A movie version?

As fans of this blog might very well know i often , as in always, compare my books to movies or the prospects of them being movies. I think its because I can connect to movies better, they seem to be the combination of all the arts : story telling, sound, and visual elements. So as I am reading another book its about time I did a movie post , because all you die hard fans won't let me rest if I don't.
I must admit that the idea of a zombie movie is not something of a original one. Over the years there have been a variety of movie full of the living dead. Most are very bad but yet a few rise above to be truly excellent. It's really a shame because as i mentioned in the last post , the reanimated corpse plague is something that is extremely interesting and actually very simple in concept. To explain this I will from time to time in this blogpost speak as director X making a zombie movie ( World War Z for example). To make and effect zombie film or novel one must just follow a few chief guidelines to make it in my opinion effective. First and foremost make the characters normal. This is a concept few wannabe zombie directors grasp, though i dont know why.
So Director X is making World War Z the film version and he first has to make the decision on characters. There are so many to choose from in the book , if he went with all of them the film would be to scatter brained. He goes with 3 , a politician , a soldier, and an everyday person. The next problem ensues in that the characters in the book are designed to for short stories not full films. Director X decides wisely to break up the film into roughly 3 sections that follow each of the characters whose paths occasionally cross throughout the war. Now to flesh out the characters. Hollywood has this bad habit of drawing from the same character shells. In horror movie ( since this is one) for example there are always teenagers who make bad decisions then end up being killed. Director X will have none of that, he observes normal people for his characters. He does not have to look beyond his neighbors for an everyday man character, he does not have to look beyond the T.V for the politician, and for the solider he looks at both. Now director X has a cast of characters and he simply must just think , " how would i react to a terrible crisis that threatened all if i was in their situation". This is just the beginning of director X's movie story , but the rest is for another blog.

There's appeal to an apocalypse ?

Those dear fans on this blogging establishment will all know I am currently reading a novel by the name of World War Z. For those new comers to this blog I will quickly summarize the gist of the novel: the novel takes place in the present and after a terrible global crisis called the zombie war. The war was caused by a virus that reanimated the dead and caused their brains to function separate from their bodies. The virus is spread through body fluids and quickly engulfs the world in hordes of the living dead. So global chaos ensues, a very interesting global chaos I might add. And as those super fans of this blog will know I promised in my previous blog to talk about why the idea of a zombie apocalypse is interesting to me. That is just what i plan to do.
The main appeal is that its rooted in realism. Its not in some far off world its not some magical being , its a disease right outside your door. Its a situation that takes place on your home field that strikes my imagination as morbidly interesting. Because I can imagine and "plan". That realism, as explained in the last post, makes this novel so gripping. These are interviews i could see on the news and that scares me.
The other interesting part about zombie apocalypses is that they present many moral decisions. Best friends and families will be infected and you will have to combat them because they will show no mercy towards you. You have to fight everyday people who through unfortunate circumstances are pitted against you. These situations expose the real person inside all of us. When our darkest our comes and we have to survive people show their colors and thats what's interesting , from a story point of view at least about zombie apocalypse's.

From Crusaders to Zombies

As far as books go the holiday season has been very kind to me. Under the Xmas shrub this year I found several novels to which I look forward to spending much time on a couch with. I got 2 Cormac McCarthy books and 4 Bond novels and last but not least the book that I should get on to talking about. That book is World War Z, and yes its about zombies.
The book is written as a collection of interviews involving eye witnesses and key figures of the zombie war. The idea of a zombie apocalypse is one that always fascinated me( for full details I may make another post) because the way recent zombies and especially these zombies seem almost realistic to the point where I sometimes find myself "planning" for one. And that is one of the great successes with this books, if this virus did exists this is what may happen. This is because the author has a very good understanding of how the world works. Every reaction of the government, economies and families seems very plausible. For example one important event in the zombie war is called Yonkers. This is a battle in which the US government is supposed to win a great victory and to raise the spirits of the country they invite all the press to watch the battle. Of course the battle turns into a fiasco, but just that fact that they have the media seems very real.
I must especially congratulate the author for the wide variety of characters that he has created . There must be at least 100 characters in the novel , and each stand out or at least you dont repeat. One could say that not all of the characters are fresh. We have certainly seen some of these characters, from the grizzled bounty hunter to the strict military leader to the everyday man. But I would actually argue that this is a asset rather than a gripe. While i do agree i have seen or even met people like these characters before , the familiarity gives the book a sense of realism. These arent some zombie killers who are tough , emotionless and fearless. These are everyday people who are reacting to their darkest hour. They are people who I could meet on the street or see on the news. Its that realism that really makes this book scary. It could happen, and that would be people I know. I believe the fairy tale and and the scare comes on even worse.

