Warm Bodies - A Review

This movie was on my Upcoming Movies that Have Tickled my Fancy post. I had written... and I quote 

"I'm terrified that this movie is going to be some sort of crazy Twilight type of thing - but I'm hoping it will definitely be on par with Zombieland (which I enjoyed immensely). The premise is simple. The world is now full of, and run by zombies, there are few people who are actually alive. Strangely, a zombie and a real-life girl, fall in love and put in to motion a series of events that may just save humanity!"

and I was right... painfully so. It really is some strange rendition of Twilight. I find it quite bizarre that we're watching so many movies these days, that when we get down to it, are about necrophilia. 

So anyway, Warm Bodies. It's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet gone wrong. R (he can't remember his real name) is a zombie who seems to be a little different. He has an internal monologue that is witty and hopeless but he is unable to express himself verbally and even finds it hard to do it physically. He's living in a world of zombies, but there are pockets of survivors around who are delicious and sometimes come out of hiding for food, medicine etc etc. Julie (the daughter of the president/leader of a group of survivors) ventures out with a group to find medicine. Unfortunately her boyfriend is eaten by R, and R falls in love with Julie through the memories he acquires from eating her boyfriend's brain. Love starts to change him and eventually it begins to touch the other zombies too. Suddenly a revolution has started that will change the future of the earth.

I found this movie a little uneven, and sometimes even a mess. There were some parts that were funny, and I did giggle, but ultimately it was slow, the CGI was... bleurgh, and unfortunately it really did border on boring a few times. The audience in the theatre seemed to really enjoy it. They laughed at all the right places (of course as we were coming out I realised that we were in a theatre with a bunch of teens).

Unfortunately the zombies just did not do it for me. In the movie there are zombies and there are  'bonies'. Bonies are what zombies turn in to when they give up... they kind of just rip their faces off and just become a bunch of skeletons who walk around eating everyone. It was all a little... confused. Y'see, at the beginning of the film we are told that zombies are slow, and take a long time to get anywhere, but then, if there is brain about they're suddenly sprinting and are super-beings. The bonies, they're fast too. Well, I don't know, the concept of the zombie had rules that they didn't follow and so as an audience member I didn't find them credible.

Although I had my reservations going to see the movie (originally we had been going to go watch Django Unchained again), it was interesting to see how this film kind of pandered to the necrophiliac swoonings of present YA books and culture. It seemed to be a movie created to cash-in on this buzz but at the same time try to be clever and Indie-ish. Unfortunately it failed. A sell-out is always going to be a sell-out no matter how you dress it up.

Nicholas Hoult seems to do as best as he can playing a corpse with little to no dialogue (although we do have the internal monologue playing over key scenes), but there are times that even he forgot what it was he was doing (maybe he was bored too). It's my opinion that Teresa Palmer is the star of the show, and that she really showed a brilliant range of emotion and carried the dialogue well. It's not her fault that the story didn't really make much sense. 

The soundtrack was actually one of its most redeeming features and that is something worth listening to again I think, for all of you guys who are inclined that way.

So my conclusion? Well, the best way to describe how I feel is disappointment. This really could have been awesome, but it wasn't. They even had a Shakespearean balcony scene which was an awesome nod in the right direction but otherwise it just didn't deliver. The action scenes sucked, and there just was not enough gore for a zombie movie. Strangely, although it was a love story - it was kind of uncomfortable and was far from believable  It is being commended as being something new - but really, truly, I did not find anything new in it at all. Sad, but true.

You may completely hate my review, maybe I'm being a little harsh? I don't know - but let me know what you think! Did you dislike it too? Did you LOVE it? If you did, I wanna hear why!

The trailer is below for those of you who are scratching your head wondering what movie I'm talking about!

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Feature and Follow

Good Morning everybody!

So, I stumbled across this great Friday tradition over at ParaJunkie's Blog and thought that I would hop on to the wagon and have a go! Every Friday two bloggers are featured on Alison Can Read and ParaJunkie and a question is asked. What we do then, is answer the question and cruise around reading other people's answers but also, come across a variety of blogs!  

