Movie review: An Education

Directed by Lone Scherfig;

written by Nick Hornby

Cast:

Carey Mulligan (Jenny),

Peter Sarsgaard (David),

Dominic Cooper (Danny),

Rosamund Pike (Helen),

Alfred Molina (Jack, father of Jenny),

Cara Seymour (Marjorie, mother of Jenny),

Emma Thompson (Headmistress),

Synopsis:

The screenplay of this movie was adapted from memoir by the British journalist, Lynn Barber. 

1961. Jenny, a student from a middle-class family, is languishing in the London suburb of Twickenham, preparing for her A levels in a posh private school her parents can hardly afford. She wants to read English in Oxford and then she wants to become a Frenchwoman - she is aware that few opportunities exist for young intelligent women like her in the UK. At 16, and socially starving, she seems less inclined to learn from the mistakes of different wayward romantic heroines she reads about than to join their ranks.

One rainy afternoon she meets an older man who gives her and her cello a lift. His name is David Goldman, he is thirtyish and he is a Jew; he drives around in a maroon limited edition sports car and he seems very well off. Jenny finds David quite harmless at first – never pushy, rather nice than handsome, very suave, very generous and as smitten with her as she is with him. He can show Jenny the life she’s only yearned for so far, squiring her to art auctions, concerts and posh clubs, plying her with Champagne and cigarettes and high-minded talk. He can even charm her parents enough to make them allow their teen daughter more freedom than she and they ever imagined possible.

Soon enough Jenny’s conservative father, Jack, all but delivers Jenny to her seducer tied up in a bow, believing that this is an opportunity for her social advancement and a better future –cheaper than Oxford anyway. Nobody spots any problems, nobody asks difficult questions or thinks about investigating the dashing boyfriend. Only after dropping out of school and getting engaged to David Jenny discovers his second life and duplicity. That and his real family.

My impressions:

Danny and Helen, the glamorous friends of David

Seen from a certain angle, that movie could look like a classic story of sex abuse and class shame ; it was such a story up to a point but fortunately it was also far more - an extremely funny social comedy about coming into age in difficult times. I did appreciate such an approach. Of course Jenny was tricked and deceived; of course David was a predator; yes, it might have ended in a total disaster. Still from a psychological point of view everything was far more real just because it was sometimes rather funnily absurd. Jenny’s parents get enamoured with David almost as much (if not more) as their daughter although they should have definitely known better. Jenny schedules losing her virginity like other girls schedule a visit to a dentist or to a beautician’s. She is thrown out of her school not because she is pregnant or she leads a dissolute life but because she is engaged to a Jew and the headmistress (a fantastic Emma Thompson) happens to be a dumb anti-Semite (by the way her answer to Jenny’s remark that Jesus Christ was a Jew as well is simply priceless!). It’s a mark of the film’s sophistication that it doesn’t rush our judgement -  at first it doesn't portray David as predatory, or the pair’s relationship as seedy making it far more complex. 

There are no weak actors in this one. David was played very well by Mr. Sarsgaard – he showed that compulsive liar's sixth sense for other people's weaknesses. He picks up on Jenny's need to be taken seriously – and to escape from her boring world of repetitive chores, Latin homework and false hobbies. He turns her parents into his simpering, giggling fans, and he introduces Jenny to a thrilling new world of restaurants, nightclubs and naughty weekends in Paris. Jenny is a very willing participant, up to a point of course, persuaded to tolerate things she would have never believed she could tolerate. In fact some of the best parts of the film show Jenny's dreamy delight in going out à quatre with David and his glamorous friends, Danny and Helen, who turn out not to be the high-living socialites Jenny takes them for, but something rather more common and tawdry. The director is allowing doubt and then revulsion to mix, drop by drop, into our impression of them. Jenny plays along with their charade, as if determined to follow her experiment to its conclusion. Physically and emotionally, she ages as the film proceeds, instructing David, “No baby talk. Treat me like a grown-up”, and drolly summarizing her anti-climactic loss of virginity with the words: “All that poetry and all those songs about something that lasts no time at all!” Her education has taught her a lot but at a great cost.

Traditionally, it's the intelligent working-class girl who gets ideas and a boyfriend above her station, gets into trouble and has to get it sorted, most often by eating humble pie. But this girl is middle class and unplanned pregnancy isn't what happens: what is aborted, or almost aborted, is Jenny's Oxford career and her belief in great people living in an ideal, exciting world out there.

