The Kari AnnAlysis

Posts Tagged ‘movie’

I tried to review movies here on The KariAnnAlysis, but was watching way more movies than I could review. Recently I recorded Magic Beyond Words: The JK Rowling Story.  JK Rowling is one of those authors that I would love to get inside of her head and see what goes on and where her stories come from. This movie gave me a little insight and answered a few questions I had about the amazing author.

The movie follows Joanne from the time she is a little girl until her movie for Harry Potter premieres. It shows her ups, her downs and everything in between and how Harry Potter was born.

If you don’t know all of this and want to be surprised when you watch the movie, quit reading now! I am going ot talk about a few parts and don’t want to be the spoil sport for you!

If you are an inspiring author, you need to watch this movie. That’s it. Plain and simple. Joanne knew from day one that she wanted to be an author. She tried to go to college for writing, but didn’t get in and ended up with odd jobs throughout her life. She got the idea of Harry Potter when she fell asleep on the train one day. And just like that, BAM!, magic was born! Joanne was married, had a baby and then her life changed. She up and left her husband and one day got the nerve to show her sister her writing and finally got serious about it. Oh and did I mention that while she wrote Harry Potter, Rowling was on welfare? She went from being so poor that she needed help raising her baby, to being worth $1B. How about that?

I always like to see how other writers do their work. Joanne had a box full of notes, pages, chapters just strewn about. I couldn’t do that. I am very OCD and a perfectionist. I always think that I can take notes here and there and write down ideas on napkins and random sheets of paper, but I just can’t. I read twitter feeds of authors who do this and kind of admire them for not being so uptight. I do all of my writing on my laptop. I always save it to my desktop and to my little flash drive. I have a little red notebook that I keep track of everything in. It had all of my notes for my books, ideas and the days that I write and how many words I get in. But it is very organized and if it gets out of order, I have to get a new notebook and transfer. I need help, anyone agree? Maybe one day I will have that idea that just comes to me and the different parts come, like they did with Joanne and Harry, and I won’t be able to help it. Fingers crossed!

One of the things that I loved about this movie was that I learned that Joanne didn’t just write Harry Potter overnight and it become  a success. It took her a few years to get it all down and get that box of hers organized. It’s been over a year since I’ve started writing. I have completed a YA novel and am in the Kari-edit stage of the second one in the series. I have also started a love story, but am not sure where it’s going to go. I loved it when I started it, but am now losing steam. I feel like I have a few ideas that are swimming around in my head and here pretty soon, one of them is going to take me by storm. I hope it happens sooner rather than later. I need a great idea for NaNoWriMo.

One of the things I disliked about this story was, and I don’t know if it’s really the case, Joanne only sent Harry Potter to two agents before it was picked up. Granted Harry Potter is a work of genius, and spectacular compared to my little YA murder-mystery, but still, TWO agents? C’mon! It looked so easy. I have sent requests out to nearly two dozen agents and ZILCH! I understand Joanne’s book came at a time where children’s books were still a budding genre and now everyone has a YA book, but STILL!

And although I felt a tad inadequate about my writing compared to miss JK Rowling, like I’m sure most authors do, this movie inspired me. She wasn’t some little rich girl who had an “in” and took advantage of it. She started with an empty box and filled it with her ideas that formed to be Harry Potter. She worked her way from rock bottom to the top of the literary world.

Have you seen this movie? If so, did you find it as inspirational as I did??

It’s 1962, a time when it matters if you’re black or white (channeling my Michael Jackson). It’s a time we have heard about, but may not have experienced, a time when those stories are so unbelievably cruel, you can’t believe they’re true. And one woman, in 1962 is going to bring those stories to life, bucking a trend that could put her on the front lines and in danger.

Skeeter is just back from college and looking for her way. Her two best friends are on the “normal” path with marriage, kids and a maid. That path isn’t for Skeeter. She wants to be a writer and the idea that may get her career off the ground comes from the help, the nannies, the maids, the black women who raise the white babies so the mom’s can play bridge, the women who cook every meal, including on holidays leaving their families at home, and the women who have to go to special bathrooms because their diseases may hard the families they work for.

It takes a while, but Skeeter finally gets these women to trust her, and on her side. Skeeter, along with Minny and Aibileen (two maids), they gather the stories of more than a dozen black women who work for white families. The women tell their own stories about working for these families and end with a book of the good, the bad and the ugly.

This is something that no one has done before and actually puts very many people in danger. Is a white woman really sitting around chatting and drinking coffee in a black neighborhood with a maid? If these maids tell their stories, will people read the books and know it’s about them? Will anyone know the book is about Jackson, Mississippi? And with these stories, will a bigger war be started than there already is?

