Movie Review- Northanger Abbey (1987)

I knew there was another film version of Northanger Abbey out there and since it was made by BBC and they made an okay version of Pride and Prejudice, I figured that it would be an okay version as well. It wasn't. I'm just really not surer that the makers of the movie realized that Jane Austen was writing a PARODY of Gothic novels... not actually writing a Gothic novel. There were so many aspects of this film that were done wrong that I really don't know where to begin. I probably spent as much time gagging over this movie as I did watching the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice or the 2007 version of Mansfield Park... and that's saying a lot.

Casting

Okay... meaning not quite bad but definitely not good. I think some of the cast could have done a lot better with just some better script writing. 

Scriptwriting

Atrocious! As I said above, I don't think they realized the whole point of Austen's book! They also left out chunks of it and added in new parts that added NOTHING. Everything was very rushed, it was an hour and a half long movie and not put together well. 

Catherine's Fantasies

As in the 2007 version of Northanger Abbey, this version dramatizes Catherine's fantasies. This is a very interesting idea but despite my not quite liking how they did it in the 2007 version, they did it better than in this version. The fantasies were just to weird... I mean weird, and oftentimes gory! 

Music

Music you ask? Why would the music factor into our analysis? Why not! In this case, the music strongly influenced my dislike of the movie. It was terrible! I'm not sure how to describe it, though my mother likened it to blues. It went along with the whole theme of making it a rather gothic movie. 

Overall, I suggest you do not waste your time watching this movie. Read the book! Always read the book. Then I would cautiously recommend the 2007 version of Northanger Abbey as a film version to watch. 

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Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts

Again this week I'm linking up with Bookishly Boisterous to bring you ten bookish and not so bookish thoughts.

Me in my scrubs. :)

1. First off, I totally blew it in my Monday post and said I was reading Mary Poppins in the Park when I was really reading Mary Poppins Opens the Door. Forgive me my many faults! At least I had it right on Goodreads! :)
2. I got a ridiculously low amount of reading done this week. All I did was finish Mary Poppins in the Park. It was a long stressful week.
3. I did download a bunch of books to my iBooks app yesterday so hopefully I'll get more reading done with that as I don't always remember to bring a book when I'm going places and now I can just whip out my phone. :)
4. I got a ridiculously low amount of sleep this week so I'm looking forward to sleeping in on the weekend. :) For the first time since I've been in college, I don't work or have class on Friday, which is amazing! I am finally experiencing that three day weekend you people speak so highly of. :)
5. My mother has made twice this week so I am getting a constant supply of her bread, which is AMAZING! However, probably not best for me trying to lose weight... but it is whole wheat... so that makes it fine...right? ;)
6. So far this week I've worn my scrubs more than my normal clothes. :) 
7. I have to do major studying but major relaxing this weekend. I imagine with trying to find the balance I'll to too much of just one of them... most likely relaxing. 
8. I started my nursing clinicals this week. My first rotation is peds but since I'm at a small hospital I may or may not get peds patients.
9. I'm tired... did I mention I was tired? 
10. I think I need some coffee... I can't think straight... if there's errors in this post I contribute it to being coffeeless. 

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Vlog- Advice for the Single Gal on Valentine's Day

Today I'm linking up with Mama Kat to give you a video of my advice for the single gal on Valentine's day.  Hope you enjoy it! 

P.S. Let me know if the video doesn't work right.
P.P.S. Blimey Cow kind of summed up what I was trying to say in this video. Be sure to check it out!

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Whatcha Reading?

It's Monday... what are you reading? Again this week I'm linking up with Sheila at Book Journey.

Last week I finished John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life, and Orson Scott Card's Ender's Shadow. Both books were very enjoyable and after having finished Ender's Shadow I can say conclusively that I do like it better than Ender's Game, though they are both good.

This coming week I expect to finish Mary Poppins in the Park, and then after that I'm not sure. I have several Tolkien books I want to read and I might get around to re-reading The Wind in the Willows or The Swiss Family Robinson, which I've been meaning to re-read for awhile. I'll also continue to listen to the audiobook of The Warden.

