We Need To Talk About Divergent: Part 1

I have this problem where I like to read books that are currently popular with the YA audience, because, y'know, as a writer I like to keep up with where the market's at. Currently the YA market orbits around things labelled Dystopian, thanks to that thing called The Hunger Games.

Remember that (painfully recent) time when you'd walk into a bookstore and look in the YA section and EVERY SINGLE BOOK looked like Twilight? Thankfully we're finally moving past that stage and now every book looks like The Hunger Games. For example, this image here on the right is the cover of Divergent, the debut novel of Veronica Roth. Note the pretentious Oh-Look-At-Me-I'm-The-New-Hunger-Games cover design. Not really the author's fault, of course. Got to love publishers/marketers and their irritating love of making every book look the same. Ugh.

I was really, truly hoping that this book would be great because I was so disappointed with the ending of THG. Surely there's some gem of a Dystopian book out there that I could really love? I know, I'm picky, but I am capable of loving YA books (Saving Francesca, The Fault In Our Stars, Tamar, Holes, etc), so it was entirely possible that I could love this one.

It wasn't long before I was let down.

When I started thinking about how to write a coherent review on this book, I couldn't think where to start. So I've decided instead to write a blow-by-blow account of my reading experience, which means I'll be saving people like Keira the trouble of having to read the book (trust me!). Anyway, just so you're not struggling to decipher the basic story line in my rant, here is the back-cover-blurb to get you started:

In sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior’s world, society is divided into five factions – Abnegation (the selfless), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent) – each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue, in the attempt to form a “perfect society.” At the age of sixteen, teens must choose the faction to which they will devote their lives.

On her Choosing Day, Beatrice renames herself Tris, rejects her family’s group, and chooses another faction. After surviving a brutal initiation, Tris finds romance with a super-hot boy, but also discovers unrest and growing conflict in their seemingly “perfect society.” To survive and save those they love, they must use their strengths to uncover the truths about their identities, their families, and the order of their society itself.

Yeah, quite obviously that's not the ACTUAL blurb that's on the back cover, but I stumbled across it on this blog and liked it a lot better than the original. And now, without further ado, We Talk About Divergent.

Back Cover
At this point I'm already not a fan of the society-divided-by-virtues concept. But hey, I'll try not to judge now and just give it a go. Maybe if Roth gets detailed with the world building it'll be really cool. 

Page 1
All righty, so the main character (Beatrice) and her family are part of the Abnegation faction. This is about being selfless, apparently. Realistically I can't imagine that one whole fifth of this future Chicago would identify Selflessness as the main characteristic that they're going to live by. I probably wouldn't, to be honest. But I'll just roll with it for now. Maybe they're actually a really tiny faction.

On with the prose: "I sneak a look at my reflection when she isn't paying attention..." Oh dear. By page one Beatrice is looking at herself in the mirror. Surely she's not going to - nope, there she goes, she's describing herself. "I see a narrow face, wide, round eyes, and a long, thin nose..." Wow, that was  such a necessary description of the character - I feel so informed. Thanks, author! I'd really prefer to be introduced to the character by their actions and personality, seeing as this is first-person and all, but you know....

Page 3
Introduction of Beatrice's brother, Caleb. Again with an unnecessary character description of his facial features. And also this horrendous sentence: "He also inherited my mother's talent for selflessness." I get that Abnegation holds selflessness in high regard, but last time I checked, it wasn't a talent. More of a virtue. Where is her editor?

Page 4
Apparently everyone in Abnegation wears grey robes, like the Weasley kids at Hogwarts. Weird.

Page 6
Okay, so I'm only at the end of the first chapter, but already I need to stop and think about this concept again. So far in the story we've only been told that this is what the future looks like, but there have been now clues as to how it got this way. Also, society is still functioning fairly well, after all the main characters live in houses and ride the bus and go to school. Either way I can't understand why dividing the society into factions based on virtues is a good idea. How come there are only five? Why do people agree to defining themselves with only one virtue? There are a million other dividers that society already separates itself by - race, culture, financial status, etc. Have these completely disappeared? If so, how did that happen? And also, where is the rest of the world? Is it gone? Is it also divided into little factions like this future Chicago? Are they the same factions? Are they different? Where is the Chicago government? Or has the government been destroyed by someone else? Apparently a lot of the city has been rebuilt, but there is no explanation for why or what happened to it. And there's this building that "was once called the Sears tower, but we call it The Hub". WHY? WHAT IS THIS BUILDING? If I don't get answers to any of these questions soon I'm going to pretty annoyed. 


