Do you plan to read any of the books this season's movies are based on?

I'll answer the question first. I might, though I probably shouldn't say that I might. For each year I make an internal plan to read all of the books on which upcoming films are based. Guess how many I usually get through? But given that I'd never trade F Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" for any film version that might ever exist, I should probably try and read source material quicker once I know it's going to be a movie. I weep proactively, for example, for anyone who sees August: Osage County first as a movie (if it's not good) without having previously known the brilliance of the play. With this year's "Adapted" crowd, I have actually had read/experienced at least five of them... plus all the superhero stuff, 'natch.

intimate knowledge *before* seeing the movies, 2013 edition

This topic is on the mind since I've posted my predictions in the Original and Adapted Screenplay Oscar categories.

What's the difference between ADAPTED and ORIGINAL these days? Well, like the Acting Categories, sometimes screenplays play fast and loose with definitions. The landmark year for "Original" vs "Adapted" shenanigans was 2002 in which both Gangs of New York and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which had presented themselves as adaptations of a novel and play respectively for months on end as they made their way into the public consciousness, suddenly decided they were originals when that category proved conveniently easier to nab nominations in. Oh sure, they had their excuses ("only inspired by" "I wrote a version of this for the screen before I wrote it as a play") but it still smelled like Category Fraud.  

I bring this up because it's possible that some of the films will be classified differently than I've classified them. The most confusing case is probably Foxcatcher since books have been written about the bizarre true story but the film doesn't seem to be based on those books but on an unpublished autobiography (?) by one of its secondary characters (played by Channing Tatum). I'm guessing Adapted for now but that could easily change.

But back to books. Have any of you read any of these pictured? Do you want to?
Which of these ten should I read and write about before the film version?

poll by twiigs.com

WHICHEVER BOOK WINS THIS POLL I PROMISE TO READ / BLOG.

I'll try for two but I will do one. I will,  I will. 

The Only Post You Will Ever Need On The "August: Osage County" Teaser Poster

A clever teaser poster that manages to put the Weston family home first and thus draws a great connective line between the stage production's branding (which always used the house) and the film version. (That house better be its own character in the movie. If this movie is 100% closeups they'll ruin the house as character!)

Or, another way of looking at this...

BEYOND BRILLIANT
SOURCE MATERIAL

INDIVIDUALLY AWESOME
ACTORS

COMEDIC & DRAMATIC
POTENTIAL

...SO DON'T FUCK IT UP,
DIRECTOR

BASED ON THE PULITZER AND TONY, WE ALL KNOW WHAT'S NEXT...
WEINSTEN: OSCAR COUNTDOWN 

Related. P.S. Yes, I'm working on the Oscar charts right now. Soon, fair reader, soon.

Revolving Links

Gawker "Magneto to Marry Professor X" the headline is actually true! Sir Ian McKellen is the best. 
Slate an excellent piece on American cinema's love affair with serial killers and violence with Terrence Malick's Badlands as centerpiece
Playbill I bet you thought you were done hearing about "Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark"'s production trouble. Ha! The trial which pits director Julie Taymor against the producers starts this May.

i09 on why condensing those sprawling Game of Thrones books is a very good move for HBO. The show won't be running forever. 
Salon interviews Lily Tomlin, a lifelong feminist who sends up feminism in Admission as Tina Fey's mom 
Awards Daily breathless online reactions to an August: Osage County screening. 
ScriptNotes Screenwriters John August and Craig Mazin discuss the Veronica Mars kickstarter on this podcast - two different opposing takes.
My New Plaid Pants on Xavier Dolan and his influences including Julianne Moore and Michelle Pfeiffer scenes. No wonder I love Xavier Dolan!
The Film Doctor 8 notes on Oz: The Great and Powerful 

enter
Playbill Hugh Jackman attached to the adaptation of the novel Six Years. I can't wait to see how he follows up Les Miz and whether he's hungry for future Oscar play.
Guardian Keira Knightley to play Coco Chanel in a short film

Laura Dern's schedule just freed up. Where are you David Lynch?!?

exit
Deadline Lynne Ramsay a no show for Jane Got a Gun on the first day of shooting. What's going on there? I feel like we're only get 1/100th of the story in these reports.
Cinema Blend Christina Ricci leaves Girlfriend in a Coma pilot. She was to be the girlfriend, the one in the coma. 
TVLine Enlightened has been cancelled. Sad day for Laura Dern fans 

Thanksgiving Linkovers

Good afternoon! I only had one piece of pumpkin pie last night so it absolutely cannot be counted as an unqualified success of a Thanksgiving. So, desperate for leftovers (I wasn't even sent home with any spare pie!), I turn to good blogs, the whip cream of this internet pie.

