New York's Vulture blog might have nailed the scoop on Justin Cronin's vampire trilogy last month, but Robert Ito played a passable game of catch-up in Saturday's NYT arts section when it comes to the subsequent bidding war in Hollywood. For Ito, the $1.75 million sale to Fox 2000 and Ridley Scott represents "the lengths that studios will go to in search of their next franchise, at a time when it seems that all the biggest projects have already been done or spoken for."

A little further down the page, Felicia R. Lee appraises Amy Bloom's migration to television drama, as the creator-writer and producer of the Lifetime drama State of Mind. Bloom puts her finger on the way television enacts the eternal return:

"You know, it took me a while to understand the meaning of a franchise, the reasons why you see lawyer, doctor, cop shows... It's not because anyone in their right mind says, 'You know, what's the most fascinating thing in the world?' It's because you need something new that happens every week in a frame."

Or, on the big screen, approximately every two years.