MOVIE REVIEW: "OZ - The Great and Powerful"

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My expectations for this film were kind of dismal, as I watched it ONLY for its female actors! What a casting coup. Academy Award nominated people and a seemingly stunning fictional world tore lots and lots of people to the cinemas to watch this movie, which is a kind of a prequel to the actual Oz-story. "Somewhere over the Rainbow" is NOT featured in the film, as its rights are held by Warner. ;)

The movie is not boring. However, some parts seemed very long to me, especially in comparison to some very racy parts. Mila Kunis doesn’t seem to fit the role of Theodora quite well, however, after changing into a witch she pulls off her thing remarkably, screaming a lot. Rachel Weisz is over-qualified and SO is Michelle Williams. Just having won a Golden Globe, I can’t seem to understand why she’s signing a role she only has to smile and chirr for? And James Franco looks strangely old in this one, which irritates from time to time.

Visually this movie convinced me on every possible level! 3D worked out fine I admit. What irritated me the most, however, was that the whole movie didn’t seem to find its tonality. For a children’s movie too brutal and dramatic, for an adult film way too childish. Thank God every single joke of Zack “monkey Finley” Braff was a big laugh!

 

BOOK REVIEW: "The Furies" by Fernanda Eberstadt

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When I googled “dramatic love story novels” this book was one of the two out of the lot that interested me the most (the first one was “The Pact” by Jodi Picoult, as recommended by me before). In the bookstore, the woman working there was all nuts about it telling me to bring loads of tissues while reading it. Would be a good sign…

Unfortunately, this 700-pages novel needs 250 pages to gather momentum with the reader. It just fails capturing your interest and the story was somehow too creepy for me to get involved. Every character seems to be weird and have strange attitudes and habits and, what’s more, everyone is described to be ugly and unattractive. How could Eberstadt do such a thing? Not good.

However, at some point, you just can’t stop reading as you simply get to know everything about the characters and you can’t help but get involved and want to know what happens to them. And then there’s the ending. The ending (the last 150) is truly read-worthy. It’s written in a very endearing style and moves the heart (as the woman from the book store told me :)) by daring to be unconventional.

All in all, though, this novel doesn’t offer enough to make me recommend it. Its plot is too freaky, its characters too unsympathetic and the first 250 pages are a pure nuisance. 

MOVIE REVIEW: "The Descendants"

This movie has been applauded by one and all, and won the Best Drama and Best Actor at the Golden Globe Awards. The trailer was far from fascinating, so I thought, that’s why I had to force myself to watch the movie. I’m not the greatest of fans of Clooney, but liked “Juno”, whose author also wrote this film.

Without expectations, this movie managed to disappoint me nevertheless. The storyline was quite ordinary. I mean, of course it is touching that his wife lies in a coma and he has to cope with the children’s problems, but it’s just not the first time such a film has been made! Also the adultery topic: of course it’s sad, but other movies treated the topic more convincingly.

What I liked about the movie was the Hawaiian Flair, however, the Hawaiian music soon began to go on my nerves :D The acting of the elder daughter was absolutely brilliant and natural, another plus; and then, of course, some very human moments in between.

All in all, however, that was just not enough to touch and move me completely, even though the ending tries very hard to. I’m very sure there are going to be loads of different opinions on that one, but I was not convinced.

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BOOK REVIEW: "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" - Marisha Pessl

photo source: [viliflik.wordpress.com]

To start off, everyone to whom I told that I was reading a book called „Special Topics in Calamity Physics“ looked at me in a weird way and probably wondered who and why forced me to do it. I guess it’s quite improbable to imagine me engaging in a new passion of the highly complex subject of physics ^^ I was tempted to read it when I once saw the book cover in a library being praised with a quote from Audrey Niffenegger (whose book “The Time Traveler’s Wife” I really enjoyed).  Another one compared Marisha Pessl’s style with that of “The Virgin Suicides” by Jeffrey Eugenides which is one of my favourite books. But wasn’t there some kind of wise saying advising you not to judge a book by its cover? Well, this book is probably the proof to why the saying is plausible.

