In the world of funny-animal comics cultdom, artist-writer Floyd Gottfredson is overshadowed by Carl Barks, the Donald Duck artist. But Fantagraphics Press’ new Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse: “Race to Death Valley” contains all you need to know to revel in the very different, deeply pleasurable work of Gottfredson. READ FULL STORY »
Diane Farr has a reputation for frank talk (Loveline, The Job, Rescue Me, Californication, AssCastles), and the follow-up to her first book Girl Code — the concept memoir Kissing Outside the Lines, which examines interracial relationships in America, including her own marriage — is no exception. Watch our exclusive first look at the trailer for the book, now on shelves, below. It does a good job of making you want to read it with clever displays of praise from the likes of Tim Robbins (“Smart, funny and insightful — Diane Farr has written a a great book on the challenges facing interracial couples in America”), Modern Family‘s Julie Bowen (“Farr has three kids and she still found time to write a pee-yourself funny examination of interracial love. I hate her”), and Lisa Ling, who also cameos (“As a journalist I found the reach of Diane’s book inspiring and important, but as a wife to someone of a different ethnic background — it was like therapy with laughter”). It also makes you want to see Farr film a documentary on the subject. READ FULL STORY »
Jay Asher, who wrote the bestselling 2007 anti-bullying book Thirteen Reasons Why, is teaming up with author Carolyn Mackler to pen a new young adult novel titled The Future of Us, Penguin announced today. The book, about Josh and Emma, two close friends in 1996 who use AOL—such period accuracy!—and discover the Facebook pages of their future selves, is set to hit stores in November. From the plot description, it appears it will be lighter in tone than Asher’s suicide-themed Thirteen Reasons Why, which is currently being developed by Universal Studios as a film to star Selena Gomez.
Readers will be able get an early taste of The Future of Us this summer. An excerpt will be included in the paperback edition of Thirteen Reasons Why, which goes on sale June 14.
Grand Central Publishing announced this morning that Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel The Godfather, which inspired the classic film series, will be getting a prequel. The Family Corleone will be written by author Ed Falco, and it will be set in 1933 depression-era New York “before the Corleones rise to power,” according to a press release. It tells the story of how Vito Corleone “fought to survive in the brutal criminal underworld to become the influential and respected Don in The Godfather.” READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Everett Collection; Scott Alan/PR Photos
Cary Grant earned the title of film icon through a legacy of classic movies, his imitable but not duplicable mid-Atlantic accent, pratfalls honed from years in vaudeville, and the best comedic double take in the business. And like most film icons, he’s been the focus of a variety of posthumous rumors, the most persistent being that the five-time husband was gay. Other Hollywood stars like Montgomery Clift and Rock Hudson hid their sexuality from the movie-going public, so the idea that Grant too had a secret life isn’t without precedent. READ FULL STORY »
Last year, Rockstar Games released the western saga Red Dead Redemption, a flat-out videogame masterpiece by bringing to life a particular time and place in American history with extraordinary detail and telling a rich, engrossing story that challenged the mind and engaged the emotions. Hopes are high among fans and critical admirers of Rockstar’s sophisticated, decidedly adult work that their next major title will prove equal to its Red Dead triumph: L.A. Noire, a murder-mystery adventure set in late ’40s Los Angeles, a sprawling and stylish videogame iteration of the film noir and neo noir genres, typified by movies like The Big Sleep (1946) and Chinatown (1974). Of course, vintage film noir owed a debt to crime fiction by the likes of Raymond Chandler (who wrote The Big Sleep) and Dashiell Hammett. To acknowledge the literary roots of its newest offering – and to expand L.A. Noire into a larger “transmedia” entertainment franchise – Rockstar commissioned several prominent authors to pen short stories inspired by the game and stand on their own as crime genre fun. An eBook compilation from Mulholland Books, entitled L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories, will be available June 6, about three weeks after the game’s scheduled May 17 release. “The concept behind L.A. Noire was to create a crime thriller that built on the classic tradition of noir, not just in film but also evoking the great body of crime fiction that exists within the genre,” says Alex Moulle-Berteaux, Rockstar’s VP of Marketing. “Chandler, [James] Ellroy, and Hammet were as much touchstones for the atmosphere and characters of the game as anything from cinema, so there was something appealing about [the] idea of setting some of the genre’s finest contemporary writers loose within that world.”
Among the authors who’ve written original stories for the anthology: READ FULL STORY »
It is a tad ironic that while CBS chased Charlie Sheen out of network town for his extracurricular shenanigans, Fox hired Steven Tyler as an American Idol judge in large part because of his bad-boy rep. Moreover, as this anecdote-packed memoir from the Aerosmith frontman reveals, not all of Tyler’s debaucherous days are distant memories.