Page 7
Beatrice has a class at school called "Faction History" and she goes into it. Funny, why didn't she take us with her? That sort of information WOULD BE USEFUL TO THE READER, VERONICA. At this point, I actually wouldn't mind a little Info Dump. So far all I know is that the Erudites (intelligent ones) hate Abnegation, and Dauntless are weird tattooed folk who jump off moving trains. 


Page 18
Beatrice has to do this weird aptitude test for the Choosing Ceremony, to help determine which faction she's actually supposed to be in. It all happens in her head after she takes this drug. An imaginary dog attacks her and some strange guy yells at her, asking if she knows this murderer. I still have no idea how these things help determine the kind of person she is.


Page 23
So, either the test failed or she failed the test - I'm not sure which - because she's now DIVERGENT (whoa, title drop!), meaning she actually fits into three factions and she can decide which one to go into. Oh, and being divergent is REALLY RARE AND REALLY DANGEROUS, but we haven't been told why yet. It is probably Foreshadowing An Epic Climax. We hope. 


Aaaaaaand those are my thoughts on the first 3 chapters. And I will come back later and write more about the crazy experience. Here's to hoping this book gets better! :D

Author Spotlight: Melina Marchetta

Pre-ordered a French Cinema book about two weeks ago. Don't really have any idea how long it's going to take to get here, because the book in still in publishing stages. Book depository told me that it would be published by now, but that appears to be a lie, so I'm tossing up asking for my money back. But I really want the book. So shall see what happens. I started film school on Monday, I'll talk more about that later, but the point is several French directors/films have so far been mentioned by various people so that will be helpful for when I get around to this French Cinema plan that I keep talking about. Anyhoo! No point moping about not blogging about that topic, so I'll blog about something else right now!

I will try and do some regular posts on various authors/books that I love/hate (I say hate because who doesn't love a good rant? Stay tuned for Veronica Roth's Divergent, people. I'm only 50 pages in and I just know a rant is coming on). I also have two or three films in mind that I want to screencap, so hopefully I'll do another Screencap Saturday soon.

My reading lately has mostly consisted of Melina Marchetta material. I received Saving Francesa as a requested gift last Christmas and read it for the first time a couple of months ago. It is now on my (depressingly short) mental list of 'most-loved YA books'. I have since read two other Marchetta books and am currently consuming a fourth. So let's blog about why this writer-lady is so brilliant, in order of book-publication-date, even though I didn't read her books in that order.

First up, Melina Marchetta writes Looking for Alibrandi, not to be confused with John Green's similarly-titled novel, Looking for Alaska. Published in 1992, Alibrandi is Marchetta's debut novel. Here's a quick blurb from Penguin:


 Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen and in her final year at a wealthy girls' school. This is the year she meets her father, the year she falls in love, the year she searches for Alibrandi and finds the real truth about her family – and the identity she has been searching for.


Upon picking the book up from the library and settling down to start it, I expected the story to be somewhat dated; it would be about ten years before Marchetta published her second novel, Saving Francesa. But what makes Marchetta such a great writer is that aside from some unavoidable fashion and technology references, the story in general stands the test of time. Marchetta's characters, including protagonist Josephine Alibrandi, are relatable to their target audience (roughly aged 12-16), and Marchetta's early writing style, albiet slightly clunkier on these pages than in her later books, is pleasantly varied and easy to read.

Marchetta's writing style only gets better - which is expected, seeing as she had so much time to practice. It wasn't until 2003 that Saving Francesa hit the book stores and graced everyone with its much-needed presence. The story is about a sixteen-year-old girl trying to save her social life (whilst attending a "co-ed" school that only recently opened its doors to year 11 and 12 girls), her family (now that her usually spirited mother Mia is suddenly suffering from a heavy depression), and hardest of all, herself.

The beauty of Francesca comes from the titular character's raw honesty and relatability, even though as the narrator she doesn't quite realise how honest she is. It is easy for almost any teenage girl to identify with her - from her annoyance at not being allowed to watch Buffy at her aunt's house, to her desperation to be part of a group despite how obviously awful the girls in that clique can be to her. We've all been there at one point in our lives; I can't even count how many times I nodded my head and thought 'yes, I know exactly how you feel' when reading Francesca's emotionally-complex narrative.

