Posts Tagged ‘Edgar Allan Poe’

Hollywood has lots of new literary movies scheduled for 2012. Here are five upcoming literary movies to look forward to in the new year.

Walt Disney Animation Studios will rerelease Beauty and the Beast in 3D. The film’s story comes from Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont‘s version of the fairy tale called La Belle et la Bête. It arrives in theaters on January 13th.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, the sequel to the 2007 film, once again stars Oscar winner Nicholas Cage as the Marvel Comics antihero. The movie comes out on February 17th.

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

The first official trailer for The Raven has been released, a thriller where actor John Cusack plays Edgar Allan Poe.

We’ve embedded the trailer above–what do you think? As we previously noted, James McTeigue directed and the cast includes John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve and Brendan Gleeson.

According to Deadline, the story features Poe teaming up with a detective “to hunt down a serial killer using Poe’s works as the basis for a string of brutal murders.” The film will hit theaters on March 9, 2012. (via Shelf Awareness)

Author Nicholas Rombes explored the life and writings of a forgotten bestselling author from the 19th Century in a recent essay at The Rumpus.

According to Rombes, journalist George Lippard wrote stories “far weirder and super-black India inky” than Edgar Allan Poe. Thanks to the magic of Project Gutenberg, you can decide for yourself with a free eBook copies of books by the two writers–follow the links below to download.

Here’s more from the essay: “Like other ‘reform’ literature of its time, the novel’s claim to be a fictionalized exposé of corruption and villainy allows it to trade in the most sensationalized depictions of debauchery … Although it’s Poe’s name and works that we are more familiar with, Lippard’s best novels churn up something far weirder and super-black India inky than even Poe could conjure.

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The Mystery Writers of America have revealed the winners of this year’s Edgar Awards. The annual prize is named after beloved writer Edgar Allan Poe, awarded to the best authors in the mystery genre since 1945.

These awards recognize the following categories: novel, first novel, paperback original, fact crime, critical/biographical, short story, juvenile, young adult, play, and TV episode.

Last year’s winners included John Hart, Stefanie Pintoff, and Mary Downing Hahn. Follow the jump to see this year’s winners in a few of the top categories.

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Happy National Poetry Month!

Can a headless horseman read poetry? Actor Christopher Walken once played Ichabod Crane‘s nemesis in Tim Burton‘s adaptation of Sleepy Hollow. The video embedded above features Walken reading Edgar Allan Poe‘s The Raven.

Poe fans will see the poet on the big screen in January 2012. The Raven, starring John Cusack, just finished shooting and is currently in post-production.

According to The Wrap, director Scott Cooper will helm a film adaptation of The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard.

The Pale Blue Eye features a young Edgar Allan Poe acting as a detective at West Point.  Bayard will publish a new historical fiction novel in March 2011 entitled The School of Night.

Actor John Cusack just finished playing an older Poe in The Raven, a film about the last days of Poe’s life. What actor do you think can pull off a young Poe? (via Ron Charles)

Just in time for the holiday release of a new Sherlock Holmes adaptation, AudioFile magazine will give readers a free collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories on audiobooks.

To access the collection, readers need to sign up for the Audiofile newsletter between Dec. 16 and 29. In months past, the multimedia series has also included listeners’ guides to Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett. The free stories will be read by award winning producer David Timson, including the stories “Silver Blaze,” “The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clerk,” and “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plan.”

AudioFile publisher Robin Whitten explained: “With the 150th anniversary of Arthur Conan Doyle‘s birth this year and the release of the Sherlock Holmes film starring Robert Downey, Jr., it’s an appropriate time to encourage a new generation of fans to discover the voices of Sherlock Holmes … the atmospheric settings, intellectual puzzles and intriguing characters of Arthur Conan Doyle make perfect audio listening.”

Ever since he published “The Raven” in an 1845 edition of the New York Evening Mirror, Edgar Allan Poe‘s famous poem has been the target of endless tributes, imitations, and parodies.

To celebrate the September 8 opening of a 2009 bicentennial exhibit on Poe, the Harry Ransom Center is encouraging writers to compose a parody of “The Raven” for fame and prizes on the website. For inspiration, they uncovered what must be the oldest Poe parody, an 1853 poem entitled, “The Vulture: An Ornithological Study.”

Here’s more on the contest, from the Poe Mania site: “Write your own parody of ‘The Raven’ based on something from your daily life and submit it to poe@hrc.utexas.edu. We will post our favorites here. Submissions become property of the Harry Ransom Center for use on this website or in other Ransom Center materials. All submissions will be entered into a drawing for a copy of ‘Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.’”