Aerosmith’s 1997 autobiography Walk This Way ends with the once notoriously party-happy band transformed into poster boys for sobriety. This book concludes with Tyler securing the Idol gig last year, but the singer recalls how, less than 12 months before, he accidentally ruptured a package of his cocaine in the New York apartment of his (absent) daughter Liv. Drug addicts of a waste-not-want-not disposition — which is to say, all drug addicts — will be glad to know that Tyler “snorted it all up, off the counters and everywhere, and got a nice f—ing rail out of it.”
No, this book is most definitely not for young American Idol fans, and we haven’t even detailed Tyler’s many explicit ruminations on the subject of sex. Nor shall we. Suffice it to say, if young Idol fans did get hold of a copy, they might well deduce that the singer is a huge lover of cats, preferably shaved ones.
Even older readers may be left occasionally confused by Tyler’s shaky grasp of his own history. The singer says he snorted acid at Woodstock, and then wonders in the next sentence, “Can you snort acid?” He also opens the book with the claim that he was raised by foxes (and not of the metaphorical variety). Indeed, Tyler really does seem to have succeeded in mainlining the noisome contents of his noggin directly onto the page (with assistance from co-writer David Dalton). At one point the singer expresses his preference for a “f—ed–up” voice with a “ton of character.” While that may or may not prove useful to American Idol contestants, it is certainly a fair description of the authorial tone to be found here. B+
More on EW.com:
Steven Tyler talks drug use with Matt Lauer: ‘I needed that cocaine’
Shania Twain’s personal struggles are already country music legend: Her poverty-stricken family, her struggle to support her younger relatives after the death of her parents, her recent divorce from Mutt Lange. But the 45-year-old singer’s new autobiography, From This Moment On (on sale today), is packed with intimate details that may surprise even her most dedicated fans. Here are a few of the most shocking: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Andrew Evans/PR Photos
Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler has confessed to snorting cocaine as recently as December, 2009, less than a year before it was announced that he was to be a judge on American Idol. The revelation comes in his new autobiography Does The Noise In My Head Bother You?, which is published today by the HarperCollins imprint Ecco.
In the book, Tyler recalls how he put drugs behind him in the mid-’80s, but then, in 2006, started taking prescription medication while being treated for hepatitis C. The singer’s drug usage escalated after he was diagnosed with a painful foot complaint until he was once again ingesting a range of narcotics, including cocaine. By late 2009, Tyler was staying at the New York apartment of his daughter Liv — who was away making a movie — and bingeing on drugs. In his memoir, Tyler writes that “During Thanksgiving I drank, did some blow again, and then Christmas was coming up so I had a guy bring me an eight ball of coke and a bunch of pills. And those deliveries got through Erin [Brady, Tyler's girlfriend]. But by December, the last package arrived and Erin saw it and said, ‘What is this?’ I said, ‘Gimme that!’ I pulled it away from her and the package ripped. Cocaine went all over the place. I went back later that night and snorted it all up, off the counters and everywhere.” Shortly after that incident, Tyler checked himself into the Betty Ford clinic.
Tyler also claims the band’s sobriety during the ’90s was not as complete as they once claimed. “Not everybody cleaned up and that’s the truth,” he writes. Indeed, the singer says that at least one member of the band was “using” when they performed last year: “It was a bit ironic and a thorn in my side, but not worth getting angry over after spending three months in rehab, that I came back to a band where someone was still using. I don’t give a f—. I live for this band, but the world needs to know.”
More on ew.com:
Steven Tyler talks drug use with Matt Lauer: ‘I needed that cocaine’
They’ve joined zombies and Jane Austen, androids and Leo Tolstoy, and now Quirk Books is taking a very soft and cuddly kitten on a journey through the disturbed imagination of Franz Kafka.
The Meowmorphosis is the latest of the imprint’s “mash-terpieces,” a mashup of classic literature with geek-fueled fancifulness — or in this cast Fancy-Feast-fulness. Author Coleridge Cook starts with the German scribe’s surreal and nightmarish 1915 novella The Metamorphosis, but instead of transforming into a giant, insect-like creature, protagonist Gregor Samsa now wakes up to find he has become “an adorable kitten.”
“The Meowmorphosis is a more psychological sort of horror-comedy, so we wanted a trailer that would convey that Kafkaesque blend of itchy, claustrophobic, nervous energy and utter absurdism. And, of course, the urgency of a cat who wants to be on the other side of a door,” says Quirk editor Stephen H. Segal.
Check out the trailer below. The publisher’s works have become hot properties in Hollywood, where Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is set up at Lionsgate and has just secured Lars and the Real Girl director Craig Gillespie, while 20th Century Fox’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is currently shooting in Louisiana.
The Meowmorphosis is out May 10.
