It's a bit early to announce definitively, but director Stephen Daldry, fresh off of making us cry our faces off with the Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close trailer, is trying really hard to get HBO to sign on for a miniseries-style adaptation of Michael Chabon's modern-day classic. more ›

Literary super-couple Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Wonder Boys) and wife Aeyelet Waldman (Bad Mother, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits) are teaming up to write a musical about the Dave Eggers-founded nonprofit 826 NYC/ Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company. more ›

THEATER: Biography is a largely forgotten 1932 comedy by S. N. Behrman, who wrote witty and flattering plays for high society. In the Pearl Theatre’s current revival, Carolyn McCormick (Law & Order) plays Marion Froude, a free-spirited, liberated lady in her 40s who draws heat when she decides to write a tell-all about her eccentric life. One of the colorful characters from her past who dreads the exposure is a U.S. Senate hopeful; sparks fly when Ms. Froude refuses to self-edit. Martin Denton calls it “a delightful, giddy, smart screwball comedy of ideas.” - John Del Signore more ›

MOVIE: One Ring Zero is a lit-rock fans dream come true. The band features Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem, Dave Eggers and Margaret Atwood’s lyrics set to the music of trumpets, theremins, claviolas, and metallophones. Director Joe Pacheco captured the band on film and presents it now as a documentary, As Smart As They Are: The Author Project. Here's a song/video with lyrics by Michael Chabon: more ›

, by Ayelet Waldman. Let’s put aside the actual book for a minute and talk about the author. Now, it’s somewhat fashionable to dislike Ayelet Waldman, and I confess I am no exception. I’m not talking about her as a novelist, because this is the first book of hers that I’ve read. No, I based my dislike – as did, I’m sure, thousands of her other detractors – on the article she wrote about being madly in love with her husband almost to the exclusion of everyone else in her life. Her husband being, as the book jacket so archly points out, “the novelist Michael Chabon”. A lot of people disliked the tone of the article – seemingly both callous and crowing but above all, too much information with not enough widespread applicability to its readers’ lives. At least, those are the reasons I disliked it. more ›

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Thanks to Product Shop NYC (who also reports that the New Year's Eve act at Madison Square Garden will be...The Black Crowes), Gothamist is salivating over this year's New Yorker Festival line-up. Edie Falco! The RZA! Ricky Gervais! Trey Parker and Matt Stone! Sleater-Kinney! And Wallce and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit! The New Yorker Festival runs September 23-25, and tickets will go on sale on August 25. The tickets range in price from $5 to $50, most being in the $15-30 area, and the programs range from the highbrow (reading by Ian McEwan, Town Hall Meeting on Iraq) to the delightfuly low (A Salute to the Three Stooges). Here's a list of the programs. more ›

As someone whose love of movies extends to how the movies get made, this excellent article in Variety by Claude Brodesser and Dana Harris about trying to get Spiderman 2, the Michael Chabon scripted sequel to 2002's most successful film, off the ground is fascinating. Though people have been hearing most recently about Tobey Maguire dumping his representation, the studio, Columbia Pictures, did in fact make an offer to Jake Gyllenhaal, because Tobey was being...might Gothamist say petulant? Below is the article, cut-and-paste for any cinephiles out there, as Variety requires subscription. Also: more ›

Via Amazon.com, I bought Summerland by Michael Chabon for my 12 year-old cousin last fall, mainly because there was a baseball theme and it was by Michael Chabon. Now Amazon thinks it knows me very well. And the truth is, it does. Except there do seem to be some glitches: Letter from Amazon.com more ›