First things first: "From Page to Screen" is a new column I'm trying here at Cinematical. Each week I'll discuss in detail a book that serves as the source material for either an upcoming or a past film adaptation. In the case of forthcoming films, I'll talk about the prospects for the adaptation: the challenges of bringing the particular book to the screen, the casting, the plot, the literary intangibles that so often wind up missing from the resulting movies. In the case of past films, I'll discuss the adaptation's approach to its source: what changed, what stayed the same, what worked and what didn't. Oh, and I'll actually have read the books.

I never tire of repeating my simple philosophy when it comes to adaptations: books are not movies. What works on the page won't always work on the screen. To demand total faithfulness to the book is folly, and will usually lead to a crappy movie. (This is also the case, by the way, for "true stories" and biopics -- people's lives, no matter how interesting, don't always, or even often, make for good films.) But that, I think, makes my task here more interesting rather than less. What does it take for an adaptation to work -- as a film in its own right, or as a translation of the source material?

The idea for this came from a number of discussions I've had here on the site. People are passionate about the books they love, and protective of them. The adaptation process is fun to talk about -- and even more fun when you've read the book and can have an informed conversation. I hope you'll join me, and I plan to be active in the comment threads.

The professional seas are definitely clear for writer/director Shana Feste. She's got her first full-length feature script picked up by Barbarian Films, they're letting her helm it as her directorial debut, and now Variety reports that she's got two well-known stars to lead the cast: Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon. That's not too shabby at all for a new screenwriter and first-time director.

The Greatest is another upcoming drama based on the aftermath of loss, and one that should feel familiar to Sarandon, seeing as she just finished The Lovely Bones. Feste's script follows a family that's trying to deal with the loss of a teen son, and a young girl who somehow throws them into chaos. (Let me guess: a secret love child!?) Brosnan and Sarandon are playing the grieving parents.

Producer Beau St. Clair notes that Feste has a "rare ability to uniquely dramatize the complicated dynamics" of loss, and I would hope so, because it seems like every day we're getting more projects that deal with the aftermath of loss -- The Lovely Bones, Fireflies in the Garden, Hickory Nation, Birds in Fall, Beautiful Children ... the theme is hotter than Derek Zoolander.

We found out from Erik back in February that Ellen Page is becoming a mom for the upcoming weird psychological thriller Peacock, which will co-star Cillian Murphy. Now Variety reports that three more have joined the cast -- Susan Sarandon, Bill Pullman, and Josh Lucas. (Who they will play has not been revealed.) This film is sounding better by the minute!

If you remember back, this story focuses on Peacock, Nebraska, where Murphy's character has a split personality -- a man and wife. That's not quite as weird as the fact that he fools the whole town into believing that there are two people. (I guess this is some sort of Clark Kent/Superman thing where no one notices that they're never at the same place at once.) Anyway, Page plays a young mom "who holds the key to his past and sparks a battle between the personalities."

Oh, but it gets better. The description with this story says: "a quiet bank clerk's (Murphy) life is shattered by a train crashing into his back yard revealing a woman living there." (Page, perhaps?) A train crashes onto his lawn? Revealing a woman living there? Umm... Is there some bomb shelter? Is his back yard just really, really cluttered? I don't get it. Whatever the case, it sounds like an insanely interesting story.

I don't know a lot about Speed Racer aside from what I've gleaned from the theme song over the years -- apparently, the young man's a demon on wheels -- so, in many ways, I'm the best possible audience for Larry and Andy Wachowski's new big-screen interpretation of the character. Originally a Japanese animation program exported and re-dubbed for the American market in the '60s, Speed Racer has now been revived and revitalized for now. And the Wachowskis have created a blast of pure pop family fun; Speed Racer's a bright, bold visual spectacle designed for kids.

And why shouldn't it be? Or, rather, how could it not? This is a property where one of the supporting characters is, after all, a monkey; any fully-grown individual hoping for an adult action film or racing realism is looking in the wrong place. Speed Racer plays like a car-crazed visual wonder -- it looks and feels like what pop artist Roy Lichtenstein would dream if you locked him in a room full of gas fumes, gave him only candy to eat and showed him nothing but Tron, Indianapolis 500 footage, episodes of the '60s Batman TV show and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. All at the same time. With the volume very, very high.

Say it ain't so! I want this to be nothing more than hyperbole and ugly rumor mongering. But let's look at it anyway: According to Flicks.Co.NZ, there are troubling stories surrounding the set of Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones.

The first is a bit of a yawner. Reportedly, Jackson is having creative differences with his art director over the best way to portray Heaven -- a pretty key location in the book, if you remember. Things even reached a point where the production had to take a break as the disagreement was sorted out, according to reports.

But then came word (today) from The Bad and Ugly that the film has now been delayed, and instead of a March 13, 2009 release date, it's been pushed to Fall, 2009. No word on whether this was due to production issues or if they'd rather hold the film for a potential Oscar push.