Film Dr. a pictorial primer on Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2
MNPP JA's living vicariously through Amanda Seyfried fixation continues unabated
Towleroad homoerotic Skyfall poster 

In Contention the first of countless top ten lists, Cahiers du Cinema finds Holy Motors at the top
DP/30 Jake Gyllenhaal talks End of Watch. Which I still haven't seen. I am a bad Gyllenhaalic this year. (I also missed Won't Back Down) 
Awards Daily Sasha interviews Ang Lee (Life of Pi)
LA Times Tracy Letts says he didn't alter much about August: Osage County for the screen in his screenplay. So... it's three hours long then? 
MovieLine Noomi Rapace does her best Mick Jagger in a new music video. But is it Mick Jaggery enough? 
Empire Marisa Tomei may co-star in a new Hugh Grant romcom. I can see that pairing totally working.

Finally...
Timothy Brayton, easily one of the best (and most completist-friendly) online film critics, has ranked every single Bond film (with each link going to a new review) the Bond Girls and each James Bond. That's a lot of 007. 

Yes yes. I'll post the results of the readers poll here soon -- sorry for the holiday delay -- but before we are totally Bonded out, knock back a martini with Tim's reviews and lists.

Anticipation: Osage County

<--- Remember last week when I shared that little AFM peak at August: Osage County? [Click on the photo to the left if you missed that post].

Well, anticipation means bread crumb madness; no matter how stale or tasteless they are, we have to nibble on them! Supposedly the movie is wrapping up filming on Thanksgiving weekend so it's all over but the post-production and the marketing and the re... okay, it's not remotely over.

So... bread crumbs: here's what the inside of the house might look like; here's what Ewan McGregor recently said about working with Meryl Streep and the director John Wells (not much but I devoured it); and here's what the text on the pamphlet to your left actually said:

Three-Time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep and Oscar winner Julia Roberts, star in the "fiercely funny and bitingly sad" big screen adaptation of Tracy Letts' Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning Play, AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY. Coming on the heels of her latest Oscar win for The Iron Lady, Streep stars are Violet Weston, the sharp-tongued matriarch of the South's most dysfunctional family since Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor tore up the screen (and each other) in that other Pulitzer-Prize winning classic-Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Directed by John Wells, August begins on the night that Violet's husband of 30 years, Beverly, mysteriously vanishes without a trace. Beverly's disappearance draws the couple's three daughters, including eldest Barbara (Roberts), back to the family home, each returning with husbands and boyfriends in tow to comfort their mother and help solve the mystery of what happened to their father. as with all families, home brings out the best and worst in everyone, as each of the children settles back into their place in the unforgiving hierarchy of the family-all amid the palpable heat of the summer. Letts' work borrows its name from the famous Howard Starks poem, describing a month of August heavy with "heat-thicked air" and "no real breeze all day." And it's that stifling climate that will slowly force Violet and her family to face truths about themselves and each other until the secret of what happened that fateful night is revealed."

I almost balked at the comparisons to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof* -- so risky/shameless to compare yourself to a work of such unarguable genius and iconic stature -- but then I remembered that August: Osage County** the play is hardly lacking in genius or, it must be said, the potential for being thought of in the same hallowed way 60 years from now that we think of Cat now.

Will this movie do the play justice? We'll find out a year from now. Or thereabouts. 

*incidentally, I sometimes --in fact quite often -- think Cat is actually Tennessee Williams single greatest work as a playwright (though the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire is unquestionably the single greatest adaptation of his oeuvre)

** If you've never seen August: Osage County on stage, you should. Readers living near Raleigh North Carolina have an opportunity this month through early December, readers living near Baltimore Maryland can see a production in January.