"Never Let Me Go" review

(there's spoilers, yes.)

"Never Let Me Go" is a book by Kazuo Isiguro I read back in April, and watched the film adaptation tonight. The story takes place at Hailsham, a seemingly idealistic boarding school in the English countryside, and the narrator is a young girl referred to as "Kathy H". The first portion is mostly tales from Kathy's youth, and of being at Hailsham with her two best friends Ruth and Tommy, but there are odd little things we're told about the school which suggests something behind it all - visits from Madame, a Belgian woman with an art gallery who picks out some of the children's art work, the way that the children's health is a huge priority - and the film opens with the headmistress, Miss Emily, scolding the entire hall after some burnt out cigarettes were found in the grounds. The children don't ever leave the confinement of Hailsham, or seem to want to, also their parents or families are never mention, nor are their surnames.
And although they already seem to know, it's spelt out to the children by one of the teachers - or "guardians" - that they were brought in the world purely so that when they grow up, these children will donate their organs to patients of private hospitals in need of replacements.

Considering how much I loved the book, the film was always going to have a some faults in it for me, but I really enjoyed Never Let Me Go. For one, it was just so well cast. Carey Mulligan was brilliant as Kathy - she showed all of the mature and sensibility she has in some ways, compared to Ruth and Tommy, then also the fact that she's also naive in a different way. But I think it was Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightly who stole the show for me. Garfield just was Tommy - the rage, the heart, and most of all just the tiny bits of clumsiness in his walk, and so many of his manerisms were so genuine to the character, he is a child all the way through. And Keira Knightly, who I think I've only really seen as a protagonist or a love interest type character, was absolutley brilliant in this where she was bitchy sometimes. In those early scenes in The Cottages, she showed all the tenaciosity and bitterness - I'm mostly referring to the scene where she completley downgraded Kathy in the attic. She was also wonderful playing the aged, weaker and worn out Ruth in the recovery centre.

There were only really two things I was annoyed that they missed out on.

The first was the scene in the book where Kathy listens to "Never Let Me Go" on a Judy Bridgewater tape - she thinks it's about a woman who finally has a baby after a long time of waiting, and she dances around the dormitory clutching a pillow, then notices Madame just watching her. I know it would've been hard to explain without the narrative there is in a book, but this scene was just the key to portraying how Madame saw the children at Hailsham, and how they saw her (Kathy knows she feels awkward around them, and she thinks that she's upset when she sees her dancing because she knows the Hailsham children can never have their own babies, we don't know why at this point).

The second thing was that so many little moments between Kathy and Ruth - them sitting together talking about sex on the pavillion, how Ruth came up and talked to Kathy in her bedroom every night they were together in the Cottages, were missed out on, and although their not that relevant alone, I think this ended up completley forgetting to show a lot about Kathy and Ruth's friendship. "Never Let Me Go" was hugely about friendships between females to me, and really in the film Tommy is much more of a part of Kathy and Ruth's relationship than in the book.

Visually it was beautiful - Hailsham and that area of Norfolk and the Cottages and the boat and really all of the locations were pretty much exactly how I'd imagined them. It was a weird time to watch this, because recently I've developed this odd amount of love for England (maybe it's because of all the Laura Marling music) considering normally I complain about living here. I shouldn't, really, it's beautiful, and Never Let Me Go showed that not in dramatic landscapes or anything incredible but just on what is here and what is real.

Other little things - Miss Emily was too harsh-looking, though I really liked Chrissy (even though she wasn't like I'd imagined) and Rodney (Bill Weasley?!) - I loved the scene in the cafe where Tommy, Ruth and Kathy are quite socially anxious around the waitress and have no idea how to order.

In short, Never Let Me Go was brilliantly cast, visually lovely and a very underrated British film - although I did like The King's Speech, I really think this deserved much more of the credit that had.

Um... fin.

