Lucky Linderman is not happy -- his father is a turtle, his mother is a squid, and he has been bullied by the same kid since he was 7 years old. 

Okay, his father isn't actually a turtle, but he doesn't do much, that Lucky can see, to make his life any better.  When Lucky tells him about the bully, Nader McMillan, his father's usual suggestion is to ignore the kid.  Now, 9 years later, Lucky is in high school and fears for his safety every time he walks the halls of his high school.

His mother isn't actually a squid either, but to escape her frustrations with her husband and her own worries about her son, she takes Lucky with her to the pool every day of the summer and swims laps in the pool for hours on end. 

There's a lot more to Lucky's story, more than I want to tell you here, because it's better to let it all slowly unfold.  Because his tale is not exactly linear (we bounce between his childhood, his current summer vacation, and spaces in-between) it's hard to say anything without spoiling this beauitful story. 

And it is beautiful.  And sad. Lucky's voice is honest and true.  He reveals his life to the reader bit by bit, as he deems necessary.  Is he teetering on the edge of sanity?  Is he just finding a way to deal with reality through a bit of strangeness?  Why are adults so oblivious to the plight of teenagers? 

There was an article a few months ago, I wish I could find the link, but someone was blogging about "Glee" and it's issues as a show, taking characters from heroes to victims in a matter of seasons.  In it, the author lamented his issues with the "It Gets Better" campaign, pointing out that it's heart was in the right place, but the last thing you want to hear when you're a teenager is that "It Get's Better" which, let's face it, is pretty much like saying "just suck it up" or "get over it".  This is the kind of message Lucky's father sends to him about the bully - instead of actively helping his son, his tells Lucky to ignore the bully, to just wait until he's done with high school.  Lucky is only a freshman - he is at his limit NOW and the thought of waiting 3 more years to finally have peace...it's not an appealing one.  And it makes him feel lost and alone in a way that only a teenager can. 

It also reminded me of an essay that Mo Willems wrote for a short story collection about being bullied where he broke it down for teens -- there are bullies, there will always be bullies, and they will grow up and have children and teach them to be bullies and defend their right to bully.  It sucks but it's true, just make sure you're not one of them.  And, once you've identified them, get them out of your life and move on.  A bully is not your friend.

This is a book for anyone who was ever bullied or knew someone who was bullied.  It's a story for everyone who feels their family is so "different" they will never be happy.  And it's a story for the adults that managed to survive high school and understand that everyone's family is "different" in their own way, for better or for worse, and that life is about processing those differences.  And for everyone who learned, one way or another, that it does get better, but you have to take an active role in your survival to make the change. 

Just read it. 

In "50/50", 27 year old Adam (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finds out he has a very rare form of cancer.  Adam, who never drinks, smokes, obeys traffic signals - never even learned how to drive because of the statistics - suddenly finds himself faced with his own mortality. 

Really, 50/50 doesn't offer a whole lot NEW in way of story.  Seth Rogen plays Kyle, Adam's best friend who is his exact opposite - drinking, smoking, fooling around with lots of ladies (though this is the calmest I've ever seen Rogen...he was actually playing an adult!).  Bryce Dallas-Howard plays Rachael, Adam's estranged girlfriend who decides to stay with him after he tells her about his disease.  Angelica Houston is Adam's mother, who reacts to the news the way any parent would. 

The only stand-out character is Anna Kendrick, who plays Katherine, Adam's not-quite-yet-a-psychiatrist (since he goes to a teaching hospital for his treatment for some unexplained reason).  She is 24 and working on her doctorate and Adam is only her third patient.  Of course, she is thrown by his youth. 

50/50 is very watchable, mostly because of the cast (did I mention Anna Kendrick is in this movie?  Seriously, she is so awesome, I love her).  The story is what you would expect, but it's the ensemble that makes you want to stay with the film until the end to see how it all turns out.  It is not "uproariously funny" as the box claimed, but it does have some chuckle-worthly moments.  It's just a story of a life, so there is some natural humor and natural meloncholy.  If you're a fan of any of these actors, it's worth a look. 

Within the first few minutes of "Contagion" you're thinking:

"Wow, it's scary how quickly a disease can spread, especially in today's modern world of constant travel."

About 30 minutes in, you're shaking your head:

"Wow, it's scary how quickly the mission to cure a disease can be overtaken by beaurocracy, politics, and selfishness." 

An hour:

"WTF never mind the disease or the government organizations, what is wrong with people?  Are we really just animals pretending to be proper?"

And the movie ends:

*breathes out*  "Wow...that was tense."

"Contagion" is a very simple story - it's the story of a new disease, similar to H1N1 and SARS, that pops up on sheer chance and manages to devistate human society.  The movie gives us a glimpse into the lives of a suburban dad, a CDC agent, a scientist searching for a cure, a W.H.O. agent searching for answers, and a conspiracy theorist with an internet connection. 

It's less like watching a story be told, but more like watching someone else put a puzzle together in front of you.  I suppose that is how it feels for the men and women faced with challenges like this daily.  When the movie starts, it's like someone has just dumped all of the pieces out right in front of us and then run off with the box lid so we have no clue where to start.  Slowly, the scientists begin to put things together the only way they know how, slowly building up the edges, putting little things together they notice, working towards a big picture.

I think the scariest thing about disease is that it doesn't need to be personified into an evil thing.  That's what makes it scary.  Evil has a goal, a purpose -- diseases are not aware of what they are doing as they slowly wipe out a person, a family, a town, a city...but people do.  People know what they need to survive.  Like "28 Days Later" and "War of the Worlds" (2005), the most disturbing scenes are when humanity falls apart and that basic survival need takes over. 

I will definitely be thinking about this movie for awhile.  Every time someone coughs or sneezes and then touches something...(yeah, don't watch this if you have hypocondriac tendencies!) 

Stellar cast, riveting narrative - def. worth checking out!

'Midnight in Paris' works because of Owen Wilson. 

Wilson plays the role that, if the movie had been made in the 70s, would have been played by the film's writer/director Woody Allen.  But because Allen was smart enough to know he was better off behind the scenes this time, he cast Wilson, who shines.  You can hear the lines coming out of his mouth an imagine Allen writing them, but the way Wilson delivers them, with his unique voice and speech pattern, turns the main character into a likeable character.

Gil (Wilson) is a successful Hollywood scriptwriter who is working on his first novel.  He's come to Paris with his fiancee, Inez (played by Rachel McAdams), and the visit has rekindled his love for the city that he visited as a younger man.  This movie is a romance, but it's not about Gil and Inez - it's about Gil's love affair with Paris in the 1920s.  One night, when he goes on a midnight stroll, he finds himself transported into the past, rubbing elbows with his literary heroes, and inhabiting the time he feels was a golden age. 

I think movie will appeal to anyone who has ever felt regret and wants that chance to change everything.  Just earlier this week, I was reading an article (Some Advice for Young People), the crux of which was that you shouldn't be afraid of quitting.  So many of us set our career goals but let our life goals, general happiness, fall by the wayside in the pursuit of these so-called milestones.  When Gil laments the fact that, when he first came to Paris year ago, he didn't just stay in the city and become a writer, but instead went back to the U.S. to persue his budding scriptwriting career, I think many of us know exactly what that feels like. 

This movie will also appeal to anyone who has ever said "I was born at the wrong time."  It's a sweet little look at nostalgia and obsessions with the past and learning to love the now.  Again, it's all about siezing the moment.  I think artists and dreamers always look to the past for inspiration and many begin to feel envious of the time when the things they love were new. 

It's a sweet movie.  No big action scenes, it's not about making big, world-changing statements -- it's about the simple pleasures of life and how easy it is to forget about them but how much we need them.  It's a love poem to Paris, a city that has managed to mesmerize people for over a century, and still have a magical charm about it today.  I doubt it will win any awards at the Oscars but I'm glad it was nominted because it got me to watch it and I really liked it.  It has lots of heart and laughs and avoids getting too serious.  Again, I think a lot of the credit goes to Owen Wilson and his fantastic performance. 

