Movie Review - Endless Love

As many of you know, I'm a total sucker for high school movies, so when something like Endless Love comes along, I'm in Swoonsville.

I didn't initially know this, but it is actually a remake of the original 1981 film with Brooke Shields playing the lead. I haven't seen that version and I will probably try to track it down if I can. I love being able to compare, but it'll be hard pressed to beat this 2014 version. In my opinion, it was perfection.

I absolutely loved it. Already a fan of Alex Pettyfer, I found the character he played easy to fall in love with. His view on love and his soft manner when it came to the girl of his dreams was just exquisite. I liked that he was flawed, that past issues he'd dealt with still surfaced when he was under pressure. It made him human.

The girl - Jade Butterfield (played by Gabriella Wilde) was enchanting. She was tall and willowy and I loved how she put up a fight for her man. Her smile and energy beside her leading man was vibrant. The actors definitely had an on-screen chemistry.

There's actually nothing in the movie I could fault, except for the fact that a few of the scenes I saw in the preview were not in the movie. I was looking out for them and was disappointed when they didn't come up. Thankfully these scenes would have just been ad added bonus rather than the making of the movie. I will definitely be watching it again in the not so distance future. It's a keeper for my collection.

The Hunger Games - Book and Movie Review

The Hunger Games (THG) by Suzanne Collins 

{May contain spoilers}

I was on a camping holiday and didn’t realise how addictive The Hunger Games would be and how fast I’d get through it, so because I only brought one book to read, I read it twice in three days.

I was unsure when I started, how I was going to enjoy a book that had kids killing kids and how the author would handle that. I was pleasantly surprised at how the world Collins created wasn’t as awful as I’d imagined and I found myself imagining what it would be like to live in such a place feeling a huge amount of pity for the fictional characters.

The main character Katniss is really likeable even though she has got quite an abrasive personality. And immediately you wonder what’s going to happen with her and Gale. Sadly that part of the book is a bit disappointing to me. I do prefer books with more romance.

The actual Hunger Games don’t start til well over half the book, but you don’t notice as it’s such an interesting read, finding out about this new world that you have stepped into. Once Katniss is in the games, the book is unputdownable (is that a word?) I just had to keep going until it was finished.

Personally I was disappointed in the climax. It seemed a little rushed or convenient or something, which did detract from the book a bit for me.

Overall I would give the Hunger Games a 4 out of 5 stars.

The Hunger Games THE MOVIE

I saw the movie, after reading the book, TWICE, so I completely understood the story, therefore I didn’t have to make sense of anything, like a complete HG virgin would.

I thought the movie interpreted the book beautifully and kept in all the important bits. There are always storylines that get left out of a movie, but none of the missing ones disappointed me.

What I found interesting was seeing life from the gamekeepers point of view and how the people running the games made the rules and messed with the arena. It makes me appreciate the free world I live in, because the Hunger Games is scarily what used to happen in arena’s in Rome in front of an audience. People killing each other for the audience’s enjoyment; it seems so sick to me, but it used to be normal.

I’d give the movie 4 out of 5.

[I’m not sure how easy to understand this movie is for a person who has not read the book. My husband might add his input from that point of view later today.]

Thanks for stopping by, let me know what you thought of the movie and/or book, the Hunger Games! 
Zealous Girl

Movie Review - Pitch Perfect

Beca, a freshman at Barden University, is cajoled into joining The Bellas, her school's all-girls singing group. Injecting some much needed energy into their repertoire, The Bellas take on their male rivals in a campus competition.

Director: 

Jason Moore

Writers: 

Kay Cannon (screenplay), Mickey Rapkin (book)

Stars:

 Anna Kendrick, Brittany Snow and Rebel Wilson

(From IMDb.com)

For those of you who know me, you can probably already guess what I thought of this movie. It is about young adults, it involves music and has a romantic element.

Check!
Check!
CHECK!

I LOVED this movie. It was so completely fantastic. The main character was really understated and I loved that about her. The love interest was a really great guy. I fell for him just a little bit... and man - could he sing! The rest of the cast were all exaggerated characters and so funny. The story is filled with great one-liners that my husband and I keep repeating to each other.

My only aversion was two small scenes involving some puke... I'm not great with puke.

As far as the music was concerned - it was amazing. The singing was top quality, with awesome harmonies and great mash-ups. I ended up buying a bunch of songs off iTunes straight after watching it and my poor family has had to endure hours of me singing the same songs!

If you like a feel-good movie with excellent music and lots of really good laughs, then this one is definitely worth checking out.

5 stars from me :D

Movie Review - Breaking Dawn Part 2

REVIEW: Twilight ~ Breaking Dawn part 2 [contains spoilers] 

Whenever I go to a movie that is based on a book, I have expectations. Before I went to Breaking Dawn part 2 last night I had a mental list of things I wanted to see:
- Bella acting differently as a vampire than she did as a human
- How the movie would portray Bella using her shield to save everyone
- Seeing the romance between Bella and Edward bloom

This being the last movie in the Twilight series I was both excited and sad to see it. This is the end of an era and I know this sounds corny, but I'll miss waiting to see the next Twilight movie.

In a nutshell, the last movie was awesome. It had romance, action and mystery. It was almost entirely true to the book and brought the characters from the book alive. I found a lot of the scenery exactly how I'd pictured it in my head and I LOVED watching Bella and Edward finally able to act on their love without the fear of hurting Bella.

There are a few things I would have changed. I would have loved Bella to be a bit more vicious in the beginning. She turned from human to vampire but seemed a bit tame. I wanted to see her leap up on the table and growl. I wished the movie had made more of a big deal about her being able to resist human blood. It was kind of glossed over with a few comments here and there.

The movie added one scene in, that wasn't in the book, which was the fight scene between the Voltari and Cullens where we saw people we love getting killed. I had been forewarned that this would happen, so I grinned through the whole thing, waiting for the catch, which was Alice just showing Arlo what would happen if he decided to fight the Cullens. The girl next to me was aghast. She had her hand over her mouth and was almost crying... so she obviously had not had a heads up.

I was sad they didn't show the use of Bella's shield much, as that part of the book gripped me so much. I wanted to see her saving everyone and the Voltari getting frustrated and not knowing what was going on. But they did have the final scene in the book where Bella gets to show Edward how much she loves him. Perfect!

I pretty much had a big grin on my face the whole movie. I just loved it, despite the comments I've made above and would still give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

What did you guys think? 

(Post written by Brenda - Yay! I'm back!)

It's Time To Make Some Changes

Over the past month, I've been thinking a lot about this blog. I ran the Author-fest throughout October and had so much fun with it. It made me realize how many amazing authors there are out there and how I want to get to know them better.

Having had a chat with Brenda, we think it is time to make some changes to our blog.

YAlicious is all about celebrating Young Adult books and movies. So it's time to start doing that a little more. From now on, we are going to dedicate this blog to book and movie reviews, author guests posts, blogger guest posts and chats about what author's are working on.

We want this to be a place of discussion and fun.

If you are an author, or know of an author you think would be good for this blog, please let us know in the comments section. This also applies to book bloggers. You guys read so many amazing books, we'd love to hear your favourites and find out what you think about writers as well.

We're also on the hunt for questions you want answered. As a reader or writer, what kinds of interview questions do you want to ask an author or book blogger?

Thank you so much to the followers we have and thank you in advance to all the wonderful guests we will having visiting our blog. We're so excited about these changes!!

Let the fun begin :)

PS - Posting times are going to shift as well. We will now be posting on a Monday and a Thursday.