The Way Way Back

            So this weekend out of pure boredom, I decided to watch a movie I haven’t seen before that I saw commercials about on television, but just never actually went to see it in theaters. The movie I watched this weekend was called the Way Way Back. Literally, this movie is depressing, well, that’s what I thought anyway.

            Basically without doing a lot of summary it’s about a boy who gets forced to go to summer house with his mum and his mum’s new boyfriend; that’s basically the whole story. The movie is focused upon actor Liam James, who plays Duncan. Basically, Duncan is an awkward kid that has no friends and is just really shy, but he learns to make new friends and find his place.

            One of the main reasons I decided to watch this movie was because it had actress Anna-Sophia Robb and all the movies she has been in so far I’ve absolutely loved, so I decided it was time I watched the Way Way Back because she was in it. I was a bit disappointed though because she didn’t seem to be in the movie all that much, she plays the role of Susanna and only talks to Duncan a couple of times; and considering the movie is focused upon the character of Duncan she really isn’t in the movie that much. Even though it’s obvious that Duncan likes Susanna and even tries kissing her, but ends up chickening out and running off, she isn’t in the movie that much.

            I thought that this movie was an okay movie, it wasn’t one of those movies that is an “oh my gosh you have to see it” type of movies. This movie is more of a “if you have time then it isn’t a bad movie to watch.” It definitely had humorous points, but I found the movie overall as depressing. I mean basically you have this boy who has no friends, shy and awkward, his dad doesn’t want him, and his mum and him live in a one room apartment with each other. It just seems overall depressing, and the fact that the mum, Pam, (played by actress Toni Collette) is with a jerk of a boyfriend makes everything even more depressing.

            I noticed in this movie that Duncan just tended to do stupid things that makes you shutter and think “Why are you doing this!?” But other than that I thought it was an okay movie and didn’t think it was a waste of time to watch, but I don’t really think it would interest that many people, so watch it or don’t…It’s a pretty straight forward movie I thought. 

Now You See Me

            So one of the coolest movies I've ever seen is called Now You See Me. This movie came out in about May of 2013. Many people saw it and just about everyone thought it was a really good movie. I thought it was an amazing movie, and would never have dreamed that I would like a movie having to do with magic.

            The movie Now You See Me centers around four magicians that do outstanding tricks on stage. The whole movie is literally just really cool and interesting. Magic is interesting and people always want to know how people do it because humans are just curious and love to know answers instead of being left in wonder. The thing that made me like this movie so much was just the plot, everything made sense and didn’t seem like the directors were leaving an important detail out. The whole story just went with everything, I wasn’t confused the slightest bit during the movie which is probably one reason I liked it so much.

            Another reason I liked Now You See Me is because I love movies about magicians; considering there really isn’t that many magician movies, this movie definitely appealed to me. The movie just centers on the detectives trying to find out what they are all going to do next and anticipate the magicians’ next moves. It’s sort of a funny movie in my opinion because the magicians’ just joke around with the detectives and play around with them, and also the tricks are awesome. Even if magic isn’t real this movie was a fun movie to see.

            My favorite part in the movie is the very end when Thaddeus Bradley, played by Morgan Freeman, is in the cell and he says to the detective Dylan Rhodes, played by Mark Ruffalo, that he knows exactly how they managed to do this trick and tells him why and then Dylan disappears and reappears out of the cell, I thought that was just so cool. Also I liked the actor Dave Franco because he was in the last season of one of my favorite shows, Scrubs. The other two guy magicians were pretty entertaining as well, played by Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson the tension between them kept the movie interesting and at ease.

            Overall, the movie was fun and interesting to see, I really enjoyed the cast. I also thought that the movie was so unique and interesting that if you haven’t yet seen this movie, it is definitely worth seeing it. 

Vampire Academy series

            A series I read a while ago was called Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead. Yes, this is a series about vampires, I used to be into the supernatural series like many other teenagers my age. This series has six books in it (I don’t count the other books that aren’t really essential to the series of the Vampire Academy, including the guides and the spin off series called Bloodlines.) The first book is called Vampire Academy, the second Frostbite, third is Shadow Kiss, the fourth is called Blood Promise, the fifth Spirit Bound, and the last book is called Last Sacrifice.

