Les Miserables

I'm a huge fan of the book, I waited with bated breath for this movie to come out for some time.

First I'll say this, this movie is based on the play that's, obviously, based on the book. Highly condensed and with good reason, lifetimes take place in that book! Beautiful, beautiful lives! There is no possible way you cannot love Jean Valjean, he makes that book have a soul and you follow him from beginning to end with the hope that his life will just finally stop sucking because that asshole Javert is the only one true good cop around! Fucking asshole.

Okay, but the movie, let me say this upfront, if you don't like musicals and the thought of Grease or Cats make your head hurt, don't watch the movie, read the book if you haven't. There's singing entirely throughout the movie with maybe two lines that are spoken. Yes, entirely! Also, if you cry easily take some tissue with you because you will cry multiple times. Anne Hathaway's role as Fantine is heartbreaking, she's the angel of tears every time she opens her mouth. And dude, Russell Crowe, did not expect that voice to come out of his mouth, you'll be pleasantly surprised. 

What I didn't like about the movie was that each story line was already begun for you. You don't see little details and damn it, I wanted the details! Also, it was made to be all about Cosette and Marius, not Jean Valjean. Okay fine, he lived for Cosette's happiness and whatever but it's all about Jean, man! It would have been so epic if the movie had been set in two parts just so they could follow the book more. Hell, if The Hobbit could have embellished parts added onto it and be made into what is it? Two? Three movies? Why couldn't it have been done for Les Mis which is a massive book with immense detail? Very angry about that. But I guess it just wouldn't have been as big a money maker as all the LOTR movies. Says who? I would have gone damn it.

...the movie is good, I just had to complain about that.

~Salinger

The Pact (2012)

Caity Lotz stars in this odd movie alongside Casper Van Dien and other unknown actors, to me at least. I honestly wouldn't call this a horror movie, it's more along the lines of a supernatural thriller & that's only because there's like ghostly shit happening every now and then but..shh okay I won't ruin that. Annie (Caity Lotz) walks barefoot all the time & doesn't learn from her mistakes & even though she says in the beginning of the movie that everyone in her family leaves during difficult situations, well I thought she was joking. Bitch bolted out the door way too many times. The camera pauses a lot around the house where all the action takes place. To build suspense? I kept thinking the movie had frozen, got annoying, it happens throughout the whole thing. Not often but once too many times.

Casper Van Dien has a small role as a police officer, maybe detective since he's in regular clothes all the time. He also has a Clint Eastwood thing going on vocally. One too many cigarettes. Watch it once because it's not very noteworthy. Not bad, but just..whatever.

~Salinger

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

This "horror" movie is one for the kids, ages 10+ imo. It's rated R but, c'mon, these kids watch crazier things (Netflix has a ages 16+ advisory notice). There are a handful of moments when your heart skips a beat from an unexpected scare, but with rat sized creatures (a quick Google Image search will show you what I mean) that are fully shown from early on in the movie, there is little to be scared over. There are an exact two scenes of any actual bloody violence and the first is left a bit more to the imagination.

I'm at the 11 minute countdown to being done and well,  I really stuck with this movie only because it's not completely terrible and I wanted to see the ending. The acting is ok, it's the script that hams things up. And really, the "monsters" are shown too often and are too visible for any sort of suspense. Then there's the child vs adult theme happening, and that's always annoying.

Kid: Daddy, there's monsters here.

Father: It's just your imagination.

You know, that type of thing & no one believes her until it's too late. Also there's a very obvious spin to the Tooth Fairy stories.

Ok, the ending is interesting, it leaves the possibility of a second movie option or just tries to lead the viewer into thinking about how these creatures might increase in numbers. Worth watching if you're into soft "horror" movies.

