Based on Diana Wynne Jones's novel of the same title, Howl's Castle is a visually stunning movie by Hayao Miyazaki, the director of My Friend Totoro, Kiki Delivery Service and the Academy Award Winner Spirited Away, among others. Both in the book and in the movie, Sophie, a 17 year old milliner, is turned into a 90 year old woman by the wicked witch of the Waste. The girl has no idea why. [...]
Lisbeth Salander is back in full form in the second installment of the Millennium trilogy by the late Stieg Larson.As the movie starts Lisbeth is in a Caribbean island enjoying the money she procured for herself in a not very orthodox way. But as soon as she comes to Sweden and, following a visit to his legal guardian (the 'sadistic pig' we met in The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo), she is framed [...]
With looks reminiscent of Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands and a dark intensity that screams of a troubled past, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the girl of the title, goes about her business of hacking into computers as she investigates her subject Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist).Mikael, a journalist for a liberal magazine, has been falsely accused and sentenced to prison for libel. As he awaits the beginning of his sentence, he is hired by [...]
by Carmen Ferreiro"Way down in Missouri" the song that opens the trailer (http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3239184153) for Winter's Bones tells us, 17-year old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) lives with her two younger siblings and her mentally ill mother. Life is tough for her. Yet Ree struggles to keep her family fed, her siblings in school and proudly refuses to ask for help. "You don't ask for what should be offered," she admonished her six year old [...]
She married her brother at 17 upon the death of their father and were both declared pharaohs, the living gods, and rulers of Egypt as their ancestors had for three hundred years since Ptolomeo came from Macedonia, a general in Alexander the Great army.When her brother drowned in the port of Alexandria, Cleopatra married her eleven year old brother as she was expected. But when the Romans came with their legions intent on [...]
I fell in love with medieval times long ago, probably as a child while reading Robin Hood, or The Sword in the Stone. But it was a couple of years ago, upon discovering The Lion in Winter, that my love became a passion from which my last novel Requiem for a King was born.The Lion in Winter was written by James Goodman in 1966 as a play that was later made into a [...]
by Carmen Ferreiro EstebanI'm not a fan of dystopian novels or of those that present post-apocalyptic scenarios. I have not read The Road nor watched the movie, even though the role of the father in the screen version is played by Viggo Mortensen, my favorite actor ever. So when, two weeks ago, my friend Candace lend me Life As We Knew It, the first book in The Last Survivors Trilogy, I did not [...]
