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Before Matt Damon was The Talented Mr. Ripley, there was Alain Delon #book2movies

The Yellow Birds starring Alden Ehereneich, Tye Sheridan & Jennifer Aniston: Kevin Powers book goes to Sundance


I’ll be honest. I’m not an eager beaver when it comes to reading books where the horrors of war are played out. I’m reluctant to confront the violence, the ptsd that crippled the lives of our servicemen long before we had a name for it. I’m not always an ostrich with her head in the sand—I read and was deeply affected by Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun and Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 years ago and more recently Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. That being said I probably won’t read Kevin Powers The Yellow Birds. While most books about war are in fact anti-war books—to know it is to hate it—The Yellow Birds, set in Iraq, feels far too close for comfort.

The film earns a place on 2017s Movies based on Books* list  and will likely find its way onto my own must watch list. The movie stars Alden Ehrenreich, the up and comer recently cast as the young Han Solo, who you may have seen in a starring role in Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply. Some people say he's got a Leonardo DiCaprio vibe. Also starring is Tye Sheridan (Mud, Dark Places) who we'll see in Ready Player One based on the book by Ernest Cline in 2018. Jennifer Aniston stars as Sheridan's mother with Toni Collette as Ehrenreich's. Jack Huston, Jason Patric also star. Directed by Alexandre Moors the movie is set to make its debut at Sundance in January. Not sure when it rolls out wide.


About the book

A novel written by a veteran of the war in Iraq, The Yellow Birds is the harrowing story of two young soldiers trying to stay alive. 
"The war tried to kill us in the spring." So begins this powerful account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. Bound together since basic training when Bartle makes a promise to bring Murphy safely home, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. 
In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes actions he could never have imagined. 
With profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on mothers and families at home, The Yellow Birds is a groundbreaking novel that is destined to become a classic.

* I'm working on it. For now check out my list of