believe the legend beware the wolf

Yay for the super huge movie poster! So as I mentioned in my last post I saw the movie Red Riding Hood over the weekend. And contrary to other reviews, IT WAS A GOOD MOVIE.

Personally, I think that the only reason this movie is getting hated on is because its director, Catherine Hardwicke, was also the director of the first twilight movie, and well YOU KNOW how people cannot stand anything related to twilight. But I'm sorry, I thought she did a good job. So it's not the MOVIE OF THE CENTURY or anything, but it was still a decent movie.

This apparently was the weekend for spinoff movies, because Red Riding Hood is also very obviously a spinoff and I don't have to tell you on what. The main character, or Red Riding Hood, played by Amanda Seyfried is Valerie, who lives in this little mountain town that occasionally gets attacked by a werewolf. Because of this, the village people live in constant fear, especially on wolf nights, aka, the nights in which there is a full moon. Valerie is in love with Peter, a childhood friend, but is arranged to marry Henry, who is a blacksmith, and therefore will make much more money than Peter, the lowly woodcutter. Personally, I thought Henry was cuter than Peter, but oh well.

The reason I thought this movie was good was really because of the suspense and the mystery. You know the wolf has to be one of the villagers, but you really DON'T KNOW WHO. It's like every other scene makes you suspect a different person, and then when you finally find out who it is, well, I can't say anything about that. It was scary in a very non-horror movie way, which I also liked because I really can't take super scary movies. And the scenery was gorgeous. I would love to know where they filmed it.

I don't know. I just keep reading these reviews where people say how bad it is. Maybe its just me. (And my friend, because she liked it too). Okay, the ending I wasn't really a fan of...they could have done a much better job. But overall it really wasn't half as bad as anyone is saying. I swear. Go see for yourself if you don't believe me!

i just saw the most beastly movie...

So I saw TWO MOVIES THIS WEEKEND. YAYYYYYYY. Movie number 1 which I saw on Friday was BEASTLY. And that title kind of makes me want to use Beastly as an adjective. Though I'm not sure if it will be a positive or negative adjective. Anywayyyy then the second movie which I saw on Saturday was Red Riding Hood.

And here was the Beastly poster! (I am still thinking of it as an adjective!!!)

And now I just made this SPLIT SECOND decision to make this into TWO POSTS instead of one because this may be longer than I thought. Only because I thought it would be unfair to put a post about Beastly and not include a picture of Alex Pettyfer and his abs.

.

You can thank me later.

Anyway, Beastly is a modern day spinoff on Beauty and the Beast. Apparently it was based on a book? But anyway I don't think I need to tell anyone the Beauty and the Beast story. If you didn't see Disney's animated version than I am quite sorry that you were such a deprived child. So the beginning of the movie was okay...actually that's a lie. In the beginning of the movie, all I could think was WOW THIS SUCKS. It's only redeeming quality was Alex Pettyfer, but then he had to get all ugly so it ruined it. Boy do I sound shallow. But seriously, the beginning was MEHHHHHHHH. Then that blind guy appeared and suddenly it got a whole lot better. That blind guy was FUNNY!!!! And then some cute romance happened, you know, some AWWW moments that made me smile, and when I was walking out, I probably still had that goofy smile on my face that is the result of said AWWW moments. I think they could have done better with this movie. Especially if it was based on a book, though I'm not sure if that's true quite yet...*Googles* Okay I just looked at the wikipedia article on the book and that was wildly different. Geez. Okay maybe if they went along with the book? I don't know, but it could have been better. Not that it was terrible or anything. I mean it was decent. But nothing I would go home and blog about, ya know? Oh wait...

and the academy award goes to

So in honor of the Academy Awards (which I had a great time watching, I might add) I decided that it would be TOTALLY awesome if I came up with MY OWN ACADEMY AWARDS. Not exactly like the Oscars exactly though. Because I am choosing the categories, and then it counts for all the movies in the world! That I've seen. Ahem. Anyway here we go.

The best OMG endings:

1. Inception

2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

3. Black Swan

The best soundtrack (I am a sucker for soundtracks, I'm sorry)

1. Pirates of the Caribbean

2. Inception

3. Harry Potter

The best to make you cry

1. Titanic

2. Pearl Harbor

3. The Last Song

The best based on a book

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

The best animated

1. Toy Story

2. Mulan

The best songs

1. "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast

2. Basically every song in Mulan

The best kiss

1. Jack and Rose's first kiss in the Titanic

2. Will and Elizabeth's first kiss in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Best Scenery

1. Lord of the Rings

2. Inception

Best Lead Actress

1. Natalie Portman in Black Swan

Best Lead Actor

that's a good question.