            I really enjoyed this series when I read it, I don’t know if it’s because I loved supernatural books or it was just a really good story, but I remembered I loved the series. I read the first four books and thought they were extremely well-written and I liked the characters and the whole romance going on between the characters. I had to wait a bit to read the next books in the series because they weren’t out yet, but finally all the rest of the books in the series came out and I read them; I was a little disappointed. I don’t know if it was because I had finally got over the supernatural books or just the fact that as the series continued it became more and more farfetched and strange. Overall with the series as a whole I thought it was pretty good, but kind of seemed like it was repetitive of other supernatural books I had read before.

            My favorite book out of the series is probably Frostbite, I feel like in that book you get to know the characters more and it’s just an interesting story; I’m not saying the first book was bad, I liked the first book, but just enjoyed the second and third book over the first. The characters in the series as a whole focus mostly on Lissa Dragomir who is a moroi which just means vampire and Rose Hathaway who is a dhampir which just means half-vampire and half-human. The other main characters in the story are Adrian Ivashkov a guy that is in love with Rose, Christian Ozera who Lissa loves, and finally Dimitri Belikov who is Lissa’s guardian and who Rose loves. The series focuses mostly upon the story of Rose and Lissa and their love lives basically.

            I liked the series, it’s probably not one of my favorite series and not everyone would like it. I recommend the series to people if they tend to like supernatural and romantic books, but if they don’t like either of those themes then they would absolutely hate the series.

Harry Potter movies

            The Harry Potter movies are amazing. There is no other way to describe the movies; the movies are probably the best representation of the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Most movies people see are based upon books, but most times we read the book series and then are disappointed in the how the movie ends up turning out; that is not the case in the Harry Potter movies. Most people thought the movies were amazing, as I myself saw them as truly amazing.

            I can’t say how many times I’ve seen the movies…I think I have at least seen every movie at least ten times, but the first 4 movies I’ve seen over 30 times for all of them. No life? It might seem like I don’t, but when you put into consideration that the first movie came out in 2001 it doesn’t seem that bad because it’s now 2013. There are a total of eight movies because the Deathly Hallows had so much detail that could not be left out the producers decided to make two parts out of it.

            Why is it worth it to watch the Harry Potter movies? First thing is the main actor that plays Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, is a great actor and Harry Potter’s friends Hermione Granger (played by Emma Watson) and Ronald Weasley (played by Rupert Grint) are interesting characters and are played very accurately. Oh, and Tom Felton is in the series playing the role of Draco Malfoy and so is Matthew Leis playing the role of Neville Longbottom; there are just really good actors and actresses in the movie that do a splendid job of making the movies interesting and entertaining.

 Another reason to watch Harry Potter is who doesn’t love English accents? They talk so cutely that it you just want to continuously hear them talk because it sounds so cool. And one of the main reasons it will take a lot of time to watch them because there is eight movies and each movie is about 2 and a half hours long…So it will take awhile to watch them all to begin with, but the producers do a good job of putting a bit of comedy into the movie to keep it humorous and it’s just an interesting and unique story.

            My favorite of the movies if I had to choose one would probably be either the Goblet of Fire or Deathly Hallows Part Two because they are both action packed and unique. The effects of the movies are really good too. I don’t really have anything else as to why those two are my favorite movies, but they just are. Overall, the Harry Potter movies are amazing. 

Harry Potter series

So a lot of people have heard of the series based upon a wizard named Harry Potter there are seven books in the series. This is a series that is made by author J.K. Rowling and consists of the books Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (fun fact: the first book is actually called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, but the United States thought that since it said philosopher in the title that no kid would want to read it, so they changed the name), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and the last book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

These are known to be one of the best series ever and also the book that brought up the most controversy as to whether to allow it in schools or not. The reason behind this is because the Harry Potter series is based upon witchcraft and some schools and families thought that it portrayed bad witchcraft and was inspiring children to become involved in witchcraft. While this series obviously talks about wizards it’s more of just a fun story that is interesting to read.

I know of a lot of people that have read the Harry Potter series and absolutely loved them, I honestly don’t know one person that has read the books and not enjoyed the series. The books are written incredibly and it’s such an interesting story and easy to follow what’s happening in the story. The series I think has to be the best children book series of all time (though teenagers like me enjoy the series very much as well.) It’s hard to not fall in love with the characters and what’s happen with all the people like Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville.

