The Hunger Games

    Recently, I’ve been on a book reading binge and I have to say for the first time in my life I’m enjoying reading. I’ve read books in the past, but thanks to my ADHD I couldn’t focus and I’ve somehow overcame that mental lapse now. I started off reading the seventh book of the Harry Potter series, after watching all six movies, then quickly wanting to move on to something new. Well, I decided to ruffle through my book-loving cousin D’s collection (which is also located in the room I stay in) and found a book entitled The Hunger Games. Before deciding to read the book, like everything else, I researched it on the internet before investing time in it. The only thing I was leery about was the fact that the book was rated for Young Adults and the main star was a teenage girl; therefore a chick book. But, the book had some impressive reviews and I decided to give it a shot.
    Enough rambling, let’s get to the books. The Hunger Games was originally written with the idea of a trilogy in mind. The first two books have been released with the third one about five months away. I’ll be covering books, The Hunger Games and the sequel Catching Fire. As I usually do, I’ll just be going over the general premise of the story without any spoilers.
    The Hunger Games immediately starts out covering the back-story and how everything in the present has come to be. Basically, the story is held in the future after North America has ceased to be and now has been split into twelve districts. Although it’s held in the future, it has a primal mix to the culture and how everyone lives, thanks to the evil Capital and President. Every year a sporting event is held by the Capital called the Hunger Games. The basic rundown of the game: every member, of each of the twelve districts between the age of twelve and seventeen, must enter their name into a deadly drawling. One male and one female from each district are then selected to enter a fight-to-the-death survival game. The government has set this game in-place to remind the people of the districts of a failed uprising that took place seventy-something years ago. It’s their way of controlling the people and demonstrating its power; by killing their children.
    Like I previously mentioned, the main character is a chick and some of the story and text favors to the female kind, romance and such. But guys (the 3 of you that read), don’t let that scare you away, the story is written for both genres. The story has a balanced work of action/suspense and lovey-crap.The book, from the very first chapter, is full of twists and turns in the plot that keep you reading. The character development is strong and you’ll feel like you know and care for each of the main stars in their own way.
    The book is roughly 360 pages but because the author, Suzanne Collins, sets every chapter to end on a cliff hanger, it keeps you reading. I’m not a fast reader by any means, but I was able to clear the first 130 or so pages very quickly. The middle of book is a bit text heavy because it describes a lot of the arena and action going on with very little dialog to back it up. In some points of the story, you might be able to guess what happens next, but probably won’t be able to guess how it comes about. Although, this certainly isn’t the first story to offer a survival apocalyptic-setting and even at times a bit far-fetched, it has its nice unique spin on the genre and definitely above average. The book is highly entertaining and you’ll want to pick up the next book right away to see what happens next.
    Speaking of the next book, let’s roll right on. Catching Fire is the middle installment of the Hunger Games trilogy and was released (Sept. 2009) almost exactly a year later from the first book. Like almost every trilogy series, the middle installment is always the slower-paced, more informative, more boring, portion of the story. Star War’s and Back to the Future might be the only exception to that rule. Anyways, the book literally picks up right where the first left off. I really have to lay off the details here because I wouldn’t want to ruin anything. Basically, the story takes a turn to the larger-than-life/bigger-picture setting. Hopefully that makes sense. The book starts out good, describing life after the first book but drags a bit in the middle. The story covers large gaps in time and focuses a bit too much on the romance portion of the story. It’s all necessary for plot and character development, but like I said, it’s the nature of the second installment so therefore it’s a bit boring. But alas, the last hundred pages or so really picks up and delivers the same intensity of the first book. The last couple chapters set up for a rather big cliff hanger leading into the third book. You’ll want to pick up the third book immediately, but sadly, you’ll have to wait till August 2010.
      Overall, both books are very solid and highly entertaining. The series are rated Young Adult (teen books) but it’s really written for everyone and that shouldn’t scare away the older readers that are up for a good adventure. Go Read.

Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/ylpzlrq
Fish Bowl Rating: (Out of 5)

Let The Right One In

            If she knocks, let her in. Let the Right One In is a recent film in a longer-than-should be list of vampire movies being released nowadays. However, this one movie is worth watching and very good to say the least. The movie is a Sweden film, so watching with subtitles is a must. Don’t you dare turn on the English dubs. A bad dub can ruin any movie. If you haven’t seen a film with subtitles, don’t worry, it’s not as horrible as it might sound, once you get into it, it flows pretty smoothly after awhile. This may actually be a good film to start off with because the dialog is not fast paced.

From the beginning of the movie, the mood is set quickly. No intro music, dark, silent, and snowy. And for the rest of the film it’s this setting throughout. Now, don’t interpret this as the movie being slow moving, it certainly isn’t. The story sucks you in to a dark world and really doesn’t let go until the very end. Although it’s classified as a vampire movie, to call this a vampire movie would be incorrect. It’s more of coming-of-age love-ish story that happens to have a vampire in it. But not all is rosey and lovey dubby in the world of Eli (the 12-year old vampire), the movie touches on some extremely dark subjects and hints on others that make you wonder “how could anyone write/think about this?”. From what I’ve heard, we’re saved from some of the grosser scenes that are featured in the book. But alas, don’t let that scare you away, it does have a purpose and it comes together in the end.

           The above paragraph will be the most detail you’ll get about the movie from my review. Again, it is a Swedish film and needs to be watched with subs. However, if you have no means of obtaining the movie, there will be an American-remake this October. I don’t recommend waiting for that release though, it’s sure to tame and dumb down even further than the Swedish version. Frankly, the Swedish version’ settings, tone, characters, and camera work are perfect for the story and, without blatant rip-off, just can’t be matched.

           The film stands in IMDB’s top 250 and rightfully so. Last I checked it was around #199 and deserves to be higher. The film is also the best of the fantasy-trilogy reviews. To the causal movie go’er this film may ride on the demented side, but if you’re actually in the mood for a unique and fascinating story that you won’t find in other vampire movies being released today, this is the movie for you. Go See. 

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/ 

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZJUgsZ56vQ 

Fish Bowl Rating: (Out of 5)

Shadowgrounds (VG)

Having just beaten Shadowgrounds, I thought I'd like to write up an review for it. I will be breaking up the review in sections, such as: Story, Sound, Gameplay, etc... Just a bit of a WARNING here, this review WILL contain spoilers.

Story

The story of Shadowgrounds is probably the weakest part of the game. To be blunt, I feel the story is very unoriginal. It's set in the future, year 2096, and on Jupiter's moon Ganymede, which was terraformed. It now has about 8,000 people living on it, and the character you play as, Tyler, is a mechanic with military background. You eventually find out there's also alien species on Ganymede with the humans. Obviously you start to get reports that people are dying and/or missing, so you're sent on several rescue missions that don't result in very much. After the search missions, you make a distress call to a shuttle passing Ganymede's orbit, and it's shot down by what appears to be an alien mother ship. You then attempt to shoot down the mother ship and of course that fails, so you take the captured alien pod to the mother ship and try to blow it up from the inside. Well, just before you do that, the collective consciousness of the aliens give you a story on how they were trying to help the humans from killing themselves off and they wouldn't listen, obviously that causes them to realize the error of their mistakes and they defuse the bomb.

Sound & Music

Okay, now it's time to talk about the sound effects, voice, music and all that relates. First and foremost, I want to get voice out of the way and say that the voice acting of Shadowgrounds is just a tad below par. The character, Jane, has the worst voice acting in the game, it just feels like there's no emotion in her lines at all. Now that doesn't mean everyone else's lines are perfect, there are quite a few other lines that feel just as bad as Jane's. However, Tyler's voice actor is probably the best voice actor, and I would say the alien's collective consciousness comes in 2nd... When it comes to sound effects, the aliens, weapons and various environmental things were all fairly well done. Likewise, most of the combat songs, if you will, were well done. Though I have to say the ambient "music" were a little too ambient for my tastes.

