Major Redo/Update

It has been way too long since my last update.  A combination of laziness and a broken laptop has led to my poor blogs being extremely neglected.  So I'm finally trying to get back on track.  Besides posting new reviews, I've obviously changed the look of RWAABA (I really didn't expect the initials for my blog to be so funny).

Hopefully over the course of the next week, I'll be able to get the following posts done:

• How I Met Your Mother: Seasons 1-3
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer
• Birthmarked by Caragh O'Brien
• Cinder by Marissa Meyer
• Matched by Ally Condie
• Sunshine by Robin McKinley
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
• The Selection by Kiera Cass

Those are just some of the posts I need to get taken care of; there's also more movie and TV show reviews as well.  And soon I'm going to start posting writing prompts, including my responses to them.  I just got this book, 642 Things to Write About, and it looks awesome, so I'll be posting some of their prompts along with my own.  I think I'll begin with just one per week, and then expand to two or three, until I finally start posting one per day.  So let the writing begin.

Title:  The Hunger Games
Genre:  Dystopian/Science-fiction
MPAA Rating:  PG-13 for intense violent thematic material and disturbing images - all involving teens

My rating:  A+ 

Synopsis (from imdb.com):  In a dystopian future, the totalitarian nation of Panem is divided between 12 districts and the Capitol. Each year two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal retribution for a past rebellion, the televised games are broadcast throughout Panem. The 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors while the citizens of Panem are required to watch. When 16-year-old Katniss's young sister, Prim, is selected as District 12's female representative, Katniss volunteers to take her place. She and her male counterpart Peeta, are pitted against bigger, stronger representatives who have trained for this their whole lives.

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Thrilling, intelligent, and exceptionally filmed, I was completely impressed with The Hunger Games.  Having fallen in love with the book series, I was a little worried about whether I was going to be disappointed or happy when leaving the theater, but this movie was incredible, beginning to end.

First, the casting was perfect.  Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Banks-- they all did an amazing job bringing their characters to life.  I still can't believe how many people thought Jennifer Lawrence shouldn't play Katniss because she was too curvy.  Who cares if she has hips if she can act?  I'd much rather have a curvy actress than some skinny girl who can barely change the tone of her voice, let alone act.  *cough* Kristen Stewart *cough*.  Hutcherson, as Peeta Mellark, also did a great job at portraying his character's openness and quiet strength.

The filmography was brilliantly done.  They decided to go with the shaky, handheld camera for many of the more intense and violent moments in the film, which added to the realism.  The filmmakers worked hard to achieve realism and believability during the film, and I think they were successful.  The sets and the costumes were neither too simple nor too ridiculous (except the Capitol citizens, but their clothing was supposed to be ridiculous).  I also loved the use of color throughout the film.  In District Twelve, everything is gray or tinged with gray, and the images are sharp and stark.  But as soon as Peeta & Katniss board the Capitol train, the color' s become vivid but overwhelmingly so, like it's oppressive.  When they finally enter the arena for the Games, the colors are lush, but everything seems to sharpen again.

The violence that was to be expected in a story about kids killing each other in a gladiator-like event is there but a little subdued.  The books were written for a younger audience after all, and they didn't want to alienate a large part of their audience.  It still doesn't mean that it wasn't intense, especially when you remember that you're not watching two adults fighting, but two kids.  It was especially hard to watch whenever it was a 12-year-old, because they're so little and young.

There were changes between the book and the movie of course, which I will discuss further in an upcoming Book Vs. Movie entry.  What I will say is that the changes weren't huge or plot-changing.  There was only one that really irked me, but I think it's because they're going to address it in the second movie.  So I'm definitely not disappointed with this adaptation.

Even if I'd never read the books, I would have enjoyed this movie.  It had all the right components for a great movie-- action, adventure, romance, interesting plots and subplots.  And because I didn't see it on opening weekend, I got to watch it without a lot of screaming tween fan-girls.  Major bonus.  A+

The Hunger Games trilogy

Series:  The Hunger Games
Author:  Suzanne Collins
Titles:  The Hunger Games (1), Catching Fire (2), Mockingjay (3)
Format:  Hardcover
Genre:  Dystopian/Science fiction

Rating:  A+++++

Background information (from Wikipedia):  The Hunger Games trilogy takes place in an unidentified future time period after the destruction of the current nations of North America, in a nation known as "Panem". Panem consists of a rich Capitol, located in what used to be Rocky Mountains, and twelve (formerly thirteen) surrounding, poorer districts which are under the hegemony of the Capitol. As punishment for a previous rebellion against the Capitol wherein twelve of the districts were defeated and the thirteenth destroyed, every year one boy and one girl from each of the remaining twelve districts, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, are selected by lottery and forced to participate in the "Hunger Games". The Games are a televised event where the participants, called "tributes", must fight to the death in a dangerous outdoor arena until only one remains. The winning tribute and his/her corresponding district is then rewarded handsomely with food and plenty, seeing as the lower districts are starving.

