I Finished The Rise of Nine

After reading and finishing the Rise of Nine by Pittacus Lore I can fully say that this was a terrific book. It kept you going with different levels of feelings, ranging from tearful sobs to overwhelming joy, and continuous incredible dialogue and the descriptions of the settings were amazingly realistic and easy to picture.  I can definitely say that Pittacus Lore, or whoever he may be, has for sure convinced me to continue reading his books. The Power of Six was a flop, but this book reminded me of why I came to love this series in the first place.

            One incredible moment Mr. Lore generated was the meeting of Four, Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten in the New Mexico desert. It was one of the most delightful scenes I have ever read in a book. It was like having all the characters of your favorite action movies together in one film, like The Avengers. It generated the most immense joy when all five of them were reunited because Four and Nine had been traveling in one group while Seven, Eight and Ten were in another. This was the first time they ever got to meet the other members of the Garde since they were toddlers on the ship over from Lorien. To top it off, this scene was a gigantic fight scene with helicopters with missiles and big black cars with machine guns, so it was extremely satisfying to see them all fighting for the first time together.

            However, this book kept me wondering. You never get to meet or even get to know Number Five. He’s been in zero books, gotten no acknowledgement and is the last member of the Garde to be reunited. Who is he? What is he doing? Why hasn’t Pittacus Lore shown him in any of his other books? What is so special about this character? Could he possibly be Pittacus Lore? The last we know of him is that he is swimming across the Atlantic ocean to who knows where. I am intrigued by the mystery of this character. I want to learn more about him and what his purpose is not only with the other Garde members, but why the author has left him out of the first three books.

            I cannot wait for the next I Am Number Four book to come out. I am on the edge of my seat about who Number Five is and I can’t wait for more battle scenes with all the living members of the Garde and for the final downfall of Setrakus Ra. Great book, Pittacus Lore.

            

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.