Character of the Week: Katniss Everdeen

This week's character of the week is Katniss Everdeen, "the girl who was on fire." She is a citizen of District 12, which is a part of Panem. She lives in a dystopian future where every year a boy and girl from each district are chosen to be a part of the Hunger Games, where they have to fight to the death. After her younger sister's name is called, Katniss volunteers to take her place in the games. After winning the games along with Peeta Malark, she becomes a sort of poster girl for the rebellion against the Capitol, sort of a female John Connor. In the upcoming film version of The Hunger Games, she is played by Jennifer Lawrence, which I think is really cool because she is one of my favorite young actresses working today. I am super excited to see this movie and I think she will be great.

Just Finished Reading: The Hunger Games

I don't normally read YA novels, so I was going to wait to see this in theaters. But, everytime I watched the movie trailer I just became more and more curious about this book. So..I used my Barnes and Noble gift card that I got for Christmas and I bought this book. I literally could not put it down. I started reading it one night and got about 1/4 of the way through and then I read the rest of it the next morning. Now I am just super excited to see this movie! I think that Jennifer Lawrence will be great as Katniss. As soon as I become a little less poor I plan to buy the other two books in the series and read them as well. I will never descriminate against a story just because it is a YA novel ever again. Actually...that is probably not true.

My Review: Like Crazy

The total time it took me to take the bus to the theatre in back to see this movie was more than the movie itself, so I'm really glad that I loved this movie. I have been really wanting to see this, but the closest theatre it was in was in Edina, so I had to sit on the bus for about an hour, then walk around 10 blocks to get there. It was totally worth it. Like Crazy is such a sweet, subtle, moving, heartbreaking, romantic, amazing film. It is about these two people (played by the adorable Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones) who fall in love a little before they graduate from college. The problem is that the girl is from England and she gets banned from the country after she violates her student visa after staying three extra months in America to be with her love. So, the whole movie is the two of them dealing with their long distance relationship. They deal with issues of jealousy, missing eachother, trying to sort out her visa, and plane trips. There are times when they agree to see other people, but then end up getting back together because they miss eachother so much. They also both end up doing really well at work in their countries. The one thing that bothered me about this movie is that the guy is perfectly find with her giving up her job and moving to America, but he can't move to England. It would have been much easier that way, considering that he works for himself. Anyways, I really love how this movie shows the transition of time. Like for instance, when she overstays her visa, you see a montage of them in bed together over the course of the months, and then suddenly he is laying there alone. It never says "three months later" or shows her getting on a plane back to England, you just know that she is gone. You see something similar to this later when they are taking the train to the airport so he can go back to the States. They are sitting across from eachother, and it keeps cutting back and forth between the two characters, and then suddenly his chair is empty and she is wearing different clothes. It doesn't say how much time has passed, but we find out later that it is quite a bit of time. I thought that Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones were fantastic in this film. They were really cute together, and just made me really feel for these characters. I do with that Jennifer Lawrence had a bigger role. She plays Yelchin's American girlfriend and all she really does in this movie is look sad. I felt so bad for her during this one scene when he called her Jones's character's name. This was just a really sweet film with great performances, and was totally worth the long ass bus ride. My rating: 9/10

My Review: X-Men First Class

For starters, let me congratulate/ thank whoever casted this movie. I can not think of two better people to play Professor X and Magneto than James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. Those two were perfect in this movie, and not just because they are both extremely good looking men. The rest of the cast was amazing too. I really liked Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, and regardless of what I said in an earlier blog post, she does look really cool when she's all blue. I thought that this movie was funny, had some awesome action sequences, and was overall just a perfect example of how superhero films should be. I was pleased to see cameos by both Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Romijn. Romijn is actually in one of my favorite scenes in the movie, where Mystique and Magneto are talking in his bedroom. (I thought it was pretty sexy...) This is a movie that makes me really excited to see the sequel. My one disappointment was that they (spoiler alert!) killed off Darwin right away. I mean, sure, he has more of a defensive mutation and not an offensive one so he wouldn't do very good in fight scenes, but I still think that he is a cool character. Oh, well... My rating: 9/10

Character of the Week: Mystique

This week's character of the week is my favorite X-Men character, Mystique. She is a mutant who has the power to transform herself into anybody else, with both her looks and her voice. She is one of those silent badass chicks, sort of like Miho from Sin City. Even though she doesn't say much, she can kick some serious ass. What is really badass is that she can kill people with her feet. In the first three X-Men movies she is portrayed by Rebecca Romijn.



In the upcoming X-Men: First Class she is portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence. I am really excited for this movie and curious as to how her relationship with Magneto will form in this movie because it appears that they both start out as good guys in this film.

Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique

Here is a photo of Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique in the upcoming film X-Men: First Class. Out of all of the characters, she is the one I was the most curious about. I loved Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, and thought that she looked amazing as the character. Although I like Jennifer Lawrence, and thought that she was great in Winter's Bone, I must admit that I think she looks weird in this photo.

Jennifer Lawrence is really pretty, but she just looks strange as Mystique. I blame it on the hair. The hairline is way far back so it looks like she's balding. Maybe it is just a bad picture, but it just does not seem like a good look for her. From all of the other pictures of Lawrence that I've seen from the film, it seems that you see Mystique in her normal human form a lot more than in the other X-Men films, so hopefully her blue girl look won't be too big of a problem. 

Movie I Want To See: X-Men First Class

This movie looks so cool! I was kind of skeptical about his movie when I first read that it was being made because I didn't think that they would pick good people to play younger versions of Patrick Stewart and Ian  McKellen, but I think that they did an amazing job casting this movie. James McAvoy was a great choice as young Professor X, but I really love Michael Fassbender as young Magneto.

One thing that kind of bugs me is that there is a bit of a continuity error with the other films. A younger actress than January Jones plays Emma Frost in X-Men Origins: Wolverine even though that movie takes place a few decades after this movie. I'm guessing that they don't really care, or just don't think that people will notice. Its not really that big of a deal because Emma Frost wasn't a major character in that movie, but was there nevertheless.... Anyways, besides that this movie looks really cool. I'm loving Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique and whatever character Zoe Kravitz plays...