My favorite detail in the novel was Francesca's tendency to call people by their full names, or by their first names, in the case of her mother. She refers to the girls in her class as "Justine Kalinsky", "Siobhan Sullivan", and "Tara Finke", distancing herself from them while she deals with her tense family life on her own. Until at one point about halfway through the novel, this happens:

     I ring up Michaela from Stella's and ask her if she'd like to do something. I try to remember what made our relationship work in the past. Was it because she had a sense of humor and treated me well? And if it was because of that, why did I feel so grateful that people treated me well? 
     But Michaela can't do anything tonight. She's having a sleepover at Natalia's. I want to invite myself over, but I keep on thinking she'll invite me instead. 
     But she doesn't. 
     So I ring Justine Kalinsky and I say, 'It's Francesca Spinelli', and she says, 'Francesca, you've got to stop using last names. How are you doing?', and I say, 'I feel like shit,' and I don't know how it happened, but by eight o'clock that night, I'm lying next to her on the couch with Siobhan and Tara and we're eating junk food and watching a Keanu movie. 
     And I want to stay on that couch for the rest of my life. 


It's from this point onwards that Francesca ceases the full name use. It's also at this point that she accepts what she's been subconsciously trying to deny - these girls that she's been trying to distance herself from, they're her real friends. They're the ones who care. And that moment, when she realises ... that's what makes this book so beautiful.

Marchetta's third novel is On the Jellicoe Road (2006). Here's your basic back-cover-blurb to get you up to speed:

"Taylor Markham is not a popular choice. She is erratic, has no people skills and never turns up to meetings. Not to mention the incident when she ran off in search of her mother and only got halfway there. But she's lived at Jellicoe School most of her life and as leader of the boarders that's her greatest asset. Especially now the cadets, led by the infamous Jonah Griggs, have arrived. The territory wars between the boarders, townies and cadets are about to recommence.

"But Taylor has other things on her mind: a prayer tree, the hermit who whispered in her ear, and a vaguely familiar drawing in the local police station. Taylor wants to understand the mystery of her own past. But Hannah, the woman who found her, has suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing but an unfinished manuscript about five kids whose lives entwined twenty years ago on the Jellicoe Road."

The first chapter or two of this novel is, to be honest, shockingly clunky. It took me a while to work out what was actually going on - who Taylor was, how old she was, what her relation to the characters around her was and also what the slightly confusing italicised story-within-the-story chapters were. But then I got there. Taylor is a pretty selfish person to begin with, but to Marchetta's credit instead of annoying the heck out of the reader by trying to force us to like this character anyway, she lets us side with Taylor's friends for a little while, who frequently point out her faults, while Marchetta carefully reveals the rest of Taylor's character layer by layer, and I began to like her a lot more as the story went on. In the end it was probably the characters that drove me to finish the book, because I liked the different relationships and the way they all interacted with one another. I'm pretty fascinated with the way people relate and connect with other people, and I enjoyed that aspect of the book.

The major problem with this novel, aside from the clunky beginning, was the failure to establish exactly WHAT kind of world we were living in. I couldn't get a handle on whether the story was supposed to be completely "real life" or if there were moments when we were submerged in the overactive imagination of the main characters. If the former, it wasn't very believable in places - the lack of adult supervision for these secluded-boarding-school students was a little worrying at times, particularly when the teenage characters got into fights. Taylor's friend Ben is hurt pretty badly in one scene, and I didn't find it at all believable that there were no teachers around to break things up or sort things out after the ordeal, so the only explanation I could come up with for this was that Taylor (as the 1st person narrator) had exaggerated the incident and Ben was really as hurt as she'd made him out to be. I get annoyed when my narrator is unreliable so neither option was working for me anyway.

Despite all the issues I had with it, I found Jellicoe crazily addictive. One night during my reading I was less than two thirds of the way through the book and was suddenly overcome with a desperate desire to KNOW THE ENDING RIGHT NOW. Not one to peek or skim ahead, I stayed up til 1:30 in the morning finishing the silly thing. And I liked it. If you've enjoyed Marchetta's other books, I'd say give this one a go, but don't make it the first one you read.

At this point, Marchetta changes genres and delves into the world of Fantasy with Finnikin of the Rock.  I have about fifty pages left of this one, so if I loathe the ending I may have to come back and update this post. It's always risky talking about a book you haven't finished, especially if you're telling people you like it before you've read the ending (*cough*hungergamesseries*cough*).

I could get you a plot blurb for Finnikin, but I'm such a hater of "ye 'old cliched Fantasy blurb" that I'm going to skip that and just tell you about it myself.

Basically, Finnkin is this young man who spends pretty much the entire book Walking the Earth with a typical mentor character Sir Topher. They end up travelling a girl named Evanjalin (another thing I hate about high Fantasy - authors screwing around with typical spelling for something more "exotic". Can't she just be called Evangeline? I mean really, Marlina.), who claims that the long-lost-king is alive and she can lead them to him. Which basically means that the first few chapters are LOADED with Infodumps about said long-lost-king and his connection to the land and to Finnikin and all that jazz.