Still the real subject of “An Education” seems to be the era itself, with the changing mores and social roles of men and women. What Jenny craves is not the fact of adulthood or sex but full access to the very idea of interesting world that is the opposite of the boring, little, average England she knows and loathes; a world where you cannot step outside your social role or you will be judged harshly by the likes of her Headmistress. Even as David is taking advantage of her innocence, she is, at first unwittingly and then more brazenly, using him to find her way to that better world, which she identifies especially with France and Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism.

You might ask: why on earth didn't Jenny question her shabby lover more closely, especially after a series of serious warning bells? She saw him steal and heard him lie through his teeth. It seems she was simply too restrained by her English politeness, and ashamed of her English lack of sophistication. She was taken in, as we all could be, by someone brazen enough to believe in his own lies. It's a sad, painful comedy, but the lovely performance from Mulligan makes it a very enjoyable film.

Finally let me add something about the soundtrack which was also painfully beautiful; so beautiful that I had to watch the movie for the second time in order to focus entirely on these great, poignant French songs and music. Done to perfection.

Final verdict:

A highly recommendable, intelligent and very enjoyable movie with a great ending and incredible soundtrack – Heidenkind/Tasha, I owe you for recommending this one to me! 

Review: The Fire by Katherine Neville

Cover of The Fire: A Novel

Book info:
Form: pdf, e-book
Genre: alchemy and chess-related thriller
Target audience: pretty much everyone interested in the topic


Synopsis:

The Fire is actually a sequel to Katherine Neville’s The Eight published some twenty years ago and reviewed by me last year. The Fire, like The Eight, follows two timelines, one past (in this case 1822) and one present (2003).

Alexandra Solarin (Xie) was twelve years old in the autumn of 1993. She was being accompanied by her father, Aleksandr Solarin on a chess tournament in Zagorsk Monastery, Russia. This young chess prodigy was to play against a similarly young boy from Ukraine named Vartan Azov in the very final game of the tournament. Shortly before the game, the girl bumped into a local woman who – without Alexandra realizing it – slipped a cardboard placard into her pocket; a symbol that bore “a small illustration of a flying bird set inside an Islamic eight-pointed star, and three words printed in Russian…” that meant “Beware the Fire”. Later in the monastery, Aleksandr saw a sculpture known as “The Black Queen”. Sensing danger, Aleksandr fled the tournament with his daughter to find the woman who slipped the cardboard with the symbol earlier, but as soon as he spotted her, Aleksandr was shot in front of his young daughter.

Ten years later, with the sudden and mysterious disappearance of her mother, Cat Velis, Alexandra realizes that the Game in search of the scattered chess pieces has evidently started again… As Alexandra reunites with her arch nemesis, Vartan Azov, they must join forces on an adventure to solve the puzzle and save their lives.

The second thread of the plot takes place in the 19th century Albania. Haidee, the young daughter of a powerful Ottoman ruler, embarks on a dangerous mission – she has to smuggle a valuable relic out of her native country and deliver it safely into the hands of a stranger. Still she and her companion, Kauri, are captured by pirates and sold at a marked in Fez. Will they be able to fulfill their mission?


What I liked:

Katherine Neville’s The Eight was a good novel and for more than one reason: the narration was convoluted without being incomprehensible, it jumped in time and space still remaining logical and fun, the author used different alchemical elements and ideas and tied them up with the plot in an ingenious manner. As soon as I was able to get the sequel I decided to read it but I admit that my expectations were high. Perhaps too high…you know the curse of the sequels: somehow they are rarely as good as the first parts. This sequel, additionally, can hardly be called a stand-alone.

In structure and elements, The Fire has much in common with The Eight: characters in each period are playing a high-stakes game related to a chess set that once belonged to Charlemagne. At the end of the first novel, the players learned that the board and pieces contained the formula for the elixir of life; here it's discovered that the board may hold more abstract information about natural order and balance -- the Big Picture, it's called at one point, the Original Instructions at others. Whatever it is, it still seems worth killing for.

Overall if you haven’t read The Eight, then I highly suggest you read it first. Otherwise, you’ll get its magical story distilled in a few paragraphs of dry summary, and by only reading The Fire you’ll probably think “The Game” is pretty pointless as well – somehow Neville never manages or bothers to demonstrate what’s actually at stake, or even introduce any real drama or urgency to Alexandra’s quest (Haidee’s story is woefully relegated to serious back burner status). 