So the next time you want to curl up on the couch with a cup of hot tea and watch a good movie, I suggest "Midnight in Paris". 

There is a difference between an old animated movie and an animated classic - I realized that last night while rewatching 'The Fox and the Hound'.

The movie just celebrated it's 30th Anniversary release, making it the same age as me, so I had fond memories of watching this as a child and listening to the book-on-cassette read-along.  I was actually very surprised by how much of the dialogue I remembered from listening to that recording over and over.  I was also surprised by how there really wasn't much else to that movie.

Watching something like 'Fox and the Hound' after enjoying a movie like 'Tangled' or even, dare I say it, 'Lion King' (one of Disney's most overrated, IMHO), you can see how far the studio has come in those 30 years.  It feels like more of a fable than a story, the characters are just skin and bones and you hardly get to know them in the 80 minute run time.  Also, I doubt anyone would make a movie targeted towards children today that featured scenes where the main character is shot at and where he is threatened with having his food sliced off with a trap. 

I'm happy I just rented this from the library and didn't buy it on blu-ray.  I doubt I will want to go back to it.  Like 'Black Cauldron', this is one of those movies I should have left behind and not rewatched because my childhood memories had filtered out it's flaws.  Tod and Copper are cute, the story does not hold up by today's standards.

The plot of Beauty Queens sounds very simple on the surface: a plane full of teen beauty pageant contestants crash lands on a deserted island and must work together to survive.  This could easily have just been an over-the-top comedy or book of catfights, but Bray uses her amazing skills as a story teller to turn this book in to so much more, using her sharp wit as a weapon to fight the battle for young girl’s minds.
 
A small group of Miss Teen Dream contestants survive the plane crash and find themselves without their coaches, parents, or Corporation products, stranded on an island.  Miss Texas takes charge and attempts to organize the group.  She’s a hardcore pageant girl and even after the crash, she has her eyes on the prize.  Mixed in with the survivors is Miss New Hampshire, Adina.  She is a journalist at her high school and signed up for the pageant as part of an elaborate scheme to expose it for the shallow, sexist event that it is.  As the book goes on, we begin to discover the secrets and dreams of all the other girls on the island.  None of them are just “pretty girls”.  Each of them has a life and decisions that has brought them to this point.  And they will have to find their strength to survive what the island is about to throw at them.
 
I don’t want to give to much away as this book was full of lots of wonderful surprises.  At times, I found myself laughing out loud as Bray poked fun at our materialistic and beauty obsessed culture...though beneath that laugh was the sadness of how much damage has been done to women when it comes to this constant judgment put upon them.  Other times, I found myself overwhelmed by the message of the book - the idea that young girls can work together, that young girls should take pride in every part of themselves, embrace their minds and bodies and be happy.  It’s a hard lesson that many of us still struggle to remind ourselves of every day.

Beauty Queens is an intelligent and fun read that went beyond my expectations (though I don’t know why I was surprised, Bray’s Going Bovine was one of my favorite books from 2009).  Due to some of the content of the book, I would recommend this for readers 16 years and up.  But I highly recommend getting this book into the hands of any young woman you want to learn to think outside the box and question what is sold to them on a daily basis.  Bray’s book is about acceptance - accepting yourself and accepting other.  About separating what is sold to us with what we actually need to be happy. 

So far this year I've read three books by some very funny people - Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt, Sleepwalk with Me by Mike Birbiglia, and Bossypants by Tina Fey.  All three of these books are worth picking up if you're a fan of any of these people or just interested in finding out what it is like to work in the comedy business.  Oswalt and Birbiglia focus on the stand-up career path, while Fey discusses her life in improv, Saturday Night Live writer, and 30 Rock creator. 

