Broadway has got a case of the Hollywoods. Remakes and sequels abound while critics yawn loudly. The latest casualty, dead on arrival, was Young Frankenstein, the musical version of Mel Brooks’s hit film, fast-tracked to the Great White Way after the record-smashing success of The Producers. Now the same is being done with John Waters’s back catalogue following Hairspray, a musical so successful it made the transition back to the big screen.

Waters’s Cry-Baby is heading to Broadway in March. A parody of musicals such as Grease and 1950s juvenile delinquent movies, it was Johnny Depp’s first major film role, playing the title role as the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. The adaptation has just opened in Los Angeles to impressive reviews; the Baltimore Sun calls it “tantalizingly, teasingly, heartbreakingly close to success”, taking issue with the central characters, a problem the producers have five months to fix before the show moves east. The script, written by Daily Show writer David Javerbaum, is bursting with the satire and irony the Hairspray musical eschewed in favour of unabounding joy.

Cry-Baby is one of a host of films heading to the stage. While previously cult classics made perfect stage fodder, even mainstream comedies are trying their luck, particularly in an effort to appeal to younger audiences. One of this year’s surprise hits has been the musical version of Legally Blonde, which succeeded where The Wedding Singer failed.

Next year, it’s the turn of slightly older films. First up, Father of the Bride. While best remembered as a Steve Martin vehicle, it began life as a screwball comedy starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor before spawning a play and a TV series. Despite its many life-forms, book-writers Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman are aware of the perils of adapting films for the stage. After winning a Tony for last year’s Jersey Boys (a musical based on the 60s group the Four Seasons), Elice announced his intentions for Father of the Bride saying: “Having weathered the advance antagonism of the press for writing a jukebox musical, we have now looked for the second most heinous thing to do – adapt a film.”

While these films all had some merit, Broadway is never afraid to polish a few turds. Xanadu, the 1980 Olivia Newton-John film described by Variety as “stupendously bad” has been successfully reborn on stage. Perhaps when a film is artistically vacant, the room for creativity is magnified. How the Broadway magic will work on much-loved movies could be a trickier task.

Arguably no film is held in higher regard in the American consciousness than Rocky, the underdog who could, and did for five sequels. While the theme tune is instantly recognisable, Rocky Balboa was never known for belting out the hits. With more musical material to work from is Shrek, a much-anticipated production and pet project of Sam Mendes. It’s DreamWorks’ opportunity to show that anything Disney can do, they can outdo, which might not be much of problem if the mutterings about the soon to open Little Mermaid musical are to be believed.

Keeping up with the next best thing can be an exhausting business. Writers, readers, broadcasters and journalists are ready to crown the new great talents in an effort to look authoritative and influential, fuelled by more than a smidge of desperation. After all, no one wants to be the one who let the latest and greatest slip by without their noticing. What’s left after the hype and frenzy has dissipated is another matter.

Currently being salivated over is Dan Vyleta, a young academic with the twin research disciplines of crime and Eastern Europe. You can probably guess something of the novel already. Set in Berlin, a year after the end of the 2^nd World War the book is part noir, part conspiracy thriller. Pavel is an American soldier, a long way from home in one of the century’s bitterest winters. Looking for black market medicine he meets Andrews, a German orphan; their friendship is interrupted by the dead body of a Russian spy and from here it’s Oliver Twist meets The Third with prostitutes, spies, mistresses and a gang of thieving children. Regardless of the hype, it makes for an intriguing set up and those who like their literary fiction with a pulsating heartbeat might want to take a look.

Continuing with the post-war crime noir theme, Michael Chabon returns with The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. It’s as quirky a title as ever and could be the book that brings him the levels of adulation over here that he gets from American readers. The set up may take some explaining so be patient; it’s an alternate history detective novel which imagines that Alaska became the home for displaced Jews after the 2^nd World War (“the frozen chosen” as they become known). Dense, complex and bursting with Yiddisah, if it sounds curious, it is, so much so that the newly-redeemed Coen Brothers have it ear-marked as their next film.

For a literary experiment that’s easier to digest, Not Quite What I Was Planning comes highly recommended. Based on a comment Hemingway made that the best story he ever wrote was six words long (“For sale, baby’s shoes, never worn”), online storytelling magazine Smith has asked readers for their autobiography in six words. The results are fascinating; funnier and more disturbing than anything that fits in a text message has any right to be. Some of the contributions are from famous writers (Joyce Carol Oates, “Revenge is living well, without you”; Joan Rivers, “Liars – hysterectomy didn’t improve sex life) but most are from amateurs (“Found true love, married someone else”; “Caring for parents. Life is circular”). Thrillingly addictive, it could be the most highbrow toilet read there is.