 The story brings you on a journey throughout the Middle East and it is jam-packed with historical references – on the Ottoman empire, Lord Byron, Napoleon, chess strategies, the Basques, the Mages the Sufism and more. It was nice. Still it was less dazzling than the first part, reminding me slightly (ONLY slightly) of The Da Vinci Code with the break-neck adventures and puzzle-solving frenzy.

What I didn’t like:

I despised the predictability of that one. The villains never dared to hurt any of the positive characters in a permanent manner and you KNEW they wouldn't dare perhaps because they were as cardboard-thin as it is only possible; the romantic interest of Alexandra could be spotted from a mile off  and the romance itself was far more schematic that in the first part. There was less chess more running around and looking for clues, Dan Brown style.

Part of the interest here was the way that Neville layers and repeats motifs. For example, in the book's historical narrative - set in the 1820s - another party of eight gathers to discuss the game, including Napoleon's mother, Letizia Bonaparte, and Lord Byron. But if the plot is a giant chess game, it's odd that none of the pieces gets taken; in both the historic narrative and the modern one, the characters just shuffle around the board spaces, staring menacingly before moving on. There is a lot of talk about the white team and the black team but the one person who emerges as a “villain” cannot even be taken seriously. And Xie's chess blindness seems a permanent affliction, since she rarely seems to know what's going on. Don’t get me wrong, Alexandra is a sympathetic character but she’s never proactive – she merely reacts to situations during the entire book and tries do defend herself. Perhaps this had something to do with her favorite chess strategy – The King Indian Defense – but practically, it was highly frustrating.

Final verdict:

Neville has certainly done her research, and if you like conspiracy theories, complex riddles, and the fictional integration of real historical personalities like Lord Byron and Thomas Jefferson, then this might be up your alley. For me though, it was a bit too repetitive and schematic.  Much of the background information sounded  as dry and impersonal as a Wikipedia entry, and the characters delivering it were often pretty lifeless. I don’t regret reading it but I was hardly swept away by it.

Movie review: My Week With Marilyn by Simon Curtis

Director: Simon Curtis
Cast:
Michelle Williams – Marilyn Monroe
Colin Clark – Eddie Redmayne
Sir Laurence Olivier: Kenneth Brannagh
Vivien Leigh- Julia Ormond

Synopsis:

It is a movie based on facts. In 1956 Marilyn Monroe went on her first trip to London. She was supposed to combine work and pleasure: it was her honeymoon right after the marriage with the playwright Arthur Miller and she was invited to star along Sir Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl. The film follows closely the shooting, especially one week of it.

Marilyn, alienated and lonely especially when Miller leaves England, develops peculiar relationship with Colin Clark, a 23-year old film student just down from Oxford who grubs the spot of third assistant director. Colin, fascinated with the great actress, soon finds out that the idol of Marilyn Monroe has big fat cracks all over it – Marilyn is emotionally unstable, already addicted to some dubious pills, fickle and very difficult to work with. Apparently fame and beauty do not always make a pretty picture. As Miller leaves England very soon, the coast is clear for Colin to introduce Marilyn to some of the pleasures of British life; an idyllic week in which he escorts Monroe, desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work, showing her castles, rivers, pieces of art and the famous English countryside. Will she be tempted to drop her noxious, demanding career for quiet life - with him?

My impressions:

Cropped screenshot of  real Marilyn Monroe in the trailer for the film The Prince and the Showgirl (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The story is told and seen from the standpoint of the film's star-struck third assistant director, Colin Clark, son of the great art historian Kenneth, and younger brother of the notorious Tory MP Alan. The movie-mad youngster had managed to find a job in Olivier's production office as an office boy/jack-of-all-trades. I admit I envied him. Not only had he good education and great plans which he yearned to accomplish, he also had that rich family to fall back on in case something went wrong. As a kind of bonus he also had an opportunity to meet one of the most desirable women of that time and something in him, perhaps his youthful innocence and honest concern, caught the eye of Marilyn herself. With her genius for enslaving men she made him her private confidant and helpmate – you must admit a bit shady position with a new husband hanging around...or even safely gone. Of course Colin fell hard for the bewitching star to a point of proposing, poor lad. Of course she refused, breaking his heart. Still he was left with memories to die for and she managed to shoot that movie to the very end.

Michelle Williams as MM - similar?