The one things I"ve noticed about these kinds of books is that there are always these very "jokey" chapters.  I can't figure out if these chapters are included because the comedian felt they had to write something outright funny or if their publisher requested it of them.  Because these "jokey" chapters are always the least entertaining part of the books.  When Oswalt writes about growing up in the suburbs of Washington D.C., working at a shitty move theater over the summer with some very eccentric individuals, I found myself laughing at how ridiculous real life can be.  But when the chapter about hobos in thea 1930s started...I was bored very quickly because the whole thing felt forced.  (I actually listened to Oswalt's book, and even he seemed less enthused about these chapters when reading them)  Tina Fey writes about traveling with her husband for Christmas with his family in rural Ohio and the catastrophe that was their honeymoon.  Hilarious.  Tina Fey writes "responses" to comments left online for her and silly lists about being skinny/fat - meh, you might smile while you read them but the laughs do not flow as freely.

I don't remember this issue with Mike Birbiglia's book, but to be fair, the book came from his award-winning Broadway show so he had a bit more time to tweak his words and stories.  This was probably my favorite of the three because it really is just a memoir and Mike's life is funny.  Sometimes it's LOL funny, sometimes a bittersweet funny...and sometimes it's just life and it still works because you know he's just being honest. 

So, if you're a comedian and you're thinking of writing a book - PLEASE, just write your story.  We know you're funny, the publisher would not have given you a book deal otherwise, so please don't feel that you must write "funny".  If you just write the way you always talk - with whatever the attitude is, then your fans will get it.  And if it's your publisher/editor telling you to make it more "jokey", stand your ground.  It's the honest truth of how strange life is that makes readers smile and laugh. 

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland - ***

Bossypants ***1/2

Sleepwalk with Me ****

So, when I first heard they were remaking Let The Right One In - I rolled my eyes.  First, I knew it had only been greenlit because there were vampires involved.  Second, I had seem the Swedish film and while I felt it was well done, I wasn't sure I liked it.  Of course, I had rented it for a good scare, but it really isn't a scary movie.  It's creepy, it's weird, but scary was not what came to mind.  Then I saw the first trailer for Let Me In and could tell they had copied the scenes from the Swedish film and wondered why you would even bother remaking it. 

But then Let Me In came out and got surprisingly good reviews...and I became curious.  Could this remake be watchable? 

Well, last night I finally popped in the DVD after letting it sit on my desk for a month.  I figured, hey, it's 11:30, I'll watch a little bit and then finish it tomorrow after work.

I couldn't turn it off.

Which was odd because it really was almost the exact same movie as the Swedish film, yet at the same time, there were enough small tweaks, added moments, that sucked me into the movie.  Or maybe it was because I didn't have any preconceived notions this time, I knew exactly what kind of story I was getting into - a relationship between a young boy, a boy who is bullied in school, whose mother is so absent from his life that she never even appears in the frame with him and we never see her face (though I can't decide if this was a cool artistic decision or a sort of "I want to be artsy" thing...but I liked it) - and the girl next door...or, at least, the creature that resembles a little girl.

This is a movie I'd love to discuss with someone who had not seen the Swedish film.  I knew what was coming, I knew the whole story, so things that might have been shocking to others were not so much for me.  

It's hard for me to evaluate this movie!  I will say the film was very well acted, by both of the leads especially.    The editing and the shots, while mimicing the style of the Swedish film, had some interesting moments of their own that somehow made this version...better?  Perhaps.  I felt the story moved a lot smoother, I was able to understand certain connections that I only remember being hinted at in the original.  But maybe that is just the English speaking size of my brain, the American side, being able to process it all faster than it could when I was watching and reading subtitles.

But I couldn't turn it off.  1:30am rolled around and the credits finally rolled and I really did enjoy it.  I don't know if I'd watch it again, it ends on a very melancholy moment, but it did have some good moments. 

Just know, it's not really a scary movie.  It's got suspense and elements of horror, but in the end, like all good stories, it's about relationships.  This relationship just happens to be between this lost boy and really lost girl/vampire...thing.  But it is worth seeing, even if you have not seen the original.  In fact, you might enjoy it MORE if you haven't seen the original because you will get to be surprised as the plot unfolds and won't have to try to figure out why you liked the American version more.