Seeing as she spent so much time on world-building I could tell Marchetta was enjoying the genre change. She particularly enjoyed the freedom that she had to torture her characters in ways that you can't really do in a 'real-world' story. By the time I was halfway through the book, the lead characters either endured or were revealed to have endured between them: punch-ups, sword-fights, strangling, ambushes, branding, thievery, defensive killing, numerous battle wounds, and attempted rape (probably loads of other things too that I've forgotten about). Oh, and let's not forget all the name-calling, of course. We are in a Fantasy novel, after all!

Once again there was something about the characters and the writing style that gripped me, and I found myself taking the book to work and devouring a few pages on my break. I was thinking about it A LOT, which is a big deal for me when I'm reading a book. I kept wondering what was going to happen next.

Now, if you're planning on reading the book, here's the part I can't help but mention, but beware, VAGUE SPOILERS AHEAD (I say vague because I'm only really giving stuff away if you're a cluey kind of reader. I'm not so cluey).

I was pretty ok with all the happenings of this story until I got within the last third of the book. Remember, I still haven't finished it yet, so I may have to update if my opinion on the ending changes.... But CURRENTLY I am pretty annoyed. You know that moment when something predictable shows up on the horizon of the novel, and you're like "nah, I trust this author. She'll do something different. There'll be a different twist that's not so predictable"...

And then before you're ready, the unfortunate King Incognito trope, coupled with its typical partner in crime Not Quite Dead comes crashing down upon the story in all its glorious clichedness. AND to make matters worse, the ever-hated (by me, anyway) LAST-MINUTE PERMANENT NAME CHANGE of one of the characters throws itself in for good measure, and as usual, the new name sucks compared to the original name (Shasta/Cor, anyone? UGH.). I searched for about half an hour for a name-change trope that suited this, but I couldn't find one, surprisingly. If you locate it, let me know please!

Anyways. I'm not a big fan of High Fantasy because of all the tropes and cliches that are always around, but I still enjoy Marchetta's writing. Why? I honestly can't answer that for sure. But there's something about her writing that grips me, and I only hope that one day my own writing has that little piece of special magic that keeps the reader reading.

Realism VS. Relatability

Disclaimer: The Spiderman/Batman character examples that are to follow have nothing to do with the original comic book characters ... well, they might, but I wouldn't know because I haven't read them. So the point is, if you're a Spiderman/Batman of comic book origin lover, please don't argue with me, I admit I am uneducated in ways other than the big blockbuster movies. No offence is intended. 


The age-old Spiderman VS. Batman argument comes up a lot in our house. This blog post isn't necessarily an argument - that is to say, I'm not trying to diss Batman. The argument here is Realism VS. Relatability, and my superheroes are the vehicle. 


Before we get into this, my computer tells me that relatability is not a word. The online merriam-webster dictionary tells me otherwise (but who knows how reliable that is). I can't think of any alternative word that means what I'm assuming we all know relatability means, so I'm going to roll with it anyway. I'm a writer! I can make things up! And I say if it wasn't a word, it is now!


On with the show. So what is the difference between realism and relatability? Why does it matter? 


As a writer and a reader, I enjoy both of these things in a novel. I like finding ways to relate to the characters, the situations, the emotions in a story. I also appreciate the effort an author puts in to make their story world and the way their characters act and react realistic. However, in most stories there is a point where, for the sake of the epic tale you are weaving, an element of your realism must be left behind. This is where Suspension of Disbelief, aided by relatability, comes to the rescue. 


Suspension of disbelief basically means, 'I'll accept your skewed reality because I'm enjoying the story'. It's that moment in the story where - what the? - Harry Potter is a wizard. Mole does spring cleaning. Christian wins Satine's heart with a love medley of pop songs while the moon sings and fireworks appear out of nowhere. John McClane miraculously survives, again. This is the moment where the writer must let go of the story's safety harness. It's time to freefall, and the reader/watcher is the parachute. Are they going to stick with the story?


In the examples I've used, I would safely assume that the answer is yes.  But why is that? Why do we love this stuff? Why aren't we yelling at the book/TV screen in confusion? This stuff can't happen! It's preposterous! Magic doesn't exist. Animals don't talk. The moon doesn't sing! And if this were real, he would have died back there. So why do we stick with the story? 


Simply, it's because we enjoy imagining things that couldn't really happen. But to be more specific, we enjoy it because despite the lack of realism, there is still an element of relatability that is realistic to us. Harry Potter thought he was an Average Joe like the rest of us. Mole's OCD reminds you of someone you know. The love Christian has for Satine is real to us. And John McClane ... well, we'd be disappointed if he died when he should have ... so we're rooting for him against the odds! 