What I liked the most  was the fact that the film offered a realistic look into Monroe’s struggle to be herself and a good professional as well . Like most of actresses the real Marilyn was a woman shockingly different from her stage persona. Watching her sweetie-sweetie act it is easy to forget her mother was placed in an insane asylum and her father was never identified; Marilyn had no real childhood and that early abandonment deeply plagued all her adult life. Monroe whispers to Clark in one scene: "People always see Marilyn Monroe. As soon as they realize I'm not her, they run," underscoring the frustration she battled facing the incongruities between the person she wanted to be and the image of her that had been ingrained in peoples' minds, that of glamour, lusty mystery and infinite joie de vivre.

Let me tell you that Michelle Williams, although not especially similar to Marilyn from the physical point of view, played her very well indeed. It was a show inside a show watching her as she shimmied for the crowd and swerved her hips, flashing that wide-mouthed-pearly-white smile and sensually placing her index finger over her red lips. Also Kenneth Branagh was tremendous as Olivier. I especially liked one of his facial expressions - when the corners of his mouth extended outwards, in a grimace of distaste, and his eyes became black discs, like the eyes of a rattlesnake preparing to digest a large mammal. ;p He should play some baddies, he would be great at it!

Eddie Redmayne also excelled in the challenging task of playing Clark, an intelligent but inexperienced young man who has to toss up between a relationship with a pretty wardrobe mistress (Emma Watson – it was her first big-screen role since Harry Potter) and a chance of love with the most famous woman on Earth (and of course you don’t need to be a genius to guess who he chose). Although sometimes he was almost too naïve for his own good, it was still believable.

I didn't like the fact that the movie was a bit too predictable. Even if you don't know much about Marilyn Monroe and you aren't a big fan of the cinema in general it is very likely you will still know how the career of that particular actress ended and no, it wasn't a happy end at all. That's why I found it sometimes hard to keep my interest up, especially during those one-to-one scenes between Marilyn and Colin. It was almost painful to watch how the boy was fighting a losing battle against all odds, knowing fully well he had no chance from the very beginning.

Final verdict:

I admit in my opinion My Week With Marilyn is relatively light fare: it doesn't pretend to offer any great psychological insight, it doesn't surprise you with unknown facts or theories; instead it gives a great deal of pleasure and fun, and an unpretentious homage to a terrible and mostly forgotten British movie that somehow, behind the scenes, generated a very tender almost-love story. The film didn’t end with a fairly-tale HEA (and who would believe it if it did), but at least it isn’t overly bitter either. Overall I don't regret watching this one (and I would like to thank Tasha for her review which made me interested)

One of the best portraits of Marilyn by Richard Avedon (Photo credit: amaianos)

Review: Higher Magic by Kira Izmailova

Form: paperback

Genre: Urban fantasy, romance, crime story

Target audience: adults and young adults (but closer to 18)

Pages: 416

Synopsis:

When Naina Chernova signed up for the State’s Magic University in Moskow she thought it was a good choice, better than economy anyway. She was left disappointed though. Mathematics? Philosophy? The history of magic? Who needs these when you are promised to practice witchcraft? What could be done?  Soon enough her student life was progressing at a steady pace until one day she was sorely tempted and decided to break into a forbidden section of the University library. And was caught - by  professor Igor Davletiarov, a guy nobody, especially not a student, would like to cross. She expected to be thrown out. And officially she was. Still it was completely spurious.

Both her status and education changed dramatically – she became a part of a very exclusive group of students schooled in real magic, something she had yearned to try ever since. She proved to be gifted, so gifted that she was chosen for a special team preparing to conduct some dangerous and super secret experiment. And here she hit another snag. Davletiarov, a tutor who was never exactly friendly but decent, started to pick on her publicly in a very nasty manner. Why? Naina’s curiosity became alive despite her hurt feelings. She decided to investigate the past of her tormentor and found out things which made her rethink pretty much everything time and again. Can magic be dangerous to her?  

What I liked:

At first glance it seemed just another version of Harry Potter for a slightly older audience – a clever but rather homely girl starts her higher education in magic, is underwhelmed by the chosen alma mater and a tad lonely; then  her life changes all of a sudden because of her own curiosity, a mysterious sixth floor which keeps appearing and disappearing and an unpleasant professor (Snape, yes, I had to add that, almost Snape but more intelligent and cleaner). Still it was original and fresh – not only the sense of humour (I laughed out loud like mad several times maybe because I could relate) and the vivid characterization but also the whole setting which really sometimes seemed far closer to Bulhakov than to J.K Rowling.

