Having recently read (and reviewed) the book, the last part (lucratively split into two films) of the Katniss Everdeen story was still pretty fresh in my mind when I went to see the movie. I knew to expect that the saga that began with a teenage girl bravely competing in a dystopian to-the-death competition has…
Category: (3.5 out of 5)
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman – Book Review
I enjoy it when authors perform on the audiobooks themselves. The interpretation of the voices and the inflections of any dialogue are true to their original vision and conveys the intended feelings. That’s especially helpful in the case of Neil Gaiman’s novels because they are full of surreal imagery and magic realism. This story is…
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins – Book Review
Featured image is The Mockingjay and the Rebels by Samuel Teixeira. With the third movie in the Hunger Games series not far away, you just know I’ve got to prep myself by catching up on the books. Despite the dramatic cliffhanger at the end of Catching Fire, I was able to hold off reading the…
Movie #18: Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons
As a kid, I grew up hearing Chinese folk tales as bedtime stories. The most well-known of them all is the Journey to the West: the story of the trickster-god Monkey King and his companions as they travel across an ancient China plagued by demons. When I heard that Stephen Chow, writer and director of…
Movie #17: Robocop
I was 16 when the original Robocop movie came out, but I can’t say that I remember it too well. One of the things I do recall about the Paul Verhoeven directed movie was that it was satirically tongue-in-cheek (which was kind of new for sci-fi). For a teenager in the audience, it wasn’t totally…
Movie #14: Knights of Badassdom
I do love a good genre spoof. There are often a lot of inside jokes (most of which I actually get) and fun cameos. Often the plot is nothing too original, but that’s OK. In the case of Knights of Badassdom, the genre is fantasy role-play — specifically LARP (or live-action role-play) — where players…
Movie #13: Ragnarok
It is hardly surprising that people compare Norwegian director Mikkel Brænne Sandemose’s movie Ragnarok to something by Steven Spielberg (most obviously Jurassic Park). Once again we have a scientist (this time an archaelogist rather than a paleontologist) looking to prove his wildly dismissed theories about the past (in this case it’s about the site where…
Movie #9: Divergent
Riding on the dystopian, young-adult coattails of The Hunger Games, Divergent was another series to make it to the ranks of blockbuster movie adaptation. Even before reading the book, I was skeptical of the premise. In a future-Chicago, society has split everyone into factions based on individual ideals (e.g. the selfless belong to the Abnegation…
Movie #8: Kick-Ass 2
From all the negative reactions to this movie in theatres, I was expecting a very disappointing movie (especially after I loved the first one so much), but I guess that lowered my expectations enough that I actually kind of enjoyed it. While the first movie was something of a landmark, this one is a bit…
