The much anticipated movie, The Social Network, has just been released recently. Some of us may not know, the film was actually adapted from the book, The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. The book reveals what had occurred behind the scenes, and follows how best friends Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg spend their college life in Harvard and ultimately moving to Silicon Valley, to further expand Facebook.
The tagline, “you don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies”, clearly define what Mark and Eduardo had to endure in founding Facebook, which ended with lawsuits and accusations. As a daily Facebook user, this book helps me to get to know the history behind what I’m using everyday. Glad to have this book.
Adrienne Willis is forty-five and has been divorced for three years, abandoned by her husband for a younger woman. The trials of raising her teenage children and caring for her sick father have worn her down, but at the request of a friend and in hopes of a respite, she’s gone to the coastal village of Rodanthe in North Carolinas outer banks to tend the local inn for the weekend. With a major storm brewing, the time away doesn’t look promising until a guest named Paul Flanner arrives.
At fifty-four, Paul is a successful surgeon but in the previous six months his life has unraveled into something he doesn’t recognize. Estranged from his son and recently divorced, he sold his practice and his home and has journeyed to this isolated coastal town in hopes of closing a painful chapter in his past, completely unaware that his life is about to change forever.
The Accidental Billionaires - The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich
You have to admire Ben Mezrich’s chutzpah. To write The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook, a supposedly nonfictional narrative about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, without ever actually speaking to Zuckerberg, reveals an enviable nerve. But then chutzpah is something of a Mezrich speciality. He is the author of the bestselling Bringing Down the House, the story of an elite group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) geeks who had the nerve to go out west and beat the bank in Las Vegas. With The Accidental Billionaires, Mezrich goes a mile or two up Cambridge’s Massachusetts Avenue, traveling from MIT to Harvard and telling us the outrageous story of an elite geek who had the chutzpah to go out west and beat the bank in Silicon Valley. Six years ago, Mark Zuckerberg was a monosyllabic Harvard freshman, as brilliant in digital affairs as he was awkward in all things physical. Today, Zuckerberg remains the major shareholder and CEO of a company now valued anywhere between $8 billion and $15 billion. The Accidental Billionaires is the story of Facebook’s founding, from the fall of 2003, when Zuckerberg first came up with idea of his online social network, to the fall of 2005, when the Harvard dropout (Bill Gates 2.0) got the company funded by some Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The birth of Facebook is a story about theoretical sex and money but very real betrayal. As the father of the world’s most popular social network, Zuckerberg appears anything but social. Mezrich describes the young Facebook founder as not only painfully lacking in social interaction but also chillingly heartless in his dealings with friends and associates. Mezrich’s Zuckerberg might be an accidental billionaire today, but there seems nothing accidental about the way in which this Internet enterpreneur relentlessly “borrowed” ideas and money from Harvard classmates and friends without ever properly repaying them. Given that Mezrich never actually spoke to Zuckerberg, this highly energetic and entertaining nonfictional novel should be read with a pinch of salt. But that salt is essential flavoring for this memorable bits-to-billions story. Like the many Facebook pages, The Accidental Billionaires isn’t adverse to bending the truth a degree or two. This is a book with nerve about an entrepreneur with nerve. Highly recommended for those with chutzpah who want to go out west and beat the bank.
A film adaptation of the book, titled The Social Network, was released in October 2010.
Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell
Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell
With the humor of Bridget Jones and the vitality of Augusten Burroughs, Julie Powell recounts how she conquered every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and saved her soul.
Julie Powell is 30 years old, living in a tiny apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that’s going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother’s worn, dog-eared copy of Julia Child’s 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes — in the span of one year. At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves from the simple Potage Parmentier (potato soup) into the more complicated realm of aspics and crepes, she realizes there’s more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the eye. And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her outer-borough kitchen into a miracle of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life’s ordinariness through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance.
Film
A film adaptation, also based on Julia Child’s autobiography My Life in France, directed by Nora Ephron, and titled Julie & Julia, was released August 7, 2009. It stars Amy Adams as Powell and Meryl Streep as Julia Child.
