Thursday, October 20, 2011

Black Swans, Strong Queens, and Bus Rides

So...I'm kind of using the BNRC for movies and music too. Movie Nook Review Corner just sounds weird. So The BookNookReviewCorner is branching out!

Movie- Black Swan
Major actors- Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel
Rated- R
My rating? One pen  \, \, \, \, \,

As a dancer, I was really looking forward to fantastic cinematic dance sequences and a really good physiological thriller.
The dance sequences were very disappointing. I know that the stars in the movie haven't had year of training that you need to make the dances look good, but these dance scenes were just disappointing. The camera was swirling around the actors whenever they danced so you felt like you were on a merry-go-round and couldn't actually see the dancing.
The "Thriller" part of the movie was weak too. The characters felt really phony and shallow and the motives didn't feel well portrayed. Plus, you never really could tell what was going on with Mila Kunis' character...
My two BIGGEST beefs were actually the lack of good time lapses. I couldn't tell that a couple weeks had gone by between the time Nina had been chosen for the swan, and the night of performance. It felt like a few days. That's not logical.
Also- SO MANY ballet stereotypes!!! Over the top stereotypes! Most ballerinas don't wear their hair in a bun all the time! Usually they just put it up for class. Nor do dancers start stripping off all of their warm ups when the director walks in the room at the beginning of class (found this out by reading a couple dance blogs).
Overall- cool make-up and costumes. That's about it.



On the other hand- I have a great book review!

A Reluctant Queen: the love story of Esther by Joan Wolf.
Rating- Four Pens! \,\,\,\,\,

Loved this book! Esther is one of my favorite of the women of the Bible. I love her story and always go back to reading her story.
This book really brought to the life the time that Esther lived in. She was much more real than I expected when I started the book. Also, the king was really well written. I would most definitely recommend this to anyone. I'm not a huge chick-flick romance person, but this is not a chick-flick romance. The book doesn't just focus on Esther, but also on the king (who's name I can't pronounce) and the politics of the day. Personally, I found that really interesting. The author made her characters have motives and emotions that made them into interesting people. I even understood why Haman acted the way he did. The author made him a person, not just a mustache twirling villain. Esther got angry with Mordecai, which I had never considered before.
I wish there had been a little more to the book. Things seemed to move pretty quickly, but I enjoyed it and it was a fantastic retelling of the story of Esther in 375 pages.

On a completely unrelated note- I took the bus by myself in pouring rain yesterday! My jeans got totally SOAKED on the way back to the train from the Huge Studio! I was freezing, but I love going to dance on Wednesday. I wish I had more time (and money) to dance. I would love to add on a bar class and some tap. Right now I'm taking Pilates to help a hip injury that's been plaguing me for a while, and it's KILLER. I love it! It helps so much! Hopefully I can start taking ballet again soon. Can't take both because they are at the same time. Praying that I find a Pilates studio closer to home. 
That's about all that I can think of. I hope I'm doing a good job of keeping this blog up.

_Until next post_

1 comment:

  1. You're definitely doing a good job with posting. I like the BookNookReviewCorner - the use of pens vs. stars is very you. I like it.
    I find it interesting that you didn't like Black Swan, as I know a handful of other people who really liked it. Unfortunately, having not seen it myself, I can't comment on who is right.
    Keep it up Kaite!

    P.S. I know someone in Palatine who teaches Pilates, but I think she does private lessons (Read: expensive).

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