What I Finished Reading

So a few posts back I spoke about the fact that I had crawled into the pages of 'The Help'. Well with determination and utter engagement, I finished the book. My first in about a year. I finished in just in time for the movie release. I finished it on the Saturday night and saw the movie on the Sunday evening. What young girl is home, reading on a weekend night you may ask, well, I follow the traditions of my Jewish family and it was the breaking of the Yom Kippur fast. That meant we hosted a dinner at our house on the Saturday night. Phew. Felt I had to make up for my reading on the Saturday night thing. haha. Anywho, I loved the book, 5 million copies sold can't be wrong. Dealing with the interaction between white home owners and their maids during the 60's civil rights movement, all put in to a Mississippi pot and fueled with hairspray. Very interesting.


The movie was sweet but fluffed over a lot of the dark aspects in the book and refused to deal with the core issues. Which left me feeling unfulfilled. I also felt that the book did this in a lot of ways. She created such full, wholesome characters and story lines, and then as the book neared the end, the stories thinned out on detail and seemed to wrap up without reason. I hate it when that happens. Slap dash writing as far as I am concerned. Doesn't seem she was writing to a deadline as she approached over 60 publishers who turned her down, and it took her 5 years to write the thing. Perhaps it was a series of different editors with different editing styles. Either way, it seems thrown together towards the end. I loved it, but the ending could have had a little more power. As they say, some books are worth the read for the final paragraph. I just wish this one had been one of them. I felt like it could have gone on, but then the argument stands, when does it end.


So this is where I end. I have made my point. I enjoyed the book, the movie was well cast, well acted, the set and costume design was flawless. My only issue was the marrying of the book to the screenplay. Kathryn, I know you had a part to play, it seems you got played.

150 Movie Lines & Catch-Phrases

This is an awesome edit Paul and I saw online. I cannot take credit for it in the slightest and am simply sharing the awesomeness. It will make you smile, it will make you happy, it will make you reminisce, it will make you remember how much you love the movies. 


Enjoy!

Lyric of the Day

I have been listening to neo-swing and rockabilly/psychobilly non-stop for the past month. I used to be obsessed with rockabilly and seem to have tuned back into that obsession. Thus to honour my love for swing and said rockabilly I have partnered my lyric of the day with a poem by William Blake called 'The Tiger'. It happens to be one of my favourite poems, and Tiger Army have sampled a line from it to use in their song, 'Valley of Dreams'.

"I prowl the night

A tiger tiger burning bright now

There's something in the air

Forever searching but I find it nowhere..."

- Valley of Dreams by Tiger Army

"Tiger, tiger, burning bright 

In the forests of the night, 

What immortal hand or eye 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?..."

- The Tiger by William Blake

P.S. The poem is actually recited by Emile Hirsch in the film 'The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys' during a funeral scene. This too happens to be one of my favourite movies. Thus a favourite song, poem and movie is acknowledged at the same time. I love efficiency haha.

Tiger Army

William Blake

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

Avatar! Finally!

I finally went to see Avatar, two months after it's release. It was cool but it was waaay too long. It got me thinking though... haven't I seen this all before. Not the tall blue people who live in a forest in an alien world that you have to wear special glasses to see, but the storyline. Boy meets girl who lives in "new world", boy comes from world who plans to mine mineral in the "new world". Boy becomes part of girls world, they fall in love and yada yada. Pocahontas right? Right! So I did some googling. As I always do and I found that I was correcto mundo. I was not the only one who thought this. In fact someone had typed out the Disney story of Pocahontas and filled in the Avatar version above it. Very clever. Oh Mr Cameron, have you done nothing original (and don't say Terminator, because those movies were shit)? Titanic was based on true events, except for Jack and Rose of course, we all knew how the story would end yet we all flocked to the cinema to see the ship tragically sink. Don't get me wrong I loved it.

So please enjoy having a little giggle at the story below as I did. I did enjoy the movie in it's true spectacle. It was supposed to do that. I am sad that it was not original. Imagine if it had been!

Click image to enlarge

Take It or Leave It

I finally went to see Invictus. Oh my. I was close to the "ugly-cry" a few times during the movie. It was a wonderful. I am crazily patriotic. I wanted to burst with pride and excitement the whole time. The poem used in the film, Invictus, is both poignant and around which the entire philosophy of the film is based. I definitely identified with something in it. And after doing a little research I have found that even Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma City Bomber) used it at his final hearing prior to his execution in 2001. Great.

I do not believe in fate or destiny but I can identify with taking responsibility for creating and writing your life path. And for never giving up no matter what you may encounter and have to overcome. I have read the poem over and over and am truly moved that this is the poem that so inspired Nelson Mandela. I hope it does the same for you.

"Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul."

- Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Louise and I at the Soccer World Cup 2010 Kick Off Celebrations