"The Girl Who Played With Fire" - a sort-of review

Yes, it's going to be another blog filled with Millenium Trilogy nerdiness. Deal with it.
So a few nights ago my friend and I rented The Girl Who Played With Fire and I'll talk about that after I've rambled about the books for a while.
Although I really like the Millenium Trilogy, admitedly I've only actually read the first and second books. Here's why.
One of the things Stieg Larsson does which sometimes annoys me is goes into way too much detail about small things. The reason my favourite bookis "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" isn't only because the first of anything almost always is (Harry Potter, Jumanji ect) but because it keeps the rambling detail to a minimum. I understand it's a complex plot and this is sometimes completley necessary, and when I started reading TGWTDT I was warned it didn't get going until page 75, to be precise. It's mostly true: the first few chapters is just explanations of things, but it's worth it because the rest of the novel sticks to the plot, uninterrupted, and it's exciting and draws you right in - I read most of the book on a beach in Turkey, and I could feel my back burning but I didn't want to leave it for a second.
In terms of plot, though, I think I probably prefer "The Girl Who Played With Fire"
SPOILER ALERT
and the investigation into Dag and Mia's murders earlier on, followed by Lisbeth and Mikael, and the way they end up communicating. Where the first book was mostly a straight up murder mystery, the sequel being about sex trafficking and also Lisbeth's past makes it much more personal to our heroine and the ways she's motivated, and I like that about it.
/K SPOILER GONE NOW.
The only thing I didn't like about the sequel was how every so often, a new character in the police force would be introduced. The next four or five pages would be spent explaining who they were, where they were brought up, their family, their involvement in Soviet Russia and this got on my nerves after a while.
I tried to rest "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest" and the reason I stopped was because it seemed like it was nearly all this explanation. It's tiring, I felt like it was studying I had to do before it could offer me a story. I'm not giving up and I'll try it again soon.

The film, my friend told me, is actually made up of bits of a Swedish TV show adaptation stuck together. I "reviewed" The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo here before and I'm fairly sure I talked about my views on the casting but there's no reason not to again. (Lisbeth is excellent and I don't feel like there's much more to say about her).
But the biggest disappointment is Mikael Blomkvist. He looks wrong, he acts wrong, and all of the quirks have been taken from him. My problem with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was that compared to the book, the sense of humour from both him and Lisbeth was completley drowned out, and this took away their chemistry, and almost made us believe they'd just had sex a few times, and there was nothing else bringing them together.
I feel the same about him and Erika Berger only worse, and Erika may be my favourite character. She was cast wrong - she seemed much more scruffy and unglamorous than I imagined her, and the chemistry between her and Mikael was completley missing. I'm not fully blaming the actors, because the version I watched was dubbed and therefore it was probably the voiceovers, but there was a scene where Erika and Mikael were talking and it was juist like bored schoolchildren reading out work in English class. They're lifeless and it makes me sad.
Having said that some of the other characters, particularly Miriam Wu, Paolo and Niedermann, and even Dag and Mia were pretty much perfect - Mia was the only one of the above who didn't look at all like I imagined, but it doesn't matter, she was great, even though a small character.
Was the red-haired journalist in the Millenium offices Lotta Karim?
Reading the book there were a few things I somehow missed, because, guiltily, I think I skim-read some of the later parts. My friend was shocked that I missed completley the fact that Niedermann has a genetic disorder meaning he doesn't feel pain, and also when it turned out he was LISBETH'S BROTHER?! :o
But in summary, I liked it quite a lot: although I think it missed some, The Girl Who Played With Fire really helped tell me the story and fill me in on the things I'd missed, maybe sometimes due to Stieg Larsson's writing style. I'm also really looking forward/confused about the Hollywood remake of the films, and hoping Daniel Craig will make a much better Blomkvist.

Prayers

I just watched Eat, Pray, Love, and though it wasn't exactly excellent it did make me think a lot, firstly about how much I want to travel. I'm pretty lucky because for my age I've been to a lot of places, both with my family and on school trips; within the last five years or so I've been to Florida, Turkey, Kenya, Brussles, Paris, and more. But I've always been somehow restricted with the people I was with, and that's bugged me a little.

The other thing it had a lot of connotations to was religion. And this is always something I've been hesitant to talk about here, along with a few other topics just because of the worry that any of my opinions will offend someone, somewhere, somehow.
Meh.

Up until a few months ago, I was 100% athiest and wouldn't be disagreed with. So is my dad, and my mum, though I think she'd like to believe in a God of some sort, is the same, and in fact most of the people around me. My best friend, however, is a pretty liberal Protestant and we've only once really debated these things.
I wouldn't say I really had a "conversion experience", but it was in RE class, (cliched I know) that I decided to open my mind a little more. I don't know why but my mind had drifted off from what the teacher was saying, and it was hot and dark in there, and I started to think about Heaven, and it first occured to me that it compared to this idea in my head I have of a "happy place". I talked about this to a friend recently, and my happy place is this park in Berlin I saw a picture of one time, a picnic in the evening with all of the people I love.
It just occured to me that maybe Heaven can be that. And that didn't make me believe suddenly in God, but for the first time I started to think that I might want to.

