Review: Pixar's BRAVE (No Spoilers)

I don't think that I've ever reviewed a film on the blog before, but I will happily start out by reviewing a movie I saw yesterday.

It is a well-known fact that I'm a little obsessed with Disney movies. I have lots of the soundtracks, have watched Beauty and the Beast probably more times than is strictly healthy, and have more "kids' movies" than "proper adult movies" in my DVD collection. Maybe it's because I write young adult? 

Whatever the reasons for my love of animated films, I have been wanting to see Brave for over a year now, ever since my illustration-major best friend went on a trip to San Fransisco (and thus Pixar Animation Studios) last spring break and she told me that they were working on a mother-daughter story. Finally going to see it yesterday, I was a little worried that I would be disappointed, since I'd been so excited for so long.

I was not disappointed in the slightest. I laughed a lot. I cried a little (although I don't think my sister or my friend noticed, so, WIN). It was absolutely everything I could wish for in a new fairytale.

As I'm sure you've noticed from the posters and the trailer, the animation is stunning. The landscapes look almost like photographs (it made me want to go right back to Scotland) and the details are positively amazing. Angus, Merida's Clydesdale horse, moves like a real horse (which I have seen done very poorly in a lot of animation before, it's HARD) and he doesn't have the cartoonish face of earlier Disney equine companions. And Merida's hair is kind of awesome. It moves and bounces like curly hair really does; the curls aren't all uniform, like real hair - they even get it WET at one point and it still looks realistic. And the color scheme of the whole movie is great - lots of soft blues and greens that all contrast really nicely with that bright red hair. Bravo, animation team, bravo.

Of course, beautiful animation does not a good movie make (don't get me started on The Princess and the Frog. Just don't). I don't want to say too much about the story here, because I think it's quite spoil-able and I was quite happy to see the story unfold instead of knowing it ahead of time. It's a very simple story, but I don't think it needs anything more. The magic makes sense; the character relationships make sense; the plot makes sense, and it carries the action and humor very well. From the trailers, we can see that Merida is determined to do things her own way, and she decides that she is going to take charge of her own fate instead of letting tradition dictate that she be betrothed to someone she does not love when she is not ready to get married. What she does to change her fate - and then what she must do to fix her mistakes - was something that I was not necessarily expecting, but it worked out very well. All of the elements tied together very nicely.

Some other things that I liked: Merida is not a typical princess, not only in that she wants to have adventures, but in that she doesn't think "I hate being a princess, my life isn't fair!" That's not what she thinks at all - she simply wants enough freedom to make her own path in life, rather than having it chosen for her by others. She does not want to be somebody else, and that was refreshing. It was amazing to see a Disney character with a complete family - father, mother, three hilarious little brothers. And I loved - LOVED - that it was a mother-daughter story. Merida and Elinor are both incredibly strong characters, and they play off each other very well. Disney, why have you not done this before?! I know that there are a lot of doubts about the marketability of this film, but I see absolutely NO reason why this movie would not appeal to boys. There's a lot of action and adventure, there is some great magic, and a good bit of fighting. It just happens to have a female protagonist. I think this is exactly the sort of movie that will be great for bridging the gap between what people think boys want to see and what they think girls want to see.

I loved Brave, it was exactly the kind of movie I was hoping it would be. I can't wait for my aforementioned illustration-major best friend to be back in town so I can go see it again.

Have you seen Brave? Let me know what you thought of it! And if not... what are you waiting for? Go see it!!

Five Quick Book Reviews!

Hello, blogsphere! So, I know it's Tuesday, and I know you're expecting a teaser from me, but I finished the manuscript (wooooot!!!) on Sunday night, so I'm afraid that's it for the French Revolution, werewolfy teasers. At least for now. I might share some more bits once I'm working on edits.

For now, though, since I haven't started a new project yet, I've been reading a ridiculous amount. I read three books yesterday. It was fantastic.

Here are some quick little reviews of five of the books I've recently read.

BEAUTY QUEENS, Libba Bray - After having read much of Libba's livejournal and meeting her on Friday, I feel that I can safely say that BEAUTY QUEENS is rather like having her sit down and actually tell you a story. It is quirky, it is hilarious, it is occasionally just plain out there, it is fun, and it is also meaningful. I must admit that while Libba is one of my top-favorite authors, this isn't my favorite of her books - sometimes the ridiculousness felt like a bit much, simply because all of it was so fast-paced and hilarious and out there. But it would not have worked if it hadn't been on the same level of silliness (and the epilogue is forgiven because it reminded me of FAME in a way that was not, for once, unpleasant). I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I enjoyed much of her other work even more.

