frelling_tralk

I really enjoyed it actually! I was surprised at how many changes they made from the book though, for some reason I had it in my head that it was going to be a pretty close retelling of it. One thing that stood out to me was I remember (although disclaimer that it has been a few years since I read it now!)( Read more... )


And it’s just been confirmed today that The Punisher and Jessica Jones are both cancelled, with Netflix not even having the decency to wait for JJ’s third season to even air first 😡 This open letter from Jeph Loeb seems somewhat hopeful though that Disney might be having discussions to continue them on another platform? It seems like a no-brainer if they want goodwill and a big launch for expanding Hulu internationally

Elizabeth Is Missing is a book that I absolutely loved, it's all about the protagonists slow slide into dementia, and through the book you follow her getting muddled over the present with her friend Elizabeth going missing, and the past where her sister Sukey suddenly disappeared shortly after the Second World War had ended. The reviews on goodreads seemed a bit mixed, and I feel like how much you enjoyed it depends on whether you viewed it as a mystery or not? There were quite a few complaints from readers expecting more of a mystery, but I enjoyed (if that's the right word!) the book more as a very moving look at how Maude's mind was slowly deteriorating. The mystery was really only there as a device to frame Maude's confusion between her present and past IMO, rather than being the point of the book, but apparently some people got annoyed because there was a lot of hype over it being a thriller/comparisons to Gone Girl

( spoilers )


And then The Dead House was a bit of a disappointment for me after the premise drew me in, but I seem to be the lone weirdo that wasn't absolutely blown away by it :( It's YA and focused on 'the Johnson Incident' and what led up to it, we follow the diary of Kaitlyn who shares a body with Carly, and the question is raised of whether she suffers from disassociate identity disorder, or whether there's a paranormal explanation for everything. The premise seemed like an intriguing one, but I found that I just could not get that into it, one of my main issues was that I felt like the way it was written ended up keeping me at a distance from the characters (it's all told through descriptions of video footage, transcripts of therapy sessions, interviews, and the diary entries). I'd argue that the supporting characters were really underdeveloped as well, I found most of their voices in the group scenes pretty generic, it was really only Kaitlyn and Nadia that stood out most of the time. Well and Ari I guess

As for the ending, ( spoilers )

I would have liked to have found more reader discussion on it actually, it would be interesting to hear what people's theories were, but unfortunately I couldn't find much, just the usual spoiler-free reviews mostly. Also the title made it a challenging book to google, I kept getting results for similarly titled popular movies instead!


And finally The Light Of The Fireflies was a book that I had very mixed feelings on. It was certainly well-written and engrossing when it came to the first half of the book, it's told through the eyes of a ten year old boy who has spend his entire life living with his family in a basement for reasons that he doesn't yet understand, and it leaves you very curious to find out what exactly happened to this family. But I had MANY issues with what seemed to be the final moral ( spoilers )

Which TV shows did you start watching in 2015?

I really need to get into more new shows, I don't think that I did pick up any new shows this year other than Daredevil! I'm currently watching The Vampire Diaries, The Good Wife, The Big Bang Theory, Pretty Little Liars, Doctor Who (all pretty old now), and the only newish shows that I'm following are iZombie, Daredevil, and From Dusk Till Dawn. Otherwise most of my tv time goes to re-watching my DVDs of older shows

Oh and I am currently watching early seasons of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix! I watched season 1 a while ago and always meant to catch up with some more, then I subscribed to Netflix for Jessica Jones and found that HIMYM was on there as well, so I've just caught up with seasons 2 and 3.


Which TV shows did you mean to get into but didn't in 2015? Why?

I hate to say this because my flist has been so enthusiastic about this show and I really wanted to join in the squee, but...Jessica Jones :( It's not that I didn't like it at all, it was nice seeing so many different female characters on-screen for a start, but I just found that the episodes were really feeling like a misery slog after a bit. I was the most invested after the first episode actually, I really liked how that whole Noir vibe with the voice-overs reminded me a bit of Veronica Mars, and then the ending with Hope certainly left an impression, but as it went on I found myself struggling to get invested. I read this interesting article which I think that sums up a lot of what I was struggling with? 13 episodes of trying and failing to catch Kilgrave just doesn't appeal to me as much as shows that have individual episode cases, as well as the serialised element. The pacing was really dragging for me when it was all so serialised, I couldn't get through an episode without it starting to feel like a chore :( And David Tennant still doesn't do a lot for me

And I talked more about The 100 at the time, but I'm still not sure whether I will watch any more of that show or not


Which TV shows do you intend on checking out in 2016?

