When I first started blogging, I realized that in working within a niche on Fangs, Wands and Fairy Dust, I would read fewer novels outside the Speculative Fiction genre.
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| My Week With Marilyn (Image via RottenTomatoes.com) |
Sometimes other bloggers and I discuss how our friends look down on us as if we were the crack whores of reading because they consider Paranormal and such to be junk. In fact, some people believe that unless a book is not dire in its seriousness it is junk.
After nearly ten years in college and graduate school, I figure I can read what I want. I don't need to prove I am smart by reading "Serious" literature. Eight times out of ten I find the so called serious literature so darn sophisticated that it's depressing, dull and boring. If I want to be depressed I will watch the news.
Now, I am seeing the "For Your Consideration" lists coming up in trade news. Well, not my consideration since I am not a member of any of those organizations. But films I haven't even heard of, that would probably have me hanging myself after the show are a large proportion of thsoe being pushed for academy awards. Now, I like drama and I like comedy. I hate depressing.
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| Image by Getty Images via @daylife |
I would love to see My Week With Marilyn or Anonymous if they would only take them out of limited engagement status. Coriolanus, which I talked about the other day looks beyond depressing. Shakespeare's Blue period I guess. As does the film which started this rant: A Better Life which is about a gardener who works to keep his son away from gangs while he gardens for the wealthy. He is an illegal, with no license. It is referred to as Touching and Startling. I just think it is going to have a bad ending. War Horse, animals being used in war, nope not going to see that. Iron Lady, which also looks a tad depressing because it tells Mrs. Thatcher's story through the looking glass of her dementia. That is mid-level depressing, but it has Meryl Streep so she'll make it amazing. I don't get it.
And if I read a film described as "coming of age" then it is off the list. Generally coming of age has some obstacle which is overcome to move on to a better life. Now, here is a movie that I understand will put Charlize Theron on the for your consideration lists: Young Adult with Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, and Patrick Wilson.
Synopsis Soon after her divorce, a fiction writer returns to her home in small-town Minnesota, looking to rekindle a romance with her ex-boyfriend, who is now married with kids.(IMDB.COM)
There are a bunch of clips here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1625346/
Like Crazy, with Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones and Jennifer Lawrence, looks good too. It is the story of a young British student who falls in love with an American student. WHen her visa runs out she is banned from the USA.
My friend Penny of Penny's Romance Reviews blogged about this today as well, sort of. She's hilarious.
