More Book & Movie Challenges

January has been a busy month, so let’s get to it, shall we?

Movie Challenge #4: A Movie by a Female Director:

Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay

A glimpse into just a few months of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life during the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in support of lessening the restrictions and difficulties of the African-American vote. It’s incredibly difficult to believe that these events happened just 50 years ago. My parents and a lot of other people I know were alive then. And while African-Americans legally had the right to vote, it was almost impossible due to voting taxes imposed for all the years in which they weren’t registered or the voucher system in which they had to have the recommendation of another voter to be allowed to register. This movie did an excellent job, I think, of portraying what those difficulties were like. It’s never enough just to say that something is allowed or that a particular group of people has a kind of freedom that they didn’t have before. Systemic racism is still an issue, and I appreciated the portrayal of this hugely important event. I think David Oyelowo was remarkable as MLK, and seeing other Civil Rights leaders, like a very young, college-aged John Lewis was awesome as well. I’m glad this movie was nominated for Best Picture; it’s definitely deserving, but I’m sad that Ava DuVernay missed out on the nomination for Best Director. She would have been the first African-American female to receive that nomination.

Movie Challenge #7: A Wes Anderson Film: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Since I saw (and LOVED) The Grand Budapest Hotel, I’ve been meaning to watch everything else Wes Anderson has ever made. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long. This is the first movie I’ve watched of his since it seemed to be the easiest to track down from the public library, and it is so delightful. A stop-motion animated version of a Roald Dahl book, this story is about a fox couple voiced by George Clooney and Meryl Streep. It’s cute and funny and quirky and lovely.

Book Challenge #4: A book Written by Someone under the Age of 30

The DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend), Kody Keplinger

This book is being made into a movie, which is the challenge that I had originally planned it for. I was also really intrigued by the concept/title. But once I started reading, I wondered about the age of the author because, honestly, the writing felt similar to the stuff I had written in high school. And, sure enough, Kody Keplinger wrote this novel as a senior in high school. This was published in 2010, and she’s published several more books since then, so it would be interesting to see how her craft has improved. Knowing her age, I was a bit more forgiving of this book, but some aspects were still problematic.

Bianca, the main character, has an encounter at a teen club with the hottest guy in her grade, Wesley. He hits on her because he tells her she’s the DUFF, and her hot friends will appreciate that he’s paying attention to their Designated Ugly Fat Friend. She dumps her Coke on him, but somehow also kisses him, and so begins their “friends with benefits” relationship. She falls in love with him, even knowing that she’s just a hookup, but of course, because this is a high school romance, he falls in love with her, too. Everything ends nice and neat, including Bianca’s relationship with the guy she’d been crushing on for three years because, surprise, he’s also in love with someone else.

Ugh, why did I read this? I should have paid more attention to the reviews on GoodReads, but I was willing to give it a shot (especially as someone who has potentially been the DUFF before–I’m rather glad that term didn’t exist when I was in high schoool!).

Book Challenge #19: A Book Older than 100 Years

Kilmeny of the Orchard, L.M. Montgomery

Okay, so the physical book wasn’t 100 years old (in fact, I read the Kindle edition), but this book was published in 1910, which was my intention when I took on this challenge. This was a suggestion for book club although we ultimately read something else, but it’s been on my radar for awhile. This is one of Montgomery’s stand-alone novels for adults, and since I love Anne of Green Gables so, so much, I gave this one a shot. It’s really a novella about a recent college graduate who moves to a small town to substitute teach for a friend who has fallen ill. Eric, the teacher, is taking a walk one night and finds an orchard, where a beautiful woman is playing a violin. She gets frightened and runs, and he discovers that she’s a local woman who has been mute her whole life. He continues to visit the orchard, they fall in love, and he has to overcome the conflict of her unwillingness to marry him (because she fears she will be an embarrassment), and a few other issues. I liked this all right, but I didn’t love it like I love other Montgomery works. Maybe because it’s so short and there’s not much character development? At any rate, it’s a Montgomery book, and I’ll never regret reading anything of hers.

