Category: Book review

Catching Fire

catching fire

Catching Fire is the second story of the Hunger Games trilogy, for which I’m covering Mockingjay on Thanksgiving. So to get us in the mood, let’s get into the book and movie.

Picking up almost a year after Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark won the 74th Hunger Games, the pair is about to set off on there victory tour, still pretending for the cameras they are madly in love. Unfortunately, President Snow is not convinced. He shows up to Katniss’s house, telling her that there stunt at the end of the games triggered problems in the other Districts, unrest was beginning and the people were rebelling. If she wants to bring peace, he tells her they’d better act more in love so the public would think they were just lovesick teens and weren’t trying to spit in the Capitol’s face. As hard as they try though, the other Districts are already riled up. The fire is catching. As the 75th Hunger Games approaches, the third quarter quarrel, snow delivers the special rule of this special game: the tributes would be limited to the past champions of games past. Being the only female winner from District 12, Katniss is selected by default. This time it’s Katniss and Peeta against the old champions, being forced into uneasy alliances to survive a game Snow will make damn sure they can’t win…

Both book and movie are really good sequel; the movie was a major improvement over the first. The book is a bit slow at first but racks up tension really well, leading to a epic oh shit ending. My favorite part of the book are the backstories of the other tributes. As for the movie, the acting and action improved a lot as well as the special effects. This time they add some humor to it but it surprisingly works well and well placed. In the end I think the book and movie are definitely worth checking out. Best wishes and may the odds be ever in your favor

Hunger Games

hunger games book Something about the upcoming holiday made me think of the amazing book and the lame ass movie. Yes, I said it, the first movie sucked. Seriously, I almost got me and a friend kicked out of our local movie theater because I was that pissed. I’m going to predominately focus on the book, but oh I will get to the movie at the end.

Katniss Everdeen is a pissed off, quiet, depressed seventeen year old girl living in District 12 in the post-apocalypse of Panem.  Each district provides a service to the tyrannical Capitol that reigns supreme and every year, to prove there might and superiority, they hold the Hunger Games. Two tributes, one boy and one girl from each district are placed in a game for all to see where the only victor is the child who manages to kill and outlive the others. Prim, Katniss’s little sister is chosen but Katniss takes her place alongside Peeta Mellark, a handsome, kind young man who showed her mercy years before in her darkest days. Katniss is a survivor though and skilled with a bow, but will that be enough to survive?

Ok, so I am a huge fan of the book trilogy. I seriously devoured the book page to page when I first read it and still held up after a few rereadings which is impressive. Here is two reasons why I hated how it was adapted: the book was in first person and almost nothing was as I imagined it. As I said above, Katniss is a quiet, introverted young woman so the first person perspective added depth and melancholy where needed; during the movie there were times she acted bizarrely. If you read the book, it may make sense but as a casual movie goer it may make you ask WTF? Next, a lot of this wasn’t how I imagined. Much like an experience with the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the story in the first Hunger Games gave me hard, visceral images without really giving them to me, making me imagine them rather than washing the page in fictional blood and guts. The movie doesn’t show you jack shit but you get a nice assload of shaky-cam. Two huge gripes I have is that for a district riddled with poverty, coal dust, and starvation, our lead actors look pretty damn well fed and ugh- Peeta your damn family can barely afford food but you can gel your hair, bullshit ahoy!  And the second thing, the final monsters got WAY bitched down from the book and on top of that, the CGI effects for them look like shit. I do enjoy the music in the movie and Woody Harrelson is awesome as Haymitch but that’s about all the good I got to say. Please read the book trilogy. Best wishes, may the gaming gods bring you glory and may the odds be ever in your favor.