Naina is a very likeable character, inquisitive, recourceful, intelligent, ironic. I liked following her around even if from time to time her life was boring. Her relationship with Davletiarov was mature, changing and developing, so far from those tiring, silly infatuations as it is only possible; yes, there was a kind of fascination but also a lot of common sense (‘what this guy wants?’ why he behaves that way or the other?’ ‘what’s happened to him?’). After reading so many American novels in which the females are either drooling over boyfriends’ six packs or cat-fighting each other to prove how kick-ass they are this was like a return to a much-missed normalcy.

Finally Naina did something which not only made me cheer but also earned my deepest respect (as it is a spoiler it is masked, highlight to read or skip, according to your wishes): she left Davletiarov. Yes, she walked away from him completely on her own. And he let her do it. Mind you she did it ONLY and SOLELY because she wanted to show her own mettle. There was no ‘third’ party, no other romantic interest, NOTHING like an ugly love triangle. You see, Mesdames et Messieurs? Completely possible. What a refreshing move after reading about all those vapid, brainless girls who are so insanely bipolar when it comes to their feelings that they sometimes make me dizzy (up-again-down-again).

What I didn’t like:

I do admit the book had its weaknesses. It was a bit too long or too short – I am sure any American writer would make of it a fully-fledged trilogy. Not a bad trilogy to add. The pace of narration was too monotone, especially in the third part of the book when the characters of Naina and Igor were separated for some time. Some plot devices like Naina’s sudden trip to Paris and her equally sudden change of heart after shopping in Parisian boutiques and getting to know foreign mages were a bit stretched. I can understand a girl can lose heart after seeing a nice pair of shoes but to lose her heart so completely? Has the author run out of ideas? Fortunately soon the order of things was restored and in the end we get a big fat HFN (happy for now). Which suited me fine.

Oh and the cover seems to be just a random jumble of pictures. This story deserves something better.

Final verdict:

A very light and refreshing novel with an interesting plot, narrated in a funny way, and featuring a pair of protagonists who are very likeable although a bit flawed. Bad news: as far as I know it is not available in English. Not yet I hope – a publisher should get interested in this one asap. 

Review: A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

Book info:

Format: pdf, e-book

Genre: fantasy

Target audience: adults

Synopsis or something like that:

It is he fifth volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, the fantasy epic series which has been made very popular nowadays. If you have read the previous four parts you know that summarizing the fifth would be close to impossible; if you haven’t read any of them, well, just let me tell you no summary an no TV series can prepare you for the complexity of those books. In fact the plot is so convoluted as to defy synopsis. Really even the work of Tolkien pales in comparison. What can be said…winter is coming and the seven Kingdoms are hardly prepared for it because they plot and prepare for a war – every ruler wants to assure the Iron Throne, currently occupied by a child, Tommen Baratheon, will fall into the hands of their man or woman.

Coat of Arms of the House of Lannister (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What I liked:


Just several chapters, really; and if I described them in more detail I would spoil you horribly. As usual, I am giving you the choice: highlight and read if you want to or skip if you prefer not to be spoiled:

-          Finally we know for sure Brienne is alive but we still aren’t told how and why – she meets with Jaime and informs him that Sandor has Sansa under his care.  Now I wonder…how would Petyr Baelish, lord Littlefinger, react if he knew? Does he know? Is he still among living? 

-          Arya is progressing on the path of Braavos Faceless Men (assassins trained in the Temple of Black and White).  Now we are told that she was made blind on purpose and then that  process is reverted. She is also shown how to change her face and sent as an apprentice on her first mission. Go Arya, GO!

-         Cersei was humiliated for her sins: she was shaved bald and led, naked, through the King’s Landing. Still she is alive. Ok, great, I can’t wait for her meeting Tyrion again.

-         Tyrion was first sold as a slave and then joined the Golden Company of sellswords and other scum. He will have an interesting life for sure but he is one of the best characters around so small wonder. If only it took him less time....

