Happy Mockingjay Day!
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The title of this post comes courtesy of Suzanne Collins, from an interview with EW’s Shelf Life, and it’s my quote of the week.
Even though it’s a bit of a template interview, reduced to questions about favorite books, books never finished, etc., it’s a nice little piece to read on the eve (well, if you can call a week and a day an eve) of the release of Mockingjay, the final installment of her Hunger Games series.
It’s not coming out until February of next year, but I bet a lot of folks will see this trailer when they go to see New Moon this weekend!
(via EW’s PopWatch)
Online ticket vendor Fandango claims that the pre-opening ticket sales for Twilight Saga New Moon have set a record as the selling the most advance tickets in the history of the company. Granted, tickets for this film have been available for around two months, it seems like the audience has spoken.
In addition to selling tickets, Fandango has gathered some excellent market research:
52% of survey respondents say they dream about vampires51% say they will scream when they’re in the theater as the lights go down for the first time on Thursday at midnight61% are more excited to see Taylor Lautner taking off his shirt than Robert Pattinson doing the same in New Moon
Since the last film created a new wave of readers for the series, it seems highly likely that this new film will probably do the same.
It’s just like Harry Potter-you keep thinking that anybody who is going to read the series, but there are always new converts turning up.

I have to admit that I was originally a bit disappointed that Wes Anderson’s newest film would be a stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, as I am a big fan of his comedies of familial discord.
However, the film has premiered at the Times BFI International Film Festival in London on Wednesday, and the reviews have begun pouring in with almost unanimous praise.
The Evening Standard’s Nick Curtis says the film is “brilliantly eccentric, a cult classic in the making”.
The Auteurs (one of my favorite film blogs) has a round-up of the critics and their opinions.
And, while I have to admit that I never pictured Mr. Fox having George Clooney’s Ocean’s 11 (12, 13 etc.) swagger, this trailer really makes me want to see it. What can I say, I am a sucker for stop-motion animation.
Needless to say, be prepared for increased demand on this book.

Oscar-winning screenwriter (and full-time punching bag of unsuccessful scriptwriters everywhere) Diablo Cody is set to write and produce an adaptation of the Sweet Valley High series.
A lot of people get on her case, saying that her dialogue is contrived, and not how real teenagers speak. While I’m not a huge fan, I think she is, much like Quentin Tarantino, is cobbling together her own argot. She may not be writing the stuff kids say, but in pretty short time, kids will be saying what she writes.
(Via SpoutBlog)
This past weekend, the animated film adaptation of Judi and Rom Barrett’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs trounced the competition at the box office clearing almost three times the box office take of its nearest competitor The Informant.
Here’s a fun tidbit about the film I bet you didn’t know: In Isreal, the film was released with the title Geshem shel Falafel, or, Rain of Falafel.

(What War Zone, via io9)

Sourcebooks has decided to delay the ebook release of its YA title Bran Hambric: The Farfiield Curse (due September 1st), so as not to cannibalize hardcover sales.
Over at Booksquare, Kassia Krozser, as usual, knocks this debate out of the park, arguing that this could possibly be short-sighted of the publisher, comparing it to making a particular piece of music available only on compact disc, instead of both cd and digital download.
Sourcebooks’ reasoning is that customers who really want the book will buy it regardless of format, and that just as customers who don’t want to shell out twenty or more dollars will wait for a paperback release, so too will these ebook customers hang loose for their ten dollar download.
I dunno. This kind of thinking may be okay if you’re J.K. Rowling, or perhaps the book economy were better. But in this situation, neither applies.
Despite my general dislike of ebooks, I think not making them available is a risky move. If the book takes off, and manages not to get pirated in the interim, then it’s a gamble that will pay off for Sourcebooks.
But these are pretty big ifs.
Let’s hope that somebody remembers to follow up on this a few months after the book is released.
(book cover photo from branhambric.com)
Leave it to Little Brown and their star author Stephenie Meyer to find a new way to get fans to buy a book they already own a second time.
LB has just announced its Twilight Publishing Program Fall titles, in which they will repackage Breaking Dawn in a new hardcover combined with a DVD of the Breaking Dawn Concert Series, and conversations with Stephenie Meyer.
LB must be anticipating tweens with a lot of disposable income this Fall, as they will be printing “only” a million copies of this new special edition.
I guess this is what CEO David Young meant when he said that the Twilight series would continue to “power on”.
Would it kill LB to just make that content available digitally for free? Wouldn’t that be a great way to keep readers coming to their website and finding out about other quality LB titles?
Rumor has it that the original trailer for director Spike Jonze’s adaptation of the children’s classic Where the Wild Things Are was a bit too rough for kids, driving kids who saw it to tears.
Warner Brothers has released a new trailer, but, having not seen the earlier one, I can’t comment on how much tamer this one is.
I will say that the trailer looks so saccharine, all it’s missing is Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill on the soundtrack.