 

5 great stories from DC new 52

jla

The new 52 comic run brought us some cool new ideas as well as introduced me to a lot of new characters I feel in love with and even helped reshaped the way we viewed some of them. Working my way to number 1, here’s my list of 5 favorite DC new 52 stories starting with…

new 52 shazam 5. Shazam (volume 1)- I’m not a magic fan but I do love Black Adam, who stole every panel he appeared in for me. Menacing, intelligent, and powerful, he was a great way to start Shazam’s origin. After reading this, Adam became a favorite of mine.

new 52 suicide squad 4. Suicide Squad: Kicked in the teeth (volume 1)- I borrowed the first 3 volumes of the new 52 a year before the movie came out and absolutely devoured them. I loved a story based primarily of villains kicking ass and spouting dark 1 liners. Also, King Shark rules!

new 52 flash 3. Flash: Gorilla Warfare (volume 3)- I love Grodd. I love the Rogues. This book boils down to Flash and the Rogues teaming up to stop Grodd and his ape army. It’s badass and ends with a awesome fight and a Easter egg I loved.

new 52 aquaman 2. Aquaman: The Trench (volume 1)- Like many people, I never thought into Aquaman much. To quote Batman, “Arthur Curry, I hear you can talk to fish.) But the gorgeous artwork and epic fight got me on board instantly. 1 superhero vs a army of mutated piranha people, what’s not to love?

new 52 batman 1 1. Batman: Court of Owls/ Night of the owls (volumes 1 and 2)- It’s not everyday a great Batman story comes out that has nothing to do with Joker. In fact, this story brings the history we thought we knew deeply into question and not only is Batman and the Bat-family at match by these creepy, damn near unstoppable assassins but they truly test what Batman stands for and that is the sign of a great story.

Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Misery

misery film

Ya know how there’s a drawback to every career choice, no job is completely great and wonderful. I know being famous ain’t all it’s cracked up to be but this made me not want to be a writer, director, or any kind of artist. Misery is the rare kind of story that believably real and so much more terrifying because of it. Much like Pet Sematary, which I covered earlier, both movie and book are great but this time I can say I prefer the book, though the movie is still an amazing adaptation.

Paul Sheldon is a famous author of a series of books named after the main character Misery, which he has gotten fed up with over the years. He has a tradition to go to a cabin he has in the mountains when he’s about to finish a book. He finishes the last book in Misery’s series to his relief. On his way back down to go to his publishers, he gets caught in a storm storm and crashes his car. His car totaled, his body unconscious and wrecked, it looks bad for the author. But he is saved by a large, heavy woman named Annie Wilkes that brings him home and nurses him back to health. Annie loves the Misery books with all her heart. Looking through his bag, she finds Paul’s manuscript for a new Misery; Paul lets her read it, after all she did save his grumpy ass and nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Annie is full of girlish glee…until she reads the ending. She snaps, screaming at Paul, slamming him and his bed up and down in a violent rage. She forces him to burn the new book he has been working on and begin a new book to revive Misery, dedicated to her of course. Paul is in living hell, immobile, isolated from a world that thinks he’s dead except for a sheriff in the mountain town. But can Paul hold out until then while Annie grows more intensely mad and her true colors reveal themselves…

A main difference I get between the book and movie is that the two main characters are much more flushed out. In the book we learn a lot about Paul as he struggles to finish the book he never wanted to make and how by the end he almost loves the series again because of how much it challenged him. Annie’s portrayal either way amazingly lifelike but there were touches in the book that strangely made me relate her to Blaine the Mono from the third Dark Tower book. The movie does an amazing job with the acting, especially Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes, and never ceases to loose tension in it’s confined space. I highly recommend it if you enjoy good old fashion suspense over gore and body counts, though who can forget the hobbling?

Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary

“Sometimes Louis, dead is better.” Pet Sematary by legendary writer Stephen King was my introduction to his insanity and brilliance when I was three or four, not much older than poor Gage Creed. To this day the movie still has an impressive talent for creeping the shit out of me and tugging at my heartstrings a bit. The book is equally as good and pretty damn close comparison wise, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Louis and Rachael Creed move into a new house in rural Maine with daughter Ellie, cat Church and baby son Gage. Its a wide, picturesque place; a long road of speeding trucks separates them from there old, kindly neighbors Judd and Norma Crandall. The Crandalls and Creeds hit it off, especially Judd and Louis. Louis is a doctor, and first day at his new job, a young man named Pascow dies on his table after getting hit by a car while jogging.  Louis has dreams of Pascow’s ruined body warning him about something Judd once told the family, beyond the old Pet Sematary out back. While the rest of his family is away, Louis finds Church dead. Judd sees the pain on Louis’s face of having to break the news to Ellie. Judd reluctantly takes Louis to a very special place far beyond the ruins of the cemetery to bury Church. Judd tells him it used to be a special place for the Native Americans that used to live there; after a long trek, Judd tells him to bury his own. Days later, Church returns. Not the sweet lovable cat he knew, Church exists with a horrible stench and a lonesome, sometimes hostile temper. Louis asks Judd how the hell church came back. Judd tells him the legend of the land but stops short when Louis asks the obvious question, have ever buried a person up there. Pascow returns to Louis again, warning him away from the ground again. Time goes by and on a fateful summer’s day Louis finds himself with a broken heart and a breaking family when Gage perishes tragically. Against everything, Louis bring Gage to the burial ground and waits for his son to come home with horrific and tragic results…

A story this simple, genuinely genius in how frightening and sad it is proves why King is a legend at the craft. Whether you watch the unforgettable movie or took the extra initiative and read the book, they sync up really well. The characters feel realistic and flushed out well. A lot of the imagery sticks with you; the most memorable image from the movie to me is Zelda, Rachael’s dying sister. That shit stays with you man. Definitely locked in my  top 3 favorite Stephen King stories of all time, perhaps even my favorite considering how much it influenced me, I can’t recommend it enough. Thank you as always and just remember, “some lines aren’t meant to be crossed, doc.”

Eclipse

eclipse

So if I had to pick a best out of the Twilight series, Eclipse, book 3, would probably be my favorite. There is some compelling narration, decent lore building, and a fair amount of tension to leads to…shit. Two books building up to a grand ass revenge and it’s over in a paragraph. No epic fight, hell the fight were hoping for we never see; the movie at least did us that solid. But I need to do this right and summarize the plot of this. Ah hell, here it goes…

So months passed since New Moon ended, Victoria is still on the loose, the werewolves still hate the Cullens, and teen bullshit. Edward and Bella still going back and forth bout the whole I wanna be a vampire/ I have no soul cuz I’m a monster crap. Also Jacob is all emo again because Bella ain’t into dog sex, she’s all into screwing rich dead people. I always thought Bella was a gold-digger myself. Anyway, they’re also almost graduating from school and apparently people are disappearing in the city next to Forks. So Jacob pops up at there school, letting it out that the two factions almost had it out trying to get Victoria. Soon after, they discover Victoria is stalking Bella, Blah blah blah Victoria is trying to make an army of newborn crack vampires to kill Bella so the Cullens and werewolves have to band together and stop her. Oh and they get engaged while Jacob tries to jump into her pants.

Ok, so Eclipse is the best of the four. There is a fair sense of tension and some cool lore sprinkled throughout. BUT the dialogue is crappy, all the characters just feel whiny, all built tensions just squeak fart out instead of being a cool climax. The movie is full of the bad emo acting the Twilight movies are famous for but we do a decent fight at the end. The first couple minutes of the movie are a nice touch that actually can trick you into thinking its a horror- HAHAHA don’t fall for it. This movie maybe directed by David Slade, director of the totally underrated 30 days of Night movie but he couldn’t even save this damn movie.  Anyway, thank you for reading and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Goosebumps

goosebumps

I was insanely in love with Goosebumps as a kid. Hell, even as an adult me and Savior still find a bit of fondness for the series. R.L. Stine’s children’s horror series was huge in the 90’s, whether it was in the books or the show, it was damn near inescapable growing up then. The books are fast and memorable, having some good tension built up in stories like Welcome to Dead House and Say cheese and Die. Seriously, twenty some years old reading them I actually felt a little bit tense. As for the show, three stories stick out to me above the rest- The Haunted Mask 1 and 2, The Werewolf of Fever Swamp, and the Night of the Living Dummy stories. Slappy the dummy from that show creeps me out way more than Chucky or Annabelle, I don’t know how or why but that bastard creeps me out. What makes Goosebumps stand out most of all is the creativity behind the stories. Though a lot of the monsters and ghouls are things we’ve seen but Stine finds ways of making them his own. If you have Netflix, definitely check it out and many of the books can be found at your local library.

