Reviews with Emma: movies

Sunday, 7 July 2013

Pet peeves of a fiction obsessed sixteen year old

Posted by Unknown at 13:29

I have probably done plenty of these posts that either tell you more about me or more to the point what annoys me, but this time I'm going to make it more topical. I am going to talk about things in literacy, films and music that irritates me to the end of the earth and back again.

1. When people bend the page of their books and/or bend/break the spine on their books.
Okay, I do think I have a slight OCD when it comes to looking after books and if you look at about 95% of my books in my bookcase, despite having read each book several times, you will not find a single break in the spine or a bend in a page. (Apart from the dreaded initial break that you get just from opening it, but even that one is so faint you can barely see it). Literally whenever I see anyone doing either of those things I just want to slap the book out of their hands and repair the damage immediately. This is also why I very, very rarely lend my books to people unless I know they can be trusted to treat it carefully. This is also another reason why I cannot deal with library books and have never ever read a book from the library because they are always so tatty and broken that it just takes the enjoyment out of reading for me. The care of books is something I do not take lightly, my friend.

2. When there is a misprint or spelling error in a book.
This is just careless on the publishers part; although, granted, its a very rare thing to happen and even more rare with printed books. However, I've noticed especially on E-Books there can be careless mistakes and it takes you a few time to read over the sentence to understand what was trying to be said. It's extremely frustrating because the amount of times that a book is read and re-read and re-re-read before its published silly mistakes should be seen and sorted out.

3.When films based on adaptations just get the casting all wrong.
I know that everyone has their own ideas about what a certain character looks like when they are described in a book. For example, when I read a book I imagine most of my characters as cartoons and so I find it hard to describe a character to another person who is not inside my head. However, sometimes I really do question if the casting people have read the books at all; take the new Divergent movie for example, Shailene Woodley and Theo James look nothing, absolutely nothing like how I would have imagined them (you know if my brain wasn't weird and turned everyone into cartoons) I just feel like its disappointing for the fan of the books. I understand that it would be impossible to find an actor that everyone loves and imagines in the place of their favourite character but at least attempt it. Harry Potter is a fine example of brilliant casting and costume; you can just tell that the casting people took the time to read the books and study the characters with detail. I am just left feeling like that in today's Hollywood, film companies are more interested in whacking out as many films as possible without really investing too much time into them.
p.s I'm sure these actors mentioned above are good, I've yet to see them in anything but this comment is made purely on their looks (vain, I know right).

4.When books could have been finished but the author tries to milk it.
This is extremely frustrating when you find a decent new book series, you read the first few and it seems that all of the events have been rounded off well and nicely, however, then the author keeps writing new books with weaker plots. This makes the series loose its integrity and makes the reader get bored and disengaged with the writing. Authors need to know when its best to put a series to bed: know when to quit, go out on a high. Particular examples of this are The House of Night series and The Mortal Instrument series. The House of Night currently has 10 books in the series when realistically they could have stopped writing them at about book 5/6, I really cannot be bothered to continue reading the rest in the series because it is getting boring and silly. The Mortal Instruments could have been finished on book 3, that would have left the reader wanting more but not really needing it, the 4th book was lacking compared to the others and took me a long time to get through it. What I am trying to say is that if you want to write a successful book series then you need to know when enough is enough, you want the reader to want more but that they don't necessarily need to have any more because the story is strong enough without it.

5.When films change what happens in the books in a very sucky way.
Sucky isn't the most sophisticated adjective but it describes what I am talking about in the best way possible. When a film is based on an adaptation, I understand that somethings have to be changed so that they make it cinematically pleasing but when they completely change the way an event happens in the book to something that to anyone who has read the books just does not make sense, then you know you have a problem. Take Harry Potter (probably the first time I am criticising it on my blog, take note because it wont happen very often, haha) in the last film (Deathly Hallows part 2) Harry snaps the Elder Wand in half and throws it away... however, in the book, Harry uses the Elder Wand to repair his old trusty wand and then returns the Elder Wand back to Dumbledore's grave. According to the film Harry no longer has a wand after he does what he does because it does not show him fixing his previous wand. To any fan of the books this will come as a very large annoyance, it would have taken the film makers literally about 2 minutes to show what happened in the book but instead they decided on a scene that is just stupid.

Saturday, 12 January 2013

Oscar nominations- My opinions

Posted by Unknown at 01:30

I love the Grammy's and films so I thought I would show you who I think is going to win.

BEST PICTURE
Amour
Argo
Django Unchained
Les Misérables
Life Of Pi
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty
Beasts Of The Southern Wild
Silver Linings Playbook

BEST DIRECTOR
Life Of Pi - Ang Lee
Lincoln - Steven Spielberg
Amour - Michael HanekeSilver Linings Playbook - David O. RussellBeasts Of The Southern Wild - Benh Zeitlin

BEST ACTOR
Denzel Washington - Flight
Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel Day-Lewis - Lincoln
Hugh Jackman - Les Misérables
Joaquin Phoenix - The Master

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Alan Arkin - Argo
Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained
Robert De Niro - Silver Linings Playbook
Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Master
Tommy Lee Jones - Lincoln

BEST ACTRESS
Emmanuelle Riva - Amour
Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook (love Jennifer Lawrence!!!!)
Jessica Chastain - Zero Dark Thirty
Quvenzhané Wallis - Beasts Of The Southern WildNaomi Watts - The Impossible

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams - The Master
Anne Hathaway - Les Misérables
Helen Hunt - The Sessions
Sally Field - Lincoln
Jacky Weaver - Silver Linings Playbook

BEST ANIMATED FILM
Brave
Frankenweenie
Paranorman
The Pirates! In An Adventure WIth Scientists
Wreck-it-Ralph

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Chris Terrio - Argo
Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin - Beasts Of The Southern Wild
David Magee - Life Of Pi
Tony Kushner - Lincoln
David O. Russell - Silver Linings Playbook

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Michael Haneke - Amour
Quentin Tarantino - Django Unchained
Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola - Moonrise Kingdom
Mark Boal - Zero Dark Thirty
John Gatins - Flight

(i've not seen any of these)

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Anna Karenina - Seamus McGarvey
Django Unchained - Robert Richardson
Life Of Pi - Claudio Miranda
Lincoln - Janusz Kaminski
Skyfall - Roger Deakins

COSTUME DESIGN
Anna Karenina - Jacqueline Durran
Les Misérables - Paco Delgado
Lincoln - Joanna Johnston
Mirror Mirror - Eiko Ishioka
Snow White And The Huntsman - Colleen Atwood

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
5 Broken Cameras
The Gatekeepers
How To Survive A Plague
The Invisible War
Searching For Sugar Man