08-19-2014, 02:07 PM
Do you know what it's like to have your kid tell you "you should read the book"? Well, some of you might. The rest of you have dogs or swords. Or both.
The Giver is a major teen lit book. T read it in 7th grade. I guess I can see why. It deals with adolescent issues and rites of passage, as well as the transition to adulthood in a symbolic way. I'm not going to read it. I saw the movie. The movie is okay. Meryl is awesome, as always, once again showing that she has more muscles in her face than ordinary humans so she can make ambiguous expressions that look like great acting. Jeff Bridges mutters too much. I'm not exactly sure when he transcended B movies into becoming this great actor, and while I think he's good, I don't think he's that good. He'd be better if he didn't mutter so much. It's weird seeing Katie in a mother role (leaving Tom really aged her). Taylor is actually quite good. Odeya kept reminding me of Mila Kunis, but a Mila that can act a little and not just be hot. And the lead character Jonas? Meh. I don't even know who he was. T said it followed the book more or less as she remembered it. The ending is ambiguous and almost like an existential French film (y'all know how much I love those). I asked T if that was how it ended in the book and she said "yeah, that's why a lot of my friends hated it." The story was okay. I can see how Divergent came to be as it uses the exact same dystopian teen-gets-selected-for-life-by-government concept, only in Divergent the protagonist is 'divergent' and in The Giver, the protag is the receiver (The Giver was first by nearly 2 decades). The ecstatic transmissions of memories are stroboscopic slideshows of current events and beautiful shots. The dystopia is sort of Logan's Run-ish, not at all visionary by today's standards.
You know what it needed. You all know.
A sword fight.
The Giver is a major teen lit book. T read it in 7th grade. I guess I can see why. It deals with adolescent issues and rites of passage, as well as the transition to adulthood in a symbolic way. I'm not going to read it. I saw the movie. The movie is okay. Meryl is awesome, as always, once again showing that she has more muscles in her face than ordinary humans so she can make ambiguous expressions that look like great acting. Jeff Bridges mutters too much. I'm not exactly sure when he transcended B movies into becoming this great actor, and while I think he's good, I don't think he's that good. He'd be better if he didn't mutter so much. It's weird seeing Katie in a mother role (leaving Tom really aged her). Taylor is actually quite good. Odeya kept reminding me of Mila Kunis, but a Mila that can act a little and not just be hot. And the lead character Jonas? Meh. I don't even know who he was. T said it followed the book more or less as she remembered it. The ending is ambiguous and almost like an existential French film (y'all know how much I love those). I asked T if that was how it ended in the book and she said "yeah, that's why a lot of my friends hated it." The story was okay. I can see how Divergent came to be as it uses the exact same dystopian teen-gets-selected-for-life-by-government concept, only in Divergent the protagonist is 'divergent' and in The Giver, the protag is the receiver (The Giver was first by nearly 2 decades). The ecstatic transmissions of memories are stroboscopic slideshows of current events and beautiful shots. The dystopia is sort of Logan's Run-ish, not at all visionary by today's standards.
You know what it needed. You all know.
A sword fight.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse
