"Where She Went" Concepts and Themes

     I’m almost done with the book “Where She Went” by Gayle Forman. It is a really good book, the sequel to “If I Stay” by Gayle Forman. This book had many themes, including the most prominent being rekindled love and rejection. Another big theme was the cons of being very very famous.

       The character of Adam is one of the most prominent characters in any book I have ever read. His character and his feelings are so easily connectable with his personality. His character is so present you get wrapped in his pain and suffering almost like a wooly blanket. His feelings, while I have never experienced those feelings before in situations like that, I can connect instantly. His fear and vulnerability is shown through, showing how he doesn’t feel like himself and like he can’t go on since Mia broke up with him.

     Mia’s breakup with him led him to do many things he never thought he would. Like start smoking. Like do drugs. Like taking loads of sleeping pills that don’t help him at all. Mia left his heart an empty pit of blackness that can never be healed. I miss the old Adam from “If I Stay”. In this book the fame thing has destroyed him and ravaged him into a being afraid of going anyone because the paparazzi are ALWAYS after him. There are always people who recognize him, always people who whip out their phones and ask for autographs. He hates every one of them and they literally drive him to the brink of suicidal thoughts.

     It is pure luck that he finds Mia the night he’s about to go out on his sixty-five night long tour worldwide that the mere thought is driving him crazy. I just hope they can work things out for good.  

Non-Fiction RR: Oscars, Fooling Us AGAIN?

A strange thing happened on Groundhog Day at the Gurus o’ Gold panel.

            The Gurus o’ Gold panel is made up of 14 awards watchers who write for Entertainment Weekly and the Hollywood Reporter. They predict the movies/actors/directors that will be nominated for an Oscar. Every year, for the past decade, they have predicted the correct Best Director nominations and the correct Best Picture nominations. This year they predicted, in order: Steven Spielberg, for “Lincoln”; Ben Affleck, for “Argo”; Kathryn Bigelow, for “Zero Dark Thirty”; Ang Lee, for “Life of Pi”; David O. Russell, for “Silver Linings Playbook”; and Tom Hooper, for “Les Miserables. A few on the panel thought that Michael Haneke, for “Amour” and Quentin Tarantino, for “Django Unchained” would sneak in the nominations category.

            But boy, did they get a surprise when the nominations were revealed. Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow, Tom Hooper, and Quentin Tarantino were all snubbed nominations. Michael Haneke and Benh Zeitlin, whose movie “Beasts of the Southern Wild” was his first feature film, were nominated. “Beasts of the Southern Wild” was a small budget film about a fable, and “Argo”, “Zero Dark Thirty”, “Les Miserables”, and “Django Unchained” were all large-scale films that attracted a wide audience. It might as well have actually been raining cats and dogs.

            I think that this article is very interesting. It shows how even the most top notched people in award business get it wrong. I think this shows how the Oscars are always one step ahead of us in the fooling department. We can never fully know what they’ll throw at us each year. We can’t prepare ourselves for what happened last year. We have to be ready for something different to happen.