One thing you hear a lot about the great HBO series The Wire is some variation on "it ruined all other cop shows for me." And it's true. The Wire was so smart about policework, so painfully realistic without sacrificing drama, that it made damn near everything else, with the obligatory gun-and-badge-scene clichés and pat little whodunnits, seem downright silly; ridiculous. Creators and writers David Simon and Ed Burns called the bluff of an entire genre. They stripped away the Hollywood varnish and made their peers look goofy, clueless, like so many deer staring at headlights.

Michael Lewis's The Blind Side isn't quite like that, but it's close. Certainly I will henceforth have trouble restraining gales of laughter at the naiveté of football movies about scrappy underdog quarterbacks who overcome the odds and lead their teams to victory. Or about the glory of college football. Or about players who make it to the NFL through sheer pluck and determination.

Even more so than The Wire to lame cop dramas, The Blind Side is an explicit rebuke to such stories. Straight up, Lewis (who also wrote Moneyball) says: it doesn't work that way. First of all, the quarterback isn't even that important. A coach with a handle on strategy and talent elsewhere on the roster, can, within reason, make damn near anyone look good throwing the ball. Second: who makes it to the NFL is determined, 99% of the time, not by persistence and heart, but by genetics. Size. Much more than you might think, shape. Innate athleticism that cannot be taught or learned. Depressingly, the selection process for great football prospects often resembles a state fair where people admire the girth and gait of cattle and "hmm" and point thoughtfully.

Where the Wild Things Are is ten sentences long, but they're some sentences. They – along with Maurice Sendak's magical illustrations, of course – are at once angry, heartwarming, troubling and reassuring. They get at something profound that kids feel, and that I still do from time to time, frankly: a desire to rage, to leave the world behind, backstopped by an even deeper need for home – a warm dinner – a hug.

These feelings aren't trivial, especially in kids. The authors who understood them best were Sendak and Roald Dahl. Dahl wrote for an older audience; he abhorred sentimentality, his wounds and his anger were usually laid pretty bare, and his stories weren't always appropriate for the single-digit-ers. But Sendak's Wild Things is a book that grows up with you. It's cathartic and comforting at any age. Those are, as I say, ten pretty remarkable sentences.

Then there are the pictures, which are strange enough to be subtly disquieting, but which have a warmth and softness that make it pretty clear everything's going to be okay. And I'm not talking just about the wild things themselves, which (deservingly) tend to get all the attention, but the fact, for example, that Max's idea of mischief is terrorizing his family's terrier with a fork while wearing a wolf costume. The previous page shows him wielding a hammer twice the size of his head to construct a blanket fort, off one edge of which we see he's suspended a pathetic-looking teddy bear from a clothes-hanger. Why? Who knows. But if you're going to be sent to your room, it should probably be for something fun.

Never Let Me Go will be Mark Romanek's follow-up to One Hour Photo, the sinister Robin Williams film he directed back in 2002. Romanek, as you may know, is a legendary music video director who has worked with Nine Inch Nails, Michael Jackson, Audioslave and Madonna, among others. You may remember his heartbreaking video for Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt," which was all but hailed as the second coming. Though One Hour Photo was not Romanek's first feature film – that would be Static, the surreal, low-budget 1986 drama he co-wrote with Keith Gordon – but it was supposed to be the beginning of a distinguished film career.

From 2002 to 2008, Romanek became attached to a number of projects, none of which made it out of development hell. He was meant to direct an adaptation of the Philip Gourevitch non-fiction crime drama A Cold Case starring Tom Hanks, but that has thus far gone nowhere. He had decided to tackle James Frey's A Million Little Pieces but that, of course, was before it turned out that James Frey was a honking fraud. In 2008, it looked like Romanek would at last cross the finish line with The Wolf Man – and then he walked out on the eve of filming over creative differences. Journeyman director Joe Johnston will be delivering that finished product this November.

When I read I Love You, Beth Cooper -- and wrote about the book here a few months ago -- I knew that the on-the-way film adaptation would be thorny. Now that I've seen the film, I can say that it is not merely thorny; it is a textbook case of an adaptation gone wrong. Working from his own mostly delightful novel, Simpsons vet Larry Doyle is like a novice driver who, in trying to avoid potholes, veers to hit every one. And, in what he should consider a betrayal of epic proportions, Doyle gets absolutely no help from anyone involved with the film -- not from the cast, not from the editor, and certainly not from director Chris Columbus, who is utterly helpless when his material is not inherently strong.