Two blockbuster films adapted from Nicholas Sparks novels have propelled the author’s romantic fiction to sales of an all-time high.
Sales of Sparks’ titles across all editions have sold more copies in the past six weeks (to the week ending 1st May) than throughout the entirety of 2009 according to Nielsen BookScan. Sparks racked up volume sales of 74,111 over the period, compared to 72,485 in all of 2009.
“Dear John”, starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, opened on 14th April, heading to number one in the UK film chart, while “The Last Song”, starring Miley Cyrus, went in at number four.
The Last Song, published by Sphere in hardback in September 2009 and in paperback in April 2010, has already sold nearly four times more than Sparks’ previous novel, The Lucky One, published in 2008. The Last Song has sold 41,760 copies since publication, while The Lucky One has so far racked up sales of 8,187.
The films also boosted his backlist, with A Walk to Remember and The Notebook, also both previously made into films, in particular receiving fillips.
(Source: Official Website of the Golden Globes Award)
I love watching award shows – though most of the time, being Astro-less, I’ll have to wait till the re-runs are on other channels. Or yes, I could just keep up with the news on the internet. So, it was with excitement that I found out that the nominations for the 67th Golden Globe Awards were announced recently. I’d scroll down the entire list and have my ”ooohs” and “aaaahs” upon seeing my favourites being nominated (again).
With trepidation, I also look out for a selection of books to read – especially those that have been adapted into movies. I prefer adaptations (book to movie) more than novelisations (movie to book). It’s fascinates me to watch see how creatively a movie could be visualised on the big screen based on a thin book or condensed into just two hours of viewing from a thick book that took us days and weeks to devour.
I’ve narrowed down some of the movies that have have related tie-ins:
An electrifying first novel that shocks by its language, its circumstances, and its brutal honesty, Push recounts a young black street-girl’s horrendous and redemptive journey through a Harlem inferno. For Precious Jones, 16 and pregnant with her father’s child, miraculous hope appears and the world begins to open up for her when a courageous, determined teacher bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set them down in a diary. The movie stars Best Actress nominee and newcomer Gabourey Sidibe and Best Supporting Actress nominee Mo’nique.
Ryan Bingham’s job as a Career Transition Counselor (he fires people) has kept him airborne for years. Although he despises his line of work, he has come to love the culture of what he calls “Airworld”. With a letter of resignation sitting on his boss’s desk, and the hope of a job with a mysterious firm, Bingham is agonizingly close to his ultimate goal: 1 Million Frequent-Flyer Miles. The movie stars Best Actor nominee George Clooney and Best Actress nominees Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga.
In the futuristic world of James Cameron’sAvatar, a young man named Jake becomes part of an exploration team on the planet Pandora, inhabited by the exotic Na’vi. Scientists have created an avatar—a body that looks like a Na’vi but is operated by a human’s consciousness. When in his avatar body, Jake finds himself drawn to the planet’s way of life. But before the Na’vi will accept him as one of their own, he has to pass a series of fantastic and dangerous tests. Can Jake survive long enough to become a full-fledged Na’vi? And will he ever want to live as a human again?
2. Best Performances by an Actress in a Movie
Emily Blunt for A Young Victoria
Born in 1819, Victoria was the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent. Left fatherless at the age of 8 months, her early years were difficult, brought up by her overbearing German mother and ambitious advisor, Conroy. Succeeding to the throne at 18, however, she began a triumphant reign where her first decree was to banish her mother and Conroy to a remote palace apartment. Yet, history and this movie, will reveal that her journey at the monarch towards her happy ending, was not all smooth sailing. The rest of the cast includes Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany and Miranda Richardson.
Carey Mullingan for An Education
When the journalist Lynn Barber was 16, she was picked up at a bus-stop by an attractive older man who drew up in his sports car – and her life was almost wrecked. A bright confident girl, on course to go to Oxford, she began a relationship which, incredibly, was encouraged by her conventional, suburban parents and which took her into the louche, semi-criminal world of west London just as the 1960s began. Ruin beckoned, until one day she made an important discovery.