What does this have to do with Spiderman and Batman, you ask? Well, these two heroes are what sparked the idea for this post. My brother Justin tells me that the great thing about Batman is that because he doesn't have proper super powers, it's his awesome technology that makes him a superhero. It's cool and realistic and whatnot because it could potentially happen. I agree with him on this, but my problem with Batman is that as a 19-year-old Australian girl who is disappointed about missing out on $100+ pay because she's home sick instead of working her 6-hour shift at a local cafe, I find Gotham city billionaire Bruce Wayne a leetle difficult to relate to. (Although right now, I probably sound a touch like Batman ... where are those lozenges?)


Spiderman, on the other hand? Photography-loving, nerdy teenager who, after getting his powers, spends his evenings scribbling away with textas designing a superhero costume? This works a little better for me.


The big point here is, who do you want your story to relate to? There's obviously a difference between the relatability of Spiderman and Batman (which includes the emotional states of the characters, their interactions with other characters, and the inner journey they take throughout their stories, but I won't go into all that detail). This isn't to say that I don't like Batman. I like the Batman films and there is much to love and appreciate. But as a big believer in the ability and need to emotionally invest in a character, I don't really have any emotional attachment to Batman (like, if he dies at the end of his upcoming film ... well, nice knowing you Batman.)


How much have you considered realism and relatability in your story? Have you found a balance? Are you reaching out to your target audience? 


In my own novel I have a lot of different things to consider. I'm already relying heavily on the reader's suspension of disbelief because by the fourth paragraph of the first page, one of the characters is revealed to be a shapeshifter. A big portion of realism has already flown out the window at this stage. And now it's up to me to keep my reader hooked. Sure, the fact that something totally out of the norm has just happened is enough to keep any reader going for several more pages, but in order to get them to Chapter Two, I need some relatable material. My shapeshifter is about 60 years old, rather gruff, lives in a rundown terrace house and probably hasn't showered for a week. He's not really relatable to my YA audience (roughly aged 15), so I bring in a younger character who, despite her air of confidence, is secretly a little scared of this guy. Now we have relatability. And we also have intrigue. What's she doing at this guy's house? What will happen there? 


My hopes are that these elements combined will lead to my reader turning the page and continuing to unravel the story. If I'm a good enough writer, I just might be right. 


If there are any writers out there reading this (a big squishy hug hello if you've come via NaNoWriMo), I hope this post is of some use to you. Happy writing!

An Introduction to French Cinema: It's Hard to Get Aquainted

So, I'm yet to start this series because I'm yet to find a decent guide to help me along. My plan of attack is to watch some things in a historically chronological order, whilst also watching some contemporary stuff at the same time.

Problem is, I've not idea where to begin. There's an awesome-looking book on Book Depository called Studying French Cinema, but it's still three weeks away from release. So I'll have to wait on that one. I've looked at a couple of others such as French Cinema by Charles Drazin, but one review I read said that he sort of gives up on giving films made after 1959 (ie, after Luc Godard's Breathless) the attention they deserve. So that sort of doesn't work for me, because I'd like a book that thoroughly covers both old and new history. Especially new, because the broad Film History book I have right now has a decent amount of French film beginnings ... but it's pretty hefty reading and I'm only up to 1912 or something, so mentions of accessible French titles has so far been scarce.

I went into Newtown today in hopes that some of the bookshops that import from overseas would have something I could purchase, but in four shops I only found one second-hand book, and it was about comparing French films with their American remakes and studying the influence that the French film industry has on America. So that was no good.

It frustrates me how difficult it is to get books about the history of other countries here. Like, as if I want to read about Australian history (film or otherwise)! Who does that? It's no wonder bookshops here are failing and people are buying more things online. I can't find anything I want in an actual shop. Trying to find research material for Eloquence was (and still is) a bit of a nightmare; when looking for specific British history one can find only broad world history books or general overviews of the history of Britain, which isn't helpful because that means I'm buying a book for $30 and only getting like $5 of relevant reading material. So again, most of my books on the 19th-century have arrived in the mailbox from the UK. Obviously, when I go there I will be taking an empty suitcase and buying books.

As for film sections themselves, most of the space is taken up by Hollywood (obviously) with a few dodgy-looking titles about Australian film or about one specific person like Martin Scorcese (who is awesome, but in this case irrelevant).

So, this series will continue with content that is ACTUALLY ABOUT A MOVIE ... later on. Once I work out what the heck I'm doing. Meanwhile, I'm going to watch Public Enemies and pretend I'm cultured because Marion Cotillard is in the movie. Hehe.