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 It is going to be so hard to write this review without giving anything away, but I will try.

First, let me start off by saying I LOVED THESE BOOKS!  Passionate, well-written, and thrilling, this trilogy had me hooked from the beginning.  As soon as I started reading it, I couldn't put it down.  I read The Hunger Games over a weekend.  Originally I had avoided the series simply because of the hype, but with the movie gaining even more attention, and my commitment to Read It 1st, I thought I'd give the books a try.  And now I'm so glad I did. 

The books tell the story of Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old girl from District Twelve who's chosen to be the female tribute during the 74th Hunger Games.  She's determined, somewhat hard, but also frightened and confused, emotional and loving.  Her inner monologues further develop her character and the reader's connection with her.  Her pain and turmoil are believable and real.  Collins did an amazing job with her character development throughout the series.

The descriptions of the Games themselves are harrowing and lifelike.  The suspense and tension kept me reading.  Warning- there's a lot of violence, and if reading about kids killing each other, sometimes brutally, upsets you... do NOT read these books.  Besides the violence, character development, and suspense, the books also contain romance.  In this case it's a love triangle.  Katniss is torn between her best friend Gale, a hardened coal miner who wishes to defy the Capitol but must support his widowed mother and his younger siblings, and the baker's son Peeta, a strong and artistic baker with a heart of gold who is chosen to be the male tribute for District 12.  Personally, I'm Team Peeta all the way, and in the end, Katniss picks... Well, you'll just have to read to find out.

It's so hard to really do justice to these books without including spoilers, so even though this review is kind of lame, please know that the books are definitely not.  If you love action, adventure, romance, suspense, science-fiction, dystopian literature, or David-versus-Goliath stories, you should absolutely read these books.  A+

Book Vs. Movie: Something Borrowed

I honestly don't know why I bother with chick lit or romantic comedies anymore.  Maybe I just keep hoping that I will find another book like Austenland.  But nothing ever comes close.  Chick lit & rom-coms are almost always cliched, immoral, and annoying.  I decided to give this one a try anyway, simply because I think Ginnifer Goodwin is a great actress, and because other reviewers liked the book.  Next time I will follow my instincts and avoid books & movies like Something Borrowed.

Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin tells the story of Rachel, an average, hard-working 30-year-old woman whose beautiful, superficial best friend Darcy is getting married to the seemingly perfect guy Dex.  After a night of "partying" for her birthday, Rachel ends up taking a cab home with Dex, and they sleep together.  The rest of the book centers around Rachel and Dex figuring out how they feel about each other, while also showing the development of Darcy & Rachel's friendship over the years through flashbacks. 

I didn't even bother finishing the book.  Besides the whole cheating storyline turning me completely off, the characters were two-dimensional and stereotyped.  The main character would just not stop whining about how old and miserable and alone she was; her best friend was as superficial and shallow as you could make her; and the fiance Dex was spineless and wishy-washy.  Could someone please tell me when men stopped being... men?  There is nothing attractive about a man with no backbone.  Also, the flashbacks that are supposed to show us how Darcy & Rachel became and stayed friends throughout the years were unrealistic.  There's no way these two completely different people would have remained best friends, especially considering how badly Darcy treats Rachel.  I just can't take this book seriously at all.  Perhaps if the characters hadn't been SO cliched and transparent, or if Rachel had not been such a whiny doormat, or if the guilt she and Dex supposedly felt had seemed real at any point, I might have taken the time to finish the book.  Incomplete

Something Borrowed, the movie, follows almost the same storyline except for a few changes I noticed here and there.  For one thing, Dex and Rachel were actually really into each other during college; Darcy just swooped in and "stole" Dex away.  But the two of them never stopped loving each other, even after Dex proposed to Darcy.  I suppose the screenwriters thought that if Dex and Rachel had always been in love with each other, then we'd be more forgiving and accepting of their cheating.

Throughout the whole movie, I sympathized the most with Rachel's best friend Ethan.  He pretty much said it best when he yelled at Rachel for being a whiny pain-in-the-butt who brought these problems on herself.  And I can't stand that the movie is geared towards making you think it's okay that Dex and Rachel cheated because a) Darcy cheated too so "it's only fair", and b) they all ended up happy in the end anyway.  Rachel even says to Darcy, during a chance meeting months later, that she's sorry for hurting her, but not for sleeping with Dex.  And Darcy seems okay with it because she's happy with how her life is going (she's pregnant by the guy she cheated on Dex with).  So the moral of the story seems to be that as long as everyone gets to have a happily-ever-after, it doesn't matter how they were able to achieve it.  C-

UPDATE- Book Vs. Movie

So here I am, all excited to start this new series - Book Vs. Movie - as soon as I got back from vacation.  I borrowed a ton of books from the library, sent for their movie versions from Netflix, and what should happen?

