Reviews and Ramblings

Let me preface this by saying that this is legit the first time that I have actually seen 'The Notebook'. That may be sad, it may not be. Regardless, it's true. I have heard about people talking about it since it was released in theatres in 2004. Essentially, it's about a woman's whom is retold the story of her own life from a book she wrote herself. At the end of the film, it shows her husband, Noah, flipping to the beginning of the book where she wrote "The story of our lives by Allison Hamilton Calhoun. To my love, Noah, Read this to me and I'll come back to you." The film is adapted from the Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name. I have not read the book either, so this was a completely new experience for me as I was expecting a very romantic, gushy, chick-flick type film. It took me about half of the film to realize that the story was about Allie as the flashbacks are longer than the current-time scenes. The story itself is very beautiful ...

This film adaption based off of the novel "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins, came as a surprise to me. Having just completed the 3-book series before I watched the first film was certainly helpful because otherwise I would have been highly confused had I only read the first book. While watching the film, the person I was with had to have some scenes explained by me as simply saying 'Book 2' or 'Book 3' because the scenes were actually from stuff that happened not in the 1st book. In the novel, there were quite a few flashbacks - in the film, the flashbacks were much less in number, but also not shot the way I expected. Beware there are spoilers of the storyline and some details as this is more a comparison of the book to the film. Then again, the entire film was shot in a way I was not expecting. The angles of shots, the use of music over silent scenes, and the overall choices by director Gary Ross were not pleasing to myself, a self-described fan of ...