I've also sort of prayed, though I don't really count it, once of twice. I have a notebook I keep at my bedside which I've titled "Letters To Nobody", and whenever I'm in one of those moods where I have to express something to someone which I could never really say, maybe they've made me secretly angry or it's someone I don't know well that's made me think a lot.
It's heartfelt love letters, apologies to friends, rants at strangers, hate mail to celebrities and, sometimes, letters to God, whoever that is.
I don't think I really believed it'd come to anything, but once or twice when I felt I've really, really needed something (things you'd think were silly, like the need to go to the Royal Albert Hall) I've "written to God" in vain hope that somehow it'd work. And I'm fairly sure I have almost no belief still but I'm a little more agnostic than I once was. It's nice, feeling like maybe someone wants good things to happen to me.
I did end up going to the Royal Albert Hall, as you know. Make what you want of that.

- Lizzie

In relation to that thing down there, I apologise for the silence yesterday, but my internet was down. I suppose I'll go one day into March or something.

The Mice in the Walls, Enduring Love

Hello!

So Bob, my cat, brought in a mouse he'd caught which was ginormous and also still alive. We shut Bob out of the room, my dad and I, and snuck around trying to catch it for a while but it ran under the fireplace, crawled up into a further hole where it's now unachievable. So I now have a pet mouse living in the wall cavities of my house. Maybe it'll have babies, and they'll feed on bugs, and dust, and the taste of all the skin will make them start to mutate into giant, flesh-eating killer mice.
I'm not sure if I'm excited or terrified.

Today Kyle Casssidy tweeted about a photographer named Raina Matar, who's done a project photographing teenage girls from all around the world, all sorts of lifestyles, in their bedrooms. I don't know a lot about photography or art but they're beautiful and I wanted to share them with you. I don't know why. The photographs are here. My personal favourite is the second along, just because it's how I feel a lot of the time.

Also whilst we're here, I apologize that I keep plugging things like the above, and like poetry I like, books, other stuff like that but it's interesting to me and this is really the only place I can talk about it a lot. I do so, anyway, but when it's here, in some respects you have no choice but to listen, and I like that. Yay, selfish blogger.
But seriously. Tomorrow I'll write a blog which has some form of purpose to it, as an apology for my babbling over the last few days.

Tonight I watched a movie called Enduring Love, and on being told that the book it's based on is by the same writer of "Atonement", I don't think I felt that excited about it (I never read "Atonement" though, only saw the movie which was disappointing). But this was brilliant.
It starred Daniel Craig, who was traumatised after feeling he caused a man's death in a balloon accident, and throughout the story, started to realise he was being stalked by Jed (Spike from Notting Hill!!!!!), who was also at the accident. It messes with your head a lot and I really liked it. Also it was only 1 hour and a half, which was a bonus because I never have time nowadays, and a lot of movies I've seen recently I've almost got impatient with the length of, because when I want to go to sleep, everything seems like it's going on too long.
That definitely wasn't the intelligent, advertising, helpful review of Enduring Love I planned but I'm tired. Shurrup.

I'll write something proper tomorrow. Promise.

- Lizzie

My Trip to the Cinema Alone

Today I did something I've been wanting to do for a really long time: I went to see a movie on my own.

