Thursday, January 26, 2012

The Girl Who Played With Fire

This is the second book in the Lisbeth Salader and Mickeal Blomkvist series. All I can say about this book is it is just as good as the first! The action picks up right where Dragon Tattoo left off. I can't wait to start reading the final book. And even though with the nature of the characters, I know a rosy, happy, warm, feel-good ending is probably not in my future with this series, I am still holding out a little hope!

In this book we do find out more about Lisbeth's history. And it is just as complicated and bizarre as you would expect. She realizes that she is in love with Blomkvist and knows it can only turn out badly for her, so she cuts off all contact with him. He doesn't understand why and basically refuses to give up on finding her.

In the first book she saves his life and in the second book his refusal to be cut out of her life allows him to ultimately save her life. At the end of this book she was clinging to life with Blomkvist by her side. Her father had tried to kill her. As we slowly find out, her father was a cold-blooded assasin/spy and very abusive to her mother and so at the age of 12 she sets him on fire and almost kills him. With his deep undercover connections in the government - he succeeds in having her institutionalized and labeled "crazy" - This is where she develops her distrust of everyone! And that is only a small insight Blomkvist gets into who she is and why.

In the final book, she and Blomkvist will be in a fight to clear her name of the murders her father committed and were pinned on her. I am chomping at the bits to start reading it! I have not seen the movie of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" but if it is half as good as the book - I hope they make the rest of the books into movies!

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Blue Valentine

"Blue Valentine"....I can't really put my finger on my feelings about this movie. It left me with a strange reaction I guess. First off, it is a movie starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. They play a husband and wife whose marriage is falling apart.On a purely acting stand point, I have nothing negative to say about the movie. They both do good jobs - he is likeable, she is a stressed out mom.

Where I become iffy is on the actual story. You meet them and their daughter on what appears to be just another normal day. She is trying to get the kid dressed and off to school and her to work - and of course he isn't helping very much (which is typical of most men! LOL). As they go about their day, they each have flashbacks of when they first met and got married. So as we are watching the marriage fall apart in present time, we are seeing through flashbacks them falling in love. They obviously had a very short courtship so we only really get to see about 3 months of their life total.

My problem is that the present is now like 6 or 7 years after their marriage and there is no explanation of how they got to their current situation.  In the course of their married years, he has obviously become an alcholic, is overweight and a drastic receeding hairline. She is now a nurse working at an OB/GYN office. Neither of which either of them were in the flashbacks. So my complaint is that if you are going to show me two people who are drastically different people now than they were when they were falling in love....explain to me a little more about the 7 years in between!!!  Why did he go on a downward spiral? If you are going to make a movie about the demise of a marriage - then give me insight into the MARRIAGE..not just the falling in love part!  Which speaking of - had warnings signs all over it! Sure they fell in love but it was not even a pretty falling in love that gave a glimmer of hope!  She was already jaded and shut off kind of because of the terrible relationship her parents had. She was someone that didn't really feel or show emotion or effection.  He was just a happy go lucky, jump before you look, live day to day kinda guy. (Neither sound like exactly mentally healthy people!)

Next they kinda jump into marriage because she turns up pregnant by SOMEONE ELSE! Yeah, the odds of that turning into happily ever after are slim! So here they were early enough in the relationship that she was sleeping with two people and contemplating an abortion but he says he wants them to be a family - so they get married.  Now years later, they basically can't stand each other. The whole movie takes place over the course of two days as they attempt, well, he attempts to salvage the marriage. She has no interest in it what so ever. But we are never shown their life together and at what point things started to go south!  In my opinion - ANNOYING!

Another issue I had with the movie was the pointless sex scenes - in my opinion. I get showing the one scene where the other fellow got her pregnant - cause it showed she was upset and freaked out cause she realized he didn't use protection, yada yada yada...but the others and there were a few and they were fairly graphic - I didn't understand the point of showing them. I can maybe get on board with the few attempts during the present time because that showed that she was totally resistant - but the ones of them during the falling in love portion were just not necessary. At least the level of graphicness (is that a word?) didn't need to be. Now I hate movies that end without a clear cut ending and kind of leave it up to the viewer to assume what happened - but when it comes to sex scenes - I get it. I don't really need to be shown the actual act thank you very much!

And this movie - it also ended just like that. They were arguing, he storms out and walks down the street and then the credits rolled! Seriously? Just Annoying! So, while the acting was good and the movie had its moments, I kinda feel like what was the point? To me, it was a movie that had no purpose. I mean that could of been a reality show of any couple living down the street. Who wants to watch that?