Carrie

Carrie bk

The classic that started it all for the legend that is Stephen King. I’m sure we’ve all either seen one of the 3 film adaptations or seen a parody of it somewhere, my first intro to Carrie was a moment in Tiny Toons for shit sake. If you haven’t been introduced to this classic, here’s the gist: a unpopular girl in high school gets bullied for being weird while at home she takes shit from her insanely over religious mother and learns she has the gift of telekinesis (the ability to move things with her mind.) When life looks to be looking up when she begins to understand the power and gets asked to prom by a popular guy, it violently goes to shit when she gets drenched in pig blood as a prank and Carrie goes apeshit. First I’m going to say I love the book. Every film has Carrie has a defenseless, skinny, quiet, girl but in the book we’re able to see her dark, hateful feelings boiling inside and her feelings on god which are interesting; of every adaptation I always enjoyed the book’s bleak ending the best. Carrie dies wounded on the side of the road after killing her mother, most of her classmates and destroying most of the town, just her and Sue Snell- the mean girl who took pity on Carrie. They talk one last time, Carrie driving her lifetime of pain into Sue’s memory like a nail, dying before sending out one last wave to scramble the minds of the town so they can’t remember much except that Carrie fucked them up. The 2002 film has an intersting ending where Carrie lived and her and Sue ran off, forever on the run. Of the films, 2002 was my favorite and most accurate to the book. For the original, Piper Laurie stole the show as Carrie’s mad mother, one of the scariest performances I’ve ever seen but Sissy Spacek is probably my least favorite Carrie. As for the 2013 remake, Chloe Grace Moretz gave a great performance as Carrie but besides that the movie was a modern day retread with DragonBall Z effects. Either way you go with it, it’s still a great story but I do recommend hitting the book first, it’s a quick but powerful read from a powerful writer.

Dark Tower 7: The Dark Tower

tower 7

At last Roland reaches the Dark Tower, but will he be the only one? The Crimson King’s forces are pressing down on our divided heroes, there is only one beam left holding the Tower up, Mordred is born and viscous, and Roland’s Tet is running out of luck. They come together to save Susannah as she gives birth to Mordred, at first a lovely baby boy that quickly reveals the other half of his breeding, showing off his spider form. He immediately kills Mia’s living form and soon after brings an end to Walter finally. Susannah wounds Mordred but he escapes, bleeding, vulnerable, and dying. The group reunites, suffering the first casualty of Callahan to get to Susannah. They head towards Blue Heaven, a massive breaker prison working on shattering the last beam. The Tet launches a badass strike on the prison to free the breakers, tragically losing Eddie in the process. The goodbyes are heartfelt and heart-wrenching but sadly won’t be the first. The Crimson King plots to kill Stephen King via the real life crash and this time Jake sacrifices himself to save King. He’s injured but not dead; Jake dies in Roland’s arms. Susannah is heart broken, first losing her husband then losing the boy she felt for like a son; Susannah and Oy start to feel contempt for Roland. They go on through a perilous winter and sinister fiends along the way, being followed by a sad, enraged Mordred all the way. In a last ditch effort, Mordred strikes them while they sleep, but Oy rushes to fight him off. Mordred kills him but Roland finally slays Mordred. Susannah and Roland part ways ; Roland and a young man they rescued are left to battle the Crimson King and step into the Tower.

Dark Tower 7 has to be one of the best finales I’ve ever read. When I first read it, I didn’t appreciate the final ending much but now I’m older I can appreciate the message it’s meant to convey. The quotes from Hurt by Nine Inch Nails and Bad Company fit the story perfectly because it’s a huge tragedy. I’m not going to lie to you, but I did shed a couple tears during some of the main characters deaths; King brilliantly made them all feel like real people so their ends have a true weight to them. Many of the fights are badass and for all it’s worth, I’m glad Roland found the tower because in the end “The Man in Black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed”.