GRACELING, Kristin Cashore - I LOVED this. I've not read (or written) an epic fantasy in quite a while, and this was the perfect book to get me back into the genre that started it all for me. Tamora Pierce was one of the authors blurbing the book, and I can see why - both GRACELING and FIRE, the prequel, seem like the heirs to Tamora Pierce's "girls can save the day too" legacy. I loved the characters, I loved the setting, I loved the way the story unfolded. It made me want to whip out my many-times-trunked epic fantasy and see if I could whip it into shape. Both excellent, excellent books!

ABANDON, Meg Cabot - I got this, as well as BEAUTY QUEENS, at the This is Teen event on Friday. I was really looking forward to it, as AVALON HIGH is my favorite Meg Cabot book, and I know she can handle retellings well. But I must admit I was disappointed. To be fair, I wasn't aware that ABANDON was the first in a trilogy, but that is clearly all it is: the first in a trilogy. 300 pages of setup. The characters and the premise were enough to keep me reading through to the end, really interested to find out what happened - but I didn't. I would have to read the next two books to do that.

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN, Sherman Alexie - I've been meaning to read this for a while, and I can see why it's so acclaimed - it's excellent. Junior (or Arnold) is such a great character, who portrays a really interesting view of his world through both the text and the cartoons he draws. The voice was spot on, as well - a smart, witty, but slightly lost and lonely fourteen year old boy. Definitely something worth reading!!

GOING BOVINE, Libba Bray - I was afraid to read this book. I was TERRIFIED to read this book. I've said that Libba Bray is one of my favorite authors, and she is, but THE SWEET FAR THING made me sob hysterically, and since this book features a main character with mad cow disease I figured it'd make me cry and I didn't want to do that. Well, I'll admit, I did get a little bit teary, but the thought at the forefront of my mind was "why did it take me so long to read this?!?!" I can see why this won the Printz award. I thought it was excellent. It featured my favorite thing in YA writing - saying big, meaningful things, exactly the way a teenager would say them. No one needs a fancy vocabulary or a fancy writing style - you don't need to be confusing to have real meaning. What Cameron has got to say, and the journey he goes on through the book - both literal and figurative - is definitely important. It definitely means a great deal. Definitely read this book!

Book Review: The Sky is Everywhere

I'd like to preface this review by saying something: I HATE dead sister books. And dead best friend books. And any other book where the main point is the character coping with the loss of someone close to them. In my experience, the book becomes a two-hundred page stream of angst. And while I completely, 100% realize that a person in such circumstances in entitled to their share of angst, that doesn't mean I want to read a book about it.

Plus, they're depressing. There is a reason I'm afraid to read Going Bovine, even though Libba Bray is one of my favorite authors.

But, I read three raving reviews of The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, so I added it to the pile of books I got from the library.

And before I get down to the detailed review, I'd just like to say that it is truly a gorgeous book. It made me smile as often as it made me cry. It might not have warmed me up to dead sister books, but the fact that there was another plot going on - the main character Lennie's conflicted feelings about new-boy Joe and sister's-boyfriend Toby - really made the weight of her grief bearable for the reader. Or, at least, for me.

Now, as neither dead sisters or boy-crazy teenaged girls are my favorite plots ever, there are really two things that sold this novel for me and made me keep writing. (Well, two and a half if you consider that Joe is wildly adorable.)

One was the writing. The other was Lennie.

Oh my God but this book is beautifully written. I've heard that it was originally a novel in verse, but even though the majority of it is now in prose, its poetic roots really show through, and not just in the many poems that Lennie writes and leaves lying around (it's kind of like you're stumbling around her town discovering her poetry, it's rather neat). With poetry, I feel like you have to be ten times more meticulous about every single word, and I think this whole book was written with that in mind. It's as though this entire book is one long prose poem, even if it isn't written in verse.

I also love it when the title comes into play in a big way in books, and that is clearly the case here. Can't tell you why, though. Spoilers.