What are you reading? Comment and let me know! :)

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Movie Review- Saving Mr. Banks

Ever since watching the trailer for Saving Mr. Banks last year I've been on my toes waiting to watch the movie. A couple weeks ago I finally got to see it. I enjoyed it but it was so bittersweet and was one of the more emotional movies I've seen. I don't watch many emotional movies though so…
First of all, the acting was superb! Everyone did their job well, especially Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers. The storyline was fascinating and, as I said before, bittersweet. I knew prior to watching the movie that Mrs Travers never did like how the movie of Mary Poppins turned out so that puts the movie in a slightly different light. I did a little fact checking on the internet to see how accurate the movie was and it is somewhat accurate but obviously makes Disney look better than it is. You can see some of the differences here and here. Just as a movie though, without looking at the facts, I consider it quite good. Looking at the facts of what really happened though, I would say it is pretty good.
If you aren't familiar with the plot line of Saving Mr. Banks, and have been reading the above just waiting for me to shut up as you have no idea what is going on…. here it is. Saving Mr. Banks tells the story of the fortnight when P.L. Travers (the author of Mary Poppins) traveled from her home in England to the Walt Disney studios so that Walt Disney could hopefully get her to give him the rights to the movie of Mary Poppins. Disney soon finds out though that it won't be as easy as he hoped it would be as Mrs Travers isn't very charitable to the idea of giving away her treasured story to a company she hates (actually she isn't very charitable at all). The movie also contains several flashbacks to her as a child growing up and how it influenced her books.
P.L. Travers is not a very nice person in the movie and neither was she in real life. However, as you watch her tragic backstory unfold, you begin to understand how that formed her into that persona. In the movie she has her funny moments but she is still a rather curmudgeonly character.

I'll close my review with a great quote from the movie that has quite a bit actually to do with my blog. :)

"It is blasphemy to drink tea from a paper cup."- P.L. Travers

Lois Johnson, avid writer, tea drinker, and reader but first and foremost, avid Christian.

Ten Bookish and not so Bookish Thoughts :)

Today I'm linking up with Bookishly Boisterous with some bookish and not so bookish thoughts. :)

1. I am so relieved to be done with my first test of second semester nursing. I stressed out over it more than I have stressed out over a test since Anatomy and Physiology (my long time readers remember how I used to stress out about those). However I'm done with it now and I did alright. If you want to know a few fun facts about childbirth I'll be happy to supply. :)
2. I got two snow days this week, which really messed up the school schedule but was good for getting studying done for aforementioned test. I seriously did study most of the time and did not go out in the snow at all. That was more due to a hatred of the cold than a love of studying. 
3. I discovered I actually can read multiple books at a time successfully despite always having thought I couldn't. I had four books going for awhile and then three and now finally I'm at an easy two. However, I foresee myself getting up to four again in the future. :) 
4. I've decided while re-reading the Mary Poppins books (after being inspired to do so prior to watching Saving Mr. Banks) that while the movie of Mary Poppins is good, it doesn't nearly capture the imagination the books inspire. I know those are children's books, but let me tell you they are good children's books. A sure way to tell a good children's book is to come back to it when you're an adult and still enjoy it. 
5. I've decided, though I have not yet quite finished it, that I like Ender's Shadow better than Ender's Game... though they are both good. 
6. I learned how to put an IV in today! If you catch me staring at your veins, don't be alarmed.... I'm imagining sticking a needle it. ;)
7. I started listening to an audiobook of The Warden on Sunday. It is the first in the Barchester Chronicles. I had already read Barchester Towers, which actually comes after it, and I had always wanted to read The Warden but never could get ahold of a copy. That's where free audiobooks come in handy. :)
8. I may or may not have had multiple geeky conversations with my mother about her pregnancies in the last few days.
9. Labor and Delivery is definitely the specific field in nursing that I'm leaning towards right now. However, I have yet to have clinical experience with it so I may change my mind. 
10. I might (Lord willing) be going on a short term mission trip to Puerto Rico for a week this summer. I'm very excited as I've always wanted to go on a mission trip to a Spanish speaking country so I could practice my (limited) Spanish as well as be able to serve the Lord in a foreign country. 

