Alice Sebold Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Okay, so I might've just knocked Sandra Bullock for going after the Oscar gold, but here's The Lovely Bones, with a story I can get behind (Alice Sebold's best-selling tale of a young girl murdered and the aftermath she observes from the afterlife), a filmmaker I can get behind (Peter Jackson, scaling things back post-Lord of the Rings), an ensemble* I can get behind (Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, and the critically-cast Saoirse Ronan), and now a trailer I can get behind.

Reading the novel earlier this year, I was struck by the simplest moments that captures almost too precisely how grief can change loved ones most unexpectedly, and while it seems that Jackson has certainly created a visually luscious realm for Ronan's character to inhabit and has retained the thrust of a somewhat supernatural murder mystery, part of what won me over was how Sebold's mystery took years to unfold, as the whole family comes to terms with the closure (or lack thereof) in their own personal ways.

If Jackson and company can balance the sprawling drama with the inherent whodunit (whydunit?) come December 11th, then The Lovely Bones could be lingering above all of the other contenders this coming awards season.

*I must confess a certain gratitude that Wahlberg replaced Ryan Gosling here. It's enough of an age difference to matter, let alone general temperament.

How do you imagine heaven? Peter Jackson's vision of the place may not be the same, based on an advance look published by Empire Magazine, and that's probably a good thing. The director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy has revealed a glimpse of his concept of the heavenly realm, from his upcoming movie The Lovely Bones, and it looks a lot like ... the Empire Magazine logo (if you click through to their site and enlarge the image; see part of it above). Yup, the Brit zine promises many more pictures in their upcoming issue, but for now all we have is one shot that makes heaven look like a studio with some clouds in the background.

If you haven't read the book, it's an absolutely devastating read, written by Alice Sebold from the point of view of a 14-year-old girl. Susie Salmon (played in the movie by Saoirse Ronan) narrates the tale from her own personal heaven: she was brutally raped and murdered by a neighbor / serial killer and has to come to terms with her own death while watching her family and friends deal with extreme emotional trauma. Susie's heaven is not like Warren Beatty and Buck Henry's Heaven Can Wait or, really, like most other heavens depicted in film, so this initial image is promising.

It's also in line with what Jackson told USA Today: "It is quite like the world of dream, using the magic of metaphor to convey Susie's psychological and emotional life." USA Today also has a different, exclusive image (see above), which shows a shadowy Stanley Tucci as the neighboring serial killer. Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, and Michael Imperioli also star. The Lovely Bones is due in theaters on December 11.

Production began last month on Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's ultra-popular novel, The Lovely Bones -- just as Ryan Gosling left his role as dad, and Mark Wahlberg jumped in. The film focuses on a young girl who is raped and murdered, and then watches her loved ones and killer from heaven as her family falls apart and they try to find her body. It's pretty dark, but with word finally coming from the set, we're finally getting hints to just how Jackson will present it -- Susan Sarandon recently talked to MTV about her role as Grandma Lynn, and just what sort of adaptation Jackson has been cooking up.

She says: "I play kind of the comic relief. She's [a] drinking, hard shooting, smoking [old lady] cutting across all of the pain, pain, pain. Whenever I possible can blow smoke in someone's face, I'm doing it!" But it seems that this levity is not just present in her role. As she says of the film on a whole: "I haven't figured out the tone of the movie, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what it is. It's going to be a strange jumble of things. But Peter Jackson did Heavenly Creatures. It's like that." So the director is turning to his roots, but that doesn't mean he's completely left the world of special effects. The actress also says his treatment of the heaven sequences "will work better in the film than they did, for me, in the book." Why that is, I don't know, but considering all he did with Lord of the Rings, it must be good.

I've been stoked about Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones being made into a movie since development was first announced, although admittedly, it took me a while to jump on the "Peter Jackson is the perfect director for this film" bandwagon. Don't get me wrong, I like Jackson, and I think he did one hell of a job with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I just wasn't sure he was the right guy to direct this tale of a murdered 14-year-old girl who watches the aftermath of her disappearance on her family -- and the guy who killed her -- from heaven.