I'm always looking for some new and awesome reading material, and always wanting people to find me, so this is a great idea!

Q: Happy Mardi Gras! If they were throwing the HOTTEST books off of a Mardi Gras float -- what would you do to have them throw to you…?

I'm not nearly as creative as those of you who have answered this question and so I imagine I would just look like this little ball of cuteness, all wide-eyed and excited, ready to lunge and grab any books that come my way (I remember hearing this a lot at basketball practise as a teen)

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Django Unchained - A Review

I had originally saved this post for when I went to the cinema to watch Django a second time, but we're actually off to watch something else (shhhh, don't be so impatient, I'll let you know soon!)

This film certainly caused quite a stir. 

I had expected something so explosively controversial that I waited on the edge of my seat to be horrified and shocked. What I found was a classic example of a Quentin Tarantino film! I went in to see a Tarantino movie... and that is exactly what I got. I think those who went in to the movie expecting anything different were kidding themselves.

I am a massive Tarantino fan. I've seen all his films I have all the soundtracks to all the movies. I'm sad that way, but I can't help it. I find his work so refreshing. His movies don't take themselves so seriously, I find the dialogue to always be brilliant and witty, and of course the action scenes are both grotesque but poetic at the same time!

Django Unchained is no different. It features a slave in America, who is bought by an ex-dentist (now a bounty hunter) to help track down three brothers. Although the dentist abhors slavery and acknowledges that he's being a complete hypocrite for partaking in this act of of buying Django for his own means, he promises that when the job is done Django will be a free man. When Django is freed he tells the good doctor that he wants to track down his wife. And that is what they do. Lots of carnage follows of course.

The soundtrack was awesome. There were times during fight scenes where Tarantino would just blast a rap tune, or at other times rockabilly type music or gospel inspired songs. It was all simply in his style and fit in a way that only a Tarantino film could pull off.

I didn't find the movie as gory as Kill Bill Vol. 1 - 2. I mean, Kill Bill was out of this world in terms of violence and blood. But the violence in Django Unchained was different because the violence was against those who could not defend themselves (such as the slaves), and those scenes in particular were very uncomfortable to watch. 

Django Unchained is both outrageous and audacious in it's subject matter but it is also a bromance in that it features two men, riding around on horses having strange conversations and looking out for each other. This is something that I feel has been ignored in the reviews that I've read. 

The movie is based in the south, the pre-civil war south, and features the many different ideas we have about the south in pre-civil war times. Tarantino does not mask the stereotypes but instead takes advantage of them. The film was quite like reading a comic book as are most of his films. 

Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio and Christoph Waltz are absolutely brilliant and believable and although the rave reviews have all commended Samuel L Jackson's performance I wasn't that keen to be honest as I found his to be the most uncomfortable performance of all. Leonardo DiCaprio's role as the deplorable Calvin Candie... slave owner and Francophile, is pretty amazing. He's just so loathsome and his character did not express ideas or beliefs that were routinely spouted in those times. Calvin Candie holds a particular interest in phrenology (and uses it to justify his views of the African slaves) and also the revolting sport of mandingo fighting. DiCaprio really is scarily believable, and gives Candie a look and feel of a young man who has grown old before his time.

Now, I've heard that part of the controversy was the constant use of the 'N-bomb' that littered this film... and it did! It was all over the place. But it didn't seem out of place. After all, it is 'The South', it is pre-civil war times, it is plantation owners and Ku Klux Klan members, and those who believe in phrenology... it is also Tarantino, remember how much the 'N-word' was used in Jackie Brown? Context is important, I feel (not that I believe this film to be historically accurate).

I've pored over Quentin Tarantino's defence of this film, I've also read his own very blunt views about how the US is still dealing in slavery (go have a read, his views are intriguing), and he's also pointed his finger towards countries in the world where you can see slavery openly practised. His views, opinions and arguments do not seem to me, to be those of an ignorant fool who has no respect for the past.

I thought that this film was good. Very good in fact. I enjoyed the writing, the shooting, the production in general. I enjoyed the performances, the soundtrack and the comic book feel. I also like the trailers. 

I'm just a teeny-tiny-Tarantino-bopper. Forgive me.