Amazon's "Man in the High Castle" is on my watch list at the moment, and The Originals, Luther, and Prison Break are all on my maybe list if I can find the time


( Read more... )

Just added some new friends from the recent friending meme, I'm looking forward to getting to know you all better :)

And some films I've watched recently:

I really liked Red Dragon! It did take me a little while to get used to Edward Norton's Will Graham though, at first I didn't feel like he has that much presence in the role, but after a bit he started to grow on me. I actually found the 'tooth fairy' and the investigation into him the most interesting part of the film by far, Anthony Hopkin's Hannibal Lector just didn't make much of an impression on me this time around, nor was I particularly gripped by his interaction with Will Graham in the same way that I was with Hannibal and Clarice in the first two films. I guess that the film's Hannibal is just starting to feel a bit overplayed to me by now quite honestly, those scenes mostly just felt like they were redoing the same old shtick from the first films, the films Will and Hannibal definitely didn't have the same chemistry as Will and Hannibal do on the tv version *g*

It will be interesting to see how the tv series handles the Red Dragon plot, Hannibal appears in it so rarely that surely Mads is only going to get one or two scenes per episode for that plot? I guess that separating the season into two parts makes more sense in that case though, as then they can have a much heavier screen presence of Hannibal in the first half of season 3 while they explore his past, before letting Will take centre stage during Hannibal's imprisonment in the second half? Anyway I'm even more excited now to see how the tv series is going to handle the Red Dragon plot! I have to confess that I still haven't read the book, so I wasn't particularly clued-in to that part of the story, but now I am and it should be awesome to see the tv show's take on the "Tooth Fairy"!


( Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes )


( Gone Girl (book and film) )


( Under The Skin (book and film) )


And I'm currently reading Never Let Me Go which I'm enjoying so far, I'm planning to try and see the film for that next

I've signed up for a Goodreads challenge of reading 50 books this year, which will mean around four books a month. So far this month I've read:


'Volume one - Hell' of the former Lord (or is he still a Lord, I'm not sure?) Jeffrey Archer's prison diaries. He goes into EVERY detail of his days there and, while it was interesting finding out more about the prison system, I don't think I'll pick up the final two volumes tbh. I was mostly interested in finding out how his first intro to prison went anyway. It wasn't exactly as I expected as there was no mention of prison rape or the new prisoners coming in for abuse like you always hear about (other than two 'young tearaways' bothering him in the exercise yard before the 'lifers' stepped in to watch his back), maybe I've taken the show Oz too seriously as far as its accuracy on prison life! He actually mentions that the other prisoners hardly ever even used ~vulgar language~ when they were talking to him, even while using the f word every other sentence among themselves.

( Read more... )


Next up I read Defending Jacob by William Landay. That was about how an American family coped with their 14 year old son being accused of killing a classmate, looking at how the parents were relating to their son, whether they should believe in his innocence or guilt, and what is their responsibly as parents if he is guilty. Maybe because I'm not a parent myself, but some of the father's actions I found very frustrating and hard to relate too (I kept waiting for him to confront his son with the evidence that he was coming across, but instead he would immediately destroy the evidence, while at the same time telling himself that his son was most certainly innocent!). Still the author did do a reaaonably good job of helping you understand why the parents would react in that way. It was very well-paced and I ended up reading the whole book in two days, although I'm not sure if I liked the ending or not.( Read more... )


Next was Perfect by Rachel Joyce which I found quite unsettling to read. It was about an English household in the 1970's that seemed perfect on the outside, but it's told through the eyes of the 11 year old son as we watch his mother's mental health slowly deteriorate. At the same time there's the story of Jim from the present-day who is struggling with life outside after spending his life in the mental health system. To be honest I didn't enjoy the present-day sections with Jim as much, I was often just impatient to get back to the story in the 1970's and catch up on what was going to happen next there, but it does all tie together beautifully in the end.

I must say though that I found the character of Beverley so deeply unpleasant that I wanted to read between my fingers in the second half! I kept dreading where it was all heading, Diana was being manipulated so horribly that you almost want to scream at certain points. And side note, but I'm wishing now that I could find some kind of book club online for discussions. I looked at the book reviews on Goodreads, but meh it's not really the same because it's mostly just reviewing the book for other readers and being careful not to mention any of the big spoilers. And that's precisely what I'd be interested in reading other peoples thoughts on...


And finally I'm about halfway through re-reading Men Of The Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong just because the recent tv series inspired me to give it another read. And that's obviously mostly about Clayton's background of becoming a werewolf as a child and being taken in by Jeremy. I might re-read Tales Of The Otherworld as well afterwards for the background of Clay's first meeting with Elena, I have a soft spot for both of those books *g*