This true-life sports drama tells of a man, born to a crack-addicted mother; who takes up American football and school, after a rich Republican family plucks him from the mean streets and adopts him. Their love is the first great force that alters the world’s perception of the boy and the second force is the evolution of professional American football into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost. The boy, who took on the name Michael Oher turns out to be the priceless combination of size, speed and agility necessary to guard the quarterback’s greatest vulnerability: his blind side. Directed by John Lee Hancock, the movie also stars Tim McGraw, Kathy Bates and Quinton Aaron.
3. Best Performances by an Actor in a Movie
Colin Firth for A Single Man
This movie is based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood. Set in Los Angeles in 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, it is the story of a British college professor (Colin Firth) who is struggling to find meaning to his life after the death of his long time partner. The story is a romantic tale of love interrupted, the isolation that is an inherent part of the human condition, and ultimately the importance of the seemingly smaller moments in life.
Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart
Bad Blake has been a big star, but he has not recorded in five years. He is 57 and now has a chance for a last show and a last chance at love. But can he stop living the blues, give up the booze, put three bad marriages behind him and form a new relationship? The movie also stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall.
Based on 2 memoirs, this movie is adapted (written for the screen and directed) by Nora Ephron. The brilliant Julia Child (Meryl Streep) woke America with the pleasures of good cooking wtih her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking and tv show. In 1948, when she newly landed in France, Julia soaked herself in the local culture – buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu – that eventually led her to her success as a cook, teacher and writer. Meanwhile, in New York, Julie Powell regularly finds herself weeping on the way home from her boring job. Then one night, she notices that the few items she grabbed from a Korean grocery store are the same ingredients, as described by Julia Child, to make Potage Parmentier. And so, “The Project” is born. Julie cooked all 524 recipes in the book, within one year and realises that this deranged Project is changing her life. The richness of the thousands of sauces she slaves over is beginning to spread into her life, and she begins to find the joy of life that has been missing for many years.
5. Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture
Based on a gripping true account written by Kurt Eichenwald, The Informant is Mark Whitacre, a senior executive with America’s most powerful food giant, who put his career and his family’s safety at risk to become a confidential government witness. Using Whitacre’s secret recordings and a team of agents, the FBI uncovered the corporation’s scheme to steal millions of dollars from its own customers. But as the FBI closed in on their target, they suddenly realised that Whitacre wasn’t quite playing the game they’d thought. He double-crossed both the authorities and his employers in one of the most extraordinary cases of global corporate corruption in the last 30 years.
Michael Stuhlbarg for A Serious Man
The book is written by Christopher Isherwood and is set in 1967. Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him, his unemployable brother Arthury is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny is shirking school, and his daughter is filching money from his wallet. Also, a graduate student is trying to bribe him for a passing grade while threatening to sue him for defamation. His search for some kind of equilibrium is conveyed with humor, imagination and verbal wit by the Coen brothers. Julianne Moore is the nominated best actress for this comedy.
Robert Downey Jr. for Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based “consulting detective”, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, astute observation, deductive reasoning and forensic skills to solve difficult cases. In this movie, Holmes and his assistant, Dr. Watson must hunt Lord Blackwood resumes his killing spree. Contending with Dr. Watson’s new fiancée and a dimwitted head of Scotland Yard, Holmes must unravel the clues to the mystery through a twisted web of murder, deceit, black magic and the deadly embrace of temptress, Irene Adler.
6. Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Matt Damon for Invictus
Based on a true story, Matt Damon plays the captain of South Africa’s rugby team (Springboks), Francois Pienaar, who joined forces with Nelson Mandela to help unite their country. Then, newly-elected Mandela believed that he can bring his people together, through the universal language of sports. He rallied Pienaar’s rugby team as they make an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup Championships match. The men shared one goal with the motto, “One team, One Country”.
Lovely Bones paints a painful picture of a girl, who was raped and murdered, and now watches over her family – and her killer – from heaven. Stanley Tucci plays the George Harvey, the man, who killed Susie Salmon.