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Company of Liars - Karen Maitland

“You've heard tales of beauty and the beast. How a fair maid falls in love with a monster and sees the beauty of his soul beneath the hideous visage. But you've never heard the tale of the handsome man falling for the monstrous woman and finding joy in her love, because it doesn't happen, not even in a story-teller's tale.” Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

This book had been on my to-read pile for... I believe, around twelve months. I started it, stopped it, started it again, stopped again. But this time round, I knew that I would have to start it, and to finish it. It couldn't just sit around on my pile forever. 

Company of Liars is a straight up plague-time, mystery/thriller that is so epically Chaucerian I could barely contain myself. It's very Canterbury Tales(ish) in that it features a party of travellers who have been brought together by fate, each member has a devastating secret and each one is willing to lie to keep their secrets hidden (apart from one). The group is made up of an accused paedophile, a healer, a magician, two court players, a freaky child and a newly wed Scandinavian looking couple, and the leader and narrator of the company, Camelot, who sells relics. Together they attempt to outrun the pestilence (the black plague) that is ravishing Europe, and at the same time keep their secrets close to the chest.

The Audiobook
David Thorpe is the narrator for this book and he actually does a fantastic job; I was really impressed. His regional accents are wonderful as are his international accents. They're caricature accents, but they're what is needed to distinguish nicely between all the characters. The book is a long one, but he doesn't lose his way in his narration and his pace is good. The production is exceptional if course, and even listening through my phone's speaker the quality of the recording is very good indeed. 

The Story
I found the book a little difficult to get in to at first, and felt a little like I just had to persevere for the first few chapters. After the first couple of chapters though I was totally immersed and would find it so very hard not to put it on during my break times at work. Karen Maitland is an expert prose writer and I was greatly impressed the way in which she commanded both the story and its characters. 

Maitland has a scarily Stephen King-like understanding of the psychology of her characters, and obviously researched the 14th Century to bits. Superstitions, paranoia and outright nastiness is a recurring theme as the pestilence spreads and the group travel up through England. This travelling gives a brilliant insight in to the many different villages, their views, customs and their own particular brand of superstition and religious practices. Maitland does an excellent job of this. It was a SERIOUS change from the majority of historical novels I come across that always have a bunch of aristocrats, rich people or monarchs at the helm. It was a story about the outcasts of 14 century England and not only how they made money, travelled and lived but also how they tried to survive during the spread of the Black Death.

What I found exceptional in her writing was the way she explored the Black Death. It was as much a part of the story as the characters were, without it being cliched or boring. The book read almost like an apocalyptic tale;the group banded together by necessity, driven on by hope, only to be repetitively let down as more and more villages fall to the plague. 

There is a tiny-lickle bit of magic scattered throughout the novel but it is not such a major feature in the book to call it a straight fantasy, and as the magic is never really one-hundred percent confirmed (I'm not sure whether the narrator could be wholly trusted, as they are part of the company of liars after all) I guess I can say that it has moments of the supernatural?

There were parts of the book that were chilling. Maitland's ability to creep me out was quite shocking. I'm not one to check around corners after a book, or to turn on the lights, or get chills, but I did, and she did this without me even realising until I was freaked out! 

So you may be wondering why I've not rated the book five stars, and I promise, the explanation will be following very shortly. 
The secrets that all the characters possess are secrets that, in the 14 century, would have you killed... and not in a nice way either, and so as a reader I greatly enjoyed trying to guess or unearth from the clues what their secret was. There was one twist, right at the end, one secret, that I just did not see coming. In fact, I spent most of the morning getting ready for work completely concentrated on what I had missed and if there had been any clues at all? The book finishes on a bit of a cliffhanger, and the conclusion all kind of seemed out of the blue for me. 

The only way I can truly explain how I felt about the ending is by using a gif. Yes, a visual representation is the only absolute way I can highlight just how I looked this morning when I reached the end...

So I totally loved the book, I was not impressed with the ending. I can appreciate that Maitland had done so brilliantly to get us to the edge of our seats but it just didn't deliver after that. Books can do that sometimes, but I definitely recommend the novel because truly, the ride is worth the read!

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