 It actually took me a couple days, at a couple different sittings, and many edits, just like Skeeter, to write this post. I felt like no matter what I wrote for the description of this book, it didn’t do it justice. We all know the premise, but at points I felt like I was giving too much away, and at other points, I felt like I was being vague. I hate to write a description that sounds exactly like the book. We all get different things out of books and I always try to put in my descriptions a snippet or two from the book that isn’t in the description. This was hard for me.

But it wasn’t hard because I didn’t like the book. Far from it. I actually loved the book. It is by far my favorite read of 2011 so far. It explored every emotion available from love of many facets to hope and courage and strength and fear and perseverance.

I am a creature of habit. I hate read books just because everyone else is doing it. I read Harry Potter when the first five were out, Twilight when the first two were out, Stephanie Plum when the first nine were out, The Hunger Games when the series was finished. I don’t know why, I just am always behind. I always seem to wait until it gets so big that I don’t have a choice anymore. Maybe I just get books that aren’t huge because I want to read them and make them huge (you are welcome to all the authors who are hoping this happens when I review a book too lol). I’d heard of The Help and heard that people liked it, but really had no idea what it was about until I started seeing movie previews. My cousin told me how much she liked it and we decided we’d go see the movie together. So that meant I had to read the book first, another creature of habit move for me.

But once I started, I couldn’t put it down. The book is told through three different perspectives. There is Skeeter, the fighting force behind the whole book. The young woman who wouldn’t fall in step with the norm and wanted more than just to be a wife. She was great for the women’s movement eh?

Then there is Aibileen, the maid to one of Skeeter’s best friends and a prime example of a maid who raises her boss’ children.

And then there is Minny, a smart-mouthed woman who remembers the rules her mother gave her before she had her first job, she just can’t seem to keep her mouth shut long enough to follow them.

As I said earlier, we have all heard the stories, the Martin Luther King Jr.’s, the Rosa Parks’, but these are the stories you haven’t heard about. Granted this book is fiction, it leaves little room to believe these stories aren’t true. And although we live in a different time, you have to think to yourself that even if you lived back then, these stories would change you forever. Or at least you would hope.

One of the things I love about the book is how it is written for each narrator. As a reader, I always try to portray the voice of the characters in my head. I always like to think I know exactly how they sound when they talk. With this book, I didn’t have to search for that voice, the voice was given to me, from the way it was written. Aibileen’s voice was so spelled out, it was right in front of your face and you couldn’t help but hear her as you read along.

I absolutely love, love, loved this book and cannot wait to see the movie. Although I hate crying in the movie theaters, I am going to take a tissue or two and just prepare the person beside me. I know I will cry because I cried in the book. There are certain books where you become so attached to the characters, when their hearts break, so do yours. I had a hard time getting through the end of this book with a dry eye, but I wouldn’t change a thing about it.

I give The Help 5 bookmarks and a few exclamation points!!

But I’m not done just yet, in case you don’t own a tv or haven’t seen the previews, or just want to watch again and again, here it is:

 Ok, I have to ask your thoughts on the book and if you see the movie before I do, please let me know. I will surely do another post after I see the movie, comparing the two.

ISBN: 978-0399155345
Released: February 2009
Author Website
Kari got this book from the Nook Bookstore thanks to a birthday gift card

I’m a sucker for cute teeny bopper movies and this one so fits the bill. Yes, it’s completely unrealistic, but it was super cute.

Things didn’t quite turn out the way Mike O’Donnell expected. He was the star of the basketball team, close to getting on Syracuse’s team, until his girlfriend gives him a stunner before a major game. Jump forward 18 years to Mike not getting a promotion, but he is getting a divorce. When he wakes up 17 again, he has a chance to become friends with his kids and prove to his wife they should still be together.

This movie is very cute and there were a couple of times when I laughed out loud. Zac Efron is a cutie and I had to tell myself he wasn’t younger than I am the whole time I watched it.

*SPOILER ALERT*
I don’t really have any complaints for this movie, other than the ending. I was glad Mike and Scar got back together, but it’s their sons big chance to show off his moves on the basketball court and they just walk out the door. I’m all about involved parents. No, I don’t mean stage parents, but as much as Mike loved basketball, you’d think he would want to watch his son get his chance.

I think the thing I liked best about the movie, and it wasn’t REALLY part of the movie was at the end when they were going through the credits. Everyone who had parts in the movie or was part of the writing or production, they pulled up their high school photo when their name whizzed by. Very cool idea. And you probably wouldn’t know them anyway if  you saw their “today” picture.

I give this movie 3 popcorns. It was cute, but I probably won’t watch it again and I definitely won’t be buying it.