Brittney Williams is a high school senior at City Charter High School. She also interns at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh – Main (Oakland). Brittney enjoys writing. She’s been writing for eight years, hoping one day to become published. She is currently writing three stories.
Pulitzer Prize winning, best-selling author Cormac McCarthy presents The Road, a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel. The Road is set in a post-apocalyptic world of the United States, where everything seems burnt and dead. It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s dangerous to even wander alone. Snow and ash sweeps across the country in a burnt, desolate wasteland.
The Road focuses on a father and his son; their plan is to head south where they hope to have a better chance of survival, unaware what’s there and what awaits them. Having nothing with them except for a single pistol to defend themselves, the clothes they are wearing, and a cart of scavenged food, they move slowly. Most importantly they have each other.
Out of all of the books that I have read, this book is my favorite. While the writing style may take getting used to, it’s a moving story of a strained and difficult journey. Throughout the novel, in this dead, dangerous, apocalyptic world, the tenderness and love between the father and his son is shown. McCarthy’s writing style is nothing that I have ever seen before, and while it’s sometimes frustrating because it’s hard to know who is speaking, it is also a fresh take on writing literature.
There are many questions that needed to be answered when reading this book. Everything is such a mystery and suspenseful that you’ll just be turning the page furiously, trying to figure out what’s happening or what’s going to happen. A couple of times, I had to re-read certain passages because I had a brief moment of “What?” as in “What-just-happened…?” moments, and that can occur for some readers.
Overall, The Road is a wonderful story. While it has dark, sad, and depressing moments, don’t lose hope. It’s a very good book.
Also, there is a movie that was made off of McCarthy’s novel The Road. It’s a great movie as well.
Recently, while scanning through Netflix Instant’s “New Releases,” I found a documentary that piqued my interest called “Indie Game: The Movie.” Indie Game is about the burgeoning independent video game biz and it follows the development of two games: Super Meat Boy and Fez.
These aren’t your typical multi-million-dollar-budgeted blockbuster games like Halo or Call of Duty, they’re personal projects painstakingly designed and coded (often by just a couple of people), where ingenuity in gameplay takes precedent over flashy graphics. The budgets for these games are small, too, and most of them don’t have big publishers like SquareSoft or Bethesda to promote them after the game is finally complete.
The movie does a great job of communicating the passions and frustrations of these game designers. And though I consider myself a life-long gamer (chronologically from Rogue on my first PC in the 80s, to the NES, Sega Genesis, N64, PlayStation 2, and, now, Playstation 3, with plenty of other PC upgrades and games along the way) I never really knew how games like these were made. Indie Game gives you a peak inside that process through interviews with journalists and such indie game luminaries as Phil Fish (Fez), Jonathan Blow (Braid), and Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes (Super Meat Boy). If the creators of Fez and Super Meat Boy are anything like other indie game designers (and I think they are), the process seems to include a lot of late nights, coding, poor nutrition, legal battles, and stress. But they make really cool games.
Watch the trailer to get a feel for the film:
This documentary is about more than the steps it takes to create a independent video game, it’s about gaming as an art form and a way of life. These guys grew up on classic games like Super Mario Bros. 3 and the Castlevania series; they want to contribute to the artform that captured their attention as kids. As they attempt to, you can see them struggle with creating just as a writer or painter might. They’re fighting to make their dreams tangible, and then, struggling to accept the opinions of the critics and gamers who suddenly have access to a part of them.
If you’re into gaming as a hobby or a possible career choice, or you just want to watch an interesting documentary, I suggest clicking over to Netflix and giving Indie Game a shot.
Beyond the story that Indie Game tells, there are indie video games themselves–they’re really worth checking out. Most are available as downloadable titles through X-Box Live Arcade, the Playstation Network, and the Wii Shop. X-Box currently has the best lineup of indie titles, but the Playstation Network is offering more all the time.
Indie Game picks:
The Unfinished Swan (platform: PS3) – The Unfinished Swan is a videogame about exploring the unknown. The player assumes the role of a young boy chasing after a swan who has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished kingdom. The game begins in a completely white space where players can throw paint to splatter their surroundings and reveal the world around them. [Metacritic]
Journey (platform: PS3) - Enter the world of Journey, the third game from indie developers thatgamecompany (creators of “flOw” and “Flower”). Journey is an interactive parable, an anonymous online adventure to experience a person’s life passage and their intersections with others’. You wake alone and surrounded by miles of burning, sprawling desert, and soon discover the looming mountaintop which is your goal. Faced with rolling sand dunes, age-old ruins, caves and howling winds, your passage will not be an easy one. The goal is to get to the mountaintop, but the experience is discovering who you are, what this place is, and what is your purpose. Travel and explore this ancient, mysterious world alone, or with a stranger you meet along the way. Soar above ruins and glide across sands as you discover the secrets of a forgotten civilization. [thatgamecompany]
Limbo (platform: PS3, XBox 360, PC) -LIMBO, a black and white puzzle-platforming adventure, puts players in the role of a young boy traveling through an eerie and treacherous world in an attempt to discover the fate of his sister.