My blu-ray player breaks.  Something is wrong with the laser, and the player refuses to read any and all discs.  Which means that Book Vs. Movie is currently on hold until my bank account has recovered enough from vacation and the upcoming Comic-Con ticket sales.

That doesn't mean that I'll put off reviewing things that I have seen or read since it broke.  I'll just include them in the series later.  I'm currently in the process of writing reviews for the following:

• Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Secret World of Arrietty
• Downton Abbey: Season 2

And I'm currently reading the Hunger Games trilogy, which has been amazing thus far.  Hopefully the movie will live up to, or at least not destroy, the awesomeness of these books.

Book Vs. Movie: Monte Carlo

It rarely ever happens, but sometimes a movie surpasses the book that inspired it.  For this first review in the Book Vs. Movie series, that is exactly what happened.  Monte Carlo, released in 2011, is loosely based on the 2001 novel Headhunters by Jules Bass.  Both center around a group of women who go on vacation together to have some fun and excitement, and while there, everyone believes them to be someone else, and they all find love.  That is the extent of the similarities between the two; the rest is incredibly different.

Monte Carlo tells the story of three young women-- Meg, Emma, and Grace-- in their late teens and twenties who travel together to France to celebrate Grace's high school graduation.  When escaping from the rain in an expensive hotel, Grace is mistaken for an heiress, and the three of them take advantage of the mix-up to travel first-class to Monte Carlo.  Of course this leads to all sorts of adventures and mishaps that lead to Grace and Meg finding love, until the real heiress arrives and panic ensues.  It's a fun, cute movie with surprisingly few embarrassing moments and a satisfying happy ending.  Selena Gomez isn't the most amazing actress, and her British accent was terrible, but overall she did a pretty good job.  But it was Leighton Meester's character that I loved the most; her story line was the most exciting and romantic.  A-

Headhunters is completely different.  The story revolves around four middle-aged, menopausal women (with filthy mouths and dirty minds) who decide to spice up their boring, monotonous lives by traveling to Monte Carlo and impersonating four extremely wealthy women.  They meet four men there, who are also impersonating people, and they all fall in love.  Their secrets eventually cause lots of drama and headaches.  One reviewer said of this book, "These women make the First Wives Club look like Little Women."  And it's absolutely true.  I couldn't finish the book; it was so trashy.  Every other sentence contained the F-word, and all the women talked about was sex in the crudest way possible.  Definitely not worth reading.  Incomplete

Read It First

So just this month, I joined the Read It 1st campaign, pledging to read the book before I watched its movie version.  I've always believed in reading a book first for several reasons.  For one, I like to imagine things my own way, and when I'm reading a book, I don't want someone else's interpretation in my head.  Especially if theirs is awful.  Secondly, I prefer books to movies and TV shows, so there's always a likelihood that I'll never even get around to watching the movie anyway.  Third, a movie adaptation can be such a flop that it could turn me away from a book.  If I hadn't read Eragon first, only watched the movie, I never would have bothered picking up the book.  And finally, there are those rare occasions where the movie is actually better than the book.  It doesn't happen very often, but in the case of Princess Diaries and Under the Tuscan Sun, both books were absolutely awful.  I saw the movies, both of which I loved, and expected the books to be amazing.  Big disappointment.

So I prefer to read it first, but what about listening first?  I hadn't really considered the audiobook as part of the Read It 1st campaign until my brother told me something interesting.  One of his friends had been listening to an audiobook (I Am Number Four), and after listening to it, she told him that it was a badly written book.  I loved that book (gave it an A+), and I truly hate bad writing, so I tried not to take the insult personally  ;-). 

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that an audiobook is no different than a movie adaptation.  It's someone else's interpretation of a book.  You're listening to how they think it should be read-- their vocal inflections, character voices, and emotional investment.  I can think of several times when an audiobook just didn't get it right, in my opinion.  When I was little, my parents had The Hobbit on tape.  The narrator completely turned me off from the book; thank goodness I decided to give it a try, but it wasn't until years later.  Another example is The Lord of the Rings audiobook from the library.  My friend Mary was reading the book before seeing the movie and I figured I would too, but I wanted to try the audiobook instead.  I gave up on that before a few chapters were done.  I'm a fast reader, and listening to someone else read at a snail's pace (to me) was incredibly off-putting.  And when I tried listening to a book I'd already read, that was even worse.  I bought a few Georgette Heyer audiobooks, and even though I loved Richard Armitage's voice as he read The Inconvenient Marriage, his interpretation of the main character didn't remotely match how I'd envisioned her in my head.  I had pictured her as a feisty, spirited heroine who laughed in the face of danger, and he read her as timid and frightened.