I think that these books were amazing and give people more imagination as how life would be different if we were wizards instead of muggles. My favorite of the series was the Deathly Hallows because they were the best written and had the most detail in them; I actually re-read that book again and realized how much detail I had missed the first time because there is just so much in the book that it’s easy to miss something.

The Harry Potter series is definitely worth reading, not only do kids love the books, but so do adults and teenagers. I know that some people think that since it talks about witchcraft that it’s promoting it, but in my own personal opinion that’s complete rubbish. It’s like an adventure or fantasy book, why hate on this series when there are far worse books than something merely talking about the idea of witchcraft? Well, anyway back to my point the series is phenomenal and people should definitely read them. 

Beautiful Creatures

            So a book I read a couple of years ago that I didn’t enjoy whatsoever was called Beautiful Creatures. Beautiful Creatures is written by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl and consists of four books including Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos, and Beautiful Redemption. I read only the first book and I just didn’t care for it, I don’t know why this book didn’t appeal to me as much as other books I’ve read in the past because I can solemnly say that with all the books I’ve read I’ve only not liked a couple of them (when I say read a book, I mean reading a book of my free choosing and not getting forced to read it by my language arts teacher.)

            Now the one reason I was really annoyed with the book Beautiful Creatures is because it has absolutely no good use of vocabulary, in the book it’s literally all in words that the common person would understand. I feel like the book was written by someone my age because of the words used in the book. And because I was reading the book for reading workshop and had to get 3 vocabulary words I didn’t know it was very difficult for me to find words I didn’t know. But maybe I'm just being really skeptical about the series, I don't really know.

            These are also very lengthy books the first book I know contains about 600 or so pages. I read the whole first book and just couldn’t make myself read the other three books; for all I know the last three books could be fantastic, but I finished the first one and didn’t like it. I don’t know if it’s because I feel like it’s written by a person that uses popular words or the story itself, but I just didn’t care for it as much as some people do.

            The book is basically about how the main character Ethan Wate has been stuck in the same place his whole life and nothing new really happened until a new girl that was really weird named Lena Duchannes came along and strange shenanigans start to happen. That’s basically all I remember about the book, I just know I didn’t care for it that much.

            Beautiful Creatures was also turned into a movie which I did wait till the movie came out and saw it. I think the movie was better than the book. That sounds so rude because normally always the books are better than the movies, but I think in this case the movie was better than the book. I think the book just had a lot of useless details that I thought were pointless to the story while the movie just shortened it up; that’s probably why I enjoyed the movie more so than the book. I think the movie was pretty good, definitely not one of my favorite movies or a movie that I want to watch again, I think that it was an okay movie, but it’s not one of those movies that people just have to see.

The Summer I Turned Pretty

            A trilogy that I own that I have really enjoyed is called the Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. This consists of three books where the first is called the Summer I Turned Pretty, the second is It’s Not Summer Without You, and the last book is called We’ll Always Have Summer. I actually read the first book in 8^th grade and thought it was super cute and adorable; all the books are romantic books.

            The main characters in the story are Belly (the chick) and the two guys Jeremiah Fisher and Conrad Fisher are brothers and they both have a thing for Belly when she comes down to the summerhouse, they instantly start to like her. I think it’s adorable the whole three books because Belly has always liked Conrad since she was really little and he starts to like her back, which is totally fiction because that rarely happens, but it’s an adorable story.

            I also like this series a lot because the books focus on Susannah who gets diagnosed with cancer and how when someone gets diagnosed with cancer how it changes everyone’s lives completely. Thought this trilogy is considered a romantic trilogy, I think it’s more than that. The trilogy shows the path people have to face when someone is diagnosed with cancer or a loved one ends up dying from cancer. The whole trilogy it focuses upon how Susannah changed everyone’s lives and how they will always remember her.

            I recommend this trilogy to people who have had someone they love be diagnosed with cancer or even had someone they love pass away. The trilogy tells about the life people have to face when they find out news like that and how they have to face it. I definitely think a lot of people can relate to this book because each year a million of people are diagnosed with cancer, so it’s more than likely that throughout the human life we’ll personally know at least one person who gets diagnosed with cancer. Reading this trilogy helps let you know that you’re not the only one that goes through the death of a close one, but others go through it as well.

            I think that this trilogy really helps if you know someone who has been diagnosed with cancer and has had to go through the hardship of chemo or had surgeries to get rid of the cancer. Though this is a romantic trilogy as its main focus, it really ends up all coming back to Susannah.