Hey folks, Harry here - most of us geeks love classic film noir. Walking into a vintage bookstore and tearing through the scent of aged paper - finding first editions of books written by a genius like Raymond Chandler is heaven. Hell, as I look up from this screen is the original one sheet for Alfred Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN - and there in the Screen Play credits is... You guessed it Raymond Chandler.

On the other side - most of us geeks are in love with an actor by the name of Clive Owen. The first time I discovered Clive, I was aboard a cruise ship off the coast on Venezuela on the Floating Film Festival watching CROUPIER and thinking, Bond, James Bond. Since then, we saw him in those BMW short film series called, THE HIRE - flicks like THE BOURNE IDENTIFY, CLOSER and SIN CITY. This year he's hit us with the INSIDE MAN and his amazing performance in one of the films of the year... CHILDREN OF MEN. I'm dying to see him next in SHOOT 'EM UP. However, Variety announced today something... far more exciting.

Clive Owen has convinced Universal Pictures and Strike Entertainment to option the Raymond Chandler series of hard-nosed mystery novels featuring Philip Marlowe. Dick Powell played him first in my favorite film noir of all time, MURDER, MY SWEET (aka Farewell My Lovely) - then two years later Bogie played him in THE BIG SLEEP. Then the next year, Robert Montgomery played him in LADY IN THE LAKE. For 25 years the character slept, till Robert Altman cast Elliot Gould in THE LONG GOODBYE. Then in 75 and 78 - Robert Mitchum played Philip in FAREWELL MY LOVELY and THE BIG SLEEP.

According to the Variety story - Universal and Clive seem intent on keeping the character in his original period and setting... with Clive chewing and spitting out the hardboiled narration. I CAN NOT FRIGGIN WAIT!

Will they attempt to start at the beginning - or work on the novels that haven't been adapted - or use some of the short stories. We'll see - right now they're looking for directors and writers. This is definitely some damn cool news!