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by J.R.R. Tolkien (5/5)

I have a hard time distinguishing between my love for this book and the nostalgia it engenders in me. This was one of my favorite books as a kid, and it remains so to this day.

One of the first things I like about this book is that Bilbo is fully grown when his adventure began. So many fantasy stories have kids and teenagers realizing they have some sort of special power. Bilbo is an adult, and he doesn’t just have powers. He grows throughout the course of the book and learns to deal with situations in a proactive way.

Another thing I like about this book is that it is purely easy to read. The action is regular, and the story moves much faster than The Lord of the Rings.

The only problem I had with the book on this re-read was not even Tolkien’s fault. I had to skip all the poetry, because whenever I read them I still hear the songs from Bakshi’s animated version of the film. Those songs are earworms.

I unabashedly love this book, and look forward to reading this to my own kids some day.

by Rosalind Miles (2/5)

Simply put, this book did not float my boat. Generally, I am a fan of historical fiction, especially anything relating to the Tudor era. But this book nearly took away my will to live.

To me, the joy of historical fiction is the chance to visit (or revisit) previous events and get them with an interesting look from the view of the narrator or protagonist. Despite other shortcomings, Philippa Gregory does this well, especially in The Other Boleyn Girl. Miles, however, managed to write a book that somehow moves too quickly, drags tediously, is confusing, disorienting and repetitive.

Elizabeth is not presented as an interesting character. Instead she is whiny, bitchy, and downright annoying.

I found a review on Goodreads that summed up my issue with her character perfectly:

If Elizabeth I was as portrayed in this book, she wasn’t just a queen of England, she was a drama queen. As portrayed by Miles, Elizabeth is a whiny, histrionic little brat with absolutely no strength whatsoever. She never commands her people; she “sobbed,” she “wept,” she “screeched,” she “howled,” she “screamed,” she “told them tearfully,” and “wept afresh.” As far as I can tell, she spent about 50 years alternately sobbing, screaming and screeching.

She seems to spend the majority of the book either in crisis, in horribly unfulfillable love or worrying about her age. And speaking of her age, the pacing does not flow well at all. She seems to skip years, bemoaning her age in decades.

This book is long, too. More than 600 pages of Elizabeth writing about her life. It takes the form of an autobiography, a self-narrated tale in which Elizabeth wants to set forth the circumstances of her life. But instead of just maintaining a straightforward path, there are also long stretches of italicized sections which are Elizabeth’s later thoughts on previous events. These sections, especially with their forced foreshadowing, made the book even harder to read because they kept pulling me out of the narrative flow.

I didn’t give up on this book because I thought at some point, events would get interesting. But they never did. It took me almost a month to get through this book because I dreaded picking it up.

So, while not the worst book I have ever read, I don’t feel better for completing it. I don’t want to give it a 1, just because it is historical fiction, and somehow that gives it an extra point. I’m just glad to have it out of the way so I can start on the rest of my summer reading.

2.5/5

I’d like to start this review by saying I thought I’d hate this film. I’ve been a fan of the animated series for quite a long time, and while I never got into the debate regarding racebending, I see where it stems from. While the movie did not hold up to its animated counterpart, it was not nearly as bad as I wasexpecting.

I suppose I should start with my problems with it. As a whole, it lacked the charm and humor that made Avatar: The Last Airbender such an excellent series. I don’t think Aang laughed a single time in the entire film, and Sokka made possibly one sarcastic remark. The characters were very serious and aware of the gravity of their endeavors in a very mature fashion. The first five minutes of the film were essentially the first five minutes of the show with the funny bits cut out.

Also, they changed the pronunciation of their names. This was probably the part that irked me the most about the film. There was no need to call Sokka “Sowe-kuh.” It made it seem like the Shyamalan had never actually watched the television series, and just decided to pronounce the names as they were seen on paper.

Some of the graphics, also, were a bit dodgy. There was one close-up on Appa’s face that was especially bad, but most of the animals weren’t done very well.

That said, I think there was some decent stuff in the film. I was impressed by the fight scenes, and it was interesting to see a “realistic” interpretation of the different sorts of bending.

The movie stayed pretty close to the plot line of the show, so there weren’t too many jarring “that never happened” moments. While Sokka, Katara and Aang seemed different than their show counterparts, Zuko seemed dead on. Besides one awkward scene forced in to reveal his backstory, his personality stayed in line with Zuko from the series. Iroh, while quite different from the show, also was interesting to watch.

The movie felt evenly paced, although there was definitely more room for character development to be inserted without upsetting the flow of the film.

All in all, not a bad film. Not amazing, but not the total disaster I expected. I left it feeling about the level of satisfaction I felt after seeing Percy Jackson and the Olympians or one of the first two Harry Potter films. I’d watch it again, but wouldn’t pay money to do so.

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I had mixed feelings going into this movie. On the one hand, it’s a Tim Burton movie featuring Johnny Depp. On the other hand, it’s a Tim Burton movie featuring Johnny Depp.

For the most part, I was pleasantly surprised. The graphics are amazing and the plot, while a bit confusing and helter-skelter at parts, held my interest for the whole film.

The film adds to the story of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” with the story of a fully-grown Alice (Mia Wasikowska). When pressured to marry someone who doesn’t really like her, she instead chases after a rabbit in a waistcoat and finds herself tumbling to “Underland” once again.

This movie was much darker than I expected, although I should have known better. The original story may be creepy in its own right, but Burton’s touch amplifies it.

One of the most disturbing moments I’ve ever seen in an ostensibly children’s film has a miniature Alice working her way across the moat to the Red Queen’s castle by jumping from one bodyless head to another.

Although I’ve grown up with the phrase “off with their head!” ground into my brain, I still was not expecting to see the gory aftermath.

I found Depp’s Mad Hatter to be problematic. I felt like he, like much of the rest of the movie, was trying too hard to make everything confusing. Although, to be honest, I had a hard time concentrating on what he was saying because his enormous green eyes kept distracting me.

His split personality between a happy hatter and an intense revolutionary with a Scottish accent jolted me out of the story instead of drawing me into it.

The supporting characters were masterfully done, especially Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen and Anne Hathaway’s White Queen. Chessur (Stephen Fry) and Absolem the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman) both are interestingly animated and voiced.

Like most of Burton’s films, it’s hard to talk about this one without mentioning the scenery and costumes. The art, like most of his other films, is simply stunning.

Although the movie did have some excellent parts (including a sword vs. sewing supplies fight), the ending was weak.

Burton created an interesting movie, with a unique plot and memorable characters, and ended it with just another story of a female protagonist rebelling against Victorian gender roles.*

Written for the Royal Purple.

*I’d like to clarify this, which I didn’t have enough time to in the original article. I feel as though far too many films force modern ideals on a historical time. Feminism is an example of this. While I know that there were many women who were ahead of their time socially, I get tired of so many historical films focusing on them. Just because we think a certain way now does not in any way mean that this was always the opinion. I think it’s lazy of filmmakers to always have the protagonist with modern sensibilities instead of taking the time to show us why they might have a different outlook.