Books that Should Be Movies: The Land of Mango Sunsets, Atlas Shrugged, Island of the Blue Dolphins

Cynical New Yorker Finds Love In The Land of Mango Sunsets

The Land of Mango Sunsets by Dorothea Benton Frank is the tale of cynical, middle aged, New Yorker, Miriam Swanson. Clinging to her place in Manhattan society after her husband leaves her for a young woman, she's forced to accept her mistakes as a wife, mother, and daughter. She returns to her childhood home in the Low-country of North Carolina, in The Land of Mango Sunsets on Sullivan's Island, and repairs her relationship with her mother, reclaims her sense of self, heals her heart, and finds love again.

Sandra Bullock's talent for playing strong, southern women makes her the perfect actress to play Miriam. Academy Award winning screenwriter and director Callie Khouri (Thelma & Louise, Devine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) should direct the movie version of The Land of Mango Sunsets. Preview The Land of Mango Sunsets.

Fiction Becomes Philosophy of Life & Love in Atlas Shrugged

Atlas Shrugged is a powerful book that has helped form the life philosophy of many readers. Although Atlas Shrugged is fiction, and was published in 1957, author Ayn Rand's message and philosophy has resurfaced and inspires a new generation in a time of political turbulence. Atlas Shrugged follows strong-willed, intelligent, Dagny Taggart as she watches society stagnate when independent productive achievers become socially demonized and punished for their accomplishments. Dagny is forced to examine and adjust her philosophy on life and love.

www.atlasshrugged.com says, "Atlas Shrugged sweeps the reader into its own world of larger-than-life characters-including the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy and the great industrialist who doesn't know that he is working for his own destruction."

Atlas Shrugged is slotted to become a movie. Variety.com says, "Lionsgate has brought on Vadim Perelman to rewrite Atlas Shrugged and direct Angelina Jolie in the starring role. Reported at The Internet Movie Database, Atlas Shrugged is scheduled for release in 2011 and Vadim Perelman's current adaptation plans a single movie about two hours twenty minutes long."

Childhood Classic Comes to Life in New Adaptation of Island of the Blue Dolphins

A popular childhood read is Newbery Award-winning Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell. Published in 1960, Island of the Blue Dolphins is based on the story of a young native woman left behind on the Channel Islands in the early 1800s. Island of the Blue Dolphins traces her 18 years alone, building shelter, finding food, and fighting off wild dogs, eventually taming one. Island of the Blue Dolphins ends when Aleut hunters find the lone woman and take her to the mainland. The movie should be expanded beyond the book to include the tragic truth of her final days: she died of dysentery seven weeks after she was "rescued," and she was buried in the graveyard of the Santa Barbara Mission in California.

Universal Pictures released Island of the Blue Dolphins as a movie in 1964, starring Celia Kaye, with marginal success. Academy award-winning director Robert Zemeckis (Director of Cast Away starring Tom Hanks), could direct a new version of this old movie. Q'orianka Kilcher (Pocahontas in The New World, and Princess Kaiulani) would be good in the lead role.

Online Sources:

Variety.com
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117971319.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
The Internet Movie Database
http://www.imdb.com/
Dorothea Benton Frank
www.dotfrank.com
Dot Frank on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=682528584
Atlas Shrugged
www.atlasshrugged.com
Scott O'Dell.com
http://www.scottodell.com/books/dolphins.html