P.S When I was in Newtown today there was a big crew of 30+ people shooting some kind of short film or a show. I stood around like a lost idiot and watched them for a bit, but they were all busy and I couldn't really ask them what was going on. I imagined they were from Sydney Film School, even though I knew they couldn't be because the crew was too big and very professional. Moral of this story: I'm excited for film school to start. One more month!

French Cinema

I know, I know. I need to start blogging regularly again! I've been dying to but I've been kinda lacking on the content front. So now, I have a topic. Thus I am blogging now to remind myself of said topic so that I  remember to research it and write about it. 


French Cinema. 


Currently, my experience of French Cinema extends only as far as French actresses in Hollywood films (Marion Cotillard, Mélanie Laurent), Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) by George Méliès,  À bout de souffle (Breathless) by Jean Luc-Godard, and The Artist, by Michel Hazanavicius.


All of this experiences have been rather incredible, actually. So I have come to the conclusion that the French know what they're doing when it comes to film (well, I ought to know that, seeing as France is home to only the most prestigious film festival on the planet). Therefore, I have decided to begin a blog series which shall be entitled An Introduction To French Cinema. So while I learn about all this amazing stuff, you can learn too!


One reason I'm choosing France over any other place in the world to begin my foreign film exploration is because France is probably the most important to the film industry. The film industry was basically born in France and the cinematograph was invented there, so quite obviously there's a lot of history to explore. I bought this book called Film History: An Introduction, and it's quite amazing and I plan to read it cover-to-cover, no matter how long that takes. It's got loads in there about French cinema among other industries, of course. 


Anyways! By publishing this post I have now committed to this project ... I'm not really sure exactly what I'm doing, so I guess it'll be a nice little adventure. Wish me luck :) 

Just gonna unload right here.

My brain is in a kind of sensory overload right now. I have to be at work tomorrow morning so I should totally be asleep but my brain was all YOU MUST WRITE and seeing as I haven't blogged it about a million years, here I am to unload all my current thoughts. Prepare for the word-vomit.

Firstly, I'm still overloaded from the interview I just had with one of the teaching guys at Sydney Film School. Pretty much got accepted. Celebrations will be had as soon as my 'letter of offer' arrives in the mail. Should be by next week. I'm pretty thrilled. Also really not keen to do the rest of the portfolio IFSS wants me to do, because my harddrive has crashed and so it means extra work to try and pull together photos. Haven't entirely ditched this possibility yet so will probably try a little for this next week.

Film school looks like it's going to be REALLY intense. I mean, the the teacher interviewing me today even kinda warned me it was intense. So I'm a little freaked out about that. Granted, everyone said that TAFE was going to be crazy intense and it really wasn't until the very last month. This, however, is probably a different story. Preparing myself for crazy-intenseness.

I have to say I'm a little worried that I won't be able to keep my cafe job if film school gets crazy. Every time I think about that my brain goes 'but you have to save money for your trip!' and then I try not to think about that. It will happen. It must. Also praying that something opens up at the dvd shop, because how cool would it be to study and film school and work in the dvd shop at the same time? I basically live there anyway....

Moving on to unrelated topics, I'm in the mood to right one of those average present-day kind of stories but have ZERO inspiration. Absolutely no scenes or key ideas are coming to mind. I can't even form a decent character or even decided on a name. It's killing me. I touched up a few scenes of the super power novel last week, but haven't done any writing since. Annoying. Got a crazy work week but hopefully some inspiration will come to me on my day off.

Been watching loads of movies lately, as per usual. Need to get back into some proper film reviews/ACTUAL BLOGGING, but for now will just list the stuff I've been watching lately to catch myself up:

Zodiac. David Fincher's true-story-about-a-serial-killer was quite brilliant. My love of Fincher has officially increased as expected. Also my love of Jake Gyllenhaal. Totally adorable.

The Godfather. YES I FINALLY SAW IT. Was a very good film. Keen for part two.

Rendition Road. Crappy film with a totally weak ending as I expected (was in the mood for something that required little thought), though half-decent acting from Ruffalo, Connelly and Phoenix. Also slightly depressing what with the 'bereavement themes' and all.

There Will Be Blood. Reallllyyyyyy strange, strange film. Beautiful cinematography though, so well worth it.

PIRATES! Caught one of the very last sessions in the cinema with Justin. Quite hilarious and very cute. Also a heavy user of this trope, unfortunately.... The amount of times we turned to each other and whispered "how is this G-rated?!"

Anyways, gotta go to bed. Would love to keep writing but my eyelid are drooping. Sleep beckons. Will lastly mention that I bought Film History: An Introduction by Bordwell and Thompson, it's big and fat and wonderful I can't wait to start reading it. Tata for now lovelies, glad to be back.

Screencap Saturday #3

Howdy!

