Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

  I watched, and re-watched, the trailer for Jack Reacher, the forthcoming movie starring Tom Cruise as Lee Child’s Reacher (the movie was formerly titled One Shot, since it’s based on that novel). We’ve talked about the casting of Cruise before — here and here — and a lot of people have very strong opinions about the [...]

Real Steel, the 2011 movie directed with uncharacteristic style and energy by Shawn Levy (Cheaper by the Dozen, Night at the Museum, Date Night), is loosely based  on Richard Matheson’s 1956 short story, “Steel.” The story had already been adapted twice for the small screen, as a 1962 Twilight Zone episode and — surprisingly faithfully [...]

A while ago I mentioned NBC was working on a television series based on the characters Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham (who appeared in the books and movies Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal). It’s going to be set before the first Lecter novel, Red Dragon. British actor Hugh Dancy had been [...]

I’ve been a Jennifer Egan fan since her first book, The Invisible Circus, came out in 1995, so I was thrilled at the triumph of her most recent novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. It was Booklist‘s 2011 Top of the List, and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Rumor has [...]

In case you haven’t heard, NBC has ordered thirteen episodes of Hannibal, a new crime drama from Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller — which means, at the very least, we can probably expect something offbeat and weird. The pilot will be directed by David Slade, who gave us the wonderfully dark [...]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Parker, the forthcoming film starring Jason Statham, will be the first time Richard Stark’s professional criminal will appear on the big screen under his own name. (He’s been called Porter, Walker, Macklin, and Stone, but never, I think, Parker.) Richard Stark was, of course, one of Donald E. Westlake’s many pseudonyms. [...]

Donnie Brasco, the 1997 gangster flick starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp,was based on the 1987 memoir of former FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone, who spent more than half a decade inside one of the most notorious of New York’s famous Five Families, the Bonanno family. As “Donnie Brasco” he rose through the ranks, ultimately [...]

Have you seen The Adjustment Bureau, the recent movie based on Philip K. Dick’s 1954 short story “Adjustment Team”? It’s a good movie, with a mind-bending premise and a rather touching love story, but oh boy is it different from its source material. In the movie, a politician (Matt Damon) stumbles onto a secret organization [...]

The Woman in Black, the new movie starring Daniel Radcliffe as a young British solicitor who comes to a small market town to tidy up the affairs of a deceased client and gets a bit more excitement than he bargained for, is based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Susan Hill. If [...]

In case you haven’t heard, Aardman Animation, those wonderful folks who brought us Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run, are doing a stop-motion version of Gideon Defoe’s splendidly wacky 2004 comic adventure, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. The movie is scheduled for release in March, and I think, if you’re a fan of [...]