Gameplay

And now lets talk about the gameplay. The gameplay of Shadowgrounds is very basic, it's your standard top-down view, third person shoot 'em up. You have guns, you aim, you shoot and hope you hit the target and kill it. While it doesn't bring anything new to the genre, and I'm being serious about that, it's still pretty fun for all you shooter fans out there. (though, it did start to feel tedious to me a few hours into it, so breaks may be a must.) You have your basic pistol with unlimited ammo, assault rifle, shotgun, flamethrower, grenade launcher, chaingun, laser/plasma gun, rocket launcher, railgun and lightning gun... The boss fights of the game were pretty exciting, but far too little of them. For example, there are far more ambush sequences, and those tend to get annoying. And speaking of those, I think the game was pretty easy on normal difficulty, which is what I played it on. They give you 4 re-spawns for every level, and I have not once run out of all 4. I came close to using all 4, but still managed. So while the game isn't that challenging on Normal and Easy, it does have Hard, Very Hard and Impossible difficulties. The game also features local co-op for up 4 players. 1 using keyboard and mouse, the rest using joypads.

Visuals

Last but not least, lets talk about the visuals of Shadowgrounds. Now, Shadowgrounds was made back in 2006, so obviously it doesn't have earth-shattering visuals. However, I feel that it still looks pretty nice, especially from such a small team over at Frozenbyte. (Infact, I almost consider them indie) The game lacks physics from what I can tell, but, that's not a major loss in a top-down view shoot 'em up. I think that the flashlight was probably the best looking part of the visuals, they have it down very well. And you have to use the flashlight very often because of way Shadowgrounds is set in. As in, the setting in the game doesn't have much light, because as we all know, survival horror means that there's going to be little to no light at all.

Conclusion

Okay, so, despite some of the negative elements about Shadowgrounds, I still feel it's a tad under-rated. It's worth playing, even if just one time. It doesn't cost a lot, so you're really not wasting money. (as of this writing, it's priced at only $9.99 on Steam) And it's really not all that short, so I believe you'll get your money's worth out of it, and it's still fun despite the bad story and the not so great voice acting. To conclude this review, I rate Shadowgrounds at 2.5 out of 5.

Website: http://shadowgroundsgame.com

Trailer: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/trailer-shadowgrounds/8501

Fish Bowl Rating: (Out of 5)

Pan's Labyrinth

               Deep In the forest, get lost in a magical fantasy world.  Pan’s Labyrinth is an instant classic fantasy story that everyone should witness. The film is directed by Guillermo Del Toro (The Devil’s Backbone, Hellboy) and is by far his best work yet. He does have a shot to top himself with the upcoming The Hobbit, but that’s yet to be seen obviously.  Pan’s Labyrinth was nominated for Best Foreign Film in 2006 and has earned an impressive 8.4/10 on IMDB.

                I really don’t want to give away too much information here so I’m going to keep the description somewhat short. Anyways, the film is set in a fascist 1944’s Spain and opens to the main star (Ofelia) and her mother being escorted to a secluded part of the forest. On the way, Ofelia’s mother encounters pregnancy complications that force them to stall their journey. During the complications of her mother, Ofelia wanders off on a side-path of the woods and encounters what she believes to be a fairy. Just a few short moments in the film the viewers are thrust into a mysterious and dark fantasy world, like how every good fantasy story should begin. Carmen, Ofelia’s mother, just recently married the very cruel Captain Vidal and that being the reason why she and her daughter must relocate to the Spanish base set in the middle of the woods. You learn quickly to despise Captain Vidal. The story really does a great job of setting up a villain that you just love to hate; everything from his arrogance and antics to his abusive nature.

                From here I’ll keep the details pretty shallow. Ofelia is followed by the fairy to the house is now currently resides at. From there, she is led into an ancient and abandoned labyrinth. Inside is introduced to the dark and imaginative world of Guillermo Del Toro. But not only is she introduced and sucked into this world, so are the viewers. The adventure that lies ahead for both Ofelia and us is one that is truly adventurous and unique.

