An Audie For 'The Maltese Falcon'

The Audie awards, which is an award for outstanding audiobooks and spoken word entertainment, announced the winners at a gala last week and The Maltese Falcon - with among others Sandra Oh, Michael Madsen and Edward Herrmann - won in the category for outstanding audio adaptation.

Here is a review of the adaptation, which was also nominated for a Grammy at this year's awards:

They’re all here—Sam Spade, the streetwise detective; the gorgeous but dangerous dame; the squirrelly guy; and the fat man—all chasing an elusive statue of a mythical bird across the most American of literary landscapes, fog-bound San Francisco in the 1920s. Few novels have been more “noir”—or more influential.

With fine talents like Michael Madsen, Sandra Oh, and Edward Herrmann, Blackstone Audio and the Hollywood Theater of the Ear have created a taut, well-paced audio production, drawn directly from the novel, first serialized in BLACK MASK MAGAZINE in 1929. All of Hammett's signature descriptions and stylish dialogue are at the forefront. Sexy, darkly comic, and broodingly moral, THE MALTESE FALCON is like a jolt of bourbon—it wakes you up and keeps you listening.

B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2010 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2009]

Mystery & Suspense • 3 hrs. • Audio Program • ©1957

Click here to hear a sample of Sandra in the role as "the irresistible and treacherous femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy".

Grammy Nomination For Sandra's Femme Fatale

Earlier this year we told you about Sandra Oh being one of the narrators of the audiobook dramatization of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon where Sandra plays the part of " the irresistible and treacherous femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy". A sample of the recording is available here.

The recording has won a few awards so far and today it was announced that it has been nominated for a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Story Telling). Here are the rest of the nominees in the same category:

• Always Looking Up, Michael J. Fox
  

• Jonathan Winters — A Very Special Time, Jonathan Winters (Music By Verne Langdon & Skip Edwards)
  

• The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Richard Dreyfuss & David Strathairn
  

• The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett), Various Artists Including Michael Madsen, Sandra Oh, Edward Herrmann & Others. Yuri Rasovsky & Josh Stanton, producers
  

• We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land, Jimmy Carter
  

• Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher

The Grammy Awards will be broadcast on Sunday, Jan. 31, 2010, on CBS.

An Earphone For Sandra

As we posted earlier, Sandra plays the part of a femme fatale in the audio book dramatization of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. It turns out that the recording is winning awards.

Sandra Oh, Michael Madsen and Edward Herrmann are part of
the cast featured in the recording.

"AudioFile Magazine, the leading publication specifically addressing audiobooks, has selected The Maltese Falcon as a receipient of its prestigous Earphones Award for January 2009.

We at Blackstone Audio are honored to offer this unique and exciting recording."

- Steve King, Blackstone Audio

Earphones are awarded by the AudioFile Magazine. AudioFile reviews audiobooks, original audio programs, commentary and dramatizations in the spoken word format. Their focus is the audio presentation, not the critique of the written material.

Earphones are awarded to "truly exceptional presentations that excel in narrative voice and style, vocal characterizations, appropriateness for the audio format, and enhancement of the text".


Related posts:

• Sandra Is A Femme Fatale

Sandra Is A Femme Fatale

Sandra Oh is one of the narrators of the audiobook dramatization of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon along with Michael Madsen and Edward Herrmann. Sandra plays the part of " the irresistible and treacherous femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy".

Click here to listen to a sample featuring Sandra .

Publisher's note:

The Maltese Falcon first appeared in the pages of Black Mask magazine in 1929. Almost immediately it was acknowledged, not only as a great crime novel, but as an enduring masterpiece of American fiction. Sam Spade, its protagonist, is the archetypal tough, cynical P.I., "able," as his creator explained, "to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client."

And what a client! - the irresistible and treacherous femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy.

Believing the book's vividly drawn characters and memorable dialogue cry out for theatrical treatment, Blackstone Audio commissioned this faithful dramatization by the award-winning Hollywood Theater of the Ear, in which a brilliant cast brings to life all the excitement and suspense of Hammett's original in the playhouse of the mind.

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