Movie Challenges #5 & #14 and Book Challenge #1

Movie Challenge #5: A Foreign Film: La Belle et la Bete

This is a 1947 French version of Beauty and the Beast directed by Jean Cocteau. It’s beautiful and creepy and fascinating and, obviously, follows the original story a bit more closely than the Disney version. Belle lives in big house in France with her father, two sisters, and a brother, whose friend Avenant is always hanging around because he is in love with Belle. The father is a shipping magnate who has lost his fortune when 3 of his ships go missing at sea. They are resigning themselves to a life of poverty when the news comes that one of the ships has returned. The father heads to the port city, only to discover that his debtors have already claimed all of the cargo, and they are just as poor as ever. On the way back home, he gets lost in the woods, finds the Beast’s enchanted castle, and explores a bit. The castle’s enchantments are weird: arms extend from the wall to light the candelabras, faces turn to look at you from the mantlepieces. The father never sees the Beast until he picks a rose to take back to Belle, the only reasonable request from his daughters. The Beast makes a deal with the father that either his daughter will take his place or the father will return within 3 days. Naturally, Belle takes his place and grows fonder of the Beast, etc.

The ending is the most interesting part of the story. When Belle returns to the castle and finds the Beast nearly dead from grief, he transforms into his human character–with the face of the friend Avenant who was in love with Belle! Avenant and Belle’s brother Ludovic had been attempting to break into the building where all the Beast’s wealth was kept, and in the process, a statue who may have been a conduit of the goddess Diana comes to life and kills Avenant, who transforms into a Beast just as the original Beast was transforming. The original Beast’s new human form had a much better haircut than Avenant, did, and was far more attractive that that animated version from Disney. When Rebecca and I watched the movie, we couldn’t decide if the Beast just looked like Avenant or if he actually was some kind of body-snatcher. But either way, it’s an interesting choice for the transformation.

Movie Challenge #14: A Movie Recommend by a Friend Who Loves Movies: The Fountain

Two friends–Bryce and Rebecca, with whom I actually watched the movie–recommended this to me in the past few months. The Fountain is directed by Darren Aronofsky and stars Hugh Jackman (Tommy) and Rachel Weisz (Izzie), who play several different characters throughout the movie. In the present time, Tommy and Izzie are married. Izzie is dying of cancer, and Tommy is trying to find a cure for cancer through experimental drugs and surgery on primates. In the past (around 1500), Izzie is actually the Spanish queen Isabella, and Tommy is Tomas, a Spanish explorer. Isabella sends Tomas on a quest to find the Fountain of Youth, which is contained within the Tree of Life somewhere in the Mayan rainforest. And in the future (around 2500), Tommy is guarding the Tree of Life within a spherical space ship heading toward a nebula. He is haunted by memories (I think?) of Izzie.

I don’t know that I could actually write a summary that fully explains how captivating this movie is. First of all, the cinematography is brilliant. The images of the spaceship and the nebula and the Tree in the forest are some of the most beautiful images I’ve ever seen on film. And Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz give such emotionally captivating performances with very few supporting actors to aid them. This is a movie that I’m going to have to watch many more times to even wrap my brain around some of the ideas of death and life, of reincarnation. ‘

Book Challenge #1: A Book Longer than 500 Pages: Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin

I don’t even know what to say about this book. There are honestly too many words for me to say about how beautiful and lovely and profound this book is. Back in November, my book club chose this for our January pick, on the premise that, since we wouldn’t be discussing a book in December because of Christmas, we would have 2 months to read Winter’s Tale, which clocks in at 748 pages.

I only need 8 days to read it. It was that good.

The book was made into a movie starring Colin Farrell that we’ll be watching at our book club meeting this weekend, but I can’t even imagine how the movie could convey even a fraction of the story. It’s the story of Peter Lake, a professional burglar, and Beverly Penn, who is dying of consumption in the early part of the 20th century. But that’s not even 100 pages of the book, I don’t think. The book spans a century of New York City life and is as much a love story about the city as it is about Peter and Beverly, or Hardesty and Virginia, or any of the other characters in the story. There’s a massive street gang led by a delightful fellow named Pearly Soames; there’s a group of Indian-like people called the Baymen who raise Peter Lake; there’s a magnificent place called the Lake of the Coheeries that is magical and weird; there’s a bridge-builder named Jackson Meade and his workers Rev. Mootfowl and Mr. Cecil Wooley. There’s a magical cloud wall that transforms everything and there’s a concept of reincarnation that I’m still working around in my brain.

