Creative

Maleficent (2014) – Movie Review

 in Books-to-Movie / Creative / Fantasy / Movies by

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Starring

Angelina Jolie – Maleficent
Elle Fanning – Aurora
Sharlto Copley – Stefan

Summary

“Explore the untold story of Disney’s most iconic villain in this wickedly fun twist on the classic SLEEPING BEAUTY. In an unforgiving mood after a neighboring kingdom threatens her forest, Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) places an irrevocable curse on the king’s newborn daughter, the Princess Aurora. but as the child grows, Maleficent finds herself becoming fond of the girl. And as the conflict between the two realms intensifies, Maleficent realizes that Aurora may hold the key to peace in the land. Journey beyond the fairy tale in this soaring adventure that is “visually arresting, brilliantly designed” (Andrew Barker, Variety).”

-From Amazon.com

Review

Honestly, I’m speechless. This movie was absolutely stunning. The visual effects were beautiful, the characters were portrayed amazingly well, and the story of such an evil villain, and showing how she wasn’t necessarily what others saw, was so creative.

In the Sleeping Beauty story, and in the movie, you always disliked Maleficent, and you were supposed to because she was the bad guy, oh, sorry, bad woman. But in this movie, it showed why she was portrayed to be the bad woman and how she changed as she watched Aurora grow and looked after her.

So the story was the first amazing thing about it, how they were able to twist such a well-known story and make you feel for her. But then the other amazing thing was the visual effects. From the moment the movie started, it was magical and the creatures, from fairies to the water creatures, was just stunning.

Some of the creatures were kind of creepy looking, but they were supposed to be. It was all about judging someone by how they looked throughout this entire movie. They judged Maleficent and her friends because they were magical beings and the one Kingdom wanted to destroy them because of it.

Now Angelina Jolie, playing Maleficent was amazing. She played that part SO well. She took on that role and really was just….amazing. I don’t know how else to explain it because she had the personality down pat and was able to get all the subtle things down. Jolie was able to walk around with an air of grace but deadly grace when she went evil.

This, is probably one of my favorite scenes of her portrayal of the character in the movie with the way she looks down and acts all innocent but has this deadly air to her.

So, to me, besides the story, the visual effects were the best thing to me as I’ve always been interested in how they do it and such and it’s amazing how magical they can make a movie nowadays.

All in all, this is a really really good movie. It was PG-13, so it’s not for children, and it really wasn’t, especially with all the violence. For being based on a Disney movie, this really was Hollywoodized (not a word, but I’m making it one now) which is kind of annoying but as a near adult, it didn’t really detract from the movie for me and I still loved it, but if you want your younger kid to watch this, this really isn’t for them because of the nature of what happens. It is quite a dark movie, lighting wise (for parts of it), and dark also in the nature of what happens.

I highly recommend it, even if you don’t really like Disney movies, because I don’t love Disney movies but still absolutely loved this. It take the classical fairy tales and adds a twist to them.

So let me know what you think and enjoy!

Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral – Print Version

 in Book Reviews / Books / Creative / Hot Off The Press / Interesting / Young Adult by

This was extremely interesting. Not what I expected at all, and talk about sad. But what beautiful pictures. This is one of the first interactive graphic novels but they also do it in book form (which is what I read.) There is more I believe to the iPad, iPod, and iPhone version. I will be purchasing that because I am curious to see how the two compare but this book was amazing. Such beautiful colors and they presented the book in such an amazing way, just so interesting. The cover of this book was also so cute.

So simple yet so elegant. Also notice with the color how it is not a true color. It is off-color. That was the effect throughout the entire book and it was really a nice touch to the graphic novel.

It was a little confusing because through the entire novel they kept referring to each other as G and F and it got a little confusing during some parts as to who was who but it was quite easy to pick again.

This is a definite checker-outer (if that is a word) and a HOT OFF THE PRESS.

But this book is definitely for older readers as there is some bad language and some sexual topics. But that was like 5 pages in a 200 page book so really minimal.

Also I read this book, wait for it, in 25 minutes flat. That is my all time record. Admittedly,  it was all pictures.

So go and purchase it here for your “i” stuff or go to your local book store/local library or shop around online.

Hope that you enjoy.

And once again, thank you to Omar, my local YA librarian for having it ready to go.

Thanks.