Nick Cave pens remake of The Crow

Australian musician and author Nick Cave is writing the screenplay for a remake of the 1994 film adaptation of James O’Barr’s comic-book series The Crow. Actually, according to The Wrap, Cave is rewriting a script originally penned by the forthcoming movie’s director, Stephen Norrington. The Wrap reports:

Hiring Cave to rewrite Norrington’s script is a bold move, but it may prove to be worth it in the long run, as Cave may be the perfect choice to help resurrect the fading franchise.

And according to The Guardian, “The new version [of the script] is said to be closer in spirit to James O’Barr’s comic books than the original film.”

Cave, who in 2006, was named one of Variety’s 10 most promising screenwriters, has also  completed the screenplay for a film adaptation of his 2009 novel, The Death of Bunny Munro (HarperCollins).

Bookmarks: Birthday wishes for Margaret Atwood, and more

Bookish links from around the Web:

• Happy (belated) birthday, Margaret Atwood. The author turned 70 yesterday
• Colum McCann has won the fiction prize at the National Book Awards for his novel Let the Great World Spin. Also at last night’s gala in New York, Dave Eggers picked up the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community
• Expanding on James Wood’s assertion that “prizes are the new reviews,” Salon.com’s Laura Miller discusses the emerging trend of “vanity book awards”
• Is the Apple tablet dead?
• The Literary Review has released the shortlist for the annual Bad Sex in Fiction award. On this year’s list are Philip Roth – no surprise there – Nick Cave, Paul Theroux, and Jonathan Littell
• Lou Reed, Maureen “Moe” Tucker, and Doug Yule, three members of the Velvet Underground, are reuniting for the first time in more than a decade, at – where else? – a branch of the New York Public Library, to promote a new coffee-table book, The Velvet Underground: New York Art

Bookmarks: Duranie lit, fun with Pynchon, and more

• Simpson’s writer takes revenge on uppity Pynchon scholar
• Nick Cave has a new novel, with its own iPhone app, Dave Byrne has a new memoir, and now … wait for it … Duran Duran has a book club on its website?
• Listen up, weary book publicists – all you gotta do is get a celeb to tweet your book title and you’re gold!
• Infringe first and ask questions later? Well yes, if you’re Google. The copyright office weighs in
• Details magazine lists its favourite literary podcasts
• The 9/11 novels worth reading

The school of rocklit

It may be true, as Michael Hearst claims, that “all writers want to be rock stars.” But do they truly have rock within them? That’s one question posed by this Carl Wilson feature in the weekend Globe and Mail. The new album by Hearst’s band, One Ring Zero, features lyrics by a variety of fiction writers, including Rick Moody, Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem, A. M. Homes, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), and our own Margaret Atwood. Although accusations of dilettantism can surely run both ways, Wilson’s piece largely avoids the phenomenon of rock stars who want to be writers, thus sparing us the unpleasant task of contemplating novels like Bob Dylan’s Tarantula or Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw the Angel.

Related links:
Carl Wilson on singing writers in The Globe and Mail