We’ve finally got the first trailer for the adaptation of Midnight’s Children, long considered unfilmable, and at a first glimpse, it looks like the project will put paid to that idea.

One thing I can’t tell from this trailer is whether this adaptation is preserving the magical elements of Midnight’s Children, or jettisoning the idea that the children born in the first hour of India’s independence came into the world with superpowers. I’d regret the downgrading of Rushdie’s characters, some of the most interesting superheroes of color ever written, into average men and women, though I can see that being the easiest way to make the book manageable. Special effects are expensive and can be easy to do extremely badly.

But while I’ll reserve judgement on that element of Midnight’s Children, I’m excited to see the movie as a whole. It’s such a relief to see another country’s history treated as if it’s worthy of epic treatment, rather than as a backdrop for Western character’s adventures, as India was in The Avengers. A period like the Indian Emergency, in which Prime Minister Indira Gandhi postponed elections, preemptively arrested dissidents, and issued decrees that let her bypass the democratic process, is important to see on screen not just because it’ll introduce new audiences to critically important parts of India’s past, but because it introduces new narrative arcs and character types into the storytelling ecosystem. And as I wrote back when news of the project broke last year, Midnight’s Children should push American superhero stories to step up their game: it has the guts to be an alternate history of India, rather than a fantasy that skates lightly over the issues it alludes to but isn’t quite willing to engage with.

I will admit to a serious soft spot for Baz Luhrmann’s pop-music drenched spectacles—I wrote last year that I think there’s something marvelous about the fact that we got Moulin Rouge and the iPod in the same year, the movie anticipating how much we’d come to love accentuating and heightening our lives by adding carefully curated soundtracks to them. I also quite liked OutKast’s underrated Idlewild, a visually gorgeous marriage of jazz age and hip-hop, and I’m happy to revisit that union, even in a movie that puts black music at the service of white characters in the same way white audiences once consumed jazz.

That said, I’ve always been left, perhaps heretically, a trifle cold by The Great Gatsby, and I’m curious as to how it’ll play when the movie is released in December.

The movie’s class politics are probably best described as universally disgusted. Gatsby makes the error of assuming that wealth can purchase him respect and love, falling into gauche error as a result, while the old monied Buchanans are revealed to be repulsive, crude people. But it’s a lot easier to shudder away from money as a source of happiness in favor of a more refined sensibility in a boom era than it is in a recession. This is neither a revenge fantasy nor a pure escape. But certainly, Leonardo DiCaprio’s exactly the right person to play Gatsby, even leaving aside that he was Luhrmann’s muse before he was Martin Scorsese’s. He’s achieved a kind of profound remoteness. And these days, the idea that someone could lever themselves from one class to another by sheer force of will is a more remote dream than ever.

The strangest possible reminder that conservative John Aglialoro is continuing his quixotic quest to produce an Atlas Shrugged film trilogy? Learning that Grover Norquist has just filmed a cameo as a street wino in Atlas Shrugged: Part 2 – Either-Or, a sequel that manages to have an even more unwieldy name than its 2011 predecessor, Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 (if only the word “squeakquel” wasn’t already taken).

At least the Norquist cameo promises a few seconds of oddball entertainment. If only the same could be said for the film’s predecessor. Though I see bad movies all the time, I’ve had a particular fascination with Atlas Shrugged: Part I since its release in April of last year. There’s so much to analyze, from its original, failed attempt to stoke the Tea Party fires with a tax-day release date to fact that its original DVD case was pulled from stores after angering fans by making a very un-Randian reference to “self-sacrifice.” (What I wouldn’t give for the Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 equivalent of Hearts of Darkness, in which a documentarian chronicled every behind-the-scenes misstep during the Atlas Shrugged’s bizarre production and promotional blitz).

But the sequel fascinates me even more, because its very existence represents everything the filmmakers of Atlas Shrugged: Part I were railing against: the failure of individuals to bow to the will of the free market, which, it must be noted, resoundingly rejected the first film. There is a “teaser trailer” for Atlas Shrugged: Part 2 – Either-Or. But it’s one of the dumbest teasers I’ve ever seen:

Newscasters. A clip of Rand from 1959, railing about “welfare states” and “destruction all around you.” It doesn’t even feature the name of the movie; just the Roman numeral columns of the number II, as if the first film was such a massive hit that we’ll all recognize its sequel on sight.

