Trailer Time: 'The Help' and 'The Ides of March'

Last year I slugged my way through The Help, the novel that seemed to be on every book club’s required reading list. It wasn’t as grab-me-by-the-lapels-and-make-me-read-it as I'd hoped it would be, at least not until the very end when I wound up staying up until the wee hours of the morning to finish it.

Yes, the fact that it's main character is an upstart writer was intriguing to me (as I'm a writer myself), but the book seemed longer than it needed to be. Nonetheless, I soldiered on to read through to the end because of all the raves I’d heard from women whose literary tastes I respected.

I think that if the story had been streamlined, I would’ve liked it better and that’s why I’m hopeful that in the film version, that’s exactly what will have taken place. Normally I wax poetic about the beauty of the written word and how the dead tree book versions of any story are generally superior to the cinematic interpretations. But in this case, I’m hoping that the opposite is true and that the film, set for an August 10 release, is better than the book.

Great cast. (George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, Rachel Evan Wood)


Great topics. (Presidential politics, political consulting, ideology, duplicity, public integrity)

Great timing. (Slated for an October 7 release, just as the presidential primaries should be heating up)

The Ides of March.

This better be good.