 

 

  What?  A YA book that is not a "sequel" or a "compaion" and doesn't involve vampire fairy zombies?  I wasn't sure they would still publish something like this, especially since the writing is so good.

I loved Judy Blundell's first YA book What I Saw and How I Lied (and I wasn't alone, it received the 2008 National Book Award for Young Adult Fiction).  Strings Attached is another historical fiction novel with that bit of a mystery noir twist.  It's 1950 and Kit Corrigan has run off to New York City to try to break into Broadway.  When we join her, she is a chorus girl dancing in a production that is about to open and sure to close within the month.  She is trying to figure out how to survive on what little money she gets, living with another dancer, whose mother is a penny pinching nag.  After rehearsal, there is a bit of a blow-up between the two girls and Kit realized that she can't stay there any longer.  She sets out on her own and happens to run into Nate Benedict, the father of her ex-boyfriend from back home.  Odd coincidence.  What's even stranger is that Nate has an apartment all ready to rent...and he gives it to Kit.  Kit, being a combination of naive and desperate, accepts the place, not thinking about the complications that could quickly arise.

Blundell opts to tell the story out of order and the non-linear way the plot unfolds keeps readers wondering what exactly is going on - why did Kit leave home?  Why is Nate so quick to offer her this place?  What happened to her ex-boyfriend? 

You won't want to put this book down because Blundell carefully hands you each piece of the puzzle, but then holds on to the final bit, that middle piece that brings it all together, until the last page. Her well researched writing brings 1950s Manhattan back to life and the reader gets a great feel for the city and what was going on behind the scenes. 

Fantastic and one of my favorite reads of 2011 so far!

Doesn't have a point of view;
Knows not where he's going to;
Isn't he a bit like you and me?

   I've been a Beatles fan for years.  It all started when I was in middle school and I caught a rerun of the Anthology special over Thanksgiving break.  I was skeptical about a biopic tackling the life of John Lennon and the start of the group.  It had been tried, and now that I had the anthology on DVD, what could a movie give me that the documentary could not?  But the reviews kept coming up roses so I added it to my Netflix list and finally got a chance to watch Nowhere Boy tonight.  Beatles or not, this was a beautiful movie about a young man searching for direction during those precious teen years. 

The thing I really enjoyed about this movie was that they did not make excuses for Lennon, or paint him as a saint.  He was the way he was.  You could see what traits he inherited from his mother, learned from his aunt, and arose due to his situation growing up feeling unwanted.  But there are no apologies made.  It's just his story. 

The movie spans about 3 years, but movies very quickly (only 1 hr 38 mins) but the script is so tight that the time just flies by.  Aaron Johnson was amazing as John, and Kristen Scott Thomas was perfect as Aunt Mimi.  Anne-Marie Duff did a great job with Julia, a woman who clearly had some issues but tried to had them behind a smile.  It was great to see these women brought to life.  I read a lot of Beatles bios back in the day, and while these two were always prominently mentioned when discussing John's story, but this film made me really see them for the first time, breathing life into the black & white photos that are always included in the books and Anthology documentary (and also flash by at the end of the film before the credits roll). 

Biggest surprise was Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Paul McCartney.  I could have watched an entire movie of the boys touring Hamburg because I really felt the relationship between Johnson and Sangster as Lennon and McCartney really worked.  There was one scene at the end that I just loved, where you can almost see Paul slip into that special place in John's heart and become more than just a bandmate, but a brother of sorts.  And I felt both boys handled it perfectly 

I don't think you have to be a Fab Four Fangirl like me to enjoy this movie.  There is no pre-requisites for viewing this movie.  It's well written, directed, and acted and will keep you interested for the entire run time.  A story of love, redemption, tragedy, loss -- one that can only be told because it's a true story; if they tried to make it up, it would be unbelievable.  It's another story that proves that it doesn't matter what decade you grow up in, what country you live in - being a teenager is a strange time for everyone as you try to find a place.