So on the whole, "Blue Valentine" was one of those movies that is kinda worth watching but for me it had a lot of issues and I just didn't really understand the point of if. What was the underlying message? Life sucks?" I take away from it that when you are promiscuous - yup it sure does!

Sunday, January 15, 2012

The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo

Yes, I know I am terribly behind in the times, but I am attempting to catch up! And let me just cut straight to the chase on this one. If you have not read "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" go now and I mean run to your nearest bookstore or download it to your kindle NOW! It is wonderful.

Yes, it is long but not for a moment do you stop to think, "oh my gosh, I have 400 more pages to go!" It moves a  wonderful and quick pace. The characters are extremely interesting and well-written. Larrson weaved together the past and the present so perfectly that I never once got lost on what was happening and when. I did have to flip back a couple of times to get the family tree straight in my mind but that was simply because the family the story is about is so huge!

Larrson weaves together about 4 different story lines and everyone is equally as interesting as the other so this book really becomes a page turner. I hated having to put it down because I just kept wanting to get to the next page to see what was happening. Now the subject matter does get a bit graphic at times but it is just so bizarre that I just had to find out more. I am now working on the second book in the series and can not wait to get to the third one to find out how Salander (the girl with dragon tattoo) and Blomkvist end up.

I have not gotten to see the movie and probably will not until it comes out on DVD but I have heard nothing but good things about it as well! Stop reading my blog and go pick up the book! I promise it is a good one!

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Presumed Innocent

I watched the 1990 Harrison Ford movie "Presumed Innocent" the other day for the first time. It was not a movie I was familiar with. It seems like I had heard of it but maybe took it as another one of his Tom Clancy movies...they all seem to run together for me. Anyway, I actually stopped and watched it the other day for the first time.

By about 20 minutes in I was almost ready to give up because it was looking to shape up like most Harrison Ford movies. Excluding American Graffitti and the Indiana Jones movies, he always seems to play the same guy. The stressed-out, slightly angry, teetering on the edge, wrongfully accused guy attempting to clear his name or something close to that. Now, he did a good job of playing that guy in "The Fugitive" but I don't think he ever got out of that role...maybe he just had it perfected by then. I don't know, but "Presumed Innocent" was shaping up to be the same ole song and dance. I hung around because I like Raul Julia. And I had nothing better to do.

I also wanted to just scream and throw something extremely large at the television and the victim. She was the typical beauty who slept with every man she met on her way to the top. She was apparently supposed to be super ambitious and smart yet felt it necessary to sleep with everyone!! Why must they make women like this? I guess because there really are women out there like that. No morals, no conscious, no respect for anything other than getting on top (of everything and everyone).

It also drove me nuts that for some reason no man could say no to her! All she had to do was give them a seductive glance and every man was cheating on his wife, blowing off his kid, you name it  - just to have a liason with this woman. And then there was the ignorant wife who even though she knew about his affair, hung around because she loved him! Seriously? Arrggghhh! That is so frustrating to me. I am sorry, but cheating, lying, with-holding the full truth are all deal breakers. Sorry - it just is.

So even with all these frustrating and stupid stereo-types, the victim had slept with enough people that it made for a really good mystery as to who finally could take it no more and killed her and why. So, over all I was glad I hung in there because it had a pretty good twist ending -I had pegged the wrong person!  It is definately worth a viewing if you have not ever seen it.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Outlander Review

So the last week of 2011 I buckled down and got myself comfortable on the couch and finished "Outlander."  I had a little trouble getting into the book initially but once some action finally started taking place and a few little twists and such started happening it became easier to read.

I think my difficulty in the book came with having to read the dialogue. The main characters are Scottish, so she wrote their conversations phonetically. I felt like I was playing a really long game of Mad Gab. I had to read and then re-read and re-read again most of the dialogue to pick up on exactly what they were saying. By page 400 I kinda had it down.

And in some places I felt she went on too long discribing this castle or that castle or the dining hall where everyone gathered and then when it came to rescuing her husband from prison- that happened in two sentences! I had to flip back and re-read a couple of pages to make sure I had not accidently skipped a page!

Overall - I think I might of given up on the book had I not heard so many good things about it. But I did stick with it and I must admit by the end of the book, it left me intrigued enough to be in search of the second book of the series.