Lennie was the second reason I stuck with and liked this book in spite of a plot that would not necessarily have grabbed me. I was left for an hour in a rather large library, so of course I came away with a huge stack of books. I read the first pages of all of them, and when I opened The Sky is Everywhere, it was almost as though Lennie grabbed me by the hand, pulled me into her world, made me a cup of tea and started telling me her story. She is just that realistic. I sympathized with her instantly, and not just because she was in a terrible situation. She was so well rounded - she's a character with many, many layers, and they slowly unfold throughout the novel in a really fantastic and interesting way.

In the end, I'm glad I read this book. It isn't one of the ones I want to reread - actually I will probably avoid rereading it. I don't like crying. But because of Lennie's character I am glad I bent my rule about dead sister books and gave this one a shot.

Book Review: Linger

Greetings, blogsphere! How are you this afternoon? Well, I hope!

So on Tuesday I said that I'd been thinking about doing a Linger review, and here I am doing it. WARNING: I am going to try and keep this as unspoilery as possible, but nevertheless, if you have not yet read the book, read this at your own risk.


I was a little worried about it initially, because I was afraid it would fall into the "second book syndrome" category. You know, where everything seems really forced and it's just so that the author can get on to the really good stuff in the third book. This syndrome is probably best illustrated not in book form, but in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

But Maggie Stiefvater is a brilliant writer, and even though Shiver is a beautiful book with a perfect ending, this picks up and continues brilliantly. It's like a look into what happens during the "happily ever after" in fairy tales - and in this case, it's not so happy. I did think it was a little bit "lead in to the third book"-ish, but not terribly so, and it was not at all annoying. I thought the conflict was clever and believable after what had happened in the first book, and I like how at the beginning, it is clearly stated that "it's never over," which I thought set the tone very well, as the events of Shiver seemed finished but clearly were not.

So, enough about Linger conquering second book syndrome, onto the book itself.

Have I mentioned that I love Grace and Sam? Well, I love Grace and Sam. So, so much. Not only are they both brilliantly characterized (some nice quirks I saw for them this time around were Sam's love of healthy tea and paper cranes, and Grace's desire for a red coffee pot), they fit so well together it is insane. THIS should be the model on which rabid fangirls base their relationships, not on certain sparkly vampires and empty-headed girls. I love the way their relationship carried on after the events of Shiver; it was very natural and believable.

Grace's parents play a much larger role in Linger than they did in Shiver, and I think that their attitude to what is happening makes sense, given their characters. I can't say more about that without giving anything away, so I will move on to the one and only thing that sort of set me on edge while reading this book.

That thing is Cole. He's a new character introduced at the end of Shiver, one of the new wolves brought in by Beck to help strengthen the pack. He is cocky, uncooperative to the nth degree, and suicidal. And, to my mind, he exists in the novel for two reasons only: one is to provide scientific know-how to fuel the plot, and the other is to be the perfect foil for Sam.

The first point irritates me slightly more than the second, because he spends the whole book insisting that he is nothing like his scientist father, and yet it is knowledge from his scientist father that is what counts. Not his own knowledge, and I didn't feel like spouting stuff from Dad made much sense for his character, but it needed to be there in order for the end of the book to happen.

The second point makes sense, really. In the absence of Beck, Sam is in charge of the pack, so Cole certainly challenges his authority. The two characters are really mirror images of each other - they're both even musicians. And Cole's "relationship" with Isabel is the perfect counterpoint to Sam's relationship with Grace, which means a lot in the context of some of the things Grace's mom says about Sam. But while this is really interesting from, say, an English-class-style viewpoint, it didn't really make me care much about his character, and there were several times where I was itching to get back to Grace or Sam's pov, because, have I mentioned I love them?

But, such is the hazard of a multiple pov book - everybody always picks favorites. I know that'll be something I will have to face if Letters to Oliver is ever published *fingers crossed.*

All in all, I thought this was a wonderful book. I raced through it in under four hours (some of that was standing in the bookstore while my mom browsed), and as soon as I finish my stack of library books I want to read it again. Out of five, I think I'd give it 4.5 stars - I still think I liked Shiver better, but it was an excellent book and I loved every second of those four hours I spent reading it.

EDIT: I just discovered that Linger debuted as NUMBER ONE on the NY Times Bestseller List. Congratulations, Maggie, it's a fantastic book and you deserve it!

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Sidenote: I have 50 followers now, hurrah!!