What I didn’t like:

General remarks, spoiler-free:

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This story is becoming so huge, so convoluted, so Byzantine that it is really difficult to keep your interest, especially that different parts have been published several years apart. I really struggled reading this one – too many inner monologues, too many info dumps, too much info about secondary characters who were hardly germane to the story. It seems the author, after a tremendously good start, tripped over his own pen. Ok, I understand, it is more likely than not THE story of his life and he did plan it as a panorama rather than a portrait or a simple landscape but really he went over the top with the number of sub-plots, different trivial descriptions of this custom or that and all those strange names of strange foreign people I hardly remembered or recognized at all. What’s more the author started to repeat different plot devices – sometimes I felt as if I breathed recycled air; officially everything is fine but your nose recognizes the same particles and starts to itch…


More particular remarks, highlight to read as they include serious spoilers;

-          The death (?) of Jon Snow was a horrible scene; still maybe he survived; rings a bell?

-         I’ve had enough of Cersei in the previous books and here she got three more chapters or so; really unfair, I would prefer more Arya/Tyrion chapters

-         Sometimes the narration was so slow that almost sleep-inducing (e.g. the journey of Tyrion to Mereen or the whinnying of Theon aka Reek)

-         Danny was reduced to a goody-goody Snow White who cannot determine her priorities because she is too occupied bedding Daario; her inner dragon had to go into a coma; her little flying adventure on a big, bad, black Drogon made me despise her even more;

-         Too many witches/priestesses/prophetesses/greenseers/whiteseers etc. around, too many different prophesies. Boring.

Final verdict:

It took me almost a month to get through this book. I didn’t want to start reading and I forced myself to finish it. Some chapters were worth the effort but most of them I found too long and boring and let me tell you I was never bored by the previous novels. In my humble opinion a determined editor should have cut out at least half of the material, making the story more compact and edgy. Will I continue reading? Yes, some characters are worth it. Still it seems the series is deteriorating and it is a bit sad.

Movie review: Brave

Directed by: Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman
Story: Brenda Chapman
Cast (voices): Queen Elinor - Emma Thomson
                    Merida: Kelly Macdonald
                    King Fergus: Billy Conolly
                    The Witch: Julie Walters





Synopsis:

Brave (2012 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once upon a time in medieval Scotland lived an impetuous princess called Merida. Merida loved riding her pony and shooting arrows at different targets. Mainly artificial, immobile targets, mind you, nothing alive. Hunting? Who heard of hunting in the Middle Ages? At that time people and wild animals lived in perfect harmony as nobody, either noble or otherwise, ate venison, right? Ok, I digress… soon enough Merida found out that the life of a princess is not only about learning and pleasures but also about duties. Her mom, the queen Elinor, decided that Merida, a 16-year-old girl, should marry. Elinor wheedled her husband, King Fergus, into organizing a nice little contest; they invited three other clans and each of them presented the most worthy young men, candidates to be a husband of a princess.

Merida was angry, shocked and hurt but mainly shocked. How could her beloved mom do something like THAT to her when she, a spoiled teenager, stated several times that she WAS. NOT. READY. FOR. A. MARRIAGE (and of course she knew best)? Let me remind you that we deal here with a Middle Ages princess who is basically telling her mum to stick her ideas up her...long braid. Her dad, a big oaf of a king and a totally henpecked husband, was hardly of help. It was time for extraordinary measures. After a fight with her mom she tore off into the woods on her faithful pony and immediately was led by a will-o’-the-wisp to a cottage inhabited by a witch…er…magical wood carver. Making a deal with a witch is never a good idea but our clever Merida decided she knew best once again - she purchased not only a room-full of useless wooden statues of bears but also a small cake which could change the eater… quite dramatically.

As soon as she returned to the castle, Merida presented her mum with the cake, calling it a peace offering. Elinor, appeased, ate one little piece of it. The results, as always when you deal with magic, exceeded anybody’s expectations. All of a sudden Merida was faced with harsh reality – either she made things right soon or her life and the lives of her family would be tragically changed forever.

My impressions:

Brave, originally titled The Bear and the Bow, follows a prickly mother-daughter relationship with a dash of special effects connected with magic – a willful teenager confronts her stubborn mother, asks for help a complete stranger creating more problems than she’s ever believed possible and ends up solving them all. Fine, just fine. 
I really wanted to be smitten by this one. The premise sounded so nice and enticing at first glance: Scottish Highlands and a Disney/Pixar cartoon  focusing almost completely on female characters; mind you it was not, I repeat, it WAS NOT about finding the love of their lives. I almost felt like cheering. Then my problems started. 