Additionally, Susan Sarandon seemed like she was pretty iffy on the film and especially her performance while speaking to press at the London premiere of Speed Racer: "I play the comic relief, an alcoholic grandmother – my first grandma – but she doesn't really seem like a real grandmother because she has a lot of hair and jewelery and nails and liquor. I don't think I ever talk without a cigarette and a drink in my hand. Peter Jackson is really a nice guy and very interesting. It was really a very different way of working. We had a good time, I'm really curious to see what it's like because he kept pushing me to be more and more extreme and sometimes that's when you make your big mistakes so I'm not sure how it will come off -- it will be interesting to see it from the point of view of the audience."

So much has been released lately, I am honestly losing track of what Speed Racer footage is new -- but the Internet is raving over the new featurette posted over on Apple. If you've been to the theatre in the past week or so, you've seen at least half of this on the First Look.

The rest of it is ... well, probably most of the movie. For a movie full of such eye-blowing visuals, you would think they'd hold back a little. Hopefully, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and Speed Racer fans will be stunned anew.

I confess, the trailers and featurette are enough for me. It certainly is pretty -- the world of the future that I long to live in -- but it just doesn't grab me otherwise. I feel terribly out of touch and I shouldn't admit it, but my first thought upon seeing Matthew Fox's racing gear was "Oh, he's Scottish." At least I know the plot, now. I am still amazed they managed to snag Susan Sarandon for this. It has to be pretty cool if she's involved, right? We will find out soon enough. Speed Racer comes to the theatres on May 9th, 2008.

So they might not be as likely to 'freak your trip' as the last poster, but Comics2Film now has four new character posters for the Wachowski's highly-anticipated adaptation of Speed Racer. Our first poster release came back in December and now these new releases give some of the main characters their very own one sheet. Racer X, Trixie, and two new posters of the Speed Racer himself, Emile Hirsch, are now available (I guess nobody thought that a Chim Chim poster would help draw in the crowds).

Based on the popular Japanese series, the film centers on a young man with the unlikely name of Speed looking to be the champion of The Crucible; a cross-country car racing rally that took the life of his older brother, Rex. John Goodman and Susan Sarandon star as Speed's parents, and Christina Ricci plays his girlfriend -- with the advantage that she kind of looks like a cartoon to begin with. Rounding out the cast is Matthew Fox (LOST) as Racer X and Scott Porter as Rex Racer.

There has been plenty of discussion about the somewhat 'trippy' look of the film, and these new posters are keeping right in line with that psychedelic vibe. Which is kind of funny if you think about all the hassle the Wachowski's got over keeping the film 'family friendly'. So whether fans like it or not, it seems like the new Speed Racer is going to be all about wholesome spectacle (probably best enjoyed in IMAX). If you don't believe me, you could always take a look at the new trailer over at Yahoo. Speed Racer will arrive in theaters on May 9th, 2008.

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.

Closing the Toronto International Film Festival, Paolo Barzman's Emotional Arithmetic opens in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, where a family's awaiting the arrival of a guest. But it's not a normal family, and it's not a normal guest. Melanie (Susan Sarandon) is looking forward to the guest's arrival; her husband David (Christopher Plummer), less excited. The guest is Jacob (Max von Sydow), who Melanie hasn't seen since the darkest days of World War II, where Jacob looked out for her and a young Irish boy, Christopher at a French transit camp. At the airport, Melanie's surprised to find that Jacob, just released after 35 years in a prison psychiatric camp, is accompanied by the now-grown Christopher (Gabriel Byrne). Memories, regrets, past pain and and what-could-have-been hang in the air. ...

Based on Matt Cohen's novel, Emotional Arithmetic is earnest and fact-filled ... and completely inert; it's like looking at a civics class diorama. The problem isn't primarily the actors, all of whom are fine; it's more that they aren't asked to do much more than show up and be who they are -- Plummer brisk and brusque, Sarandon flighty-yet-flinty, Byrne handsome but haunted, von Sydow weary but wise. Roy Dupuis, playing Melanie and David's son, actually stands out even though his character's not given much to do; it may be because Dupuis isn't simply coasting on his familiarity and prior roles.

See, the movie has the word "cock" in the title. That's what makes it funny.

And I hope you get a whole lot of laughs from that hilarious moniker, because it's funnier than anything found in this witless, worthless waste of ... anything. Time, money, effort, you name it. I've seen documentaries about hair cancer that offer more laughs than this movie. (Well, not really, but I'm trying to make a point. My apologies to anyone who has ever suffered from cancer of the hair.) Not to pat myself on the back, but that parenthetical comment I just made? Also funnier than anything found in Mr. Woodcock. And the comment wasn't really all that funny.

Forgive me for spinning my wheels in the early part of the review, but asking me to review Mr. Woodcock is like asking an experienced food critic to review warm water. There's just nothing here, folks. OK, stop me when this sounds like it'd be worth your nine dollars: A self-help author returns to his cozy hometown only to discover that his mother is sleeping with a despised gym teacher. (Are we at $9.00 yet? No? Only about 64 cents? Fine, but I think you're being generous.)