Road to Jerusalem part dos ( the movie)

As I have been reading this novel I keep thinking what a good movie it would make. I mean the book does have everything. Epic scale, great battles, love story, family struggles, everything. Well for once the world listened to my brilliant ideas and last year a swedish film company went and made a movie of the trilogy ( the Road to Jerusalem being the first) and the movie was entitled
" Arn". This past summer, when i was in Sweden, I was able to get a hold of this movie and watch it. There was the small problem that half of the movie was in swedish ( they spoke english in the Holy land) but i got around that by knowing the story.
The overall verdict was that the movie did do a pretty good job of capturing the story. The scale was epic and the battles bloody, but thinking back I do have a slight problem with the lead( or rather the way Arn is portrayed). In the movie Arn is portrayed as a young warrior inexperienced to the ways of the world. Movie Arn is skilled with a blade but to me in the first part of the movie to inexperienced. He stares around a lot and tries to stay out of fights but is not presented exactly the way I pictured him from the books. While book Arn is young and semi-inexperienced he is very deadly. He is almost the James Bond of his time, he can weild the sword and bow with deadly efficiency and doest even wear armor. I guess i just want to see a more dangerous Arn, because when Arn gets to the Holy Land he does many amazing things, including feats of arms. I just want to believe the transition for the first book and the second. It would be much easier to believe if Arn was already deadly Pre-Holy Land instead of coming from nothing and going to amazing. But apart from that little gripe the movie was very good. I still support my opinion that it should be made into an american movie. There are two few of these epics anymore ( the last one being the Lord Of The Rings) and i miss them. Arn is a perfect opportunity because it not only has an epic scale but great characters to. One could argue that in a sense Arn was already made into a movie with the movie Kingdom of Heaven by Riddly scott staring Orlando Bloom in 2005. But while Kingdom was very good I think Arn would be much better because we have room to see Arn grow over the three chapters of his life into a character we know and care about. Balien ( from Kingdom of Heaven ) is kind of just thrown at the viewer and into the holy land leaving us to wonder about his character. Anyway hopefully someone in america , not just sweden, will recognize that i have brilliant ideas and then make a lot of money.

Annotated Bibliography

1. The author , Aaron Caplan, is a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington where he often represents public school students and families. The article is written to educated mostly parents on the situation of their child in public schools. In his article Caplan cites a large amount of court cases and their ruling to provide accurate detail in his article. The court cases present a solid verdict on the laws regarding free speech.

2. The author, Reynolds Holding, is a well researched writer who has gathered up several accounts of people experiencing free speech issues and put them in a compelling article set to inform other parents and older children. Along with witness accounts Holding also cites a few court cases. The witness accounts show how common free speech issues are in modern life.

3. Suit blends internet,free speech and school.

The author, Victoria Kim, is a staff writer from the Los Angles Times. The article is intented to be read by parents of kids in schools. The article focuses on one main court case and occasionaly making reference to other cases as well. The article talks of a case involving Youtube which could be considered as a common way to speak out to others and speaks of the punishment for usuing such a common site.

4. The author,

Kirsten Scharnberg

A new novel of swedish decent

So as those hardcore fans of this blog will already know, I have recently finished  "The Road" and now since i really needed something to read i picked up an old favorite ( that seems to be happening a lot with my reading). Anyway the book I chose to grab of the shelf this time is titled 

 "The road to Jerusalem" by Swedish author Jan Guillou. This book was introduced to by my father a couple years back. In Sweden the book is apparently very popular so i decided to read it. I was instantly swept up in the adventure of the story, but unlike the road did nor fully understand the writing. So I prepared myself for round two as i picked up the book. 

The story as one might guess by the title is set in the 12th century in Sweden. A young boy named Arn grows up Arnas where one fateful day he falls and severely wounds himself. All think Arn is going to die and Arn's mother in desperation promises Arn to God should He save him. Arn lives and is soon sent to a monastery . There he spends most of his childhood where he learns many things from latin to sword fighting. Soon , as Arn leaves the monastery and he goes out into a now war torn sweden. He gets involved with different clans and eventually a forbidden love that sends him to the crusades.

I haven't read that much yet to be honest so i cant say much on writing style, but I will have later ideas in later posts. 

The road concluded and the thoughts that followed

So recently I finished the road...

And I was extremely satisfied with everything in it.

As I mentioned in the previous post I have read it before but this time it was almost like my first. Before I don't think I really grasped the book and appreciated it for what it is. I remembered only the most memorable scenes and forgot the wonderful details. But this time i got all those and it created an experience.

The road is interestingly broken up in to sections, small paragraphs, each of which show a day in the life or maybe a thought of the main character. Each seems to have a message about life, or i should say what was life, as the main character is constantly thinking about what he left. It gives the book a certain value that i can't find in many other books. As opposed to other books having one or maybe a handful of messages this has many, and each we must look upon with care. Because they are honest. This world the man lives is gone. life as we know it is gone, and he can reflect because he know what he is missing. And it is that honesty that makes this book valuable in culture. I'm sad to say I did not absorb every message because i was caught up in atmosphere of the book. 

Now i know i have praised this book a lot but it really does deserve it. Its characters are strong its message deep and it really sticks with you. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes cormac mccarthy or just really anyone in general   all will walk away with something.