And finally, something to rediscover. Persephone Books are one of Britain’s most interesting publishers, specialising in reprinting neglected books of the 20^th century, be they novels, journals or even cookery books. As recognisable as an old Penguin paperback, each book has a simple grey jacket and unique fabric end papers but what lies inside is just as intriguing, especially for those bored of what’s currently in their bookshops. Recent authors republished have been Katherine Mansfield and Dorothy Whipple; next up to be resuscitated is Winifred Watson’s Miss Pettigrew Lives For The Day, a sort of Cinderella for grown up and a fabulous recreation of London in the 30s. Perhaps, if Persephone are right, the next big thing doesn’t have to be new at all.

It’s probably not all Graydon Carter’s fault, but he’s a fun one to blame. After discovering that he was a secret environmentalist, Carter deftly combined the world’s favourite eco-hero and an indecently cute baby polar bear in an Annie Liebowitz shot cover for Vanity Fair’s latest wheeze, the annual Green Issue. And so, with a little help from Leonardo DiCaprio, Knut went stratospheric. And so, with a new found love for polar bears the, to quote George W Bush, “global warming folks” had their image. Since then polar bears have been perching perilously on ever decreasing chunks of ice – a sign of a world heating up and hearts melting. And where the magazine shoots and news footage went, book covers followed.

Recently published is Sir David King’s guide to climate change, The Hot Topic. For the uninitiated David King is like Al Gore without the awards (but with a knighthood). In his capacity as science advisor to the British government he convinced Tony Blair of the perils of a warming planet and managed to wind up the neocons by claiming climate change was “the most severe problem we are facing today – more serious even than the threat of terrorism”. As many books on the state of the planet are, The Hot Topic can be heavy going, which is where the polar bears come in. Not just one but three of the beauties adorn both the British and American covers. Perhaps it’s misplaced national pride but for sheer cuteness, the British cover wins – it’s got momma bear and two baby bears (and not a green-conscious Hollywood star in sight). Also, lawyers may need to be called given the similarities between the American cover and this rival book.

Meanwhile the bear turns up in the bizarrely titled Fighting for Love in the Century of Extinction. It sounds like a dating guide for the end times (“Stock up on canned goods! How to make your nuclear bunker romantic” etc). They’ve missed a trick with the cover as well – that’s one old bear. Everyone fell out of love with Knut after his six month birthday. As with fashion, it’s all about youth and no amount of airbrushing can save this cover star.

The polar bear also appears on the companion book for Live Earth, this time in cartoon form. I’m assuming the cover is showing a polar bear having to use a flotation device because all the ice has melted but to me the bear looks pretty languid; on vacation, perhaps? Or, as it paws towards that floating bottle, maybe that’s the look of a bear with a drink dependency. It’s a tricky business this design lark.

Those less aware of Knutmania have opted for the penguin, briefly Hollywood’s favourite Arctic animal with the successes of Happy Feet and March of the Penguins. With the exception of Time Magazine’s guide to the warming climate, these tend to kid-orientated, like Dr Richard Cheel’s Global Warming Alert! and Anne Rockwell’s Why Are The Ice Caps Melting?, both featuring penguins in peril. I haven’t read the latter, but I hope the questioned is answering with “Because your selfish parents insist on driving an SUV”. There are happier images, you just need to believe global warming was invented by pinko liberals who hate America (step forward, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming, complete with a dancing penguin wearing a lei. You see, those penguins don’t need no tundra, they’d be much happier when things warm up a bit). 

Elsewhere the covers go for post-apocalyptic imagery so bleak and unremitting it makes The Road look like a feel-good beach read. Wild weather, rising tides, arid landscapes, pollution and turbulent skies all loom large. The sense of doom tends to render them all a bit similar; there’s a clear look to an “environment book”, from the imagery to the colour scheme (usually icy blues and whites, sometimes with a dash of screaming red). For something more striking, try the hardback cover of Mark Lynas’ Six Degrees. It’s since been replaced by an almost submerged Big Ben amidst turbulent waves and lightning. Not subtle, I grant you, but effective and at least it isn’t quite as literal as this one. More crashing seas with Fred Pearce’s With Speed and Violence, but then with a title and theme like that, perhaps a polar bear cub doesn’t quite fit.

When it comes to books, there’s one phrase guaranteed to depress. (Well, maybe there are two.) Whether said as an apology, boast or sidestep, “I’ve no time to read” crops up whenever books are mentioned. (And it only ever applies to books – when have you ever heard anyone say they don’t have time for TV or music?)

