republic of Gilead.

And Professor Pieixoto is back, too. Audible has issued an “enhanced edition” of the audiobook of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which was first released in 2012 and is read by Claire Danes. Among the enhancements: several of those questions that the professor invited in the last line of the book, drafted by the Audible team, with some answers, newly written for the purpose by Atwood.

Characteristically, it’s a grimly playful project. One questioner—a reporter played by Atwood herself, who also supplied a new introductory essay for the audiobook—asks the professor to elaborate on the circumstances of the footlocker’s discovery. Dismissing with a chuckle the news imperative for drama—“Newspapers and magazines do so love their stories of adventure and discovery!”—Professor Pieixoto recounts that the cache of tapes were found during the building of “Gilead Village,” a museum reconstruction for the purposes of education and entertainment. “The results are not always accurate—who can hope for total accuracy after so many years,” the professor remarks. “But they are certainly picturesque.” The suggestion is of a Colonial Williamsburg for the era of Handmaids: a darkly plausible phenomenon.

Atwood wrote the new text in early January, and among the questions are several that give her an opportunity for contemporary allusion. When asked whether the Handmaid might, even in her confessional narrative, be concealing her own political activities against the regime, Atwood’s professor makes some observations about the repressive habits of authoritarian governments: shooting or otherwise silencing members of the resistance, shuttering news organizations, and the like. Another technique of authoritarian regimes, Professor Pieixoto notes, is the use of propaganda: “If there is no true news, false news can be made very plausible.” When asked what circumstances might cause a turning back of the clock to Gilead-era practices, Pieixoto enumerates a potential “perfect storm” of conditions: “environmental stresses that lead to food shortages, economic factors such as unrest due to unemployment, a social structure that is top-heavy, with too much wealth being concentrated among too few.” Under such circumstances, he warns, “there is pressure to trade what we think of as ‘liberty’ for what we think of as ‘safety.’ ”

Obviously I’m going to have to get my hands on a new copy of this. 🙂

Source

 


Marvel Artist Fired Over Hidden Religious Messaging In Comic

So, the first issue of X-Men Gold came out and all seemed as it should.  Everyone had good things to say, until it was people in Indonesia got ahold of it, that is.

 

After X-Men Gold #1 came out on April 5, some users on Reddit’s r/Indonesia and r/Marvel began posting about what looked like references to Indonesian politics in Ardian Syaf’s artwork. Specifically, two panels featuring Colossus and Kitty Pryde seemed to refer to the current situation in Jakarta, which elected its first non-Muslim governor in 50 years in 2014.

The governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, is an ethnically Chinese Christian popularly known as Ahok. He is currently facing blasphemy charges for accusing his political opponents of “lying” by using the Quran to attack him. Specifically, Ahok cited their use of verse QS 5:51. According to the Sahih International translation (compiled by a Sunni scholar), the verse reads:

“O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people.”

X-Men Gold artist Ardian Syaf, according to his Facebook post, was inspired by [a] December 2 protest, and therefore included references to it in X-Men Gold #1.

In one panel, Colossus wears a t-shirt that reads, “QS 5:51,” a reference to the Quranic verse about non-Muslims.

To many Indonesian readers, these references read like coded support for the conservative, Muslim-leaders-only, anti-Ahok stance.

Personally, if I were accused of including anti-Semitism and bigotry in my artwork, I’d leap to explain otherwise. Syad, though, hasn’t yet apologized, and is reportedly doubling down. He even reportedly joked that the pulled issue of X-Men Gold #1 would become a rare comic.

In a shared conversation with a fan, though, he did assert, “I don’t hate Jew or Christian, I worked with them in 10 years…a lot of good friends, too.” He also said that Ahok “did blasphemy to our Holy Book” and that the protest was a “peace act” enacted “because police never take him like blasphemy doers.” He called the protest a “very special memory for me.”
Here’s their official statement from Comicbook.com:

Marvel has terminated Ardian Syaf’s contract effective immediately. ‘X-Men Gold’ #2 and #3 featuring his work have already been sent to the printer and will continue to ship bi-weekly. Issues #4, #5, and #6 will be drawn by R. B. Silva and issues #7, #8, and #9 will be drawn by Ken Lashley. A permanent replacement artist will be assigned to ‘X-Men Gold’ in the coming weeks.

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Slyvia Plath Letters Reveal New Facts of Her Life

Heavy stuff here, so readers beware!  Suicide, abuse, and miscarriage are among some of the topics discussed in the letters Slyvia Plath sent her former therapist.

Sylvia Plath alleged Ted Hughes beat her two days before she miscarried their second child and that Hughes wanted her dead, unpublished letters reveal. The two accusations are among explosive claims in unseen correspondence written in the bitter aftermath of one of literature’s most famous and destructive marriages.

Written between 18 February 1960 and 4 February 1963, a week before her death, the letters cover a period in Plath’s life that has remained elusive to readers and scholars alike. While the American writer, who was living in England during that time, was a prolific letter writer and had kept detailed journals since the age of 11, after her death Hughes said his wife’s journals from this time were lost, including the last volume, which he said he destroyed to protect their children, Frieda and Nicholas.

Did he really destroy them to protect the children, or himself?

Sent to Dr Ruth Barnhouse – the model for Dr Nolan in Plath’s autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, who treated the writer in the US after her first documented attempt to kill herself in August 1953 – the correspondence is understood to be one of Plath’s only surviving uncensored accounts of her last months, in which she produced some of her most famous poetry, including the collection Ariel.

The unseen letters were written at a time when Plath was troubled by her mental state, during the disintegration of one of the most famous literary romances of the 20th century. Yorkshire-born Hughes had met Plath, a Fulbright scholar, while they were students at Cambridge University in 1956. Hughes was already an established poet and she had gone to a party on 25 February of that year with the express desire to meet him. Within four months they had married and the two quickly formed a formidable and mutually beneficial creative partnership that resulted in Hughes’s breakthrough Hawk in the Rain collection and Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar.

Andrew Wilson, author of Mad Girl’s Love Song, about Plath’s life before she met Hughes, said the interviews with Barnhouse would provide an invaluable insight into the origins of her battle with depression and were the “missing link” in her biography and literary history. “These letters look as though they could fill certain gaps in our knowledge, and seem as though they can shed new light on the turbulent, controversial marriage between Plath and Hughes,” he said.

So sad, but I’m glad that some of her voice (outside of the book) is available for us to understand her better.

Source


Interesting Links:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Cookbook

10 Most Banned & Challenged Books in the US

 

Kate Copeseeley

Kate Copeseeley

Buzz Worthy News Correspondent
Kate Copeseeley is the Buzz Worthy News Correspondent, occasional reviewer, and a bonafide bookslut®. She can be found haunting Goodreads, writing The 100 fanfic, and neglecting everything else in favor of burying her nose in a book. Visit her on Goodreads.
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One Response to “Buzz Worthy News: April 17, 2017”

  1. Carina Olsen
    Twitter:

    Eee! This time, excited about two of these news 😀 YAY! Haha 😀 Dying to see the new Thor movie. <3 But, well, I didn't think that trailer was all that awesome :p Not much happened at all, lol. But DYING for the movie 😀 And eeee! The Raven Boys news is aaaamazing 😀 I'm so so excited. Thank you for sharing about all of this Kate. <3 Hugs.
    Carina Olsen recently posted…Waiting on Wednesday #289My Profile

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