There’s a bit of Dickens here, in the character names and the descriptions of New York as an industrialized city and the discussion of the weird orphanage where Peter Lake grows up. There are strong elements of magical realism very reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. There’s a love for place that I’ve really only seen in Henry David Thoreau’s descriptions of Walden Pond.

This is the perfect winter book. I’m going to buy a physical copy of my own someday on the off-chance I’m ever snowbound and need to read a book that won’t make me hate snow and winter. Also, I will be reading this again, I’m sure. Every page of those 748 had some grand treasure, and this quickly became one of my new favorite books.

Book Challenge #13 & Movie Challenge #2

Thank God for Christmas break and a new apartment with no internet. No, really. I have done so much reading and movie-watching, and it’s wonderful!

Book Challenge #13: Read a book by an author I love that I haven’t read yet

The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is, far and away, one of my favorite authors. I had read the first issue of The Sandman years ago, and I’ve owned the trade paperback of volume 1 but had never gotten around to reading it. Before Gaiman became famous for his novels and works of short fiction and episode-writing for Doctor Who and his marriage to Amanda Palmer, he made his name known in the comic book world with this critically-acclaimed series.

In Vol. 1, a man named Roderick Burgess acquires a grimoire that should enable him to capture Death. Instead, he ensnares Death’s little brother Dream (also known as Morpheus), whom he imprisons for about 70 years. When Dream is captured, he is no longer reigning over the dream and nightmare realms, and of course things go horribly awry.

When Roderick’s son Alex finally releases Dream, he immediately punishes Alex and then goes on a quest for his tools. Dream teams up with John Constantine to find a small, but powerful, bag of sand. He ventures to hell to fight a demon in order to get his helmet back. And, with a little help from old members of the Justice League of America, he finds Doctor Destiny, who has used Dream’s ruby amulet to take control of the dreamworld and attempt to bring about the apocalypse. (Also, Morpheus is kind of attractive in that 80s, early-Neil Gaiman, comic-book sort of way.)

The editor, in the introduction to vol. 1, states that this is the weakest of the collected volumes, that Gaiman was still trying to find his voice. But I still found it wonderful. It’s almost like there’s this band that you’ve loved for years, and you discover their unreleased EP that they recorded in someone’s garage, and you still think it’s wonderful. This volume of the comics is really, really good, and I know Gaiman’s voice well enough to hear it in the voices of Morpheus and his sister Death. And I’m eager to get my hands on the rest of the series now.

Movie Challenge #2: Watch a movie made more than 50 years ago

Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949)

I found this on sale at B&N a year or so ago, and I’m so glad I did. It’s a musical about baseball! Frank Sinatra plays a young second baseman to Gene Kelly’s veteran shortstop on a championship baseball team in the early 1900s. In the off-season, Sinatra & Kelly do vaudeville acts, and the movie begins when they’re late for spring training in Florida. Shortly after they arrive, the teams learns that the old owner has passed away and left the team to a distant relative who wants to see the team. They immediately assume it will be an old, fat man who thinks he knows more about the game of baseball than they do. Instead, the new owner is a beautiful woman, played by Esther Williams. She immediately clashes with Gene Kelly, and young Frank immediately falls in love with her but has no game, so he doesn’t no how to talk to her about anything other than baseball.

There’s baseball and romance and bad guys betting on the game of baseball and a clambake. It’s really delightful. My friends who love musicals would love it. Also, Frank Sinatra is a skinny, young guy who looks absolutely adorable in his team sweater.

Movie Challenge #3: Movie with a Number in the Title (28 Weeks Later)

First challenge completed! I finally got around to watching 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to the excellent Danny Boyle-directed zombie movie 28 Days Later. Danny Boyle shifted to producer on this as he was busy directing another film, and a Spanish director named Juan Carlos Fresnadillo joined the film. None of the cast of the first movie returned, but that’s okay because this is a completely different story.

