JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

You picked the winner of the Weekly LitWit Challenge 8.3: Cruel Rejections. It’s VenusdeSupsup! Congratulations, Venus—it appears you voted for yourself more than twice; fortunately other readers agreed. You may claim your Carson McCullers hardcover any day starting Thursday, 2 February 2012, at the Customer Service counter of National Bookstore at Power Plant Mall, Rockwell, Makati.

* * * * *

The book being The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, the movie being the adaptation of the same by David Fincher. Explain your answer in 500 words or less. Oh and try not to write like Stieg Larsson; make your prose compelling.

The winner will receive the bestselling Scandinavian thriller The Boy In The Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis

and a copy of the official Fincher movie poster (see above). Consider it a limited edition: You won’t be seeing this poster displayed in cinemas due to the racy artwork.

Three runners-up will each get a poster, courtesy of Jay and Columbia Pictures. David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo opens in Metro Manila theatres today.

We’re accepting submissions until Tuesday, 7 February 2012 at 12 noon.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

In this LitWit Challenge you can win a charming hardcover edition of two novels by Carson McCullers: The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding. All you have to do is to write a story in 1,000 words or less in which the narrator is cruelly rejected by the object of her/his affections.

Notecards by Terrapin Stationers.

The best-written, most cruel rejection wins. Of course we are particularly interested in certified true stories, but we’ll take all tales of spurned and thwarted love, including Rafa-Roger slamfiction. (Soy su destino, no ese Mirka! Beruhigen Sie unten, den Anna Wintour Sie hören kann.)

As always, post your entries in Comments. We’re accepting submissions until Thursday, 26 January 2012 at 2359 hrs.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

* * * * *

Now a word from our sponsor.

National Bookstore is doing its second annual one-day Ang Pao Bag promo on Monday, 23 January 2012, Chinese New Year’s Day, at selected NBS branches. The bag contains more than Php1,000 worth of assorted products, including a Stabilo highlighter desk set, a hardcover John Grisham, photo albums, scrapbook materials and office supplies, and is available for only Php500.

Enjoy your Ang Pao Bag and here’s to a joyful Year of the Dragon.

We got an interesting set of film adaptation pitches for The Weekly LitWit Challenge 8.2. Any one of them would make a movie far superior to anything Star Cinema, Regal or Viva churned out last year.

Howards End
e-ripley has an idea for a Romeo and Juliet adaptation set in colonial era Zamboanga. Good work, but R&J has been done to death. If you like Oro, Plata, Mata, look up one of its inspirations, The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) by Luchino Visconti, set in the last days of the Sicilian aristocracy. Or read the novel by Lampedusa.

Akyat-Bahay Gangster pitches Brideshead Revisited in 1930s Iloilo/Negros and 1940s Manila. This would work, except that the remake of Brideshead from a couple of years ago with Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw taking over for Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews is a blot on our memory. (Yeah our criteria for judging are completely arbitrary.)

Akyat-Bahay Gangster also suggests E.M. Forster’s Howards End in Malate and New Manila. Hmmm. (Yes, Christopher de Leon and Lorna Tolentino are old enough; Raymond Bagatsing is too old.) But putting the Zombadings team on it is an intriguing notion—their humorous approach would keep it from getting too staid and stately.

Valley of the Dolls

Ligayaparaiso’s pitch for Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls starring Roderick Paulate and Vice Ganda: Outstanding! Fabulous! We would invest in that.

kindler’s take on The Great Gatsby in Dumaguete starring Joko Diaz as Tom, Heart Evangelista/Anne Curtis as Daisy, Cogie Domingo as Nick: nice. We dread the forthcoming Baz Luhrmann adaptation. DiCaprio-Maguire-Mulligan are fine, it’s the Luhrmann we have doubts about. Also we haven’t seen a Gatsby adaptation we like. The Jack Clayton version: as pretty and immobile as a fashion magazine layout.

The winner of the Weekly LitWit Challenge 8.2: Pitch a film adaptation iiiiisssss….Ligayaparaiso. Honorable mention to Akyat-Bahay Gangster (for Howards End). Congratulations! You may pick up your prizes at the Customer Service counter, National Bookstore, Power Plant Mall, Rockwell, Makati starting Tuesday 24 January 2012.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore. The next LitWit Challenge is coming up.

* * * * *

kimedes007, your prize for The Weekly LitWit Challenge 8.1 can be claimed any time at National Bookstore in Rockwell.

In last week’s LitWit Challenge we asked you for something Picture of Dorian Gray-ish. Given the subject matter we were looking for something bizarre and theatrical. Fortunately one of the entries featured arch characters, posturing and overacting, and guest appearances by Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and Princess Diana. So the winner is kimedes007.

Congratulations, kimedes007! Please post your full name in Comments (It won’t be published) and we’ll alert you when your prize has been delivered to National Bookstore at Power Plant Mall, Rockwell, Makati.

* * * * *

While reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens it occurred to us that it would work as a Filipino movie or telenovela (After all it was serialized in a magazine). It’s a melodrama full of brilliantly-realized characters, dramatic plot turns and memorable set pieces. It’s got horror, action, romance, comedy, drama, the works. Great Expectations has been adapted for the screen many times in the UK and the US. We think it would appeal to the Pinoy movie audience as well.

The dining hall at Satis House, from the BBC series Great Expectations (2011).

Consider the story. You’ve got a young orphan boy living in a small town. The poor child is maltreated by his much older sister. One day he is threatened by an escaped convict. Later, he is hired by an eccentric old woman to visit her in her decaying mansion and play with her beautiful niece, who insults him constantly. Of course he falls in love and yearns to become worthy of her. In his teens he is adopted by an unknown benefactor who sends him to the city, where he becomes a young gentleman of means. There he meets the beautiful girl from the decaying mansion. He woos her, but she has been trained to break men’s hearts. And then he discovers who his real benefactor is…

The setting could be Lucban, Quezon in 2012. Martin Escudero could be Pip. Celia Rodriguez could play Miss Havisham in her sleep.

We would watch that movie.

Your assignment for the Weekly LitWit Challenge 8.2 is to pitch us a foreign novel to adapt for a Filipino movie. Describe the plot (See example above.) Include the time frame, setting, and proposed cast. Post your entries in Comments by noon on Sunday, 15 January 2012.

The winner will receive a signed* copy of The Known World by Edward P. Jones.

* We have two signed copies of the book. You have the option to erase “To Jessica”. It will not diminish the value of a signed copy of a great book.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, an extremely good-looking young man realizes that he will grow old and his beauty will fade. He wishes that his portrait would grow old in his place. Dorian Gray’s wish is granted: for 18 years his appearance does not change. Self-indulgence and debauchery seem to have no effect on his looks. The portrait, however, grows more and more repulsive.

This week’s LitWit Challenge is to create a character so vain that he or she will do anything—and we mean Anything—in order to stay young and beautiful.

Write us the story of this character in 1,000 words or less, and post it in Comments on or before 11.59pm on Saturday, 7 January 2012.

The winner gets the Penguin Couture Classics edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (photo above), cover designed by Ruben Toledo.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

The nominees are:

larghetto for the rewrite of the Smiley trilogy by John LeCarre
Ligayaparaiso for retelling Sa Mga Kuko Ng Liwanag by Edgardo Reyes
mothproof for the villain’s version of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Read their entries here.

The envelope, please. Rip, rip. The winner is Ligayaparaiso!

Congratulations, Ligayaparaiso! You may claim your very heavy Mythology book any day starting Monday, 2 January 2011 2012 at the Customer Service Counter of National Bookstore in Power Plant Mall, Rockwell, Makati.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.