But more than anything, the Atlas Shrugged: Part 2 – Either-Or trailer confirms something I’ve suspected for a long time: conservative filmmakers have no idea how to market a movie. With both politics and pretensions aside, let’s acknowledge the real reason most people go to movies: to be entertained. And by comparison, let’s review the most successful liberal movie of all-time: Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which won the Palme D’Or and grossed $120 million on a $6 million budget. I have many problems with Michael Moore’s gotcha-documentarian tactics, but there’s no denying his skill as a filmmaker. If you haven’t seen it since 2003, watch Fahrenheit 9/11’s theatrical trailer again:

The jaunty music, the stunt journalism, the wacky George Bush clips, the seductive promise of “the year’s most controversial film.” It doesn’t bill itself as a liberal screed; it bills itself as comedy. And it worked.

I was actually one of the few Americans who paid to see Atlas Shrugged: Part I in theaters, owing to both a misplaced sense of film-critic duty and my own perverse curiosity. I expected to disagree with the film’s objectivist politics (and was not disappointed). But I didn’t expect it to be so toothless, so poorly produced, and so ineffective at preaching to its own choir. Conservative or liberal, movies can be political and still succeed – but they also have to remember be movies.

io9′s Charlie Jane Anders has a typically intriguing interview with Jon Spaihts, the screenwriter who did the first drafts of Prometheus, and part of the discussion came down to the difference between rendering worlds and telling stories in video games and movies:

Storytelling in games has matured tremendously in the past decade. Some really great work has been done. But the design requirements are totally different, almost the opposite of filmic storytelling. The central character of a game is most often a cipher – an avatar into which the player projects himself or herself. The story has to have a looseness to accommodate the player’s choices. This choose-your-own adventure quality is a challenge for storytellers and, I fear, militates against art.

A filmmaker is trying to make you look at something a certain way – almost to force an experience on you. Think of the legendary directors, whose perspective is the soul of their art. It’s the opposite of a sandbox world. It’s a mind-meld with a particular visionary.

I’m actually curious if this, as well as production costs, are part of why it’s been so hard to adapt major video games into major motion pictures. There’s always uproar in fan communities about how true an adaptation is or isn’t to source material, and if the main character’s mostly a vehicle for a player, to project themselves into the game, it will be awfully hard to reconcile all of those private universes into a coherent whole that’s mostly satisfying to a majority of people. I know we all agree what Chell looks like, but I don’t know if anyone shares my idea of who Chell is.

The idea of making a movie out of Bob Dylan’s 1975 album Blood on the Tracks is ludicrous, and not just because the brilliant, weird movie I’m Not There already burned through all the best, most inventive ideas for who could possibly play Bob Dylan. If you do Blood on the Tracks as a straight narrative of a relationship breaking down, reducing the music to background atmospherics, you lose all the weird brilliance of the world Dylan’s created. And if you try to od it as a series of short vignettes, it’s hard to think how the narrative might work. But as long as this thing’s in the works anyway, here are five ideas for who should play some of the more entertaining characters on Dylan’s album:

-The Ex-Husband from “Tangled Up in Blue”: If “she was married when we first met / soon to be divorced,” it’s worth remembering that someone else got their heart broken before Dylan’s operatic love story even got kickstarted. John Hawkes is awfully good at portraying hope that expects to be disappointed, whether as Sol Star on Deadwood or paralyzed journalist Mark O’Brien in The Surrogate, about a paralyzed man who decides to lose his virginity, which will be major Oscar-bait when it comes out later this year. If anyone deserves to be in proximity to Bob Dylan, it’s him.

-The Parrot from “Simple Twist of Fate”: If the parrot from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is available, he’s definitely put in enough time in the background on a goofy project. Now’s his time to prove that he’s an artist.

-Mrs. Gray from “Idiot Wind”: Now that the American Pie franchise has come to a conclusion, Jennifer Coolidge is free from the obligations of obligations of playing Stifler’s mom. But she could put that experience to good use playing a sexy widow who runs off to Italy with someone inappropriate and an enormous amount of money. Maybe Eugene Levy can play Mr. Gray, who gets shot. Those eyebrows are great at conveying surprise.

