Forget Nicole and Keith...

Venice, Italy -- Patricia Arquette and her random, kilt-wearing hubby (actor Thomas Jane) get the Romancing the Tome thumbs' up for wedding of the week. It's like a Merchant/Ivory film in the making! (I wonder if Patricia's transvestite bro, Alexis, was maid of honor?) -- Amy

Casting Couch: Mysteries of Pittsburgh Revealed!

Last week we got a sneak peek at casting picks for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. This week we hear that Sienna Miller (yawn), Max Minghella, and Maggie Gyllenhaal's baby daddy Peter Sarsgaard will star in Chabon's first novel Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Rawston Thurber (Dodgeball??) will direct. Minghella will play Art Bechstein, the son of a money launderer who becomes embroiled in a love triangle with Miller and Sarsgaard's characters. Mysteries is often thought to be loosely autobiographical with some readers fixating on Art's bisexuality. You can make up your own mind: Read Chabon's fascinating NYRB essay about writing Mysteries here. More on the adaptation here. --Kim

Something Adapted This Way Comes

Variety reports that Sean Bean (pictured) and Tilda Swinton will star in "Come Like Shadows," an adaptation of Macbeth described as "a period piece designed for a contemporary audience." The film will be set in Scotland and directed by The Jacket's John Maybury. Steven Soderbergh is the executive producer. Great casting choices, if you ask me -- Bean played Macbeth on the London stage in 2002 in a performance several reviews described as "raunchy." Hmmm. Incidentally, my friend, Meg, just saw the Scottish play performed in Central Park, with none other than Jennifer Ehle (P&P's Elizabeth Bennett) as Lady Macbeth. Here's what she had to say about it.

Also filmbound: Marley & Me, John Grogan's uber-bestselling account of 13 years spent with a very bad dog. -- Amy

How the West was Done

HBO may be washing their hands of one of my favorite series on television, Deadwood, but at least the studio's film peeps still have "west" on their compass. The Book Standard reports that HBO films is joining forces with Dick Wolf (he of the Law & Order epidemic) to adapt the bestselling nonfiction book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, by Dee Brown. -- Amy

Cowboy Classic?

"Well, I'll tell you the truth. I ain't no real cowboy, but I'm a hell of a stud." -- Joe Buck, Midnight Cowboy

It only just dawned on me this weekend while watching Midnight Cowboy for the second time in my life that it's actually an adaptation of a novel by James Leo Herlihy. While I'm not much for reading a novel after seeing the film version, I may make an exception for this one. Not exactly your conventional "buddy picture," it's the account of a naive male prostitute who meets both rotten luck and, ultimately, a best friend on the unsavory streets of New York City. In the film, Jon "Shiloh's grandpappy" Voight plays the wannabe cowpoke (no pun intended), while Dustin Hoffman is his down-at-heel sidekick, "Ratso" Rizzo. Has anyone out there read Midnight Cowboy or any of Herlihy's other novels? Just curious. -- Amy

Tea For Two

Although Kim and I continue to debate the merits of downtown Los Angeles, we're both in agreement that high tea at the Millenium Biltmore hotel is a bright spot in the metropolitan melange. We partook of the "Empress Afternoon Tea" at the hotel's Rendezvous Court on Friday afternoon, and here's how it measured up. -- Amy

Ratings scale: One sugar cube = tepid; Five sugar cubes = tea-rrific

TEA: Although the selection was limited, we both enjoyed our tea choices. Following a glass of champagne each, we forgot to make note of exactly which tea we ordered. Afterwards, the sugar buzz had zapped our memory completely. So excuse the lack of specifics.
Rating: Four sugar cubes

SANDWICHES: Egg salad, smoked salmon, cucumber and ham & cheese. Though not exactly bowled over by originality, we wouldn't have wanted anything too avant-garde. The classics never disappoint.
Rating: Five sugar cubes

SCONES: We had to wait for a new batch of scones to come out of the oven, but it was worth the wait. Though preciously diminutive, we were generously allowed five, AND offered more after we polished them off. (We had enough discipline to decline extras.)
Rating: Five sugar cubes

SWEETS: Believe it or not, we're often put off by afternoon tea services that offer too many sweets. (Because after gorging on sandwiches and scones, one still feels obligated to eat every last delectable dessert, thus feeling like a penitent porker by the time one is finished.) In this case, the Biltmore wisely kept the dessert plate to an appropriate three items per person: White chocolate mousse topped with fresh fruit in a crisp, edible cup, a lemon bar topped with slivered almonds and, the chaser -- a chocolate truffle.
Rating: Four sugar cubes

ATOMOSPHERE: The room itself was beautiful: High, intricately painted ceilings with wooden beams, a fountain and a grand staircase leading to the second floor. There was no harpist (but we certainly survived without a flourising rendition of the Titanic theme song...) On the downside, the hotel lobby restroom was appallingly institutional (read: high school lavatory). Still, the hotel has loads of cool history. There are old black and white photos from Academy Award ceremonies of yore, and legend has it, the Black Dahlia's ghost still lurks in the lobby. (A hotel doorman was the last person to see Elizabeth Short alive.) Kim found the photo of a dapper Jimmy Stewart accepting an Academy Award for Philadelphia Story particularly swoon-worthy.
Rating: Four sugar cubes

Keira Sticks With Her Blokes...

I've been known to fall for a limey or two in my day (a byproduct of my love for Masterpiece Theater and for men who start sentences with "I say,...." spell color with a "u" and have a vocab that includes the word "serviette.") The accent, as we all know, is, in a word, hot. (I even know a dude from New Jersey who faked a British accent to get a date with my friend. It worked!) Conversely, the American accent doesn't have the same "kiss me, you fool!" effect for the English ladies -- at least not for Keira Knightley, who tells In Style magazine that she prefers dating Brits to Yanks. Knightley, who is still dating her P&P co-star, Rupert Friend (Mr. Wickham), says she prefers guys who smell like Guiness to "vain" American men who put too much effort into their appearance. Clearly, Miss Knightley has not ventured far enough into our great country to find the real buzzards. -- Amy