4 posts tagged “a great and terrible beauty”

In the past 24 hours I have watched a ton of things. So much that I should be tapped for the rest of the week. Belle was over last night and we started watching Ring of the Nibelungs which was just poor. Funny, but poor. Robert Pattinson was good as the guy who stood in the background. We laughed out loud at it and I have to say that the effects were certainly worthy of note... No lizard could be that vicious and live.

After that we watched Stardust again as Belle had never seen it. I was excited to share Ben Barnes with her. I am trying to cultivate an obsession for him and it is only lukewarm and lending more toward admiration than fascination. But I did find a few pictures of him so I had to decorate this post in one.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was next and I think the consensus was that Johnny Depp is a god.

Today, we watched The Bad Mother's Handbook. Another Robert Pattinson show. He was utterly adorable in this. I really liked his character and I hope that David will watch with me sometimes. I can honestly say that he was the best actor out of all of the cast.

Tonight after we took Belle home we watched Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. I am trying to get all refreshed before the new movie comes out. I don't have much expectation for the new one. I totally think Harrison Ford is too old to pull of Indy and Shia LaBouf isn't going to be able to distract me from Ford taking his Geritol. But I plan to rewatch all the old ones and they were really good even though they were formulaic and cheesy.

I got set straight by Belle that A Great and Terrible Beauty is being made into a movie. So my dream is someone else's dream too. The script is supposedly been bought by Mel Gibson's production company and that worries me to death, but, okay. There is much talk about who should play who but I know some of the suggestions confound me. No Kiera Knightley. I have managed to read 100 pages into A Sweet Far Thing and I am distraught for the lack of Kartik. It makes the first part of the book worthless to have him absent. If he doesn't show up soon I might start on the last page and read backward.

Lastly is a little comic of the Twilight movie that made me smile. Today was Twilight Tuesday and MTV had an article talking about the plan to shoot the sequels together should the movie see enough of a turn out in the theaters. It pretty much said what has already been said and I was looking for more concrete things than what-could-bes and might-bes. The other thing was a little clip on Peter Facinelli and Carlisle's car. What happened to interviews? I want more of what I was getting during filming.

Yesterday afternoon I finally finished Stardust the book. I loved the ending. I got over my annoyance with Yvaine and I loved the subtle way things played out. I thought the book was really good. Then last night I watched the movie, which is a lovely thing unto itself... maybe brilliant if you hadn't read the book. I didn't like the adaptation of the end of the book. I could have done without the big showdown that is in the movie. Give me the book's bittersweet ending over the movie's rather diabetically induced sugarfest. But I did like the movie, so long as I thought of it as something entirely separate from the book. I only pray, I won't be saying that same line when Twilight comes out.

I did like Ben Barnes as the hapless young Dunstan Thorn. I think the boy is very pretty and I am just a sucker for the pretty. I also liked Claire Danes as Yvaine. I loved Charlie Cox in Casanova and I thought he was perfect for Tristran/Tristan. I did not like Kate Magowan as the Slave Girl/Una. I thought she was a bit odd for the part. I pictured someone tinier, more agile and pixie-like. I also imagined the fair Victoria as a lot better looking than Sienna Miller. I did love Mark Strong as Septimus. He's still my second favorite character of the book. And De Niro as Captain Shakespeare was entertaining, even if they built that character entirely for the movie and he is not the man he was in the book. Oh and I didn't like Michelle Pfieffer at all. I thought she was just cheap compared to the rest.

Back to Ben Barnes, I also finished Prince Caspian. It was a quick and sometimes pedantic read. The voice that the entire book is written in is so obviously masculine that sometimes it feels rather cardboard. I don't know how to actually describe it. It's just a shallowness. Like if a male is telling a story where you aren't really described the situation, but you are getting a summation. I am looking forward to the movie at the end of the week. I am hoping that I find this more memorable than The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe movie. I just can't say that I recall a whole lot of what actually happens in the first. This is the bane of being un-fan-like about something.

I am hemming and hawing now, whether to read The Host or  A Sweet Far Thing. I have missed Kartik this last week without him. I even found Gemma Doyle fanfic and I couldn't read it without spoiling myself. Of course, because it is my way, I did manage to spoil myself some anyway. It's not as bad as last time where my nosiness spoiled me for the end of Rebel Angel's. This is more of a 'and after everything that happens, this happens' thing. I will stop talking about before I write it out and spoil Belle. So I guess I just made my decision. I will be reading, A Sweet Far Thing next. I wouldn't be sad if that got made into a movie. I don't have a clue as to who would play Gemma or Kartik. I would love for Kate Winslet to play Miss Moore. I don't know who I would have play Gemma's mother or father. Could I pick Charlie Cox to play Thomas though? And Pippa, Felicity and Ann... *sigh*. Too hard. I have one person cast in my version of A Great and Terrible Beauty. I will have to keep it a work in progress.