Obviously, we know from the title that more time has passed since Cillian Murphy woke up in that hospital in the first movie and the world had gone to hell. We get a brief glimpse of the early days of the apocalypse in this film, but only so that we can see the ramifications of certain characters’ actions later in the movie. Through a quick timeline, we learn that all the infected actually died of starvation after 5 weeks, and then cleanup began. NATO forces arrived to begin reconstructing Great Britain, and the first survivors move into a heavily-guarded area called District 1.

One of those guards is Jeremy Renner, playing the role of a sniper. Idris Elba plays a general (with an American accent…in a movie set in Great Britain…so surreal). The rest of the case is fantastic, too, especially the 12-year-old boy Andy, played by an actor named Mackintosh Muggleton, who just missed his chance to be a Harry Potter character, I think. Andy and his older sister Tammy had been on a school trip when the outbreak began, and they are returning to live with their father in District 1. They become the emotional focus of the movie, even when the outbreak unexpectedly begins again.

This was a good sequel, almost as good as the original. Lots of unexpected things happen, and the ending just sort of pulls the rug out from under you. I loved the way it ended. My only complaint about the movie was the shaky-camera work. It made me a little dizzy, but it did cut down on some of the gore, so I don’t suppose I should complain too much.

So there’s one movie down, and one spoiler-free review! If there are more dreary, rainy days next week, I expect I’ll nail down more movie and book challenges then.

2015 Book & Movie Challenges

In addition to whatever book challenge I do every year, I decided that I would also add a movie challenge since I watched so many wonderful movies last year. I’ll be tracking my watching/reading on my blog, and I’ve made pages to keep track just like I do with my reading every year.

I feel like I became a movie fan late in life. It’s only been the last 3 years that I’ve cared about Oscar races or well-made films or watching every great movie by particular directors. So I’ve missed a lot in all those years before 2012. This challenge will hopefully make up for lost time.

In 2015, I resolve to watch the following films. They must be first-time viewings, and I no movie can count for two or more numbers on the challenge.

1. A movie longer than 3 hours
2. A movie made more than 50 years ago
3. A movie with a number in the title
4. A movie by a female director
5. A foreign film
6. A documentary
7. A movie directed by Wes Anderson
8. A DC superhero movie that did not receive critical acclaim
9. An Oscar-winning Best Picture
10. A movie that came out in 1985 (the year I was born)
11. A movie based on a graphic novel not involving superheroes
12. A movie I own but have never watched
13. A Quentin Tarrantino movie
14. A movie recommended by a friend who loves movies
15. A musical or movie based on a play
16. A movie with a color in the title
17. A movie based on a fairy tale
18. A classic horror movie
19. A classic science fiction movie
20. A movie set in South Carolina

I adapted the movie challenge from my book challenge, which in itself is an adaptation of one I found on Tumblr. In addition to my goal of reading 100 books this year, I will fulfill the following 35 requirements:

1. A book with more than 500 pages
2. A book published in 2015
3. A book with a number in the title
4. A book written by someone under 30
5. A book with nonhuman characters
6. A funny book
7. A mystery or thriller
8. A book with a one-word title
9. A short story collection
10. A book set in a different country
11. A nonfiction book
12. A popular author’s first book
13. A book from an author I love that I haven’t read yet
14. A book that a friend recommended
15. A Pulitzer Prize-winner
16. A book based on a true story
17. A book at the bottom of my to-read list
18. A book that scares me
19. A book more than 100 years old
20. A book based entirely on its cover
21. A memoir
22. A book I can finish in a day
23. A book with antonyms in the title
24. A book set somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit
25. A book published in 1985
26. A book with a color in the title
27. A book by an author I’ve never read before
28. A book I own but have never read
29. A book set in South Carolina
30. A book originally written in another language
31. A book written by an author with my initials
32. A play
33. A book I started but never finished
34. A classic science fiction novel
35. A book that became a movie or TV show

Follow by movie challenge here and my book challenge here. Let’s see how much I can read and watch in 2015!