Reviews...

I just read a good post about how everyone's a critic and it's a well articulated, well put together article about what any decent reader/writer/movie watcher/director/critic knows. And one thing really resonated with me. He talks about how blogs are taking over the universe... well they're a big sphere of influence these days and one of the reasons it "Because the Internet doesn't require accountability, they write things they'd never say face-to-face, which makes them cowards as well." And I think that's so true. And I certainly try, generally, to not trash anything I don't like. I can't help but trash A Clockwork Orange for example but that's because all its depth and meaning were lost on me due to two consecutive monday 10 o'clock lectures enforced watching of it. I'm sure if you watched it at your own leisure it'd be a great, moving, thoughtful, philosophical movie. But personally? I'm mentally scarred and it almost ruined "Singing in the rain" for me! But even there when I talk about it to other people I state the situations in which I watched it and most people agree that it might not be conducive to understanding! I asked my not-quite-step dad the other day what he thought of The Shining (which I also watched on a Monday at 10) and he said he didn't think he'd ever finished it. And to me it just wasn't scary, I didn't get it. Maybe that's why we were shown movies at that time, to try and strip away all emotions that might normally be associated with them - no fear etc. Who knows? So anyways in any review I give here in future, not that I'm going to be influencing the wide world, but as good practice, I will attempt to never trash a movie or book and if it really is a one-star situation, all opinions are relative so I will attempt to explain mine.

Now with that good plan out of the way what other news? Well I still failing in the getting down of story on paper but I'm resolving issues in my head, getting to know my characters better etc. I meant to force myself to write all evening but I just bought the complete works of Jane Austen and I'm tearing through Mansfield Park - don't you just loathe Mrs. Norris? Ms. Austen was excellent at writing thoroughly despiseable characters! Or maybe I just get too into it, I'm very right and wrong when it comes to books and movies - the baddies are bad and the goodies are good. I only half forgave Snape at the end of the Deathly Hallows - OK so he loved Harry's mother etc. but he was still a wanker quite frankly! Or is that just me?

Speaking of reviews therefore, I also just finished reading The Magician by Michael Scott. It's the sequel to The Alchemyst which was released last year and they're great fun. They're YA books I guess or maybe younger, perhaps, whatever they're enjoyable. Not as in depth as the only other series of books that I know that mention Nicholas Flamel (Harry Potter) but very interesting and there's so much myth and legend come to life in them that I can't help but love them. They follow the journey of Sophie and Josh Newman, 15 yr old twins who are discovered to possibly be the twins of an ancient legend put down in the Book of Abraham the Mage. Flamel and his wife find these twins and believes that their powers must be Awakened in order to save the world etc. The only issue I have with the books is that I thought they were going to be a trilogy but they're a sextet with one book being released a year so I have to wait till 2012 till I know what happens. And OK so it was six years between when I first started reading Harry Potter and when it finished but, though great, these books aren't as in depth and lucious as the HP books and they don't have quite the same re-readability. I actually read the last book twice in the three days after it came out because we were staying with my uncle and I didn't have anything else to read! But yes, great fun.

Night night.