I hasten to add that I Love You, Beth Cooper is not that bad -- I think it's a bit better than our Peter Martin lets on, and certainly better than our Eric D. Snider insists. But the movie -- still about a geeky, virginal high school senior who confesses his love for the class hottie in his graduation speech -- is sappy, muddled, and just mystifyingly unfunny. Consider that the novel is hip, razor-sharp, and hilarious, and you start to get a sense of what a rare specimen this adaptation is. So what happened?

This column is so often steeped in skepticism that it's a relief to declare unequivocally: I cannot freakin' wait for this movie. Just as I was starting to think that the zombie sub-genre was becoming played – the recent trend toward athletic, lightning-quick zombies hasn't really cured the zombie movie's fundamental repetitiveness – World War Z threatens to revitalize (your gratitude for not writing "resurrect" or "reanimate") the genre by hauling it, straight-faced and dead serious, into the real world.

The first thing Brooks does is set ground rules. Once infected and undead, zombies are essentially monomaniacal brains unmoored from brains' normal contingencies – e.g. a pumping heart, a digestive system, oxygen. Until the brain itself is destroyed, it will stupidly, relentlessly pursue human flesh, using whatever parts of the original body remain at its disposal. Zombies move slowly, with arms – if available – raised toward their target. If a zombie finds prey, it will moan; if a nearby zombie hears a moan, it will move toward the source and let out a moan itself. You see how this could escalate.

When he went on the Late Late Show to promote The Strain, Guillermo del Toro – who co-wrote his first novel with seasoned crime writer Chuck Hogan – told Craig Ferguson that his goal with the book was to reclaim vampire lore from the decidedly unmenacing lover-vampires popularized by Anne Rice and, God forbid, Stephenie Meyer. (Watch the Late Late Show excerpt below the jump – worth it just for Ferguson's uncannily accurate take on Twilight.) I do think he overstates his case a bit – the last decade has offered such a surfeit of vampire stories, that there would seem to be something for everyone (not least del Toro's own Blade II, easily the best of that franchise). Still, I'm grateful to have del Toro's twisted imagination provide an antidote to the glittering fairy-vampire nonsense everyone always insists on discussing these days.

The novel, which came out June 2nd, just popped up in the #9 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List. It's not every day that a filmmaker as worshipped as del Toro makes a popular literary foray, so I thought The Strain was worth talking about. It is not currently pegged for a film adaptation, but I suspect that won't remain the case for very long. Whatever its merits as a book, it would make a kickass horror flick.

Admittedly, I experienced Stephen King's N. under utterly ideal conditions, which might explain why I consider it such a marvelous short story – one of King's best. I was driving to northern California for a weekend of camping and whitewater rafting (the Cal Salmon river – just an hour or so south of Oregon). It got dark just as I left the highway and hit the winding, narrow country backroads; no headlights, no cars. I happened to be listening to King's recent Just After Sunset short story compilation, where N. – one of the longer pieces in the set – appears in the middle, taking up discs 8 and 9 in their entirety. The story started just as I hit a series of switchbacks going up a mountain. The twisty roads, the oppressive darkness, the (seemingly) complete emptiness, and Stephen King in his Lovecraftian unknowable-cosmic-terror mode... I'm probably lucky to be alive and not in a ravine somewhere.

Actually, King denies that Lovecraft was the inspiration for N. Instead, he cites Arthur Machen's classic horror story The Great God Pan, which you can (and should) read in its entirety right here. Either way, N. is terrifying – a story of unspeakable horrors lurking just beyond the thin veneer we know as reality. Better yet, it's not – like some of Lovecraft's tales were – all concept. King's got a couple of great hooks: first, the story is told through letters, journal entries and newspaper clippings, somehow amplifying the atmosphere of impending doom. Second, King provides a clever alternative explanation for obsessive-compulsive disorder. It seems that all that counting, touching, and insisting that things be arranged just so isn't mental illness, but an attempt to save the world: to keep the evil out.

Steve Lopez first stumbled onto Nathaniel Anthony Ayers near a tunnel in Los Angeles, not far from Skid Row. Lopez, a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times, was hard up for a column topic, heard an unusually talented street musician in an unlikely place, and struck up a conversation. Articulate, clearly unwell, and doing impressive things with a broken-down violin, Ayers half-intrigues and half-amuses Lopez, who comes back to see him. On his second visit, Lopez notices Ayers scrawling names in the asphalt. "Who are those people?" Lopez asks. "Oh, those are just my classmates from Juilliard," Ayers answers.

