Victor Hugo

Hugo Chavez is already having a very busy afterlife. The charismatic and controversial president of Venezuela died March 5. Not long afterward, one joke goes, he showed up in heaven and persuaded St. Peter to choose a Latin American as the next pope....

Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who died Tuesday, was an avid reader.  "Read, read, read, read," he said in a speech in 2009. "That should be our slogan every day." It turns out that his political position might be attributed (at least in part) to...

In an Oscars broadcast that was packed with tributes to movie musicals, "Les Miserables" won three Academy Awards on Sunday, including a win for Anne Hathaway for supporting actress. The film also won in the categories of sound mixing and make-up....

To find the inspiration behind the actors, actresses and others who hoisted Oscars last night, look no further than the works in your nearest library, bookstore or e-reader. The big winners were drawn from characters in adaptations that ranged from a mid-...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column about my fondness for fat books, my current one being Victor Hugo's novel "Les Miserables," and some readers wrote to ask for other books I would recommend. Here's an incomplete list of my favorite novels, not all...

I recently started Victor Hugo's novel "Les Miserables," which most people seem to prefer in movie or musical theater form if only because those take less time. You can get the story in under three hours instead of taking who knows how long to plow...

The character of Fantine in Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables" is a prostitute who is so poor that she resorts to selling her teeth for money. Actress Anne Hathaway, who plays Fantine in the movie version of the stage musical, notified the world on Sunday...

"Les Misérables" won the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy film on Sunday, adding to the movie's already considerable awards momentum. The movie adaptation of the honored stage musical also picked up awards for actors Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway....

The Oscar nominees for best picture owe a huge debt to books -- and the creativity of authors. Most of the top films are screen versions of tales that were woven by printed words (or digitized versions). That's not taking anything away from the...

Four former winners and one newcomer were nominated for the 65th annual Directors Guild of America Award for directorial achievement in feature film for 2012. Steven Spielberg, 66, earned his 11th DGA nomination for "Lincoln," the acclaimed epic about...

An ambitious bookworm in my youth, I once started Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. It was on a recommended-reading list. I ground to a halt a few pages in and discarded the recommended-reading list. I have never seen the musical and have never consciously...

For the past few months, just about every movie I've seen has been preceded by a short documentary on the making of "Les Miserables." The point most stressed in these previews is that every song in the movie is being sung live; that unprecedented steps...