The suggestion seems to be that reading is a chore, something to be planned for rather than enjoyed in a free moment. But surely the day is full of potential moments to open a book: waiting for a bus, over lunch, in bed… and now, in the workplace. Dailylit.com puts paid to the excuse about not finding time for good books; now the books come to you, as daily morsels in your inbox. Over 800 books have been divided into bite-size pieces to be emailed to you every day. The books are complete editions and each instalment takes just a few minutes to read – as much time as it takes to update your Facebook profile.

The American site evolved out of the founders’ realisation that they were spending hours each day on the internet but struggled to find time to read. Further inspiration came when the New York Times serialised classic novels and they found they enjoyed incorporating reading into their daily routine.

Most of the books DailyLit offers are classics; they are out of copyright and gloriously free. Everything from Austen to Zola is there, along with more unusual fare that wouldn’t be published by Penguin Classics, like JM Barrie’s My Lady Nicotine and lectures by Frank Lloyd Wright. There are some contemporary works, but they tend to be of the Mills and Boon type – perhaps for people too ashamed to be seen holding the garish covers on public transport.

The number of instalments varies. The Magnificent Ambersons comes in 126 parts (and would take 25 weeks to get through, if you received it every weekday) while it would take you two years to devour War and Peace at the same rate. Your reading doesn’t have to be so regimented, though. Your subscription can be personalised, and if you’re desperate to keep going, you can get the next instalment sent to you straight away.

Despite this flexibility, there’s a certain sterility in reading in ready-sized portions. Perhaps it’s a little too reminiscent of homework. Then there’s the problem of reading a screen, a sensation which, in my opinion, doesn’t really lend itself to fiction. Does anyone else find this? It’s not just that I miss the romance of curling up with a good book. It’s a matter of distraction, as an email pops up in mid-sentence, or the prose is suddenly overtaken by a corporate screensaver.

What do you think of Dailylit.com’s idea? A novel opportunity? Or does it further underline the fact that literature and the internet will never enjoy the cosy relationship enjoyed by music and TV? Do you like the idea of Eliot in your inbox, squeezed between jokes about Chuck Norris and invitations to share your bank details with Nigerian aristocracy?

After a Christmas of Oliver Twist and The Old Curiosity Shop, the BBC has lined up Little Dorrit as its latest adaptation. Expect the “Bleak House treatment”: a smattering of stars, soap-like scheduling and enough swooshing camerawork to leave viewers of a delicate disposition suffering from whiplash. All this and an Andrew Lloyd Webber-helmed search for kids to star in a new production of the musical Oliver! to tide you over until next Christmas’s cinematic outing of A Christmas Carol. Is anyone else getting Dickens fatigue?

Elsewhere, Jane Austen still reigns. After her back catalogue was exhausted by last year’s ITV season, a new spin is required. ITV offers us Lost in Austen about a modern reader who (feminists, read on with caution) “longs for a man who can spark the fires that lie within”. And lo, she is transported into the pages of Pride and Prejudice. The BBC, meanwhile, has created a drama about Austen’s own life (especially her romances), Miss Austen Regrets, a conceit recently explored in the BBC-backed Becoming Jane.

Indeed, it’s cinema that seems to be stealing all the good books. Despite their classic status as TV series, both Middlemarch and Brideshead Revisited are going to Hollywood, much like Joe “Atonement” Wright’s Pride and Prejudice (though the BBC got their own back here by unnecessarily re-making Sense and Sensibility).

Even what is original seems curiously familiar. Cranford was trumpeted as something new, but it’s actually the third Elizabeth Gaskell novel the BBC have brought to life in recent years. The most unique thing about it is that adaptor supremo Andrew Davies was nowhere to be seen (perhaps too busy with Fanny Hill and A Room With A View). While current Sunday night success Lark Rise to Candleford is less well-known, its genteel humour, strong female cast and surplus of bonnets surely induces feelings of déjà vu.

If television’s collected works of Austen is well thumbed, there are reasons. Drama is expensive, especially period pieces, so risks are to be avoided. With their wealth of characters and episodic structures, Austen and Dickens lend themselves to multi-part programmes, and they’re also hugely exportable, especially to America, where they are lapped up by Anglophiles when shown on PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre.

However this greatest hits and cover versions approach to adapting English literature leaves other writers and books languishing. Isn’t there a crime writer worth thinking about other than Agatha Christie (there’s been around 30 Marple or Poirot adaptations since 2000)? And what of the other great Victorian writers – Wilkie Collins or Samuel Butler, perhaps? Or 20th-century novelists like Jean Rhys or Angela Carter? Even international authors or, whisper it, a book from this century?

Still, the BBC may be a step ahead. Announcing their new production of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the publicity material says Thomas Hardy is arguably “the most neglected of our great literary authors”. Quite right too; it’s been three years since his work was last shown on television.