The winners of the Golden Globes will be announced on 17th January 2010, and the awards are usually used as a marker – the run-up to the prestigious Oscars (Academy Awards). 2009 saw the success of Vikas Swarup’s Slumdog Millionaire become an overnight sensation when it won the Oscar for Best Movie. Perhaps another author is crossing his/her fingers that he/she made the right choice to have his/her book turn into an award-winning movie.
I can’t wait. It’s been more than a year since Twilight was screened. And everyday, more so now, there is a bombardment of updates on the cast, clips, trailers, posters, images, music previews etc on New Moon. I have changed my desktop numerous times to feature different New Moon posters, because there are just so many choices of images to choose from.
So, tell me, whose team are you on? Edward’s or Jacob’s? Mine is Edward… and though he leaves Bella after a small bloody incident, I knew he would soon be back. Except, I didn’t expect him to be involved such a big showdown with the Volturi in Italy! Oh, I should stop there and not leave you with too much details. To know more about why Edward ended up at the Volturi meet (no thanks to Bella jumping off the cliff) and when Jacob and his pack of friend change into a pack of werewolves, read the book (or catch the movie).
Recently, when I ventured around the bookstore looking for early Christmas gifts, a tin box set containing 4 journals - with covers from Stephenie Meyer’s saga of 4 books (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn) caught my eye. There are also quotes from the saga and other books that inspired Meyer while writing her bestsellers. Yes, I think my cousin will love this. I would.
I remember reading and watching multiple versions of movies and animations of A Christmas Carol as a kid.. and always had the same feeling… that ironically, though I like the idea of a time traveler visiting me, I didn’t like to know the future so much in case I have been or will be as bad as Scrooge ever was.
Published in Oct 1843, this Charles Dickens tale begins on Christmas Eve, 7 years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge’s business partner Jacob Marley. That night, the ghost of Jacob Marley appears before Scrooge and warns him that his soul will be bearing heavy chains for eternity if he does not change his greedy ways, and also predicts that a series of other ghosts will follow.
The first, the Ghost of Christmas Past, takes Scrooge to the scenes of his boyhood and youth which stir the old skinflint’s gentler and tenderer emotions. The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge to the home of his nephew Fred to observe his game of Yes and No and to the humble dwelling of his clerk Bob Cratchit to observe his Christmas dinner. The third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, harrows Scrooge with dire visions of the future if he does not learn and act upon what he has witnessed. The last ghost was the most haunting of the three. It still is to me, sometimes.
In the end, of course, Scrooge becomes a different man, treating his fellow men with kindness, generosity, and compassion, and gaining a reputation as a man who embodies the spirit of Christmas.
This November, A Christmas Carol comes alive at cinemas worldwide and is played by Jim Carrey, Jim Carrey, Jim Carrey.. and many others.
A couple of months back, I watched the trailer to The Time Traveler’s Wife on the big screen. My immediate reaction at the end when Eric Bana starts to disappear in front of Rachel McAdams eyes, I thought, “I need to read this novel before the movie comes out!”
I did. I read and immersed myself in the love story between Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshaire. I must say, the author, Audrey Niffenegger is a wonderful story-teller! Not only did I leave all my other books on my bed half-read, she had left me wondering often how I’d feel if I have my own time-traveling partner to look out and wait for. Will he ever appear? Would it be a curse to meet someone like that? Would I even want to be someone like that?
Though the chemistry between the lovebirds was good, the movie was not up to my expectations – many colourful characters were missing (Ingrid, Charisse, Kimy etc) and scenes were so obviously altered from the original. Some critics said that the movie was disappointing, too much of a farce. I’d say the movie would be a good prelude to those wanting more. To those who have not read the book.
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As for me, I’m contemplating the idea of reading Niffenegger’s second novel. The one that hit the stores just a few weeks ago. The one that has a ghost. A ghost whose body has just been buried in the cemetery nearby. A ghost that haunts in Her Fearful Symmetry.
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Quotes To Share
"Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
- Plato
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