Notes in the Margin Weblog

The books that took the Oscars / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com:

They may not have been clutching golden statuettes last night – or anywhere near Hollywood, for that matter – but there is a another set of Oscar winners this morning and they have as much reason to celebrate as do the stars you saw on the stage. They are the authors whose books – ‘Crazy Heart,’ ‘Push,’ ‘The Blind Side,’ and ‘La pregunta de sus ojos’ – inspired four of last night’s winning films.

Marjorie Kehe tells the story behind the adaptation of each book into film.

After a long courtship, Angelina Jolie will play Kay Scarpetta / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com:

In a follow-up matter to my previous post, Christian Science Monitor book blogger Marjorie Kehe is reporting that many people, like me, are not impressed by the choice of Angelina Jolie to play Kay Scarpetta:

Not everyone is happy. Leaning on both references in the novels and Cornwell’s own appearance, many Scarpetta fans picture the pathologist as more like a 40-something blond with a short haircut. Others insist that Scarpetta more closely resembles Jodie Foster (who is said to have turned the role down), Glenn Close, Demi Moore, and/or Kristin Scott Thomas.

Angelina Jolie to play Kay Scarpetta – latimes.com:

Jolie’s desire to play Scarpetta has revived prospects of a movie franchise that could begin shooting as early as next fall. In a surprise, Fox 2000 has decided to jettison the books in favor of an origins story written directly for the screen. Set in the present day (as opposed to the late 1980s, when the series begins), the film will feature a distinctly younger Scarpetta in the years before she becomes the steely, unassailable expert pathologist she is today.

I gave up on Patricia Cornwell’s fiction years ago, but it looks as if her self-centered and shrill medical examiner, Kay Scarpetta, may finally find her way to a movie screen near you.

I have reservations about the plan to produce “an origins story written directly for the screen,” however. Remember what happened to Sara Paretsky’s female detective V.I. Warshawski in the movie that starred Kathleen Turner? That film combined pieces of several of Paretsky’s novels into one screenplay that completely missed the point on V.I.’s character and made her into a laughingstock rather than a feminist icon. And mystery author Sue Grafton, who used to write for Hollywood, has promised that her popular female detective Kinsey Millhone will never appear on the big screen because Grafton knows what can happen in the translation from one medium to the other.

But then, it will be difficult to make Scarpetta a worse character than Cornwell herself has done already.