And finally, the dreaded VD. Whether celebrating or consoling, Penguins Great Loves are a good bet for February 14th. No “I wuv woo” banalities here, the 20-strong series celebrates the anguish, pain and passion of love with authors as diverse as Hardy, Kierkegaarde and Chekhov and the same price as a couple of wilting roses reeking of the petrol station they were bought from.

Cinema and food has a complex relationship. There’s the gastronomic pleasures of Chocolat and the vitalisation of wine in Sideways, but personally when I think of film and food I remember the less pleasant scenes. The cooked lover in The Cook, The Thief…, the live squid eaten in Korean shocker Oldboy, the boy forced to eat an entire chocolate cake in Matilda …

Perhaps because cinema doesn’t allow the taste and smell of food to be conveyed (yet), directors go for spectacle, often achieved through sheer volume. Consider the wafer thin mint which proves to be a mouthful too far in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, or the man forced to eat himself to death in Se7en, and of course Supersize Me; some viewers found it stomach-churning, others found it made them crave a Big Mac.

Then there’s food being used in imaginative ways, from the baked goods in American Pie to the custard made by Ewan McGregor’s character in Young Adam, and the less said about Marlon Brando’s use of butter in Last Tango in Paris the better. It’s a far cry from Nastassja Kinski being fed strawberries in Roman Polanski’s Tess.

Then there’s food and horror.

Hannibal Lecter in his various incarnations is an obvious example; personally I never felt the same about Red Dragon, my local Chinese takeaway, after the Silence of the Lambs sequel came out. Cannibalism can be something of an unexpected theme in cinema as anyone who watched Delicatessen (which was, after all, made by the directors of Amelie) hoping for more heart-warming foodie moments will tearfully testify.

Perhaps what I find most terrifying of all is the role of food in science fiction, where the pleasure and taste of food is considered of much less importance than its nutrional benefits. Consider The Matrix where Keanu Reeves’ character Neo is fed a bowl of the greyest slop which contains “a single celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins and minerals”, described as everything his body needs. Surely it’s no surprise that when Cypher betrayed his friends, he did it for a steak.

 Love is blind. Just ask the Nazi Low Rider and his Jewish boyfriend. They don’t share a jail cell yet, but are hoping to. If you’re having trouble following this, perhaps these three words will make things a little clearer: Louis Theroux documentary.

This week he was back with another slice of the American underbelly, with an inside look at the notorious San Quentin prison. Usually “inside look” is something of an overstatement but in this documentary the level of access Theroux enjoyed was incredible.

Standing alone in the prison yard, Theroux was free to interrogate people considered so dangerous they needed to be locked up 23 hours a day. One interviewee was serving a 500 year prison sentence (plus an additional 11 life sentences). Whether the prisoners enjoyed the attention, wanted to tell their own stories or were disarmed by Louis’s naivety, whatever they were asked, they answered.

Fascinating insights emerged about the savagery of prison life, and the predominance of racism but most memorable were the unexpected moments of tenderness. Meaningful relationships had formed between prisoners and genuine friendships between prisoners and their guards. And, for once, Louis was happy to take a back seat.

Making any form of prediction about American politics at the moment is probably best avoided. Still, it looks like the youth vote could be a decisive factor; as many unders 30s turned up to the Iowa caucus as senior citizens, and Hillary and the gang are taking notice. But how do candidates engage with voters half their age?

The answer, as ever, comes from Glamour magazine. Alongside blog posts like “Why, Britney, Why?” and advice on matching your nail colour to your BlackBerry, they’ve launched an election blog, Glamocracy. Primarily written by five young women from a variety of backgrounds and political allegiances, they’ve also invited all the presidential hopefuls to contribute. Hillary was said to be so keen, she contacted them before they got in touch with her.

Other guest bloggers who’ve accepted the invitation are Obama and McCain, all keen to show the personality behind the politics. The posts are all remarkably similar, paying tribute to the women in their life and reflecting on their role as a parent, child or spouse.

Less successful is Mitt Romney who appears to cut and pasted an old speech on healthcare reform. Perhaps it’s just as well; how his particular brand of conservatism sits alongside articles on the joys of not marrying is not immediately clear. Indeed, with a measly 12 comments to his post, Mitt hasn’t quite struck the same chord as Glamour.com’s other token male, Mike Cherico, the “edgy English teacher” looking for love in all the wrong places. Should Team Romney want hints on connecting with the under 30 female audience, perhaps the Governor needs to open up. Cherico is honest to a fault describing his “”unhealthy weakness for six-foot-tall, babealicious women.”