Jarad Henry's "Blood Sunset"

Jarad Henry is an Australian crime writer. His first murder mystery, Head Shot, which was inspired by Melbourne’s gangland killings, was short listed in the 2006 Ned Kelly Awards for Best First Crime Novel. As a manuscript, it was also short listed in the 2004 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Blood Sunset, his second novel, was short listed in the 2006 Australian Vogel Awards and in the same year won the Fellowship of Australian Writers Jim Hamilton Award.Here Henry shares some ideas about the star and creative team should his latest novel be adapted for the big screen:My second crime n

Read more »

{[['']]}

Perri O'Shaughnessy's "Keeper of the Keys"

Perri O'Shaughnessy is the pen name for sisters Mary and Pamela O’Shaughnessy, authors of the bestselling Nina Reilly novels.Here they develop some casting ideas for adaptations of their stand-alone thriller, Keeper of the Keys, and for the main characters in the Nina Reilly novels:We have sold a few movie options over the years, although none of our books or short stories have ever made it the big screen. However, if we were ever to sell rights to a book that did, we would expect shocks to the concept and the characters. Maybe we would welcome them, since the artist/director/screenwriter sh

Read more »

{[['']]}

Steven Wilson's "Armada"

Steven Wilson is Curator and Assistant Director of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, which houses one of the most diverse Lincoln and Civil War collections in the country. His books include Between the Hunters and the Hunted, President Lincoln's Spy, and Voyage of the Gray Wolves.Here he develops some ideas about the director and cast should his novel Armada, set just before D-Day, be adapted for the movies:I grew up with movies and my brother and I could tell which studio (back when studios were factories) produced a movie by the sounds used from their libraries. Warner Bros. gunshot

Read more »

{[['']]}

Timothy Hallinan's "The Fourth Watcher"

Timothy Hallinan has lived off and on in Southeast Asia for more than twenty years. He is the author of eight published novels and one nonfiction work on Charles Dickens. The Fourth Watcher is the second book in the Poke Rafferty novels of Bangkok that began in 2007 with A Nail Through the Heart.Here Hallinan develops some ideas about the directors and cast should the Poke Rafferty novels be adapted for the big screen:The Fourth Watcher is the second in a series of Novels of Bangkok (as the people at William Morrow subtitle them), so there are really two challenges: casting the continuing ch

Read more »

{[['']]}

A Night To Dismember (1983)

JULY 3, 2008GENRE: INDEPENDENT, SLASHER, WEIRDSOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)It wasn’t long into A Night To Dismember that I realized I was in for something truly special... maybe 2 minutes tops in fact. As I watched a rapid fire collection of scenes with little cohesion speed by, endlessly narrated (by a guy that sounds like Charles B. Pierce) to hide the fact that there was no source audio, I decided that the film was simply divine. And it just got better as it went on, peaking at the halfway mark when the narrator describes a dream sequence thusly: “Vicky felt as though someone faceless was m

Read more »

Independent, Slasher, Weird,

{[['']]}

Triloquist (2008)

JULY 2, 2008GENRE: PUPPET, SERIAL KILLERSOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)Is there a Sniglet for when you are walking around Blockbuster at the same pace as another customer? That happened last night, it was me and this lovely looking woman and her child, browsing from A-Z, constantly getting in each other’s way and saying “excuse me” every 12 seconds. And the woman was obviously a “good” mother, as her kid kept trying to get her to rent R rated films like The Orphanage, only to be shot down (the mother’s suggested alternative? Drillbit Taylor. Poor kid.). Since she clearly wasn’t down with the

Read more »

Comedic, Puppet, Serial Killer,

{[['']]}

Slaughter Party (2005)

JULY 1, 2008GENRE: COMEDIC, MAD SCIENTIST, SLASHERSOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)When you have a movie in which a midget (Mighty Mike Murga) is raped by a mountain man in the first 15 minutes, the last thing you should say about the film is that it’s dull. But that’s exactly how I would describe Slaughter Party, a Troma film that seems oddly held back on several occasions and manages to make even nonsense like Terror Firmer look like solid storytelling in comparison. At no point in the film was there any evidence that I was watching a completed film. Characters come and go without any real rhy

Read more »

Comedic, Independent, Mad Scientist, Slasher,

{[['']]}

Andrew Blechman's "Leisureville"

Andrew Blechman has been a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the Des Moines Register. His work has also appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, the New York Times, and the International Herald Tribune, among others. His first book, Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird, was widely praised in the media and featured on CBS Sunday Morning.His latest book is Leisureville—Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias. Here's how he'd like to see it make the journey to the big screen:I’d love to see Leisureville adapted as another installment of the National Lampoon

Read more »

{[['']]}