All male characters were there to provide comedy relief, remaining as thin as cardboard cut-outs (so no, don’t invite your boyfriend/husband along to see this movie; it might have disastrous effects). There’s the idiotic father, completely dominated by his cool wife, and three triplet boys who are simply up to no good all the time and could have easily been one person, so similar they seem. There is also a bunch of fight-crazy, bombastic clansmen who just eat, drink, laugh loudly, quarrel, fight and strut about (small wonder they would lose their independence in the near future). It was funny for about five minutes but after a while I admit I  got bored, waiting in vain for somebody male with brains (such a thing exists, right?). In other words, somebody to break the routine in an intelligent way. At the end I found out that  this tale definitely wasn’t as fresh and groundbreaking as I hoped. For all the hubbub about Merida being Pixar’s first truly feminist princess, there is little evidence that she is anything more than a spoiled redhead lass, badly in need for a life lesson or two. She is also surprisingly weak – even compared to the other Disney princesses. 

Say what you might about Jasmine but she was far more independent and clever enough to escape her gild cage and then play along with Jafar to help Aladdin. Ariel knew what she wanted and had to work hard on her own in order to win over the prince. Belle had to work as well and overcome many obstacles to save the day and her beloved Beast. Merida, on the other hand, simply has to reverse what harm she did (and let me remind you she did it out of  her own sheer stupidity) and follow the steps laid out for her at the very beginning – not a particularly difficult task you must admit. If anything, it’s Merida’s mother who is the strong female, being more than capable of stopping the men right in their tracks, especially her husband. Yes, I appreciated the fact that Merida didn’t have to either fall in love or marry at the end (undoubtedly preparing the ground for the next installment in which she WILL marry as her mum wishes) but I felt a bit disenchanted by too many clichés, plaguing this movie. Mother/daughter bonding couldn’t carry the whole an-hour-and-half long film and it is hardly something new although I admit an evil step-mother is a far more popular trope.

What’s more…ok, I grant it, the visual effects were simply great. The shaggy, orange-red hair of Merida was done in a really ingenious way, along with many animals and landscapes, always animated to perfection. On a sensory level, Brave is almost entirely a delight. On a plot level and character-wise – nothing special.

Final verdict:

Overall, in my humble opinion, Brave is Pixar trying too hard. When you’ve built your brand on delivering on your promises, it’s devastating when you come up short. The film that starts off big and promising soon diminishes into a rather wee, schematic fairy tale with a heroine who is supposed to be kick-ass and then she isn’t because it was WRONG all the way. Yes, boys and girls, her mum did know better from the very start. Ha, show me a child, let alone a teenager, who wouldn’t be pissed off with such an ending. I myself was expecting so much more.

Review: On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves

Book info:

format: mobi
Genre: adventure, romance
Target audience: adults

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family's summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day. T.J. Callahan has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He's almost seventeen and if having cancer wasn't bad enough, now he has to spend his first summer in remission with his family - and a stack of overdue assignments - instead of his friends.

Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.'s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island.

Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter. Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.'s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.

What I liked:

The story – as simple as that. Although the premise made me think immediately of Castaway movie with Tom Hanks, I was soon made so curious about the future of both protagonists that I kept reading until the very end. The plot was thought out in a really good way and, to my delight, it didn’t finish with the rescue, which I kind of expected. The pace of narration doesn’t slow down for a moment – I literally swallowed the book in two evenings. The author tells her story using alternatively two POVs: that of Anna and T.J. She isn’t shunning difficult topics like age disparity or hormonal turmoil of a teenager becoming an adult.

The best part was the changing relationship between Anna and T.J. It was described in a very realistic, mature way and still the author managed to end the book with a HEA. Both characters were presented with their flaws and advantages; they never acted strangely (read: in a stupid way) and their reactions were logical.

What I didn’t like:

First of all it is clearly a debut novel and it is felt. The style could have been more polished Some dialogs seemed a bit wooden. The characters overused their Christian names too much, sometimes stating obvious things over and over again..

I didn’t appreciate jumps in the narration timeline either (like: three years later or two years later, I hate those); in fact it was perhaps the very feature that disturbed me the most. I suppose the book would be far better without them, even if it was a bit longer/ more complicated.

Cover:

A bit generic but fitting. I like those blues.

Final verdict:

A good story but rather shabbily told. If you like romance novels you might appreciate it better than me. Still not a bad novel for a debutting author.