The idea of it started a few weeks back, because I was discussing with one of my friends whether or not going to see a movie alone is "cool", and decided that it most probably is (because it shows you're interesting, and interested in what you're doing and it's quiet and nice.)
Then, last weekend, I went to see The Dilemma with all of my teenage girl friends. I'd really wanted to go and see Black Swan, which everyone had decided would be too scary, and so we settled for a romantic comedy type thing which I quite enjoyed, it just didn't fill what I'd left the house hoping for. After the movie ended, I talked to my friends about whether I should go see Black Swan now, alone (it had started ten minutes ago, but adverts). Most were kind of mutual/mildly shocked that I was considering doing this, one in particular discouraged me, "Bleh, you'll look like such a loner, you can't go to the cinema twice in a day, you'll get fat!" (?!)
I didn't go then, but the fact that someone had told me I couldn't go to see a movie alone made me want to do it. It made me want to do it MORE.
I couldn't get the idea out of my head. Today I woke up without much to do, schrumped around until 11:30-ish when I decided something needed to be done. I googled it (using my phone, internet was broken, hence boredom) and Black Swan was starting at 1 o clock. I could make it, just.
I walked briskly into town, feeling excited and almost a little proud of myself for leaving the house using only willpower, and made the bus just in time. I like riding the bus with my friends, but sometimes I like there not being voices around me, and especially when there aren't people my age there who I'm not with. The only people who saw me were old ladies, not watching me disaprovingly because of R&B music blaring from a mobile phone but thinking, "Isn't that nice? A quiet, respectable teenage girl who probably won't rob me. And that book she's reading, "Neverwhere" looks interesting, I'll google Neil Gaiman when I get back to my bungalow."
Anyways.
I got to the cinema and queued up to buy my ticket, I asked for a ticket to Black Swan.
She said, "Black Swan is a fifteen."
"I'm fifteen," I said.
"Do you have ID?"
And this made me angry: not that she was questioning my age, because fair enough, I'm not fifteen for a month and I wasn't wearing very much make-up but because she'd asked if I have ID. Of course not - I don't have a driver's licence, no real fifteen year old's parents would allow them to leave the house with passport, birth certificate ect. There must be a better system. So then I was like "Myeh, fine."
She almost went on to serve some 10 year olds behind me, but I booked a ticket to The King's Speech and then went to the next counter and got my nachos.
I actually liked it a lot. Collin Firth, Timothy Spawl and the actress who played the Queen Mother whose name I don't know were all brilliant, as was the King's speech therapist Lionel. Parts of it made me feel so good, sometimes patriotic and sometimes just happy. It made me laugh and smile, no part of it was too dark, and unlike most historical films, I never felt like I was missing out on anything because my knowledge of the time period is vague. Maybe that's because it didn't rely on it too much, maybe I'm just starting to learn stuff more. Yay for "Rebecca" and GCSE History?
And I liked the experience. I love my friends but sometimes in the cinema I feel quietly embarassed when they talk loudly in the adverts (I probably do so too when I'm with them I think) and adults judge me and I almost want to apologize. It's not us, it's just being in any large group of girls generates a lot of clutter and noise.
My throat started hurting so I got iced tea on the way home.
And to summarize, in self defence, I've done it and going to the cinema alone is cool. You should try it. I may even go back and re-attempt Black Swan next weekend.
I'm kidding.
...

Also I got a cold, felt tips and an idea all within the last few days
If anyone follows me on Twitter, know that Bob is fine now. Another cat bit him and the vet had to cut into his side, which he moaned about a lot and had to have two other vets hold him down, but he's better now and just having to take a lot of antibiotics. He only has a bald patch on his side which I think he's worried will ruin his cool (if kitties can be egocentric, Bob is). Callie and Sandy wander around sympathetically and lick his wound, if he'll let them. It's happy.

Seeing as I've mostly just talked about myself today, here is someone who's music I started to fall for when the song "Fidelity" was on a TV show called Mistresses (which I'm getting to writing about one day soon, I promise). Regina Spektor is so, so awesome. She plays piano, her voice is lovely and her songs are sometimes happy and playful, like "Dance Anthem of the 80s" sometimes and melancholy and nostalgic like "The Call" or sometimes just plain awesome, like "On The Radio" which is one of my favourites (videos for "Fidelity and that one are both brilliant).
"This is how it works,
It feels a little worse,
Than when we drove our hearse,
Right through the scremaing crowd,
While laughing up a storm,
Until we were just bone,
Until it got so warm,
That none of us could sleep."

That's all for today. Have a nice week/few days and stuffs. :) .

- lizzie

Cats, "The Disappearance of Alice Creed" and P4A

Callie is sat next to me, padding around and making mruh noises, because all of the thick white stuff outside makes her paws cold. The cats are fighting because they're bored and there isn't very much else to do.

I've been away from the internet for about two days now, mainly because I didn't really have anything I wanted to share with anyone, and so I kept away from Twitter and Facebook and here until I didn't have anything else to do.