Wait, what? That last sends Lopez back to his office to do some Googling and make some phone calls. Indeed, it turns out that Mr. Ayers attended Juilliard as a bass violinist before paranoid schizophrenia drove him out and eventually onto the streets. If the word "Juilliard" means nothing to you, suffice it to say that musicians with the chops to get into the immensely prestigious New York City academy do not ordinarily wind up homeless. Here, Steve Lopez thought, was a column. Maybe a couple.

There are good writers, there are great writers, and then there's Neil Gaiman, who inspires slack-jawed awe. His omnibus Fragile Things contains my all-time favorite short story, "A Study in Emerald"; I don't want to give away too much, because I think you should read it for yourself, but suffice it to say that it begins as very clearly one thing, and slowly, organically turns into something else entirely. Gaiman's ability to tell a fully-formed, absorbing story while moving between genres with confidence and grace is nothing short of astonishing. His brand of fantasy may not be for everyone, but as a writer – in terms of versatility and control of the form – he is second to no one.

In the afterword to one of the more recent editions of Coraline, Gaiman calls the short novel his proudest achievement as an author. He's right to be proud. Some people are stunned to learn that Henry Selick's recent animated adaptation was made using stop-motion: frame-by-frame manipulation of physical objects and sets. I look at the book with a similar sort of amazement bordering on disbelief. It's an remarkably meticulous and effective work, such a stylistic and formal balancing act that it almost seems fragile.

Coraline begins by lulling you into complacency. We know it's a "children's book," and the opening pages are filled with the lovable naiveté, repetition, and short, declarative sentences we usually associate with writing for tykes. And so we settle in for a gentle children's fantasy story. The title heroine will have an adventure – scary, but not too scary – learn some lessons, and give her parents a big hug when it's all over.

Hey – remember when I correctly pointed out that Dan Brown's Angels & Demons was wretched, insulting nonsense, and everyone yelled at me? The consensus seemed to be that I didn't know from good populist entertainment; that I expected everything to be brainy, couldn't appreciate a good action-packed mystery, and basically should just shut up. (My favorite was when people informed me that I was wrong because Dan Brown is richer than I am.)

I stand by what I said about Angels & Demons, but I should have mentioned a counterexample to Dan Brown: an author who writes simple, unabashedly goofy page-turners that sell like hotcakes but are actually readable, with characters who aren't obviously morons, sentences that don't make grown men cry, and messages that are coherent, if not nuanced. One such author is John Grisham, whose books are preachy, ludicrous, and simplistic – but also absorbing and breathlessly entertaining. You scoff, but all the while you're furiously flipping pages.

Grisham's newest, The Associate, has already been tapped for a feature-film adaptation, starring Shia LaBeouf as a Yale Law School grad bound for a low-paying but noble public interest law career but who is blackmailed into taking a prestigious, soul-sucking law firm job by nefarious types who want access to some ultra-secret documents for corporate espionage purposes. The novel covers some of the same ground as Grisham's classic The Firm, except this time grounded in what Grisham perceives as the reality of life for young, bright law school graduates seduced by the high-paying but miserable jobs as associates in corporate law firms. It's hugely silly and hugely entertaining in the best Grisham tradition; with the right director and screenwriter, it could take a place of honor in the less-than-illustrious history of Grisham film adaptations.

So there are these two high school dudes, right, and though they're seniors, they're so aggressively geeky and socially inept that losing their virginity doesn't even seem like a real-world prospect. But before they leave for college, they have the opportunity to have one last craaaaazy night of adventure that could well culminate in getting laid – in addition to drunk, beaten up, and/or arrested.

Wait: have you heard this one before? You could be forgiven for thinking – or at least hoping – that Superbad was the last word on this subject. But like it or not, here comes I Love You Beth Cooper, adapted by Simpsons vet Larry Doyle from his own novel and directed by that stalwart of the bland and inoffensive, Chris Columbus.

The book reads, indeed, like Superbad by a Simpsons writer: hyperactive, incessantly self-referential, with occasional bursts of sincerity in an attempt to give the proceedings some emotional heft. It's often very funny, though usually due to an oddball choice of words by Doyle rather than anything situational. ("This is... odd," he she-grunted.") Where Superbad balanced out the raunch with a disarming sweetness, Beth Cooper goes for a sort of detached, intellectual cool, obviously sympathizing with its besotted protagonist (Doyle claims that "Denis Cooverman" is inspired by his own high school experience) but also taking not-inconsiderable joy in pounding him into the dirt. Mileage may vary; I can see how this approach would seem insufferable to some.