Saw a film last night called The Beaver. It's been on my to-watch list for a while now for various reasons (Jodie Foster directed it, the DoP also did The Young Victoria, it stars Yelchin and Lawrence, etc).

The film stars Mel Gibson as the "very depressed individual" Walter Black, who develops an alternate personality through a beaver puppet that he finds in a dumpster. Walter uses this "Beaver" personality as his sole means of communication, until what seemed at first to be a kind of therapy spirals into a mania. Jodie Foster stars as his wife Meredith, torn between leaving him and helping him, and Anton Yelchin as his teenage son Porter, who is determined to be nothing like his father. The subplot involves Porter and his relationship with cheerleader Norah, who hires him to write her valedictorian speech.

The movie is fairly predictable but I enjoyed it quite a lot. It's very tasteful visually - there's some excellent use of block-color that I particularly appreciated, and the camera work is nice and clean. I don't think Jodie Foster has directed much before this film (2011), but I'd be interested to see what she does with directing in the future. Anyway, this is, of course, a screencap post, so here's 32 of my favorite frames from the film.

"It's a television show!"

Disclaimer: Spoiler alert. But if you've read the book, there's not too much to worry about, I guess. 

Howdy, folks. Previously I blogged about the incredible trailer that was The Hunger Games. For those of you who remember that blog post, it was me gushing about how brilliant the trailer was, even though I didn't much care for the book. Admittedly, my opinion on The Hunger Games series has altered somewhat. On reading the first book a second time I found more to appreciate about it. I still don't love everything about it, but it's become one of my more favorable YA novels of recent years.

So, the movie. The amazing EMPIRE gave me free tickets to a preview screening of the film after I entered their little 25-words-or-less competition. Yay me! Thanks EMPIRE. You're awesome.

Justin and I rocked up at Event Cinemas last night and stood in line excitedly with a rather mixed-bag of other ticket-winners. Unlike the crowd for the sneak peak of The Amazing Spiderman that I was also in, this sprawling line outside the theatre was filled with your average two-best-friends and girls-who-give-free-tickets-to-boyfriends, I was surprised to also find myself standing between old-people-who-probably-don't-know-what-they're-about-to-watch-like-how-did-you-even-find-empire's-website, and woman-who-brought-her-completely-ignorant-work-colleague-along. Interesting.

Anyway! Sorry, I like to ramble. Let's get on with the show.

As also stated in my previous THG-related blog post, I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps the movie could be better than the book. In some visual ways, yes, I'll say it was. The film enabled us to see things only briefly mentioned and left to our imaginations in the books, so that was a plus. What director Gary Ross left out, visually, was a major disappointment.

I'll start with the beginning shots. Thankfully, this is where I was most disappointed with the movie, so this review (sort of) (somewhat) goes up from here. We're first introduced to District 12. I would describe what we saw here, but heck, I don't even know how to describe what I saw. Gary Ross, you really wasted this part of the movie.

Being a cinematography lover (DoP is my dream job, don'tcha know), I was admittedly shocked at Ross' choice of camera technique for conveying District 12. He chose to show us parts of this impoverished town in close-up shaky-hand-held shots. Like, ridiculously shaky. Like OMG-we-forgot-the-tripod-but-I-had-so-much-coffee-this-morning-who-even-cares! kind of shaky. Stop moving the camera around, guys, I can't see a thing. So yeah, I don't really I know what I was looking at. I think District 12 is a place full of boring poor people who play in the dirt? It's a good thing I read the book, then. To quote Stephanie Zacharek for Movieline, who I totally agree with: "You wonder, particularly in the District 12 scenes, why [Ross] didn't just screw the camera into the damned tripod: the stillness would have been classical and elegant and better suited to the emotional tone and texture of this part of the story". You said it, Stephanie. I don't know what he was thinking.

The camera also rushes through The Reaping, when all the kids file in to get their names drawn out of a glass bowl, two of them to be taken away to compete in The Games. By this point I understood some of his reasoning behind the shaky camera - the moments when Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss is trying to keep her composure while looking for her panicky little sister made perfect sense - but as for the rest of the movement in these early scenes, I was at a loss for why the camera was trying to force a urgency into my mindset. I was expecting an eerie stillness, like the stony faces of the children waiting, a subtle sign of their rebellion. So yes, I was disappointed that the camera was telling me what to perceive. In my personal opinion, I like the camera's framework to be invisible wherever possible, and I didn't consider these scenes to be an exception.