-Lily, from “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”: Emma Stone got famous as a redhead, only to reveal that her natural hair color was actually blonde. So who better to play a gorgeous frontier girl who switches hair color as part of a life transformation. She’d be awesome in an adaptation of the most epic song on “Blood on the Tracks.” And now that David Milch is available, maybe he could dust himself off and go back to the frontier well. I would totally watch this as a stand-alone movie.

-The message-deliverer from “If You See Her, Say Hello”: It has to be pretty stressful being the go-between for Bob Dylan and a woman he’s broken up with. But Adam Pally deserves a European vacation after all the awesome work he’s put in on Happy Endings this year. And any awkward news is more palatable when delivered by a man who’s in full-on bear mode.

I was looking through Business Insider’s list of female-lead movie franchises, and I noticed some interesting—and not particularly encouraging—numbers.

First, a lot of these franchises tend to trend downward, with subsequent entries making less money than the initial movies. These aren’t necessarily Bond-like franchises, in other words, with story and action potential that can last years. They’re Hollywood wringing diminishing returns out of once-promising ideas. Bridget Jones Diary made $281,929,795 at the box office, but Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason made slightly less, pulling in $262,520,724. Underworld started at $298,376,455; Underworld: Evolution brought in $111,340,801; a Kate Beckinsale-less Underworld: Rise of the Lycans made $91,327,197; and it remains to be seen how the fourth movie, currently in theaters, ends up performing. Jamie Lee Curtis only really starred in the first two Halloween movies: the initial installment made $60 million worldwide while the sequel brought in $25 million. The Scream movies stayed relatively flat, making $173,046,663, $172,363,301, and $161,834,276 for the movies with the original cast. And the Scary Movie films had a more uneven trajectory, making $278,019,771, $141,220,678, $220,673,217, and $178,262,620, respectively.

The Resident Evil movies are an exception to the trend, as is the Alien franchise. The former saw its box office go from $102.4 million, to $129.3 million, to $147.7 million, to $296.2 million. It’s no surprise that a fifth movie is in the works. The Alien franchise started out with $104,931,801 in its first go at the box office, rising to $131,060,248, $159,773,545 and $161,295,658 by Alien: Resurrection. Given the hype around Prometheus, I’d be curious to see if it’s the most successful of the series.

Now, it’s not that all big franchises starring men show consistent growth, but they do tend to have generally upward trajectories. Spider-Man 3, Iron Man 2, Mission Impossible IV, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon, to name the most recent entries in some of the biggest current male-centered franchises, have all ended up pulling higher box office than the movies in the franchises that preceded them.

But the real worrying point is how much lower the box office threshhold is for these women-anchored franchises than for ones starring men. The only movie franchise starring women that’s even in the box office leagues of these superhero movies is the Twilight franchise, which has the advantage of being based on an existing property (the same is true for superhero movies, though there are probably not as many hard-core Iron Man readers as there are Stephenie Meyer devotees). Maybe the lesson Hollywood should take is that we need some superheroine movies, or to start dipping into the well of books with large female readerships. Though not if they’re going to be sloppy ways of trying to force Katherine Heigel on us, yet again. Don’t think you snuck One For the Money by us.

This whole interview with Norton Juster, in which he talks about being in an interracial marriage and how that’s reflected in his fiction, his architectural practice, and his friendship with Jules Feiffer, is awesome and worth reading. In between this and Michael Chabon’s new introduction to The Phantom Tollbooth (which is excellent other than asserting that punning is somehow a male thing), I’m glad to see a surge in Juster-love. But this part of the AV Club interview stood out to me, when Juster says:

I wasn’t very pleased with what they did with the Tollbooth [film adaptation]. One of the problems, and this is very unusual, was that Les Goldman and Chuck Jones were treating it like the Holy Grail and wouldn’t change anything. When you transform a book into a film, there have to be changes. You can’t stick with dialogue the way it is written in the book. You have to really adapt it for the big screen. He was too respectful.

I tend to err on the side of believing that almost nothing is unadaptable. The folks who said Watchmen couldn’t be done were ignoring the fact that, if you cut out the Black Freighter stuff, it’s a very clear and useful storyboard for a very complicated story. But so much of what I love about The Phantom Tollbooth is that it’s self-consciously literary, making literal thought processes and word games. The things that in prose and in the spindly illustrations feel delicate and funny might seem ham-handedly literal on-screen: the idea of Milo flying out of his car and ending up on Conclusions has always felt funnier to me as a mental image than it would be if it was something that actually happened.