You Should Be Reading: The Knife of Never Letting Go

“The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.”

Written by Patrick Ness and originally published in 2008, The Knife of Never Letting Go is the first book in the Chaos Walking young adult trilogy. Set in the near future, the story follows 12-year-old Todd Hewitt, the only boy left in a town called Prentisstown. Todd has been brought up to believe that a pathogen has killed all women in a colony world and that the alien inhabitants unleashed a germ called The Noise, giving everybody the ability to hear everyone else’s thoughts. A month away from becoming a man, Todd comes upon a patch of silence and soon discovers the source: a girl. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two go on the run, along with Todd’s loyal dog, Manchee, and learn more about the true history of the New World a secret about Prentisstown’s past.

Set to be released in 2020 and directed by Doug Liman, the film adaptation and stars Tom Holland as Todd, Daisy Ridley as Viola, and Mads Mikkelsen as the Mayor of Prentisstown.

Film Review: The Paperboy

Directed and co-written by Lee Daniels and based on Peter Dexter‘s 1995 best-selling novel of the same name, The Paperboy is set in 1960’s Florida and follows a reporter (Matthew McConaughey) and his partner Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo) who return home to investigate a career-making story involving a death row inmate (John Cusack). With the help of his younger brother (Zac Efron) and a death-row groupie (Nicole Kidman), the pair try to prove the violent swamp-dweller was framed for the murder of a corrupt local sheriff.

Casting Catch-Up: Tom Hardy, Rhys Ifans, Toby Jones, Lily Collins & More!

(Written for BritScene)

Some very interesting casting news this week, including Tom Hardy taking on his first project under his new Executive Options banner and Colin Salmon and Theo James joining a couple of interesting new TV pilots. If that’s not enough to entice you to read more, then you can also find out about the ongoings of David Oyelowo, Rhys Ifans, Toby Jones, and Lily Collins too, who are joining some really great upcoming films such as Writers, Serena and The Butler.

Film Review: Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

(Read this in my publication In Retrospect – Issue 1)

Rating:

Directed by Rupert Wyatt, The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is the prequel to The Planet Of The Apes phenomenon that was first published as a novel in 1963 by Pierre Boulle. ‘La Planète des Singes‘ was first translated as Monkey Planet, but was later reissued to tie into the film franchise that the novel inspired. The first film adaptation was released in 1968 and starred Charlton Heston, which was then remade in 2001 starring Mark Wahlberg. This latest instalment explains the uprising of the apes, telling the story of how they escaped captivity and gained their intelligence, and how they managed to take over humanity when their only purpose was as test subjects to help save it.