So, moving on. After Katniss takes her sister's place in an emotional farewell (yes, I cried a bit, okay?), we are swept with her and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) into another world, one full of color and weird people and stuff. I liked the portrayal of The Capitol, probably because I found that part the hardest to picture when reading the book, but I still felt there was something missing. If you've seen any of the promotional posters for the film, particularly the ones of Elizabeth Banks' Effie Trinket advertising makeup products or something, those alone gave more insight into The Capitol's materialistic mindset, and I felt that any real "heart" of any people in the movie, save Katniss and Peeta, was missing.

That being said, when all the tributes are presented on their chariots to thrill the obsessed audience ... well, that was pretty epic. Good soundtrack. CGI was a touch lame, but whatever.

I enjoyed some of the scenes in the arena better on screen than I did on page, like the tracker-jackers and the wall of fire. Action scenes like that don't always sounds as good on paper, so I was glad to get a visual (so having said that, I'll politely ignore the lack of variety in the actual scenery. I swear Katniss passed that same tree and mossy rock twenty times).

All righty, that's about all I have to say on the visuals. Let's get down to the nitty gritty - the acting.

Personal favorite is Stanley Tucci's Caesar Flickerman, the host of The Hunger Games' television show, and the commentator overseeing the action in the arena. I'm a huge fan of Stanley, and was thrilled to see his name on the cast list when the film was first announced. He really was perfect in this role and I was glad to see he got plenty of screen time. Sadly, for other greats like Woody Harrelson (playing Peeta and Katniss' mentor Haymitch), the script diminished his role to a lot of sitting and standing in the background.

Lenny Kravitz as Cinna also seemed pretty good, but again he didn't have much to do on screen. Hopefully we'll see a little more of him in the second film...

Something the filmmakers did do well was the casting of the other tributes, particularly the Careers of districts 1 and 2. Although a lot of their screen time was nothing more than looking tough and sneering behind Katniss' back, they did it well. Definitely all cast for the smug looks they could pull off, but that is of course, exactly what we wanted from them. One of the better (brief) action scenes is the girl-fight between Katniss and Clove, the girl from District 2, which ends with the massive hulking dude from District 11 smashing Clove's head into the cornucopia and knocking her dead. Sweet. Also freaky. But good action nonetheless.

Josh Hutcherson delivers as Peeta, especially during his early scenes before the Games. I loved how much drive there was behind his character. Favorite Peeta moment was probably him waving to the Capitol citizens as the train arrives in the city, and Haymitch says "See, he knows what he's doing."

As for the impossibly young tribute Rue (Amandla Stenberg)... she was far too out of place in the arena. Now, I know that sounds weird when I say it, because she's only twelve and is supposed to be out of place, but the problem lies in the visual representation of her character. She's too clean, too casual, looks too much like she's supposed to be on the Disney Channel or some adventure movie for eight-year-olds. There was no wide-eyed vulnerability, no desperation, no sense of a girl forced to grow up too fast, just a girl.

It's Jennifer Lawrence that manages to carry Rue's character into the emotionally-invested zone. Katniss' reaction to Rue's death is perfect. She looks at her in the same way she does her young sister Prim (Willow Shields). The set up of this scene is perfect because you're purposefully reminded of Prim, and when Katniss whispers "I'm sorry" with as much emotion as you can squeeze into two words, I was tearing up. Then she garnishes Rue's body with flowers, and the scene is intercut with shots of District 11 swelling into an angry mob. If you're not crying by the time Katniss is crying, well ... either you're a hard-hearted blockhead or I'm a marshmallow. I know, I know, give me a good actor crying on screen and I'm an emotional wreck!

The point is, I knew this movie was going to be good as soon as I heard Jennifer Lawrence was playing Katniss (if you haven't seen her in Winter's Bone, what are you waiting for??), and she carries this film to make it a winner. She's just so watchable. She takes in everything around her and makes herself part of the set, part of the story. The bit where she wins me over (theoretically, that is - she'd won me over before she even started shooting) is her interview with Caesar Flickerman.

In the scene Katniss is wearing a dress with a hem that bursts into flame when she spins around, designed by her stylist Cinna. After she shows it off for the audience, she finally relaxes and we get her first ever genuine smile of the movie. What's great about Lawrence is that she's a totally different person when she's smiling. She has the ability to mask her emotions (something any great actor should be able to do), so when Katniss finally puts her shields down and lets the Capitol audience in, the real audience watching the movie is also drawn in to the character. Caesar Flickerman ends the interview by asking Katniss what she said to her sister after she volunteered to take her place. 'I told her I would try to win for her', says Katniss, and just as it's intended to be, that's the moment where we see the real Katniss Everdeen. If it weren't for Jennifer Lawrence's strong performance, this film would probably have nothing going for it but Stanley Tucci wearing a blue wig and laughing for some unexplainable reason.