The Rise of Nine

I’m currently reading the book The Rise of Nine by Pittacus Lore. While I am only about one hundred pages into the book, I can already tell I like it. I had some second thoughts when this book came out. I didn’t want to read it at first because, while I loved the first book so much, the second book I never finished because I couldn’t stand it. It annoyed me because I wanted the book to be about Number 4, like the first one was, instead this book alternated between Four’s perspective and a girl named Marina in Spain, who you’ve never heard about. Yes, she is one of the Garde, but you don’t want to listen to her story, you want to know about Four’s story because you know him so well and you love his character.

            So I dropped that book. And I didn’t want to go back to the series because it had seriously disappointed me. Finally, after being persuaded to read this book by a friend, I picked it up. While this book is still told in the perspective of both Four and Marina, it’s better because Marina is now with Six, and Six makes Marina’s story a lot more interesting.

            I have some inferences. I think that even though Six, Marina, Ella and Crayton think they’ve found Number Eight, I don’t think he is actually Eight. My suspicion started when Commander Sharma, who works for Eight allegedly, told them outright that this boy was Eight. If he really is a member of the Garde, he would’ve been quieter about this, like the other members. Not only is outright telling them his true identity, without any concern of any Mogadorians nearby, but also what he has done with the people of India. He has thousands of them working under his thumb because they think he is the god Vishnu. He also has the entire Lord’s Resistance Army against him, fighting to rebel. In my opinion, if he really was Eight, this would’ve been way too exposing for the Garde.  

"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.  

Non-Fiction: Anna Karenina Production Design

When it was decided that the book “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy was going to be made into a movie, Joe Wright, the director, had a large and demanding task ahead of him.

He had to capture the expressive expeditions of the characters while transmitting the grand scope of the background. Wright now faced an alarming dilemma. Should he shoot the film in its Russian locations as told in the story? Should he expand the budget of the film to and unfriendly amount? Instead, Wright chose to set the movie in a rundown theater, to give it the feel of a decaying Russian society in the 19^th century.

It is quite startling to think of the magnificent set of “Anna Karenina” being set in a derelict theater. There are so many different settings set outside and inside, with thousands of people or two, all done in one theater. The epicness of the movie itself, with its sloping ballrooms and dirty streets of Russia, is quite extraordinary by itself; but to think that it was all filmed inside a theater is amazing at the determination to create exactly what you want someone to see.

  Wright had incredible skill and willpower to transform a dilapidated theater into the streets and houses of Russia. Since he didn’t want to overspend the budget and travel to Russia itself, it only made his task harder. Instead of having the streets and ballrooms already built in front of him, he now had the task of creating this town. This, while being extremely difficult, would’ve helped Wright in a way. He now had the power to build exactly what he wanted to see, which helped immensely. 

Beautiful Creatures

The book I am almost finished with Beautiful Creatures, and it is a really fantastic book. There are two main problems in this book. The first one is that Lena, the main character’s girlfriend, is a Caster, which is like a witch, and on her sixteenth birthday she will be Claimed, meaning that it will be decided whether she will go Light or Dark. Ethan and Lena find out there is a curse on Lena’s family that every Caster will go Dark. Desperate to change it, they work on finding the cure to this hazard while meanwhile, Lena’s murderous Dark Caster mother, Sarafine, is hunting her down to kill her.

         The second problem is that in the small, Southern town of Gatlin, where this takes place, they don’t take kindly to newcomers. And when anyone, especially a newcomer, does anything remotely dangerous or hazardous, Mrs. Lincoln and her cronies from the DAR take fight. Lena, being a Caster not yet sixteen, has trouble controlling her powers, and one fateful day, the rich Southern girls are teasing her in class, and she accidently breaks a window with her mind. Mayhem ensures, with mothers from the DAR screaming over that their children could’ve been killed, yelling that Lena is mentally insane. And none so extreme as Mrs. Lincoln. In fact, she goes so far to organize a court case for Lena, which she loses, eventually, but she is still planning to get Lena.

         These two plots, which we thought were separated, are finally connected in the end. It turns out that Sarafine, which we thought this whole time to be coming after Lena, was actually in the town of Gatlin this entire time. She was using Mrs. Lincoln’s body as a host, which explains the severity of Mrs. Lincoln’s plans for Lena.

         So far, it has not concluded whether Lena will go Light or Dark, but the danger is creeping up on her every second. And now that Sarafine has Lena in her grasp, the dangers are even more present.