Lottie Green Author and Creator of Worlds – Science Fiction and Chick Lit Novelist
Lottie Green is a Washington, DC based author of Let Down Your Hair and Once Upon a Thyme, and author of an upcoming science fiction novel trilogy titled The Only.
So all the pomp and circumstance around the Oscars is over. Ellen DeGeneres headed up a great party, even providing her guests pizza. And who knew that all those famous people could photo bomb so well? Overall, it was an entertaining evening with not many surprises outside John Travolta’s new toupee and his terrible faux pas – who the hell is Adele Nazeem? Poor Idina.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images Continue reading “Oscars are over. Now what?”
I’ll admit it. I suck at this whole blogging thing. Sure, I start off fine. I’ll write some wonderfully witty posts for a period of about a week…and then I quickly turn radio silent. Life gets in my way, and I find I’m too tired to sit down and compose a clever bit about how stories are told through a variety of mediums. Continue reading “I Am a Sucky Blogger”
So the YA book market as well as the movie world are living large off the many versions of dystopian futures where the youth of the time must save the day – Hunger Games, Divergent, and Matched just to name a few. But the thing NOBODY is talking about is how these books have 16-year-olds basically ready to beat the shit out of each other – but none of them ever think or want to have sex. Have the teenagers of the future turned into a bunch of eunuchs and nuns?
I think it’s really interesting that the super uber Christian authors, particularly Veronica Roth author of the Divergent books, thinks it’s okay to have a female character want to expand her world by entering a society without any sort of parental supervision that revels in violence, where bashing in someone’s face until they bleed is rewarded, and where one reveals personality and shows rebellion by getting tattooed, but can never express one ounce of lust or simple human biology. Her characters are mired by their need to save society and yet are completely clueless of what it means to be human.
The Matched series by Ally Condie is even more repressed. The dystopian society built in this series eliminates all creative outlets, matches kids up on their seventeenth birthday but they can hardly touch each other and where relationships are only maintained to propagate the species – but then again sex is NEVER mentioned. And it’s still up to the teenagers to save the world.
I’m not saying that all YA novels have to be as blatant and open as Forever, by Judy Blume, but it’s just ridiculous to continue to place teenagers in incredibly adult situations and never expect it to come up.
Like a lot of fans I was thrilled to hear about ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT coming back for another season – and on the pioneering platform of Netflix, too! But I was also filled with trepidation. It’s been too long I thought. The magic can’t come back. Michael Cera is too old. Portia De Rossi is too happy in her married life. And Justin Bateman is having too much fun making mediocre feature films. It won’t work.
Sadly, I was right, but not because of the fault of the still brilliant ensemble cast. Unfortunately, the actors are given much to work with. The constant flashbacks just don’t work. Well…besides pissing off the viewer. There are too many and do little to propel the story forward. And it’s hard to know what the producers were thinking with the weird Ron Howard storyline. It just recreated a sad going nowhere trip for Michael – and the audience.
Overall, it still doesn’t suck to schedule a binge watching of the fourth season. You just won’t enjoy it as much as the first three.
What did you think? Like the Netflix versions?
Let me start this off by saying how I am not a Will Smith fan. I think he’s mediocre at best and his best is when he’s playing a character that’s basically himself. He is lacking depth – totally evident in his performance in Six Degrees of Separation. But of course, I’m biased. I saw the 1990 play on Broadway with James McDaniel in the part Will Smith brought to screen. Or I should say, failed to bring to screen.
But this post is not about Six Degrees, it’s about a terrible movie, with terrible actors (including Will’s son, Jaden), and particularly terrible directing by the once great M. Night Shyamalan. You thought The Last Airbender was bad? Not even close to this one. And what makes it worse is that the actors are so lacking in skill that they think the bad dialogue will be better if they just stand there with I guess they think is a very pensive look. They look pensive. See picture.They talk pensive. And the audience is bored out of their minds.
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It’s a colossal failure. And I hope that the Smiths will take it as a sign that they should stop producing movies for their children to star in. I know. I know. But they were so good in The Pursuit of Happyness. And what about the remake of The Karate Kid?
The former I felt is better because Jaden hadn’t become affected. But by the time his folks came around to producing The Karate Kid as a vehicle for him he has turned into a self-obsessed, narcissistic, egocentric teen. Unable to evoke any emotion other than the pensive face he copies from his dad. And that is not entertaining.
But the real question is M. Night Shyamalan who for whatever reason hasn’t been able to make a good movie since The Sixth Sense. His surprise endings used to be entertaining and fun. And while watching, I kept hoping I would get that with After Earth. That the whole terrible experience would somehow be redeemed by a sudden unexpected, yet expected twist.
It just wasn’t meant to be.