Jim Carrey's Yes Man struck me as an awful waste of a terrific premise.

Far from the retread of the Liar Liar gimmick that some people claim, Yes Man's central conceit really resonates, and gets at a simple but profound truth: saying "no" to opportunities is safer and easier, but saying "yes" is more rewarding and fun. Literally having the main character start saying "yes" to everything is not my preferred way of tackling this issue, but it could easily work as a goofy, absurdist approach. Jim Carrey's track record may be bruised, but the actor is still a national treasure. And Peyton Reed's filmography contains some films that managed to be thoughtful despite their staunchly populist aims.

What an unpleasant surprise, then, to see a film so terminally mired in the worst Hollywood comedy conventions. It's hard to be meaningful or even sincere when everything is hideously distorted to fit the confines of hoary old formulas, complete with scenes that don't fit, but which a movie like this simply must contain. Yes Man winds up shrill, manic and unpleasant (albeit sporadically funny) when it should have been breezy, earnest and simple.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Da Vinci Code.

I read about fifty pages of The Da Vinci Code before hurling it across the room. I sat through the stupid movie – the whole thing – and hated every miserable moment. It now faces some stiff competition from Twilight, but before this year I would have been hard-pressed to come up with a less interesting pop culture phenomenon. At least for a non-Christian like me, who has no reason to be stunned by the notion of Jesus Christ having procreated, The Da Vinci Code simply had nothing to offer.

I don't consider myself a masochist, but I don't mind being a guinea pig. So I thought doing Angels & Demons in this column would be fun, in a way.

It would have been great to be able to say that Angels & Demons was some sort of revelation (no pun intended); it certainly would have made this post easier to write. Alas, it ranks among the dumbest things I've ever read: an adventure book for fourth-graders, seemingly written by a sixth-grader. In an effort to make itself "accessible" to absolutely everyone, it makes its characters into nitwits – which is problematic since its characters are Harvard professors and world-class particle physicists. Dr. Robert Langdon, played by Tom Hanks in both films, has never heard of a particle accelerator – or maybe he has, and is just astounded to learn that it's an enormous underground structure. Antimatter is a new concept as well. At one point, the novel helpfully explains who Galileo was. You get the idea.

I read the last hundred pages of Marley & Me at the counter of a neighborhood diner. Waiters and busboys and cooks milled around in front of me; fellow customers chomped on burgers to my left and my right. It was with around forty pages to go that I had the mortifying realization that I was crying. Sitting there in full view of what seemed at that moment to be all of San Francisco, reading a bright red book with a Labrador retriever puppy on the cover, tears streamed from my eyes.

Now, I won't try to sell you on the idea that Marley & Me is a great book. I can't even, in good conscience, recommend it as a "good book," which is what makes my teary diner incident so embarrassing. It's a sappy, sometimes shameless, thoroughly unremarkable memoir, consisting mostly of strained attempts to extract life lessons from mischievous-dog anecdotes. But there's something in it that pushes a certain button in those of us who melt at the sight of a grinning, tail-wagging canine. You know who you are. You may have wept watching My Dog Skip.

In interviews, Michael Cera has been ambivalent about his newfound fame. He's even expressed gentle skepticism regarding the Arrested Development movie everyone's buzzing about. I'm sure he has legitimate personal reasons to be concerned about his celebrity – it can't be easy for someone who doesn't have a huge personality, and who isn't a natural attention hog. But we fans and viewers also have reasons to worry. Foremost among them is the concern that Cera's popularity could drive him to roles where his talents are wasted. Indeed, as this fall's Nick & Norah's Inifinite Playlist demonstrated, it's already begun to happen. For the first time in the comic's career, his presence hurt the project instead of helping it.

In my first go-round with Nick & Norah, after reading the book and before seeing the film, I was optimistic that the role of Nick was just the opportunity for Cera to expand his range – play a character who is a little more confident, a little less tentative and hesitant. Sadly, that's not what happened. Instead, some subtle differences aside, Cera transplanted his (very funny) stock character from Arrested Development, Superbad and Juno into a story where that character wasn't needed, or welcome. In the process, he turned what could have been a sweet, moving romance into a tepid, if still amusing, teen comedy.