You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness

I don't know that I love all of Jonathan Safran Foer, but I do love Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Once, several years ago, I gave it to a friend I thought could use a good read of it. He looked at the title and said, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Ah, the Ryann Ferguson story." Ha. Ha. 


I'll go on record and say, most "precocious realism" or even "hysterical realism" doesn't bother me. (Though I was not really a fan of Special Topics.) 


As far as movie adaptations go, I feel like this one is poised to be good. It's basically my dream cast for the thing. (You had me at Tom Hanks. Mayor of Hollywood. Love everything about him. For a long time, I sort of hoped I could marry Colin Hanks, just so Tom Hanks would be my father in law.) And I'm really happy Daldry is directing. He's got one of the best handles on tone of work about children I've ever seen. Just thinking about it is making me want to watch Billy Elliot right now.