Friday night was strange. In the time I'd spent being a teenager so far, I'd never been particularly drunk or smoked or other stuff that I'm supposed to screw up my youth by doing, until the other night when I suddenly tried a little too hard at being exciting and hardcore. Nothing very bad happened, just enough to make me realise that it's probably better to spend my free nights sat at home on my computer drinking mocha.
Is that bad?

The good news is that, The Things We Stumble Across/The Wall/my 75% written novel is safe! Two weeks or so ago, my beloved laptop took its fourth trip to our favourite repair shop after a virus from a chain email, and had to be wiped completley. I don't trust Norton very much, and I've lost a lot of random crap I'd written, and for a while I thought I'd lost my novel, until this morning I found a memory stick that it was on.
I am so, so thankful and relieved.

Last night I watched a movie called The Disappearance of Alice Creed and it was completley brilliant, and it scared me more than any film I've seen before. To begin, two men in balaclavas shop for some soundproofing in B&Q then kidnap a young girl. By the end, there's so much more reason to everything. It was extremely low budget, there were three actors we saw in the whole movie. It built up an incredible amount of tension and fear inside me, I remember sitting and trembling during one of the first few scenes. The plot and the characters' past is unravelled throughout the movie, with no flashbacks but simply conversation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX-LOYRupUA
I also want you to watch this - one of my favourite musician's videos for something going on on Youtube called Project 4 Awesome. Kina Grannis is a brilliant singer-songwriter and also an incredible woman, and I really did cry watching this video, and it surprised me because although charities' causes have made me sad and sympathetic before I'm usually quite a heartless cow when it comes to crying, as I've mentioned a lot. After Christmas when I'm no longer broke, I really do plan to donate to LLS.

I hope you have a good week.

- lizzie

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - movie review

Every year I go on holiday with my parents, the resorts we stay at have a selection of the same kind of people. By the pool, of course, they read, and they all read the same things - my parents included. There's the same few editions of airport bought FHM magazines, copies of She and Elle and things, and always several of the same paperback novel that can be found on Waterstones chart shelf a few weeks before. This year, it was Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Done with my novels and short story complimations (oh my god. Noctures by Kazuo Ishiguro. let's get on to that later), I had nothing to read on the journey home. On the 5 hour flight, I couldn't sleep and read most of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
The first novel of the Millenium trilogy is pretty brilliant. It is violence, mystery, sex, Sweden, feminism, love. It's also a 'who-dunnit' novel, which for once I did work out part of the answer to, but there's a second huge twist at the end. One of the main things I loved about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is that characters came alive in my mind, particularly Lisbeth Salander who I've talked about here before, and Mikael Blomkvist.
Last night, I watched the movie.
I wasn't expecting to love it and for it to be perfect, because that's never happened to me with a book's adaptation (Push/Precious is an exception). But there was a lot that annoyed me about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
I watched the movie with my mother, and it was avaliable in Swedish with subtitles or English and dubbed , which we argued over and ended up watching dubbed - she won.
Lisbeth was good, but the first thing I said was, "Mikael Blomkvist is all wrong". I'm not that sure how I pictured him in my head whilst I was reading the novel - I didn't have an idea for a while until I read a magazine that said George Clooney was considered for the part in the US movie adaptation, which suddenly seemed to fit. Not only did the slightly dead-eyed actor look nothing like I imagined Blomkvist, but the script failed to convey his personality, which despite being a hard-ass professional fianancial journalist/detective/crime fighter there was fun in. One of the things that was imporant to Blomkvist and Salander's relationship, and made Mikael a little more likeable, was the Elvis music mentioned, and the present Lisbeth buys for him at the end, which I think would have translated well to the screen.
Not only was Mikael's affair with Erika Berger, a huge plotpoint throughout all three books, pretty much unexplained and ignored, but Erika looked all wrong. In the version I'm casting in my head, she'd be played by Jaime Murray or perhaps Sarah Parish, and definitely would not be blonde or look like my exchange partner's mother. I started out not liking Erika but by the end of the second book, although small she was firmly in the place of my favourite character.
There were a few other issues. Martin Vanger wasn't slimy CEO-ish enough, he was old and fat and suspicious. Harriet shouldn't have been blonde. Miriam Wu, though we only saw her a second, was just right, though.
Aside from all that, most of the movie was spot on. The scenery - Hedeby Island and Stockholm were how I imagined, but not the Millenium offices.
I liked ranting about the movie here. More later on.

Lizzie