Live Wire

War Horse,Michael Morpurgos novel was published in 1982. Over the next 25 years,about 50,000 copies were sold. It simply was not a book that anyone really knew about or cared about, the author once noted in an interview. But since the release of Steven Spielbergs Oscar-nominated film version in Britain two weeks ago,the book has sold more than 60,000 copies there,BBC News reported. The novel,about a farm boy and his beloved horse enmeshed in the horrors of World War I,was made into an award-winning play using puppets in 2007. Last week,the film was nominated for six Academy Awards including best picture. Movie versions,of course,always boost book sales,but the burst of interest in this case has enabled the book to monopolise the No. 1 sales spot in Britain for the past couple of weeks.

21 Jump Street,based on the 80s television series about back-to-high school cops,but now with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum in lead roles,will have its premiere on March 12 at the South by Southwest festival. Janet Pierson,producer of the festivals movie portion,noted a kind of aggressiveness,a boldness,risk-taking in 130 feature films that will screen between March 9 and March 17 in Austin,Texas. Pierson pointed,for example,to Dollhouse,an Irish film,from the writer-director Kirsten Sheridan,about five street kids who create havoc after breaking into a suburban Dublin home. Several documentaries in the program look at Los Angeles and the raucous past of its music culture. Those include Sunset Strip,about the history of that iconic portion of Sunset Boulevard,and Uprising: Hip Hop amp; the L.A. Riots.

Nick Krause plays Sid,the scene-stealing teenage friend who tags along with George Clooneys on-screen family as they travel around the islands in The Descendants. In his audition video,shot on his phone,his sister stood in for Clooney in the scene in which his character has a heart-to-heart with Sid. Though it might have seemed technically dashed off,Krause and his sister,Kate,also an actress,have theories about how to read a script sides in actor-speak. Well be like,O.K.,now read these sides like youre Arnold Schwarzenegger and Im a floating pie, Krause explained,laughing. And then we do it as Mercutio vs Romeo or old Shakespeare characters vs Secret Life characters,seeing whether we could juxtapose them all and still have the sides read as coherent. And thats how we would memorise them.