The Wikipedia entry and some of the blogs are a bit misleading. Here's more on the '21' casting controversy. Apparently the issue is that the team was primarily Asian (as well as other ethnicities) and that the film throws in 2 tolken Asians in the background rather than featuring them prominently. Also, the characters' ethnicities supposedly figure into the story very clearly in the book. Now I almost want to read/watch it just to see how I feel about it this!

Quoted: The head of an Asian-American watchdog group yesterday lashed out at the made-in-Boston flick “21” and MIT card shark Jeff Ma, who he claims supported the “whitewashing” of the Sony Pictures flick. “It’s insulting and pathetic,” said Guy Aoki, head of the Media Action Network for Asian-Americans.

I used to LOVE studying this poem in English class - it always made me want to drink some mead, ha. How cool that Crispin Glover is playing Grendel!

Quoted: Inspired by the epic Old English poem of the same name, director Robert Zemeckis's digitally rendered film follows the Scandinavian hero Beowulf (Ray Winstone) as he fights to protect the Danes from a ferocious beast named Grendel (Crispin Glover).

I'll have to read the trilogy before the movie comes out!

Quoted: A young girl ventures into a perilous parallel universe to rescue her best friend and fight the forces of darkness in director Chris Weitz's adaptation of the first installment of author Philip Pullman's best-selling fantasy trilogy.

I didn't know Love in the Time of Cholera is coming out as a movie, yay! Javier Bardem is amazing. I wonder if this influenced Oprah's choice to use this title for her book club. I did some digging: New Line, who's producing the movie, is a division of AOL Time Warner, which is partnered with Disney - ABC's parent company (Oprah's network). Interesting.

Quoted: Based on Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez's novel of the same name, director Mike Newell's Love in the Time of Cholera details a passionate love triangle that unfolds in turn-of-the-century South America.

I can imagine it must be really hard to say goodbye to characters you've come to know so well, even if you created them yourself...

Quoted: Harry Potter author JK Rowling says she felt "devastated" writing the last words of the final book. "I was sobbing my heart out, I downed half a bottle of champagne and went home with mascara all over my face," she said.

Some great Seattle Reads events coming up! In addition to Jhumpa Lahiri's visit May 14-15, there are a number of S. Asian films showing around the city!

Quoted: All Seattle Public Library programs are free and open to the public. Tickets are not required. Doors open 30 minutes before the program begins. Parking in the Central Library garage will be available for the $5 special event rate.

Saw this today... Really fascinating premise, with some great moments & acting. But somehow I have a feeling the movie doesn't do the book justice. Anyone read it?

Quoted: In 2027, in a chaotic world in which humans can no longer procreate, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea, where her child's birth may help scientists save the future of humankind

Wow, I'd never heard of this disorder before... apparently people with it can't even remember their own faces well enough to pick them out in a group photograph!

Quoted: People with prosopagnosia, or face blindness, must develop alternate strategies for identifying people.