~Salinger

All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque

This book was very eye opening. I had seen the movie as part of the movie challenge and decided that I was going to read it, because I loved the movie. The book has the same surmise as the book and only differs in length but other than that everything is the same. Now the book if you didn’t read the movies premise is about a group of German classmates that go to war together. One by one as they fall to the experiences of war, they discover that people have made seem as something glorious when in reality it is a nasty , self-loathing experience. They also find that when they express themselves to the people coming home, they are treated like traitors by the very men who praise war in all its forms but have never themselves been in one. The story is told mostly through the point of view of the soldier Paul. The story whether read or viewed always makes me want to cry, its one of those pieces which neither glorifies war nor negates war. It is only a story about a boy who had no desire to enter into a conflict that had little to do with him, and how he pays for the consequences.  The end of the book ends in the same way, with Paul reaching for the butterfly. This butterfly that represents memories forgotten, friends long gone and of unreachable peace in the soul.  This is the plight of the solder, according to the author, the inability to rest the troubled soul of the warrior. Paul, after seeing so many horrors, when he comes home cannot be at ease as he used to be. His innocence has been taken and so his love for the simple things of life. He has faced the harsh reality of the war and cannot be at peace with the chaos and self- destruction he sees in his home. In his home his infirm mother is battling with cancer and he cannot do anything.  He does not know how to face the unseen enemy ailing his mother.  Paul is a hero at the end of this novel, but one of those nameless heroes’, a name on a wall of thanks. The author makes you see both sides of the war and he brings war to the true harsh reality, that we are sending our brothers, fathers, sons, lovers, and friends  to a battle that is not there’s but that they shall fight for.

Forgot about Me?

So Bolingbroke is back bitches and I'm loaded with reading Material and movie reviews!

So I took a forced vacation cuz my papa-san won't pay the internet and i finally came back to school so anyways here it is my welcome back =]

Kiss The Dead - Salinger

Tres sorry ya'll, unlike Bolingbroke, my only online connection has ever been dial-up and friend's internet. And now phone. But I have a cheap phone and don't have an app for Blogger and I'd really like to include pictures, but can't so that's why I make ya'll wait and wait. And you love me right? =]

Okay, so Kiss The Dead by Laurel K. Hamilton

Bolingbroke pretty much said the main faults of the book. 

• Still too much sex
• Anita's morality is still an issue
• She's spouting out tween lingo now
• Her height bother's her (though it shouldn't since she's "tough as nails" now)
• The sex again
• Where is this series going?
• Pointless

 I'll give LKH props for toning down the sex scenes down just a notch, but they're still there, for those of you that enjoy them. Also there was more Marshal Anita Blake and I liked that, but from page one all the way to pretty much chapter 17, it was all her investigating one crime scene, going to the next clue onto Boring St.

Anita is becoming too powerful and if the main character can bend time and become Neo..well what the fuck next? What other bad guy is left for her to beat up? I'm too involved in the series to just stop reading it, still hoping that this little ray of light will turn into a decent book and get things going back in the, in my opinion, the right direction.

~Salinger

Kiss of the Dead

Hello, I am still alive an promise to one day add the other books i've read, I know i've been lagging it, but no internet! Anyway to the problem.
Kiss the Dead
 Book number 21... what can i say about this series? That it started dying at book 16? Maybe and that i keep hoping LKH will get her shit together and write a new and exciting book worthy of Anita? Maybe. I liked the series up to the Harlequin. Now even i have hard time defending LKH, if only she tried harder. I feel the plot line is rehashed, and sometimes she drifts so fucking far that its hard to remember what the fuck really happened. I miss the days where Anita was just  plain hard ass and stuck to her guns. Now shes happy and doesn't care about anything. I like the fact that shes ok having a thousand and one boyfriends but come on at least make them part of your main story. I think in this book Nathaniel her number 2 main bf had like seven lines. I love the Nathaniel and it is because of him i read the series. Hoping for Anita to change! To not ask questions like, why did she mind sleeping with a 18 year old? or Do the cops take me seriously? To stop bitching about her height! She can't magically grow two inches get over it! You made her short fucking deal! Furthermore why you always toying with Nathaniel's life? You kill Nathaniel and I'm done with you LKH! I suggest Ms. Hamilton take a break- not the pathetic two hr break she took last time- no a real one, and think about some new plot lines and where she wants the series to go, because right now there is no direction. And stop with the random sex, please, it used to be fun when it was a guilty pleasure. Haven't you heard too much of something is bad enough? ( Spice Girls anyone?) anyway she gives it up (literally) in such copious amounts im wondering if her vagina is the circus of the damned. Its just bad, bad and  sex is never bad. But she made it bad. Its like this no one likes a gray character (hear that fifty shades of grey?) Anita either has morals or she  doesn't make up your mind. LKH make me want to read Anita again. Give your audience something to work with, have Anita chased by Olaf and a undead and were beast army, cuz now he master of the city of dallas or something and all her lovers go to protect her and she whoops ass or something like a three trimuverate convergence!!!