Showing posts with label Kami Garcia. Show all posts

Seventh Row: "Beautiful Creatures"

Posted by Sandra on Thursday, February 28, 2013. Filed under: , , , ,
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Hello everyone, I watched "Beautiful Creatures" the movie this weekend. I read the book last year, and I was a bit conflicted about it; I liked it very much, but it wasn't exactly one of my favorite books. Still, I will never miss an opportunity to watch a movie based on a book... And I emphasize based because this movie has almost nothing to do with the book.... 

Warning! This review contain many spoilers. 

Let me start with the characters:

Ethan Wate was portrayed by Alden Ehrenreich, which in my opinion was right for the role. I never expected Ethan to be drop dead gorgeous (which I liked very much) and Alden is handsome, just like Ethan was in my head. I think he did a great job, he made me laugh, shed one or two tears and I loved the way he narrated the story. 

Lena Duchannes... Oh, well... She wasn't my favorite character on the book, but I really expected her to be more. She was portrayed by Alice Englert, whom (in my opinion) is not very much alike to Lena. Lena was meant to be absolutely gorgeous, and Alice was pretty but it ends there. She wasn't as charming as I thought Lena should be, but I ended up enjoying her in the movie. Kind of. 

Link was absolutely perfect. For me, one of the only two characters that were truly how I imagined. He was cute, fun, and charming. I would've liked to see him perform with his band, but still, Thomas Mann did a great job. He was my favorite character from the movie, but I found incredibly stupid that he shoot Ethan, I mean, why? It was predictable and lame.

Macon Ravenwood is the other character which I think it was portrayed perfectly by the incredible Jeremy Irons. Oh, Irons is one of my favorite actors and I was thrilled to see him as Macon. I reckon he did a great job, but I blame whoever wrote the script for some in-congruencies. 

Amma... I was terribly affected by the decision of kind of mixing Amma's and Marian's character into one, excluding Marian from the movie. I think Viola Davis was amazing, but I wanted to see Marian on screen.

I know that sometimes producers and script writers have to cut off some characters in order to have a fast paced and entertaining movie, without overwhelming the audience with tons of characters, but what the hell happened to Marian, Sarafine (after she leaves Mrs. Lincoln's body) and my beloved Boo Radley????? Also, some scenes were excluded, such as the Winter Ball (bummer). And most importantly, they excluded one of my favorite things from the book... The mental connection between Ethan and Lena. 

They changed a lot of things from the books, and left out some very important stuff, that people who've never read the book should've known. Some friends thought the movie was full of non-sense and bad. I think that with the right script, it would've been awesome. 

And what to say about that ending? GOD, how the hell are they planning to start the second movie with that horrible ending? Unless they're not making a second movie, and this was a stand-alone... And if this is the case, they could've done better, to give it a closure. 

I really hope that there's a second movie (Beautiful Darkness) in the works, and I hope that its better than this failed attempt to make a good adaptation. 

That being said, I have to say, that I thought the movie was entertaining. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it... too much. I thought that for a person who has read the book, it was bad.

If you haven't seen it yet and you've read the book, you won't be pleased. But hey, let me know what did you think about it. 

Movie Trailer: Beautiful Creatures

Posted by Sandra on Tuesday, February 19, 2013. Filed under: , , , ,
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Guys I know Beautiful Creatures is a BIG franchise now, and it's everywhere you go, but if you haven't watched the trailer for the movie, which was released in the USA last week, and will be released worldwide this friday, I leave you here two movie trailers, so you know what to expect and decide if it's worth watching. I personally think it is, although I think I'll leave the movie theater disappointed. We'll see. Post your thoughts about the movie if you already watched it or if you plan to.



and


Beautiful Disappointment

Posted by Sandra on Thursday, January 3, 2013. Filed under: , , , , ,
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Title: Beautiful Creatures
Series: Caster Chronicles, #1
Author(s): Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Pages: 563
Published: 2009
Read In: 2012
Rating: 3/5

I really craved a story with a male POV and I wasn't sure enough if I would like this one.

Turns out, I was wrong. Sort of.

This was thrilling, romantic and incredibly interesting.

Color me surprised when I was reading this book and I immediately started to do some research about U.S.A wars (I'm not from the USA), I had never been interested in that topic before... Until I started reading Beautiful Creatures. It was very exciting, sometimes tad confusing, because of the constant change of scenarios and too much information, but it was so refreshening to read from Ethan's point of view.

May I say Ethan Wate is one of my "I'd like to marry with" characters? Well, no entirely because sometimes I felt like I was reading from a girl's POV, maybe that's why I related so much... But still, he is not described as a super smoking drop dead gorgeous guy, he's just attractive, and he has an amazing personality... Personally, I think we would get along, because sometimes it felt like I was reading about myself, we're too alike. He had this sad past, and ambitions and dreams of leaving that sad little town, he didn't have an easy life, he was kind of lost... At least, until he met Lena.

Lena Duchannes , what a lovely name. I didn't LOVE her, but she was very agreeable and kind of cute in a weird way. Sometimes I felt the character was just meh, and other times she thrilled me.

Lena & Ethan, such a beautiful romance, in my personal opinion this is one of the corniest yet cutest romances I've read, because it had love, acceptance, sacrifice, willingness to do everything for each other, chemistry and yet it wasn't overwhelming and annoying. I loved them together.

The other characters were just okay. Amma was a strong character, but nothing new to me. No one is memorable for me so far, well maybe Link and Macon... I have a weakness for Mick Jagger wannabe's and antisocial-dream-sucker-uncles.

I hope to learn more about Ethan's mom, she seems a great character.

I loved the literary references: "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The Catcher in the Rye", Hemingway, Frost, Luther King, Bradbury.

There were some really memorable quotes, at least for me, two of my favourites being:

"There’s something about sitting alone in the dark that reminds you how big the world really is, and how far apart we all are. The stars look like they’re so close, you could reach out and touch them. But you can’t. Sometimes things look a lot closer than they are.

and

“I never loved you any more than I do, right this second. And I'll never love you any less than I do, right this second.” 

It was fun, exciting and magical! A great story about love, lies, magic and sacrifice. It was very original and really entertaining (at least after 100 pages). It was a lot to digest, but I liked it.

I gave it 3 stars because sometimes it was hard for me to keep up with the story, all the information being processed and understood, but that didn't make it less enjoyable.



January Books

Posted by Sandra on Tuesday, January 1, 2013. Filed under: , , , , , , , , , ,
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So it's a new year, and the first month has arrived. This is the month when we all begin to work on our new year resolutions, and my mom has always told me that "You end the year just how you start it", so I think it's a good way to start it with new reads.

These are the books I plan to read in January. Hopefully I'll be able to read them all (:
(Links below the picture)

         
The Sea of Tranquility

Graceling
The William S Club

Shatter Me
Beautiful Darkness
Warm Bodies
        
Sweet Evil
Across The Universe

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