When I think of the best lead actor, I'll add that haha. But now I'm finished!

By the way, I made a tumblr. I actually like tumblr. But its just for pictures. I swear I won't be like those other people that put their life stories :)

but which of you can embody both swans? the white and the black.

So I saw Black Swan yesterday. And I have to admit. It was very very good. I liked it a lot. My heart was poundingggggg at the end of it. Like when the credits started rolling, my friend and I just looked at each other like WHAT JUST HAPPENED.

Basically, the premise is that this girl Nina is a ballet dancer, and upon getting chosen as the lead for her troupe's production of Swan Lake, gets so overwhelmed with the pressure, that she goes crazy. Literally. But there were a lot of things going on in it besides that. The big thing with Nina playing the lead role, is that although she plays the white swan perfectly, she can't seem to get the black swan just right. As Thomas (pronounced To-ma), the ballet director says, "The truth is, when I look at you all I see is the white swan. Yes, you're beautiful, fearful, and fragile. Ideal casting. But the black swan? It's a hard f*cking job to dance both." So also in this movie you really see Nina evolving from the white swan to the black swan. And at the same time as this, Lily, a new dancer from San Francisco, also comes into play. Lily's personality is like the black swan, so at first the image is Nina as the white swan and Lily as the black swan. They even have Nina wearing white all the time, and Lily wearing black. But as the movie progresses, this obviously changes because Nina too, with Lily's influence, becomes like the black swan herself.

There was just so much going on in this movie, and I don't really want to spoil anything for anyone. But there is just so much that I would love to say. Like my theories for what really set Nina off, what really made her break down. Obviously in the beginning she wasn't entirely normal, but she REALLY went off on the deep end by the end.

So here are the many things I think came into play. This won't spoil the ending, at all, but you might not want to read it anyway, because it does go into specifics for certain things. It's not that big of a deal in any case. I would read it if I were you, but if you're one of those people that can't have ANYTHING given away, then don't read the next paragraph.

Okay. The first component to Nina-going-crazy is obviously the career she's in. Being a ballet dancer isn't easy. There's a LOT of pressure. Also, Nina doesn't really have a life. She's sexually repressed, and it only makes it worse when Thomas basically starts hitting on her. Because he keeps like kissing her and feeling her up and saying stuff to her, and even though some of it actually might be to make her a better dancer (I know that sounds crazy, but you have to see it to understand), it kind of screws with her head, because she actually starts becoming very attracted to him, but she doesn't know how to express it. There's also this weird thing with Lily. Nina gets deluded into thinking Lily is after her role, but actually Lily seems to be a pretty nice person. But even before that, well let's just say it seems like Nina has a little crush on Lily, but again this might just be her being sexually repressed, so she's confused about her feelings. The final thing that sends Nina off into the deep end is her mother. Now, Nina's mother seems to be a very nice lady, but the problem is that she really babies her. I'm pretty sure Nina is supposed to be about college age (obviously she doesn't go to college because she's a ballerina), so why should her mother be cutting her fingernails for her? I mean Nina still calls her Mommy. Come on. So put all of these things together, and you get the delusional crazy person that Nina becomes. It's really too bad though, because she was a nice person in the beginning.

In conclusion, Black Swan was a very good movie. And though I love Inception to DEATH, I think it might beat it to win the Oscar.

harry potter review continued

This is the continuation of my review of the newest Harry Potter movie. If you haven't already, I suggest reading the first Harry Potter post before this one. As I said before, there are spoilers.

There was one thing I left out in the other post that I didn't like, something that they had left out. When Harry, Ron, and Hermione go to visit Xenophilius Lovegood, he is supposed to mention that Luna is out in the garden. However in the movie, they don't have him do this, and its altogether too suspicious to begin with. In the book its much more dramatic: Luna seems to be taking a very long time in the garden, which strikes both the trio and the reader as odd, and then when they go up to her room, they notice the thick layer of dust and lack of clothing. When they go back downstairs, they find Lovegood's newest Quibbler edition, with "Undesirable Number 1" on its front cover, a completely wtf moment when they realize that he had sent an owl to tell the Death Eaters. I just thought it wasn't a surprise at all in the movie because of the creepiness from the beginning. Also, I had wanted to see Luna's pictures of everyone, because I thought it was very touching.