Tonight, Belle is coming over for us to watch the Ring of the Nibelung or otherwise known as... Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King. It has Benno Furmann and Robert Pattinson in it. Benno Furmann played Inspector Detector in Speed Racer. We rented it to see Rob. We aren't hoping for a lot from it. It is a made for TV movie. But hey, it could happen, it could be the best made for TV movie ever.

Today it is only 18 days until the 31st. I am hoping to be awake and coherent at 10AM that day to go to the bookstore and read the Special Edition Version of Eclipse for the Breaking Dawn chapter 1. I have tried to talk D into buying me the new version but as I want the paperback versions too, he's not as convinced to buy every version that comes out. So I might be living at the bookstore reading and rereading the chapter until 2 August. How pathetic. But it can't be helped. I feel like I've been waiting for this forever and it hasn't been a month. I can't imagine how those who read Eclipse when it came out feel. They are probably heavily medicated.

I finished A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray the other day and I have been sort of stalled in the book department. I want to read the next book in the trilogy which is called Rebel Angels. I am hoping there is more Kartik in it as he was my favorite character. At least he didn't make asinine decisions like the lead character Gemma Doyle does. I am not saying that the book was bad, because I really liked the way it came together and the ending was good. I am just saying that it's hard to like Gemma. Hopefully she will have a little more growth in the second book.

6 May is when The Host comes out. It will be the first non-Twilight book Stephenie Meyer has written and I am oddly excited about it. I'm a little afraid for the subject matter, alien life forms that inhabit the host body of humans but the story goes beyond that to humanity and love. I am excited for it all the same. It's no Edward Cullen but I'll give it a try.

Tonight I tried to read Dark Side of the Moon to tide me over. I found it really hard to concentrate on and I also was skipping parts in the book that moved too slow for me. All in all I would say I probably don't really want to read this book right now. That makes me sad, it wasn't too long ago when I read it four times in two weeks. Maybe I am a little burned out on it. Maybe I'm reading too much fanfic and it is ruining me for real books.

I do have one other new book which I have yet to read. I bought it when I bought my Twilight Saga books. It's Jennifer Ashley's Highlander Ever After books and the last in a trilogy. I reread the other two books not long ago so I am refreshed and ready to commence this series at any moment. It's the story of Egan and Zarabeth, who you get tidbits about in the other two books. I should have tried to read that today instead. Or Sebastien by Anne Bishop. That is another book I could have tried to read instead. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

I am happy to say that my Pens made a sweep of their series and made it past round 1 and tonight my Rangers beat the Devils and made it too. I was a bit disappointed that the Maple Leafs weren't good enough to make it to the playoffs. If I'm honest they pretty much sucked this season. Vesa was their only saving grace. I do miss seeing Leafs games though. D, who knows the Sharks schedule by heart, tells me that the next Sharks game isn't until Sunday. For his sake I hope they win their series. Although, as a Phaneuf fan I can't be sad when he plays well. As for the Ducks, I have never got over the betrayal of them getting rid of Andy Mac. I want them to lose. I'm just black at heart like that.

Battlestar tonight was nerve wracking. I want to know what is happening with the Sixes and the Eights. I was very happy with the end of the Chief and Callie story. I never liked her. Kara as a little bit crazy is par for the course. I love seeing her on the edge. I sort of hope she and Lee are reunited. I want the happy ending. There was a lack of Baltar which I was a little disappointed by, but that just means there will be a ton of him next week.

I started a new book last night. Heather brought to my attention last week and I BookMooched it. It's called A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. I don't know if I'm liking it. The main character is sort of a brat and I can't say I regret the bad things that happened to her. It feels like it moves really slow and I feel like I'm waiting for something that hasn't paid off as of yet but I'm only 50 pages in. I'm going to try to stay patient and stick with it. I even added the next two books to my BookMooch Wishlist, so I am trying not to get down on it so early. I'm sure that it's just that I'm used to the pacing and style of Stephenie Meyer and Twilight. I'm sure that I'm just not adjusting well. I also hated the small romance novel, My Wildest Ride by Isabel Sharpe, that I read yesterday. I think I'm just being a petulant reader. It's not the Twilight Saga or a Dark-Hunter novel, so it's just not good enough.

Tomorrow D and I are going to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I guess I am still mildly Veronica Mars fan-ish. Kristen Bell is part of why I want to see this movie. I also loved Knocked Up and it's by the same people that made it. After D has promised me a trip to the bookstore. He's going to get Belladonna, the next book after Sebastian. I want to look for a copy of the Iliad. I'm not sure I'm buying it. I could BookMooch it, but I think if I get it, I want it to be a nice edition. I have yet to get my 2nd issue of the Iliad in comic form so I haven't started reading the comic yet. Although, note to self: the 5th issue came out on Wednesday and I haven't got it yet.

I spoke with my father yesterday. He wasn't expecting her to make it through the night. I am assuming, as I haven't heard from him as of yet, that she is still fighting. I was hoping that this would be fast. He tells me she isn't suffering, that they have her on pain medication so she isn't feeling anything. But he also tells me her respiration is shallow and at only 6 breaths a minute, so she's slowly suffocating. That still is an awful way to die.