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The Sunday Salon (Apr. 1):The Hunger Games movie review

Posted by Anastasia on April 1, 2012 10 Responses »

Apr 012012

Happy April, everyone! I’m going to do my monthly review later this week. Today I want to try and catch up on writing reviews, which have really piled up lately because I’ve been reading SO many good books that all deserve a longish review. I’m not sure how it happened, but I’m basically reading three trilogies all at once, which is strange. Usually I try to break up series books so I don’t get overwhelmed, but these three trilogies were just so exciting I didn’t want to wait too long to continue reading them!

Anyway, since I’ve just finished writing my review for The Hunger Games, I thought now would be a good time to review the movie! There will probably be spoilers, btw. Continue reading »

The Sunday Salon (Feb. 19): A review of ebookfling

Posted by Anastasia on February 19, 2012 8 Responses »

Feb 192012

I’ve been a member of ebookfling since December, and though I haven’t used it all that much I really like it so far. Basically, it’s a website where you can lend and borrow ebooks with other people via the “lend” ability of Kindles and Nooks. As such, it only works with Kindles and Nooks (or Kindle/Nook apps) and their corresponding ebook formats and lending rules (two weeks to keep a borrowed book, can only lend each ebook once, can’t read a book you’ve lent to someone else while it’s being borrowed, etc.).

To borrow ebooks you need credits. You get credits from lending ebooks to other people, or from buying them for $2.99 per credit. I think that’s kind of a high price for a credit, especially since you don’t get to keep the book, but I suppose if you’re desperate to read a book it’s cheaper than buying a copy for yourself. (Maybe?) The easiest way to get credits is to just load a bunch of available-to-borrow ebooks to your account, and then wait for people to request them from you. I’ve got about 120 ebooks in my library at the moment, and I get about two borrow requests a week.

To request an ebook, you can either search for what you want or add books to your wishlist, which you can set to email you once a book is available. Once you request a book, the person you requested it from has about a day or so to agree to lend it to you. I’ve only requested one book so far (Those Who Hunt the Night) but it went very smoothly and I got it within a few hours of requesting it. Neat! From loaning books to other people I’ve noticed that you don’t learn anything about the person you’re lending the book to. The process is almost completely automated, and at the most I think you’d only see their username on ebookfling. Maybe their email, too. Continue reading »

Using the Overdrive app to read ebooks: a short review

Posted by Anastasia on December 14, 2011 No Responses »

Dec 142011

I’ve been using the Overdrive mobile app to read ebooks from the Singapore Public Library for about a month now, and overall I think it’s pretty good. It’s easy to check out and return books from the library, there’s a decent amount of formatting options to make reading those books comfortable, and there’s a few extras just to sweeten the deal. Continue reading »

Why the Singapore National Library is awesome

Posted by Anastasia on December 7, 2011 4 Responses »

Dec 072011

I’ve been a member of the Singapore National Library (or “National Library Board Singapore” or “Singapore Public Library”) for about a month now. I first learned about it at the Mobileread forums, but I didn’t think of actually joining until now. Probably having all my paper books packed away had something to do with that…

So! The Singapore National Library is free to join. Everything’s in English, including the website and books. You don’t need to be in Singapore to do it; you can register online from anywhere and have access to ebooks, audiobooks, and (I think) videos. The procedure for joining the SNL can be found here, so read that first. Continue reading »

Thoughts on Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)

Posted by Anastasia on November 7, 2009 No Responses »

Nov 072009

Vampire's Assistant poster I went to see Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant with my parents last weekend, and I wasn’t too disappointed. It was a little cheesy and ridiculous, but since the book series is cheesy and ridiculous and yet somehow still enjoyable I didn’t much mind that part.

I’ve only read the first book of the series, and I thought it was mostly mediocre but with potential for more awesomeness as the series goes on. The movie is less mediocre and more over-the-top, which I think was actually a really good choice. If the movie had been exactly like the book(s) it would have been horrible and MST3K-worthy, so I’m glad they changed a lot of things.

The actors were a good choice; I really liked Chris Massoglia, who played Darren, and Patrick Fugit, who played Evra the lizard boy. I loved how John C. Reilly played Mr Crepsley as sarcastic and witty (and funny). He really was the best part of the movie, and if I end up watching the movie again it’ll be purely to see him.

I immediately noticed that they cut a lot of things from the books, like I said before. The things they cut made the movie move much quicker, and — this is kind of mean– a lot of the things they cut were the things that were, well, boring in the book. For instance, that time when Darren steals Madame Octa and keeps her in his room for weeks and weeks and the book goes through the whole re-training Octa thing and whatever. Boring! And they totally cut it from the movie. Yay!

Unfortunately they went a little too crazy with the cutting sometimes, and it felt like about half the movie was missing. I don’t want to sit through five hours of The Vampire’s Assistant, but I also want the movie to make sense, you know? It was like quickcut-quickcut-quickcut all the freakin’ time, and it was quickcutting away from any decent exposition. And with the way they cut it– it always felt like BIG REVEAL! OMG! was happening every ten minutes and that was really irritating.

Vampire's Assistant - Reilly! Like I said before, the books are really cheesy and some things in them are, uh, stupid (transferring blood through fingertips? Yeah, that’s dumb), but the movie tried to fix some of that (mostly through humor and John C. Reilly) and it wasn’t a bad result. It’s not my favorite movie adaptation of a book, but I had fun and I’ll probably go see it again when it hits the $1 movie theaters. If this movie was a book I’d rate it 3.5 birds.

I should mention that my parents, who haven’t read the books, loved the movie and had a great time. However, neither of them would pay to see it again, not even at the dollar theater (harsh, dudes).

Have you seen this movie? What did you think about it?

