4 posts tagged “rebel angels”
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 have so many things I want to write about today that I just don't even know where to start. I finished Rebel Angels this afternoon. What can I say, I really love Kartik. I loved how his character was developed in book two of the trilogy, although I was a bit disappointed about how things end between him and Gemma. The action was great in this book. The twists and turns were diabolical. All those things you sort of thought you were right about you find out you are, but you no longer think you are. It's tricky. I liked Gemma more in this book than in A Great and Terrible Beauty. She was still terribly immature at times but she isn't as blindly naive. I was ambivalent up to a certain point about Simon Middleton and then flat out didn't like him. Not to mention I measured him up to Kartik the entire time and he doesn't compare. I think Bray is doing an excellent job of defining the taboo and the expectation of the society. I just wish that Kartik wasn't taboo. I'll take him if Gemma can't make it work.
I went and bought The Host and A Sweet Far Thing today. I am currently torn because I don't know if I should read either one of those or Stardust. Stardust, I could probable read by tomorrow. Okay I have to study so maybe not. But I could read it quickly. The Host is 600+ pages and A Sweet Far Thing is 800+. Those are real commitments. With how fuzzy my head is at the moment I just don't know which is the better book to start. And I'm reading Twilight again with Jason and I told him I would be ready to discuss chapter 5 by Thursday. So many books and so little time.
While at the bookstore I took note of the display for Twilight. It is so big and always in flux. Sometimes stocked, sometimes not so much. The woman who checked us out gave me a small happy when she noticed that I was buying The Host and asked me if I was waiting for Breaking Dawn to come out. I admitted, shyly, that I was and told her how many days until 2 August. I mentioned the movie coming out in December and she surmised that it was going to be huge. She thinks the sequels won't be a problem. It made me feel good about the whole situation. Random bookstore clerk who sees popularity of the books, thinking that the franchise is a go. *sigh* Happy thoughts.
Speaking of Twilight, today is Twilight Tuesday and MTV released the official movie poster. I'm not that excited about it. I think it could have been better. Edward looks disjointed to me, not like he's looking over her. I think she looks soft and he looks too dead. Maybe he should look dead, but it just makes me not like it. I do like one thing. His eye looks topaz. Score points there. There was a fan poster made by Loleia that I liked, I'll post that too. If I had my choice between this and the cast photo I would pick the cast photo. I think the teaser trumps them both. Although with some time and space I can recognize that the teaser caters too much to those who already know and love the books and were going to see the movie anyway. It could have been catered more toward a more diversified audience.
Tomorrow is my second exam in Art History and I am not, exactly, looking forward to it. I am sort of dreading it. But to save me from real dread, the class is at the Getty. I hope to go in early and be able to look at one statue in particular. I want to do my paper on it. It's called the Venus Genetrix. She's very much in the style of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. I hope to compare them to one another. It will also give me time to study a bit before the exam. Of course I don't think we will have a tour tomorrow. Since we have so much to make up after last weeks class fiasco.
After class it will be a comic book day. Angel: After the Fall, Buffy and Lords of Avalon are all coming out tomorrow. It will be a nice reward after the exam. LOA left off at the place where Seren is stabbed by Kerrigan. It's one of my favorite parts of the book and I loved seeing it done in comic. D told me that after Angel: After the Fall that they are going to do a Spike: After the Fall. I am interested in that. I still can't get into the Buffy comics. I don't like the legions of slayers. It was hard enough for me when there was Faith. I hope that there could be a Twilight Manga. That would make for good adaptation.
Tonight I caught up with past times and finally saw SuperBad. I must confess... this movie did nothing for me. I don't really get the cult success of it. I found it just overdone and embarrassing. Why is it that embarrassment is seen as funny? I have to say Michael Cera was my favorite part of the movie although I liked some of the facial expressions of Seth Rogan as one of the cops. I don't think that this is in the vein of Knocked Up or Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Or maybe it's just a lot more guy-oriented that I would like it better if I had a Y-chromosome.
The Lion & Lamb LJ community is a big resource for getting Twilight things of all kinds. Some rather ambitiously creative people there have been making movie posters for the long awaited (221 days) movie. I saved a few of the really good ones for my desktop but I wanted to post them here for prosperity's sake. I really love the one done by Lovewithbite, the bottom one. The other two are done by Flame_Eternel. I think they are rather impressive.
I have been having a bit of a hard time reading lately. I'm unfocused and undisciplined and have been tending to get sucked into some truly horrible fanfic rather than finishing what I have started. I explained it today as being a heroine addict and taking cough medicine to get me through. It is a bad, nasty habit that is attached to a goodly amount of self loathing. But enough belaboring... I have been reading Rebel Angel's for almost an entire week. I am liking it well enough, but would like to just be done with it already. I am looking forward to finishing the Gemma Doyle Trilogy with A Sweet Far Thing. I hope the last book has more Kartik in it than this one does. I am not feeling the Simon Middleton vibe. I don't care if Kartik is taboo in her society. They kissed once and I want more of the same.
Lastly, after The Host, I am going to attempt to read Stardust so D's head won't explode. I have yet to see the movie because I haven't read the book. D would love to watch the movie again and I'm the wrench in the works. I owe him this small favor. So it's been added to my cue. Of course at the rate that I'm reading this could be reading for next month. How did I go from reading a book a day to not finishing one in five days? It's Twilight. It ruined me in so many ways.
I had D take me to two different bookstores last night to get my hands on Rebel Angels. Of course things being what they are and life getting in the way, I've yet to start it. I am freaking out over not having all the images for this next exam in Art History. I'll get around to it. I am happy that Jason notified me that he got a copy of Twilight from his library. We are going to read it together. So I will have that in the juggle soon too. I can handle it. Rebel Angels is only 500 pages. The third book in the series is 800. I'm not looking forward to that. I have to finish this in a timely way because a week from Tuesday The Host will be out and I will want to read that. I'm so eager to see how it is.
D and I saw two movies this weekend. I hate going to the movies on a Friday night but we did and the theater was basically packed. We saw Harold and Kumar 2 Escape from Guantanamo Bay. I really liked the first one. I love Neil Patrick Harris in both films, but he was the only highlight in the second one. I was really disappointed. They over did it on the 'our government sucks' jokes and the Kumar is an idiot theme was a little overdone. I kind of want my money back.
Today we went and saw the Tina Fey movie Baby Mama and I really liked it. It was formulaic and predictable but, all the same, it worked. I think you get what you pay for in this film. I really like Tina Fey and I think she is really pretty too. Much better than Harold and Kumar.