Now for the things I liked/loved about the movie. There were two specific changes that they made that I actually really liked. The first was Hedwig. Hedwig's death was just so heartbreaking, and I think it made it so much better how in the movie she wasn't helpless in her cage, she had been flying out of it, alongside Harry, and had tried to help him by attacking one of the Death Eaters. Of course the Death Eater just sent a quick spell her way and she was gone, but I actually really loved how they had made her help Harry in her final hour. Funny how Hedwig's death drove me to tears just as easily as Dobby's. The second change they made that I liked was in the very beginning of the movie, where they actually showed Hermione putting the memory charm on her parents. It was definitely a tear-jerker, especially when Hermione disappeared from all of the pictures in the house.

Other things I liked about the movie were mostly the things that they kept the same. All of the moving around was pretty realistic, especially how they showed the passage of time, which reinforces the fact that Ron and Hermione were just waiting for something to happen, and how none of them really knew what to do. The scene where Harry dove into the lake to retrieve Gryffindor's sword was almost exactly how I pictured it, although the Horcrux "fighting back" was a whole lot more dramatic than I personally had pictured. Even the scene when Ron got splinched was somewhat how I had pictured it, and speaking of Ron, the sexual tension between Ron and Hermione was ridiculous (in a very good way). Through the whole movie I was just waiting for them to stop everything and start making out, though I had to remind myself that that particular scene will happen towards the end of the next movie. I also loved how they showed a bit of what would be happening at Hogwarts when the Death Eaters stopped the train, especially when Neville mouthed off to them, and I wish that I could remember the line or find it on youtube, but I can't. Either way, it was awesome.

Basically it was a really good movie. Of course they had to take out some scenes and change some things, but for once the scenes they took out weren't THAT overwhelmingly important, and the things they changed actually made the movie better. It could not have been exactly like the book, but for the things they kept the same, I think they did an extremely good job. I think I might actually want it on DVD now haha. So go see it cuz its awesome!!!!!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1!!!!

So yesterday, after a very long time of waiting, I finally got around to seeing the newest Harry Potter movie, and with great joy I tell you all that it was great! Honestly, it was probably one of the best since the first two. Prior to this movie, I always had the basic belief that after the second movie, the movies got progressively worse, and I am very glad to say, that the seventh movie broke this trend. It definitely wasn't exactly how I had imagined it, and they did alter a few things, but other than that, it stuck to the book better than any of the others, except maybe the first or the second.

Right now I'm going to go over a few things that I liked/did not like about the movie, specifically the scenes I wish they hadn't taken out, the changes that I actually did like, and just other random things I may have liked and disliked. Therefore, there are likely to be spoilers for people who either read the books but haven't seen the movie, and don't want to know what changes have been made, or those who have not read the books and have not seen the movie, so this stuff would REALLY spoil everything. If you are either of these people, I would suggest not reading any further, at least until you've seen the movie.

Okay so first off is things that I did not like, which basically is scenes they took out. I noticed that they took out three scenes that kind of bothered me. The first was in the beginning of the book, when the Durselys are leaving, and Harry and Dudley share a sort of moment. I had totally loved this scene in the book just because it made Dudley seem like not such a jerk after all! The whole thing was kind of touching, actually, and they took it out! :( The second scene that they took out was when they were in the dungeon or whatever at Malfoy Manor. Dobby had just appeared in the dungeon, so Peter Pettigrew was sent to investigate, since Dobby's apparating had made a loud crack. Harry and Ron immediately jump on Pettigrew, but Pettigrew is able to grab Harry's throat and begins to choke him. Harry reminds Pettrigrew that he once saved his life, causing Pettigrew to hesitate. This hesitation is seen as mercy by the silvery hand Pettigrew was granted by his master, Voldemort, so the hand strangles Pettigrew and kills him. In the movie none of this even happened, so those who haven't read the books don't know that Pettigrew is supposed to be dead. The final scene that I was upset that they left out was also in Malfoy Manor. When Bellatrix and etc. call up Griphook to deem if the sword is fake, in the book, Harry begs Griphook to tell them that the sword is a fake, even though they know it is not. This sets up what will happen later on in the book, and would have set up what will happen in the next movie, when Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Griphook rob a Gringotts vault.

This review seems to be taking much longer than I thought it would so I've decided I'll include the rest, which is mostly the good stuff, in another post, so goodbye for now. :)