Note: The DVD comes out February 23, 2010! Pre-order it!

Thoughts on Romancing the Stone (1984)

Posted by Anastasia on October 5, 2009 No Responses »

Oct 052009

Romancing cover I’ve seen Romancing the Stone at least ten times by now, but that doesn’t mean I can’t write a semi-review about it! It’s actually just some thoughts I had while watching it on Sunday, and so there’s some spoilers for the movie here. If you haven’t seen the movie already you may want to proceed gingerly; but it’s an awesome movie so you should definitely see it ASAP.

I first saw Romancing the Stone because my mom TRICKED me into watching it when I was, what, twelve? And it’s been one of my favorite movies since. I love the action-adventure bits best, though Kathleen Turner is a close second and everything else comes after. The romance? Eh. Not as fun as the other stuff (sorry, but I can barely stand Michael Douglas). Anyway, it’s basically like a really fun romance novel in live-action format, including the scantily-clad heroine and buff manly-man hero who trade insults and, of course, end up falling in love with each other while growing into new, better people. Oh, and there are villains in snazzy uniforms, drug dealers with big trucks, Danny DeVito, man-eating crocodiles, shoot-offs, jungle excursions, dancing, and lots of humor. Yay!

Romancing stereotypes Probably the best thing I like about Romancing the Stone is that it doesn’t treat romance novelists as stupid, vapid women who spend all their time eating bonbons and fluffing their feather boas. Sure, Joan is a bit naive and she does some pretty stupid things for a New Yorker (like believing the obviously sleazy Zolo when he told her another bus was coming and it wasn’t– then he tried to rob her), but she’s an intelligent woman who is incredibly brave and loves adventure (and, yeah, romance). I love too that at the end of the movie she still writes romance books instead of moving on to literary fiction, or something. These sort of things give romance books (and readers), a kind of validation while simultaneously throwing out the sad-neurotic-cat-lady myth that romance readers are encumbered by.

I also really love how the visuals match up with the characters’ emotional states. Take Joan, for instance. At the beginning of the movie she’s high-strung and, okay, kind of neurotic. She wears her hair up in a high, tight bun and her face looks pale and wan. When she meets Jack and properly starts on her journey of self-enlightenment, her hair slowly starts falling down. She still looks kind of pale and ill, but she’s got a rather snappy ponytail. And then when they get to the drug dealer’s village, after their mad run from the soldiers, her hair is completely down, curly and loose, and her face has finally got some color to it. And what do you know: she’s also gotten more self-confidant, happy, and even a bit more grown up.

Romancing big gun There are lots of little things like that in Romancing the Stone, and trying to find them makes watching the movie even more fun. Plus the story is just an excellent thing as well: it’s exciting and romantic and funny, even with Michael Douglas as the leading man. Plus I love Kathleen Turner (and her awesome bag).

I wish Romancing the Stone was a book. I’d keep it forever and reread it each year o and it’d be wonderful. (We have a copy of the movie on VHS and I’ve totally hugged it to my chest like some 1980′s teen movie heroine.) I don’t really like the sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, but I haven’t seen it in a while so I can’t really remember why.

This one, though? Pure awesomeness.

Review: Stone Reader (2002)

Posted by Anastasia on April 25, 2009 No Responses »

Apr 252009

Stone Reader (2002)
129 min, Dir. Mark Moskowitz
StoneReader.net
Buy it at Amazon (used), StoneReader.net (3 disc special edition) / Watch it at Netflix
Rating:

Summary from Netflix:

Eighteen-year-old Mark buys a novel by a little-known author and starts reading it, but is unable to get through the whole thing. Twenty-five years later, Mark decides to give the book another try and finds the story absolutely spellbinding. When he tries to buy more copies of the book, he finds that it’s out of print and no one seems to know where the author can be found, sending Mark on a yearlong search for the elusive writer.

I’m a big fan of documentaries, especially documentaries about weird things, like bingo or crosswords or spelling bees. Documentaries about books and authors, if done well, can be just as interesting as a documentaries about people who dress up as superheroes, and this one is quite good.

Though I never heard of Mark Moskowitz before, I could empathize with his desire to find out more about a book and author that no-one else seems to have read or heard of. I’ve run into that problem myself a few times, but I never thought to actually track the author down and see what happened to them. You’ve gotta admire that kind of determinedness, and of course it makes for a good film.

It’s not a straight-forward documentary. It encompasses a few years Mr. Moskowitz spent finding out all he could about Dow Mossman and his book, The Stones of Summer, and it frequently dips off into other bits of things, like other one-hit wonders, Mr. Moskowitz’s forays into literature when he was a kid, etc. This makes the movie longer, but I think it makes it richer, too. And since I’m a big ol’ bookish person myself, I love hearing about which books turned people into bookworms for life. (For Mr. Moskowitz it was Catch-22; for me I think it was the Little House on the Prairie books.)

My favorite part was when Mr. Moskowitz finally tracked someone down who not only remembered Dow Mossman but also had read his book! I threw my hands up in victory, I was so excited. And then he finds Dow Mossman himself, who laughed at the thought of his book being republished. Little did he know, eh?

Stone Reader is a film about a book that fell into obscurity, but was nevertheless loved by at least, uh, five people. It’s a film about the power books have on people’s lives, for better or worse (Mr. Mossman had a nervous breakdown while writing Stones of Summer and had to be hospitalize!), and it’s a film about how obsessive bookworms can be when they latch onto something wonderful.

I suppose Stone Reader is successful in that Mr. Moskowitz got to find out about what happened to Dow Mossman, got Mr. Mossman’s book republished, and now got me wanting to read it. It sounds wonderful (comparable to Faulkner and Joyce, apparently), and I look forward to reading it.

What documentary inspired you recently?