Hunger ( Gone, 2)

I’ll admit it. It took me ages to finish this book but I’ll get back to why later on. This is the second book in the Gone series written by Michael Grant. The book is still written in a third person point of view and at the beginning of each chapter we once again face a timer that will be a countdown to a huge event that the book will shortly end after. This time the timer starts at 106 hours and 29 minutes, which means that everything in the book will take place in that time range.

It has now been three months since everyone above the age of fifteen disappeared, leaving all the kids stuck in a barricade around there town. Three months without adults and a population of 300 pretty irresponsible kids has left their hometown in a state of chaos. Due to ignorance and laziness the town is pretty much out of food. Since no one took the responsibility to conserve the food and take care of it all the food left consists of can food.

Even more people are starting to develop unnatural abilities which cause a conflict between the mutated kids and the normal ones.  The battle from the last book caused some kids to flee and they now want to avenge the leader named Sam. Sam therefore faces threats from the “normal” kids and his enemies from the previous battle. Yet the population in Pardido Beach faces a bigger threat: a darkness looming from inside an old mine…

In the beginning it all seemed perfect. I had problems with the characters being immature in the first book. In this one they began to mature and I thought that It would turn out to be one of the best books I read this year. Unfortunately it all started spiraling down in the middle of the book.

Suddenly the kids weren’t so mature anymore and the author could once again not really prioritize what to focus on. Manny new characters appeared and the author swaps around perspectives on about 15 people regularly. Along with the third person point of view you had issues connecting and sometimes even separating the characters.

People are starving and having conflicts in the town, it should be pretty easy to fix, right? – No, not really. The focus ends up in too many different places such as the mutations in animals and humans, the darkness threatening to destroy them all, the conflicts from extremely many sides and also the personal development.

There is too much to take in and that’s why I stopped reading somewhere in the middle of the book. Naturally the author had to make the last 100 pages extremely good and practically force me to read the next book. Yet he won’t win. I will stop reading the series, or at least for a while. The story is great but the execution is in the wrong direction (if it even has one) for me. So the last part of the book might have saved the entire thing, but it still turns out to be slightly above average for me. 6 / 10

Step Up Revolution

Dance movies, I have seen quite a few but there are only some of them that are actually good. I still ended up watching this movie even though I had not seen the third one. The great thing about the Step Up franchise is that the movies can be seen independently. I did also like the first two movies so I thought that it would be fun to see the fourth one a few years later.

Before I let you know more about the movie it seems like there has been a lot of confusion about the title of it. So this is the fourth movie from 2012 and the final title for it is revolution. So if you have heard anything about Step Up 4 Miami Heat or Step Up 4Ever it’s all the same movie they just changed the title so that the final title is Revolution.

Now when that part is all cleared out I will tell you bit about the plot. This was the movie that was most different out of the Step Up movies I have seen. Yet it had pretty similar aspects if you wanted to see them. This time it was about a rich girl who wants to be a dancer in Miami instead of working for her father’s company. During her journey she meets a boy who is in a dance crew who she falls for. The problem is that the dance crew is against the girl’s father’s company, which means that the girl has a decision to make.

I’m not sure if it was my mood or if my unconscious mind is telling me bad things about the movie but something made me enjoy it less then I probably should have. The problem with that is the fact that I don’t really have anything to complain about. The dancing sequences were visually the best I have seen in the franchise so far and probably one of the best once in all dance movies I have seen.

They made sure that the dance sequences were not only dancing but dace choreographies with a purpose and they were filmed in a way that is very visually appealing for the viewer. The characters were not that unique but the movie was full of actors I have never seen before which in a way made the story a bit more believable than it would have been with actors we all recognize.

The plot was carried out well and in the end it turned out way better that expected, yet there is still something negative in the back of my mind that I can’t quite wrap my head around. So my best advice to you is to trust that it was visually stunning and see it if you like. 8 / 10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1800741/

Mountain tops

Some simple but tasty cakes.

Oven Temperature: 175°C Time Range: Minimum of 12 minutes

Ingredients:

50 grams of butter

2 eggs

1 ½ deciliter sugar

200 grams or 5-6 deciliter of coconut flakes

5 drops of vanilla aroma

4-6 tablespoons of finely chopped sweet almonds

1. Melt the butter and let it cool down.
2. Then pour in the chopped almonds into the butter and stir.
3. Whisk the eggs and the sugar properly.
4. Then add all the other ingredients.
5. Let the dough puff itself up for a minute or two.
6. Pull out a tray and put some baking paper over it.
7. Use a spoon to create small mountain tops on top of the tray.
8. Put it into the middle of the oven for at least 12 minutes. Depending on how big your cakes are the time range might differ a bit so make sure that you keep an eye out on the cakes after 12 minutes. Look for some color on top of the cakes and then they should be done. I would also advise you that in this case it’s better if they are a bit too small then too big because then you can make sure they have been properly baked a bit easier.