Have a fun week! My school week is over now. :) 

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Frustratingly Spoiled

Two of Mama Kat's writing prompts this week were "write a blog post inspired by the word 'spoiled'" and "Something that frustrates you." Well, I thought that combining those two wasn't that hard so why not? One of the thing that frustrates me the most and has to do with spoiled is lazy people in college... don't tell me they aren't spoiled.
The fact that they are in college using my tax payer dollars to be there is a big part of the aggravation to me. I'm going to make a few stereotypes here but in my experience, they're true. A vast majority of the students I meet at college, even some of the better ones, go out and drink, experiment with drugs, cheat on their tests, don't actually write their own papers, don't show up to class, and in general are just lazy... then wonder why they are failing their classes and complain about it! Honey, you aren't in high school anymore... not that your high school should have been like that either. You go to college to go to college! If you want "the college experience" then don't spend my tax dollars... or your parent's money either. I feel like we are fostering a bunch of spoiled and lazy children (and I mean children) in colleges anymore. If you're in college, you should be acting like an adult. I started attending my local community college when I was sixteen and people didn't believe I was really that young because I acted more maturely than most of my fellow students. That's sad.
I know my experience has been limited to a community college but from what I've generally heard, it isn't too much different at state colleges. If college students put half the work into their classes that they put into achieving the next level of Candy Crush, they wouldn't be failing.

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Top Ten Books that Made You Cry

If you guys know me very well, you are wondering at the title of this blog post. You will know that I don't get emotional (i.e. cry) over books, movies or TV shows. My brother still tries to randomly quote sad moments in Doctor Who to get me to cry... it hasn't worked yet. However, I thought about this list and decided to adapt it to books that do make me sad. There is one book that I cried over, but I was very young then! And that book would be....

1. Bridge to Teribithia by Katherine Paterson- It was the first book I read where a lead character died and I was just really shocked. That's my only explanation for the sudden burst of emotion.
2. The Book Thief by Martin Zusak
3. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
4. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beacher Stowe
5. Carry on Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham
6. Rakkety Tamm by Brian Jacques
7. Little Women by Louise May Alcott
8. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince- Just a little emotional because of you know what.
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- Because it ended. 
10. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

The only one of those I actually cried over was the first, the others just made me feel sad.

I've come to realize that I feel far more emotional over movies/TV shows then books, maybe because I am actually seeing it. While I have teared up for a select few movies and TV shows, I haven't ever actually cried. Then again, as I have mentioned before, I don't read or watch a lot of sad books or movies. 

Linking up with The Broke and the Bookish. 

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It's Monday! What are you Reading!

Today I'm following along with Sheila at Book Journey to write about what I read last week and what I'm looking forward to reading this week.

Last week I read Dying to Forget, and finished  reading Mary Poppins Comes Back. I have really been enjoying re-reading the Mary Poppins books after having been inspired to do so after watching Saving Mr. Banks. In my personal opinion, while good, the movie of Mary Poppins, does not measure up to the imagination inspired by the books. While interesting, Dying to Forget was only so-so due to its theological issues.

This week I'll be finishing up Ender's Shadow (Orson Scott Card), a parallel novel to Ender's Game, Mary Poppins in the Park (P.L. Travers), and hopefully also finish up Don't Waste Your Life (John Piper). With three books to finish, I doubt I'll be starting anything new this week but we'll see. :) I'm also listening to The Warden (Anthony Trollope) via audiobook but I think that will take some time to finish.
Comment and let me know what you're reading!

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Monthly Resolutions- February 2014

January went by really fast but also really slow. However, it's now February which means school starts really picking up! Fun!

Read or Re-Read Five Books

Last month I listed which books I wanted to read that month and we know how that turned out. So.... what I'm hoping to read/re-read this month is Ender's Shadow, Mary Poppins in the Park, The Swiss Family Robinson, The Wind in the Willows, and The Children of Hurin. I also started listening to The Warden last evening via audiobook but I'm thinking that will take longer than a month to listen to. We'll see how it goes! :)

Memorize Scripture

Next up are verses 3-4 of Psalm 31. Hopefully these will be as easy as the last two verses. :) 

Pray Daily

Same as last month.

Do one crochet project

I doubt I'll have the time this month to go overboard and crochet fifty hats... okay it wasn't fifty, but it was a lot! 

At least two blog posts per week

Sometimes I do more, sometimes I do none, but I'll at least try for two blog posts per week. :)

This month will be quite busy enough so I'm not getting fancy with my goals. My clinicals for nursing school start up in a little over a week. I'm very excited for this semester of Pedes and OB. :)

Lois Johnson, avid writer, tea drinker, and reader but first and foremost, avid Christian.