Leads Set for "Rock 'n' Roll"

Rufus Sewell, Sinead Cusack and Brian Cox have been announced as the stars of Stoppard's latest play.

Spare a Thought for Jack, the Self-Emasculating Tapir

I usually pay scant attention to stories about wacky "birds-and-bees" tours at zoos, but the graphic nature of this one really made me do a double-take. I hear there have been no major complaints from The Chronicle's loyal readership. I don't know whether to compliment our audience on its openmindedness or despair that no one seems to read what we print.

Soul Patch

New review in The San Francisco Chronicle, covering three books that, in one way or another, address the mind/body problem and the existence of the soul: Ian McDonald's "River of Gods," Christopher Moore's "A Dirty Job" and John Scalzi's "The Ghost Brigades." All three get high marks.

Stoppard Catch-Up

It's been a while, but I've had my reasons. Anyway, assorted Stoppard-related news has been trickling in:

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival will stage "On the Razzle" next year. Yay! I'll probably get to see it.

ACT here in San Francisco has announced that its next season will open with "Travesties." Again, yay!

Stoppard is reportedly adapting Robert Ludlum's "The Bourne Ultimatum" for the big screen. The director assures us that it will be "a f**kin' classy film." Uh, yay, I guess.

More Stoppard Links

Well, somebody liked Stoppard's "Heroes." It won a Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy.

And Daniel Radcliffe is using some of his "Harry Potter" earnings to buy a Stoppard manuscript entitled "Murder."

Sleeper "Cell"

On Sunday, The Chronicle ran my latest science fiction and fantasy column, covering Stephen King's "Cell," Kevin Brockmeier's "The Brief History of the Dead" and "The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana" by Jess Nevins.

I probably gave "Cell" a kinder assessment than it deserved. The plot really is rather dumb if you think about it for more than a second. But I was in the mood for a guilty pleasure at the time, and that's what King delivered. So, good on ya, Steve.

Here's a very funny Digested Read of "Cell," courtesy of The Guardian Unlimited.

WonderCon

I'm interested in doing more freelance writing about comics. With that in mind, I was a correspondent for Comic Book Resources at last week's WonderCon, just a block away from my office. I wrote about:

Grant Morrision, talking about the "WE3" movie, hopes for an "Invisibles" anthology hardcover and language magic

The Future of the DC Universe, which sounds quite headache-inducing and a huge financial drain on anyone who wants to follow all its permutations

Upcoming Vertigo books, which honestly don't excite me very much. Oh, well.

Ave Atque Vale Bluths

I'm really going to miss "Arrested Development."

Playing the Trump Card

Stoppard asks whether the right of free expression is self-evident.

StoppardFest in Winnipeg in '07

Details are still very sketchy, but a StoppardFest has been announced for January '07 in Winnipeg. Apparently, this year's O'NeillFest was something of a depressing bust, but organizers hope the StoppardFest will achieve the level of success attained by 2004's AlbeeFest.

Apropos of Nothing

This is the only book dedication to have ever made me laugh out loud. It is from "The Ignored," a horror novel by Bentley Little:

Special thanks to the employees of the City of Costa Mesa with whom I worked from 1987 to 1995: both the friendly intelligent competent professionals I liked, and the small-minded backbiting bureaucratic assholes I hated.

Stoppard to Adapt "Lear" for Hopkins?

This item, about Anthony Hopkins' proposed cinematic swan song as King Lear, is truly curious. Is Stoppard really working on an adaptation, or is Sir Anthony just talking out his, uh, hat? Or are the Welsh playing some sort of practical joke on us? They will, you know.

Ew, Cooties!

My most recent San Francisco Chronicle column explores the theme of contamination in new books by David Marusek, Charlie Huston and Charles Burns.

A More Complete Bibliography Than Mine

Michael Hutchins maintains a very useful Stoppard bibliography. Beware, though, of the ugly and annoying Geocities tab.

Family Business

Tom Stoppard's son Ed is performing the title role in the English Touring Theatre’s production of "Hamlet."

By Which I Mean He Contributed to the Screenplay

Conventional wisdom seems to be that Tom Stoppard had an uncredited hand in Lasse Halstrom's new "Casanova," starring Heath Ledger.

Stuff to Which I'm Looking Forward in 2006

Well, 2005 is gone, and good riddance. Let us instead keep in mind the pleasures that the new year might bring.

Two new Stephen King novels, "Cell" and "Lisey's Story" are slated for publication this year. The first sounds like it could be either really lame or a rip-snorting guilty pleasure. The second is being played up for its literary value, which always makes me suspicious. Glad ol' Steve is enjoying his "retirement."

It looks like "Arrested Development" may be picked up by Showtime or ABC. I don't subscribe to Showtime, but at least there's now the possibility of more episodes on DVD eventually. I don't get HBO, either (I'm one cheap son of a gun, aren't I?), but "The Sopranos" is slated to return this spring. And I continue to enjoy "Lost," somewhat against my better judgement.

The culmination of Grant Morrison's "Seven Soldiers of Victory" super-dooper comic book maxi-series thing arrives in April. It's been a long, weird ride so far, but Morrison is known for rarely bobbling his endings. I may even read his "All-Star Superman" limited series, although I'll probably wait for the inevitable trade.

The WonderCon comics fest happens at San Francisco's Moscone Center in early February and then the World Horror Convention hits town in May. I am enough of a geek to be waiting eagerly for them.

I always enjoy our family vacation in Ashland, Oregon. This season, I'm looking forward to new Oregon Shakespeare productions of "The Winter's Tale," the rarely produced "King John" and David Edgar's adaptation of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Meanwhile closer to home, Berkeley Rep will stage "The Glass Menagerie" with Rita Moreno.

I know of two major Stoppard productions coming up -- the world premiere of "Rock 'n Roll" in London and the New York premiere of "The Coast of Utopia." I won't be seeing either, but it will be interesting to read what the critics have to say.

Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen will release his new solo disc, "Morph the Cat," in March. If my excited anticipation marks me as a sad remnant of the Seventies, so be it.

The movie version of "V for Vendetta," starring Natalie Portman, looks promising, even if cranky Alan Moore has removed his name from it.

Then there are the usual personal aspirations for being more productive and more successful and thinner. We'll just have to see whether the odds for those are any better than the probability that "V for Vendetta" won't suck.

Time Sinks

Choicest links of the day:

Crunks '05 -- the choicest media corrections of the year

Lostpedia -- the "Lost" wiki. Don't get them started about the numbers.

When Giants Walked the Earth

Here's a good, old interview with John D. MacDonald by Ed Gorman. One quote jumped out at me:

I had four months of terminal leave pay at lieutenant colonel rates starting in September of 1945, ending in January 1946. I wrote eight hundred thousand words of short stories in those four months, tried to keep thirty of them in the mail at all times, slept about six hours a night and lost twenty pounds.

800,000 in four months! Holy crap!

Trilogy in Translation

Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia" is slated for a Moscow premiere in 2007.