Blink - the movie?

[QuikSand]

http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/11/film.dicaprio.reut/

Well, count me as a big Malcolm Gladwell fan, and a very big fan of the book Blink (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0316172324?v=glance). I enjoyed and appreciated it the most (by far) of the dabbling I did with popular nonfiction this summer.

Anyway, I hear that this has been optioned for a movie and I'm at a loss to imagine how this becomes a film. The book, in its entirety, is basically a long series of not-very-connected vignettes all regarding this general concept of thin-slicing, making quick snap judgments based on only a trifle of information. Great reading, but I don't see any coherent storyline there. It might make an interesting semi-documentary, along the lines of the old In Search Of TV show... but apparently this is going to be a plot-driven film (with Leonardo DiCaprio signed on, apparently) involving a man with a special gift of quick-reading decisions.

Anyone know more about this? My best guesses would be that it involves the art world (and the detection of frauds) but maybe there's another component of the book that provides a better setting.

I'm interested, but skeptical.

[Shkspr]

Since it's Gaghan who's cracked the problem of the book's spine, I'm guessing the film will follow many different plotlines in much the same way as Traffic. Maybe it'll cover a succession of people in turn, as we see each one in situations where they spot read other characters in the movie or are spot read themselves, with the snap decisions advancing or twisting the plot as more and more characters connect.

[QuikSand]

Since it's Gaghan who's cracked the problem of the book's spine, I'm guessing the film will follow many different plotlines in much the same way as Traffic. Maybe it'll cover a succession of people in turn, as we see each one in situations where they spot read other characters in the movie or are spot read themselves, with the snap decisions advancing or twisting the plot as more and more characters connect.

Good call, I could see that.

[Shkspr]

Thinking about it, I wonder if anyone's optioned the story of the kid in Freakonomics who ran with the Chicago gang in order to get access to their financial books. Done well, I'd watch that.

[QuikSand]

My general take on Freakonomics was that it didn't really engage me any more in full than it did in drastically-abbreviated bits. When the co-author did the book tour, I saw him a couple of times, and I felt like I didn't get much more out of reading the whole book than I did from his canned five minute chat.

I think the Chicago drug gangs would be the most promising of the subplots to expand on... but I found their conclusions to actually be fairly uninteresting.