Pattinson's Pachyderms

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I mentioned on Monday that I was in the middle of reading Sara Gruen's book Water For Elephants; it was a breezy Summer-appropriate read and I finished it last night, flying through it much more quickly than I normally do a book. A lot of that had to do with what I'm reading next - and I'll have what I consider a fun announcement about that next week - but really, it's a pretty simple read. No big scary themes to clog up your brain and all the plots are laid out in perfectly digestible morsels that go down easy. Love, valour, orangutans.

The most enjoyable parts were the behind-the-scenes circus stuff and that'll translate well to film, or should. Francis Lawrence, the director of Constantine and I Am Legend, knows his way around spectacle. Not sure about Reese Witherspoon as the horse-rider Marlena, but then, unless she's playing someone exactly like Tracy Flick I'm never completely sure about Reese. On the other hand, Christoph Waltz as her paranoid-schizophrenic husband August should be a treat. He's smaller than I imagined August, but what he lacks in stature he makes up in spunky pomposity, that's for sure.


As for Robert Pattinson... sure, why not? The reason I'm doing this post though is to commend the casting people for their terrific job in casting Hal Holbrook as the old version of his character, Jacob.


That's a bingo, y'all. I wasn't sure if they'd even leave the Old Jacob parts of the book in the screenplay - and I'm not sold as of yet that they even need to - but since they seem to be doing just that, Hal's perfect.


Oh and one more thing - there's a dwarf character in the book, Kinko, and in the film he's played by Mark Povinelli, who you can see there above with Pattinson on the set of the currently filming movie. I was just looking through Povinelli's IMDb page and realized that, well... I got a good long look at his ass last night. I finally watched "A Very Sunny Christmas", the Christmas episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Povinelli plays the half-naked elf that's having sex with Charlie's mother in that episode. (Sidenote: "DID YOU FUCK MY MOM, SANTA???) So... it's a small world after all, is what I'm saying.

Anyway anybody read the book? Thoughts on that cast?
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