                Although I don’t consider this to be the best fantasy story ever told, not by a long shot, Pan’s Labyrinth certainly can hold its own against some of the bigger names out there. The movie is currently ranked #68 on IMDB top 250 and I have to agree with its position. It’s one of the best films of the 2000’s. Everything from the physical setting to the dialog to the style and visuals of some the creatures encountered Pan’s Labyrinth delivers on all fronts. This movie is a must-see for any fan of the fantasy genre. The film, however, is in Spanish so unless you’re fluent, turn on the subtitles (NO DUBS). If you’re a DVD collector, it’s a must buy. Go see.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqYiSlkvRuw

Fish Bowl Rating: (Out of 5)

The Fall

        Take a trip, literally. It’s what The Fall is all about. The Fall is the first review in my trilogy series of fantasy-movie reviews and definitely worth seeing. The film was produced back in 2006 and has earned an even 8 out of 10 on IMDB.
       The Fall is set in a 1920’s Los Angeles hospital with two main stars. One being Alexandria, the five-year old girl with a vivid imagination, and the other being Roy, a broken stunt man both physically and mentally. The story of The Fall is two-part, the main story of Roy and Alexandria and why they’re at the hospital and the other being the story inside the story. That is, the fairytale that Roy portraits to Alexandria that mirrors Roy’s real-life problems. The movie starts out a bit childish and really it’d make a great kid’s movie if it wasn’t for the brief instances of blood and topics with a darker overtone, the reason for the R-rating.
       The fairytale takes place on an island featuring five heroes with different backgrounds. Each of the five heroes has their own specialties and reason’s for being on the island. As the story explains each back-story, it all leads up to the heroes being banished to an island by an evil Govern Odious. The story progresses through a fantasy world while each of these heroes seek revenge. Visually, the settings for the fairytale are stunning and lush. The film is a bit artsy and the camera work is great.
       As I mentioned before, the story of Roy’s real-life problems are reflected in his fairytale. Throughout the film Roy deals with depression and suicide, due to his physical problems from a stunt he performed poorly and because of the loss of his girl friend.  Because of his current state-of-mind and Alexandria’s vivid imagination they’re able to create an entertaining setting and world.
       Overall, The Fall is a solid film and recommended for rental. The story is entertaining for both adults and children. Although I don’t necessarily recommend younger children should watch the movie. The acting is great, especially from Cantinca Untaru(Alexendria)  which was very natural. Again, visually, the film is great with its locations and style. Although I don't have any real complaints about the movie, I am giving it 3 out of 5 and it is the weakest film out the trilogy.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO0LYcCoeJY
Fish Bowl Rating: (Out of 5)

Fantasy-film reviews

    I'll be releasing my next three reviews very soon. The reviews will feature all films from a related genre of movies, that is R-rated-fantasy-films-that-feature-little-girls. The reviews should point my 1 or 2 readers to films that maybe no one has heard of but some of the best movies out there. Two of which are foreign films.

The fantasy trilogy consists of:
Pan's Labyrinth  - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/

The Fall - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/ 

Let The Right One In - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/

Shutter Island

      Shutter Island may be the best mainstream movie of the year so far. I won't be revealing any of the plot, story or spoilers of any kind because just hints of any can ruin this film, therefore, I'm going to keep this short. The movie's suspense is based off the viewer knowing as little as possible about it going into the theater. I will say, however, I was able to guess the plot twist causing the film to be zapped of it's thrills and suspense at the ending. 

     Shutter Island combines, what I believe to be, strong character development with good story telling. Both of which are set in a creepy and dark atmosphere. To actually care about a character in a film nowadays is somewhat rare. Don't get me wrong, this film isn't necessarily built around the audience having emotions invested in the main character but if you can buy into the back-story and the character's current life and situation, it'll pay off at the end.

     I will say this(despite my earlier comment about know as little as possible), don't necessarily buy into the trailer. I've seen the trailer probably a dozen times before actually seeing the movie and, to me, it seemed as-if it was trying to sell a supernatural thriller. The story and settings certainly have a surreal feel to it but it's definitely not about ghosts or anything of that nature.

     Overall, Shutter Island is a solid film with a good story to tell. It's not the first movie ever to pull off the ending so if you've seen enough suspense-thrillers you may end up with an anticlimactic feeling, as I did. Despite that feeling, it was still worth seeing because the directing, acting, script, and plot/story are all above average. It's worth seeing in theaters. Go see.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1130884/

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYVrHkYoY80
Fish Bowl Rating: (Out of 5)