So I've decided that besides putting off watching the movie/TV adaptations until I've read the book, I'll also put aside the audiobook version as well.  I've also decided that besides following the rules of the Read It 1st campaign, I'm also going to go back and read the book versions of the movies I've seen in the past.  There are many that I hadn't realized were based on a book or story, and I've decided to see how they compared to each other.  Of course that does mean reading it second, but it also means the start of a new series on my blog.  During the year, I will be doing a series called Book Vs. Movie.  As I read a book and then see the movie (or read the book after having already seen the movie), I'll review them together.  I've made a list of as many as I could find, and it's seven pages long, so it looks like this will be a nice long series that may take me more than just 2012 to finish.  If my Netflix movies arrived today like they should, the first Book Vs. Movie review should be up tomorrow.  Enjoy!

Title: Terra Nova: Season 1
Genre:  Sci-Fi Adventure

My rating:  A-

I know a lot of people will disagree with me about this TV show, which is why it will most likely not be coming back for a second season.  But I actually liked Terra Nova, especially towards the end of the season.  I think the biggest problem people had with this show was that it started out too young and too cliched.  Almost everything in the first half of the season seemed kind of corny and overdone.  But the show matured in the second half of the season, ending with such a great finale.  If only the entire season had been as good as that finale.

Besides a great finale, Terra Nova also had a talented cast.  Stephen Lang, Jason O'Mara, and Shelly Conn are brilliant actors, and their supporting cast was good as well.  I'm always a little nervous about child & teenage actors, but the ones in this show either have natural talent or very good acting coaches.  As well as a good cast, the show had great villains.  They were reasonably evil without going over the top, and their characters had depth and dimension.  A-

The Superhero Years

It seems that our society has become obsessed with superheroes.  Of course, this isn't a new phenomenon, but for some time, their popularity had dwindled.

Now it seems Hollywood is bent on a "revival".  Thor, Captain America, Batman, Iron Man, Spiderman, Superman-- all the old favorites are getting a facelift and a franchise.  And some are even joining forces for the highly-anticipated movie, The Avengers.

But why now?  Perhaps it's simply because Hollywood has run out of ideas, a very plausible theory.  But I think it has more to do with the current state of affairs.  When Superman, Captain America, and Batman were introduced, World War II was just starting and America was still recovering from the depression.  Iron Man, Spiderman, and Thor were products of the 1960s, when the country was involved in both the Cold War and the Vietnam War.  Now, America is struggling financially and fighting terrorism in the Middle East.  What better time to re-introduce America to their heroes?  Superheroes are born out of necessity; when America needs them, they appear, ready to save the day.  And so, Hollywood has been hard at work.

The two most recent Superhero movies I've watched are Thor and Captain America.  I personally enjoyed Captain America more.  For one thing, I think Chris Evans is a much better actor than Chris Hemsworth, and for another, the dialogue was pretty awful at points in Thor. Both movies were enjoyable though.  Their plots, special effects, and supporting cast all work together to make fun, action-packed movies where good triumphs over evil.  I'm definitely looking forward to when these two heroes meet up in The Avengers this summer.
Thor:  B
Captain America:  A-

Title:  I Am Number Four
Genre:  Fantasy/Science Fiction
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some language

My rating:  B+

Being one of those people who likes to read the book before seeing the movie, I usually cannot help comparing the two.  If they don't make too many changes or if the changes aren't drastic, I can enjoy the movie, despite loving the book so much.  I Am Number Four received a B+ from me, not because they changed things, but because the movie had too many plot holes and seemed much to rushed.

Of course there were a couple of changes, most of which I considered no big deal.  But there was one change that just irked me throughout the whole movie.  In the books, John's protector and mentor Henri is a very different person; he's much kinder and loving, treating John as if he really was his son.  John looks up to him and thinks of him as a father.  In the movie, John and Henri have a tense relationship, with Henri being very strict and gruff and John being very disrespectful.  I was able to handle every other change, both minor and major, but the change to Henri's character was the one that I couldn't get past.  It made Henri's self-sacrifice in the end seem less emotional and touching than it should have been.

But the main problem with the movie was just how much they rushed it.  Most movies now are at least two hours long, so why they cut this one short is beyond me.  If they'd just added on an extra fifteen minutes, they could have filled some of the plot holes or kept the movie from feeling too hurried.  B+