Before the oven

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the oven

 

 

 

 

 

Blue Lagoon The Awakening

I rarely watch romance movies but I thought that I would give it a try and see if I could figure out why people seem to love them so much. Well I can say that this movie did not give me the answer. Before I tell you about it you need to know that I watched the movie from 2012 so do not confuse it with The Blue Lagoon from 1980.

The plot is about a class going on a school trip from USA to Trinidad. Once they reach their destination some students decide to have a party on a boat. After an encounter with the police two students find themselves stranded on an Island with the only things that they brought to the dingy they used to escape the police with. In the end the movie is about the love story with two people stranded on an Island.

As far as the romance went in the movie I did not believe it at all. The characters were predictable and so were the romantic moments. The actors did a mediocre job which made the movie even worse and you could really see that there were actors trying to get into character, which is not what you want to see at all, since you want to believe that they are real characters.

Instead they managed to hit all the basic stereotypes that made the plot predictable and boring. The only thing that saved this movie for me was the beautiful setting with a stunning exotic environment. Unfortunately the place where the movie is shot can really enhance the movie and make it better, but it can’t save an entire movie if the plot and the acting is on a level way below what it should be. 4 / 10, since I’m in a good mood today.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2287663/

Mansome

Documentaries, I like them a lot but rarely watch them. This one caught my attention because I had seen a TV-show with the same theme. The show was very funny so I thought that I would give the documentary a shot.

In the documentary there are one-sided interviews about what it means to be a man. These things are usually really funny so I was extremely disappointed when it turned out to be a boring documentary with topics I have already seen.

They used the time badly and talked way too much on non-original topics. Since each topic were over 10 minutes long you became extremely bored while watching it. The people who were discussing the topics were also boring and their opinions brought nothing new.

The documentary even had a bad ending since it ended abruptly and by that making you realize that you had been wasting your time waiting for something great to happen that never came.

If you still like the concept of this as much as I do, then wait for a new movie, TV-show, documentary or perhaps a female version of it. Because Mansome might be the worst documentary I have seen in years. 1 / 10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2294729/

Now is good

The British movie was released this year and it’s about a 17-year old girl dying of leukemia. We get to follow her last month’s alive and see her trying to accomplish her version of the things you must do before you die.

The movie did have some potential but it did not feel believable enough. The parents’ behavior and most things about them were pretty believable. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for the rest of them. Dakota Fanning was not acting well in this movie and that made it hard to believe the story.

Along with the main character’s weird friend and a younger brother with even stranger behavior the entire scenery became a bit to created and that part stopped you from seeing the movie as something that could actually happened.

Towards the last 20 minutes of the movie they really managed to pick it up. The movie became much better and it almost became a really good movie. The problem was that after the good parts had begun the movie ended shortly after.

In the end they did have a good ending but I had hoped that the movie would be a lot better than it was, but instead it got stuck on mediocre.  5 / 5 stars.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1937264/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Butter

The one of the oddest titles I have seen on a movie. It also has a mix of many actors and those two reasons made me watch the movie. Later I found out that it’s from 2011 and is comedy movie.

The plot is kind of hard to describe without giving too much away so I’ll keep it short. There are two very different families and a stripper that are the main characters. Everything is also centered on a butter carving contest.

Butter carving? Personally I have never heard of it. It is pretty “simple” tough, you carve sculptures from butter. Very weird phenomena if you ask me, The good thing about that was that it made the movie a bit unusual and the sculptures that were made impressed me a lot.

The two families were extremely different and that made the movie even better since they brought many funny moments with them. Tough the one who wins the price in the comedy category for me was the stripper. She was hilarious on some occasions and she made the concept even better.

The acting was overall very good and the characters were quite unusual and they were played by some unlikely but famous actors. The butter carving kept the movie from being something you have seen before and naturally this was something that I really liked.