Would you guys like to see more book reviews? I have just finished The Sky is Everywhere and I've been thinking about reviewing that as well. I also have Thirteenth Child and I Am the Messenger on my to be read pile. What thinkest thou, blogsphere?

Because John Green is a Genius

So at school, I met another writing major named Sarah. Sarah is a Nerdfighter - specifically a "person who is made out of awesome instead of blood and organs and things," and unspecifically part of an internet community started by John Green and his brother Hank. Sarah told me some pretty cool things about Nerdfighting and about John Green's books. I had heard of Looking for Alaska and wanted to read it because I heard it was pretty good.

Cue summer. As I was finishing up Letters to Oliver, I took breaks/procrastinated by watching John and Hank's vlogbrothers on YouTube. Yes, all 678 of them. (I obsess over things. Whoops.)

I have also read all four of John Green's books, and own two of them. So I can say two things with extreme confidence: one, that I am now a bona fide Nerdfighter, and two, that John Green is an amazingly talented writer.

Looking for Alaska, which of course has nothing to do with the state, is a really powerful book. It is raw and honest, both in an emotional sense and in a sense of the action on the page. It absolutely feels real, which is one of the reasons it is so heartwrenching. It is broken into a "before" and an "after," and because I knew that, and because of the title and the summary, I knew exactly what that before and after were leading up to. But really, that didn't matter. The book still made me cry, and while I will admit that I cry like a small child at movies and Broadway shows, it usually takes a lot in a book to make me cry. But John Green has this amazing talent for blending the poetic with the starkly realistic, something I'll talk more about later.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is his most recent book, but I'm going to talk about it now because I'm going in order of how much I liked them. Not that I disliked either Looking for Alaska or Will Grayson, Will Grayson - they were both great; I just liked his other two a little bit more. WG,WG tells the story of two characters with the same name who meet up and whose lives become intertwined. This is a really good example of the other thing I love so much about John Green - his quirky characters. His characters always seem to have at least one defining quirk. Pudge in Looking for Alaska memorizes famous people's last words; Colin in An Abundance of Katherines loves anagramming; Q in Paper Towns is always nervous. John's Will Grayson has rules for life and likes keeping himself perpetually average. His side characters are all well rounded as well - Tiny Cooper, for example, is just hilarious, and I can absolutely imagine a person like that. WG, WG is a particularly good example of John Green's amazing characterization because it is cowritten by David Levithan, and his chapters, possibly because of the IM-ing style, were not as captivating. We're so much in the head of the all-lowercase and rather emo will grayson that none of the other characters pop at all, and don't really catch my sympathy. Tiny Cooper can be annoying as all hell, but I still want to give him a hug; on the other hand, I just want to punch Maura in the face.


An Abundance of Katherines is much more lighthearted than anything else he's written, and I really want to give Colin a hug. This book was quirky and fun, but it didn't throw aside the bigger issues that John Green likes to make us think about - he just looked at them from a different angle. Also, this book has footnotes. Humorous footnotes are some of my favorite things ever, and there are lots of them in this one. And because Colin is a former child prodigy, you learn a lot of interesting things from it as well - like why the shower curtain blows into the shower, and not out. And that Tesla liked pigeons. I think the only problem I had with this book was the ending - it felt a little bit "and the moral of the story is" to me, but it made sense within the book, I guess, as the prologue was like that as well. All in all, however, this was fun and I enjoyed it very much.


Paper Towns, however, might just be my new favorite book. It is absolutely, blow-your-mind amazing. Remember when I said that he's got this amazing talent for blending the poetic and the realistic? Well, if he did that well in his first book, in Paper Towns, his third, he has absolutely perfected the technique. I suppose it helps that the book has an awful lot to do with Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," but still. The book is all about misimagining other people, which everyone does, all the time. And Q explains it perfectly.

When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out. -- Paper Towns, pg 302

Not only is the plot thrilling and the prose absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, the ending - which is possibly the hardest part about writing fiction, as it is inherently fake; the only way things end in real life is with death - is PERFECT. Obviously I can't tell you why, but it is bittersweet and beautiful and just absolutely PERFECT.

I'll stop fangirling now and will instead implore you to go read some John Green books - especially Paper Towns. He is amazing, and you won't regret it.

DFTBA!

Btw - John reading the prologue of Paper Towns.