04 May 2008

Books and the Stars: David Beckham, Brad Pitt, "Sex and the City"

Brought to you by the letter F and the number 23: Like many kids who were born in the '70s or '80s I have no doubt my love of reading was nurtured and encouraged by watching "Sesame Street." The veteran PBS kids' show still has its wacky celebrity guests -- in fact, soccer (football) star David Beckham just filmed a segment with Elmo. Of course, it will never get better than Smokey Robinson being attacked by the giant letter U. (Can I just link to this clip once a month? It is so fantastic, and by fantastic, I mean frightening.) This exhaustive list will tell you whether your favorite celebrity has appeared on "Sesame Street" yet.

No country for young authors: The next Coen Brothers movie is a heist film of sorts, but instead of a prisoner's buried treasure or a briefcase full of drug money, the sought-after prize is a memoir. Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand play a pair of gym employees who come into possession of the autobiography of a recently fired CIA agent (John Malkovich). Not only does the agent need the confidentiality-breaching document back, his estranged wife (Tilda Swinton) and one of his CIA bosses (CoBro buddy George Clooney) are also dying to get their hands on the book. The follow-up to Best Picture winner "No Country for Old Men" is called "Burn After Reading" and it will open the Venice Film Festival in late August.

Are we wearing our hair, or is our hair wearing us? In preparation for the "Sex and the City" movie I mooched Candace Bushnell's original book as well as her follow-ups FOUR BLONDES and LIPSTICK JUNGLE. But I just found out that Evan Handler, who played Charlotte's divorce lawyer and -- spoiler alert -- eventual husband on the show, has written a memoir about his battles with leukemia called IT'S ONLY TEMPORARY: THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS OF BEING ALIVE. I mention this not because I'll probably read it, but it has the funniest cover of any book I've seen this year. Go on, go ahead and click.

3 comments:

Marjorie said...

Please do keep linking to that clip. I don't think I have seen it before--I mean, not since I started remembering things I saw. There's probably a lot of Sesame Street floating around in the parts of my brain that were formed before then.

Jess said...

You're missing one of the Candace Bushnell books--Trading Up. Or have you already read it? If not, you should read it after Four Blondes and before Lipstick Jungle, because some of the characters are the same and that's the chronological order they go in.

Ellen said...

Jess -- I haven't, nor did I realize there was an order! I will request it from the library right away and put it in its proper order. Actually, that's perfect because I think I'll write about those books the last week in May (the 4 days after Memorial Day) -- four books, four days, all good.