I warmed up to Jackson when he cast Ryan Gosling and Rachel Weisz as Jack and Abigail Salmon, the parents of Susie Salmon, the murdered girl; then just a few days ago news came that Jackson had finally cast the all-important role of Susie (much speculation had floated around the internet on that, with Dakota Fanning being the name I most frequently heard bantered about) with Irish actress Saoirse Ronan. There's been no announcement yet on who will play Susie's sister, who is also an important character in the book, but we do at last have a name associated with one of the most pivotal roles -- the murderer.

The Hollywood Reporter has a story up today that Stanley Tucci is in negotiations to play the part of child molester/murderer George Harvey. Tucci shone on screen in The Devil Wears Prada and he's a great character actor, but he's not the first person that would have come to mind for the role of this type of bad guy -- which makes him perfect for the part. That's the thing about sexual predators -- they don't usually look like the bogeyman, they look just like the nice guy next door, the guy who tends to his garden, waves at the neighbors all friendly-like but never invites anyone in, keeps to himself while blending into the scenery. Tucci has the ability to play that to a tee; casting someone who actually looks evil would be way too obvious; the normal-looking guy who harbors the dirty little secret that he lures little girls to an early grave is far more sinister.

Between the casting news and the early excerpt of Jackson's script, I can't wait to see this movie now. What do you think of how the casting is shaping up? And are you excited about seeing Jackson bring The Lovely Bones to life on the big screen?

It definitely seemed that Peter Jackson was taking his time with casting his big screen version of Alice Sebold's bestseller, The Lovely Bones, but we're now one step closer with Variety reporting that Irish actress Saoirse Ronan has been cast as Susie Salmon, the victim of a brutal crime at the hands of a local serial killer. The story revolves around the 'ghost' of the young murdered girl who watches her family and friends grieve from her spot in a 'personalized afterlife'. Ronan only has a handful of credits, and most of them are in television, but she has been busy this year with the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement with Keira Knightley, where she plays a vindictive girl who falsely accuses a man of a crime. Ronan is also set to star in the Fox Walden fantasy film City of Ember, based on the novel by Jean DuPrau.

Last month, James had news of an excerpt from Jackson's script, and based on that, it sounds like Jackson has been putting his time to good use since the collapse of the live action Halo film last year. In May, he began shopping the project around before he finally settled on Dreamworks; the studio had been trying for years to secure the film rights to the novel, so the deal seemed to work out for everyone. Already signed to play Ronan's parents are Ryan Gosling and Rachel Weisz, so, the only missing piece of the puzzle seems to be the role of the young girl's murderer. Bones is set to start shooting this October, so I would expect to hear at least one more casting announcement soon, so stay tuned.

Peter Jackson's next film won't involve elves, talking trees, or giant gorillas. He's working on a much smaller scale (he'd almost have to go smaller at this point) with his upcoming film The Lovely Bones. He adapted Alice Sebold's much-loved novel with his writing partners Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh - Mrs. Peter Jackson. They started shopping the script to studios this week. With Oscar-winning director Jackson at the helm, and a much smaller financial risk than his past few outings, I don't think he should have any trouble finding a partner. Unsurprisingly, the only major studio Jackson and his crew didn't pay a visit to was New Line. Jackson has been publicly feuding with New Line chief Bob Shaye over royalties on the Lord of the Rings films, which led to Jackson pulling out of The Hobbit.

The Lovely Bones tells the story of Susie Salmon, a 14 year-old dead girl whose spirit keeps watch from Heaven. She watches how her death affects her family, friends, and even the man who raped and murdered her. It's pretty heavy stuff, but Jackson insists he'll be carrying over a lot of the humor in the book as well. If you question Jackson's ability to handle material like this, let me direct you to what I think is far and away his best film -- Heavenly Creatures with Kate Winslet. The Lovely Bones sounds similar to that 1994 gem in that both contain "normal" and "fantastical" worlds. It will allow Jackson to direct a more traditional narrative while giving him opportunities to show off his numerous visual gifts. Jackson has said that the hardest aspect of bringing The Lovely Bones to life will be recreating the Heaven Susie lives in, as it was left intentionally vague in the novel. Hey, if anybody can do it...