This movie may not be the funniest movie ever made but it was different and a lot better than I expected. So I really recommend this movie even though not everyone will find it as good as I did. 8 / 10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1349451/

Life Of Pi

Many marvelous things have been said about this movie. So I was greatly happy with seeing this at its premiere date. It is based from the same titled novel written by Yann Martel. The genres in the movie are mainly drama and adventure. It is directed by Ang Lee who after this movie will be one of my favorite directors and I hope to see more movies that he has done.

The movie is about an Indian boy with the nickname Pi. He lives with his family on a zoo they own and when they get some financial issues they decide to move the entire zoo over to Canada. Along the way there is a huge storm and the ship sinks. This leaves Pi in a fate where he could live or die and it is all told in the most unique shipwreck story ever made.

Before I tell you about my thoughts I would like to enlighten you on two things. Firstly the age limit your country has is there for a reason and the trailer is very different from the actual movie because in the movie you get to see more brutal scenes than some might expect when looking at the trailer. Secondly I wanted to mention that I did watch it in 3D. Therefore I would like to say that if you like 3D or are slightly interested in it then seeing it in 3D won’t be a problem at all since it was done beautifully in 3D. If you do stick to the 2D version I’m pretty sure that it will be equally good either way.

The movie did surprise me a lot. Like I mentioned it was different from the trailer so it featured many things that I did not expect. The movie is just over 2 hours and that might make the beginning seem a bit slow, but in the end it’s worth it. I was also a bit surprised that the movie is a flashback, for those of you who are familiar with interview with a vampire this movie had a similar re-telling aspect to that one.

I must mention that the movie has been creating headlines as a visually stunning movie. This is correct in every aspect since stunning visuals were the first thing you saw and it was even visually better than the trailer suggested. The story was very capturing from start to finish and whether you find it believable as a movie or not is up to you. Tough personally I feel that if you are watching the movie too see how believable you can make it look I think you are on the wrong pathway.

The movie was way better my expectations tough there were two things that did disappoint me a bit, yet I feel giving the movie a lower grade because of that is wrong and therefore it will still get a full score. I also really think that you should give the strangest survivor story made a shot. 10 / 10 (I am sorry about the length but I figured the two things I wanted you to be enlightened about before watching it might be really good to know so I hope that you can overlook that part.)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454876/

2012

Since today is the day that we are all doomed, well according to the Mayans.  Therfore I decided to write about this movie now, even though it came out in 2009.

The movie follows an American family as they try to figure out a way to survive when the entire world is quickly reaches its dooms day.

This movie has received an average rating and I must say that I agree. The plot was decent and the visuals and everything were awesome. It had many funny and interesting characters which brighten up the mood in the movie a lot.

Yet I felt like it sort of backfired. The more time you spent watching it the less believable it felt, especially the ending and the astonishing technology, that were supposed to secretly have been developed over a very short time. To some extent this technology this already existing but with the short time range they had it all felt a bit ridiculous to me that some unrealistic technology were supposed to save the world.

For me the characters and the excellent visuals saved the movie, but the ending were disappointing and predictable. With unlikely events happening along the course the movie it turned out to be just above decent.   6 / 10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190080/

Wide Sargasso Sea

This old novel was written in 1966 by Jean Rhys. It is a postcolonial novel parallel to Jane Eyre.  The author has decided to focus on some of the characters background story up until e specific part in Jane Eyre. The book is divided into four parts and it is written from a first person point of view, tough the point of view changes throughout the book.

This book centers on a background character in Jane Eyre. We get to follow her story from being a child and see how she ended up as the crazy woman in the attic of the Jane Eyre books.

The book tells the story in a pretty objective way and therefore the characters felt to dead in my opinion. When you heard their thoughts they were plain and boring. The way the plot was portrayed made you feel completely uninterested. It felt like you were in a boring lecture at four in the morning. The changing point of views was done in a blurry way which made you even more confused and it made the characters impossible to relate to.

The one thing that I had been looking forward to in this book was when the main character would arrive to England, since I had recently watched Jane Eyre and that is the part were the two books collide.  So I was extremely disappointed since it was very hastily in the end and the last pages tricked you into a different ending all to suddenly make a twist that made the book feel even worse than it was before.

In honesty this was one of the worst books I have ever read. It was so boring that it was hard to remember what I was reading. The author changed the names on some characters from Jane Eyre and that confused me even more and the only good thing about the boom was the last five pages. So if you are not a huge fan of this type of literature then I would not recommend it since you will probably despise it. 1 / 10

There are tones of covers for this book but since I don’t want to search around I provide you with the original cover of the book.