In the beginning you feel quite enthusiastic. The style seems unusual and unique, you get interested in the characters being crafted, and at first there are only Blue and her father Gareth. Yes, a girl named Blue. And she does present an account of how much she had to suffer while growing up and in school because of that name. Guess someone should have given this book to Beyoncé while she was pregnant to prevent her from naming her daughter Blue Ivy.

With time you just realize that the story is not interesting enough. It’s difficult to stick to continue reading the book as there is absolutely nothing that makes you want to carry on and find out more about. The next thing is the style which you thought of as entertaining in the beginning, but which simply becomes plain annoying. Believe me, it’s not fun to see quotations being made to other books in almost every third sentence. Besides from that, the story gets somewhat more captivating only way past the middle of the book.

And then the shock. The ending. It’s devastating. By this point you’ve already come to accept the weird style which you even consider charming – BUT! Even with an ending like that, and it’s extraordinary, you can’t make up for 450 pages of dreadful reading. Why on Earth does this revelation needs to stay secret until the last 50 pages?! Sure, it improves the whole judgment of the book, but you know what? It’s just too late! And in addition to that, the whole conclusion is a bit far-fetched. It reminds me of a detective story I once read: a man is killed in an apartment behind locked doors and locked windows; and there are simply no clues inside of that room. That’s the way you feel when trying to solve the mystery behind “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”. The resolution in the end of both stories are comparable, when in the detective story it’s a monkey, which traveled on a ship from Peru to Great Britain, climbed through the window and strangled that man. Pretty absurd? Something you wouldn’t have ever guessed? But you’re still not satisfied with that solution because it’s just so surreal?  You can expect something similar with Marisha Pessl’s book as well!

You can see that I wasn’t really impressed by this story and I’m still having a hard time reading it. Is the story bad enough for 2 stars? Yes! Would I recommend the book to anyone else? Maybe, but probably only to hear an other person’s opinion about it. Did I enjoy reading it (which usually automatically deserves the minimum of 3 stars)? Surely not, except for the last 100 pages. Would I really want anyone else to go through the same reading experience I had to endure? I really wouldn’t! So with this short analysis I was finally able to make up my mind: giving it 2 stars and banning it to the list of disappointing reads.  

BOOK REVIEW: "The Undercover Economist" - Tim Harford

photo source [goodreads.com]

This book was an attempt to read something out of my usual comfort zone. And also a small starting step towards the quest of writing a review for every single book I read (really helpful for myself too because I forget the contents of a book I finish terrifyingly fast O.o). Well, to say it right from the start "The Undercover Economist" wasn’t as bad as the rating suggests. I felt compelled to only give it 2 stars after comparing it to all the other books in my collection, when some  were actually really good and only got a rating of 3 stars!

I had quite some trouble getting through the book, maybe because of the topic (I’m not such a huge fan of economics) or maybe due to the author’s slacking style (at some point he was just getting way too complicated)… The most surprising thing to me was when I finished the "Undercover Economist" and made a list of what I thought of it, the things I liked outweighed the ones I didn't like!! This lead to my conclusion that even though there were only a few bad parts in it, those were so bad, that they are responsible for making the overall rating so low.

After reading the book you do get a nice overview over all the major theories and most important key aspects of economics. It is written in an entertaining style, with lots of "taken straight out of daily life" examples and it is much more fun to read than any "schoolbook-economics-explanations"!

Here the parts I really enjoyed, finding out about: who pays for your coffee, what supermarkets don't want you to know, the "inside story" (background information about health insurances), why poor countries are poor, how China grew rich and the chapter "Beer, Chips & Globalisation" (dealing with the pros & cons of globalisation and actually offering possible solutions towards global and environmental problems). And here the ones which messed everything up: a chapter about "rotten investments" (an explanation of banking crises in excruciatingly long details) and the chapter "the men who knew the value of nothing" (covering the subject of auctions and all the little things which can be done wrong about them... yawn!).

This was actually the most memorable part of the book to me: how to order cheaper coffee at Starbucks! This probably isn't anything new to US readers but here in Europe the "short cappucino/ caffe latte/ espresso" seems to be well hidden. I tested it in Austria and it worked! The size is about the same as a normal "tall" but there's more coffee in it and seems to be much tastier! And it's cheaper too! So it could even go by the slogan "make it short, make it tasty, make it cheap!" Try it out for yourself ;)