Braid (platform: PS3, XBox 360, PC) - Braid is a puzzle-platformer, drawn in a painterly style, where the player manipulates the flow of time in strange and unusual ways. From a house in the city, journey to a series of worlds and solve puzzles to rescue an abducted princess. In each world, you have a different power to affect the way time behaves, and it is time’s strangeness that creates the puzzles. The time behaviors include: the ability to rewind, objects that are immune to being rewound, time that is tied to space, parallel realities, time dilation, and perhaps more. Braid treats your time and attention as precious; there is no filler in this game. Every puzzle shows you something new and interesting about the game world. Braid is a 2-D platform game where you can never die and never lose. Despite this, Braid is challenging, but the challenge is about solving puzzles, rather than forcing you to replay tricky jumps. Travel through a series of worlds searching for puzzle pieces, then solving puzzles by manipulating time: rewinding, creating parallel universes, setting up pockets of dilated time. The gameplay feels fresh and new; the puzzles are meant to inspire new ways of thinking. [Microsoft]
Super Meat Boy (platform: Wii, XBox 360, PC, iOS) - Super Meat Boy is a tough as nails platformer where you play as an animated cube of meat who’s trying to save his girlfriend (who happens to be made of bandages) from an evil fetus in a jar wearing a tux. [Metacritic]
Fez (platform: XBox 360, PC) - This quirky platformer stars a little white creature with a bright red fez. Gomez is a 2D being living in a 2D world. Or is he? When the existence of a mysterious 3rd dimension is unveiled, Gomez embarks on a journey that will usher him to the very end of time and space. Utilize your ability to navigate 3D structures from 4 distinct 2D perspectives. Explore an open-ended world full of secrets, puzzles and hidden treasures. Re-open the mysteries of the past and discover the truth about reality and perception. Alter your perspective and see the world in a different way. [Metacritic]
Hi! My name is Noori, and I am going to be a senior at The Ellis School. I live near the middle of nowhere, my taste in music is a tad on the eccentric side, I love photography, I’m absolutely obsessed with the 1920′s, I love to read poetry and also really wish that I had the talent actually write some, I love shopping, and I do not have any pets, though I would love to have a cat! I have always loved to read, & I read as many different types of books as possible, although my favorites are mostly classics. One of my favorite authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald, once said, ““That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”, and I could not agree more. Reading is more than a hobby for me – it is a passion. It’s endless entertainment, and it is always engaging.
As I’m sure many of you have heard, a new film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novella, The Great Gatsby, is due to be released this coming Christmas. Although the hype surrounding the movie has only continued to grow larger and larger, I have to admit that I’m not very excited. The Great Gatsby is most definitely one of my favorites, if not my favorite book, and with what I have seen and heard so far of the movie, I do not think that the movie will even begin to capture the depth and passion of Fitzgerald’s book. The Great Gatsby, for those of you who have not read it, is told from the point of view of a man by the name of Nick Carraway. Nick has recently moved to the east coast, where he finds himself falling into a world that he could never have even imagined before, the world of Jay Gatsby. The novella focuses on Gatsby, a complex character, who in many ways represents the corruption of the American Dream. Nick finds himself sympathetic towards the tragedy that is Gatsby- the tragedy that Gatsby finds himself in due to his inability to let go of the past. It is through this book that Fitzgerald shows how the frivolity and carefree mantra of the 1920’s affected people’s morality.
I find that often when film adaptations are made of books that I have read, the movies leave me dissatisfied. I think the first issue with turning a book into a movie is that it takes away what the book is meant to do in the first place. Books are meant to involve the reader’s imagination. When reading a novel, a person uses the words and descriptions as guidelines to formulate their own ideas of what the story really looks like. By turning books into movies, the viewers obviously cannot do this. As viewers of a movie, we can only see what the director wants us to see. We are given one way to see a story, and a lot of the novel is usually lost in the translation from literature to film. Directors also often take “artistic liberties” on the original stories. To which one must ask, “why did you even base it off the book to begin with?”. There is no reason to make a work that is simply another person’s spin on an original work. My response to this is always “why not just make your own story?”. It makes no sense to simply take another work’s name and then change absolutely anything that the director and screenwriter want to change of it. In terms of The Great Gatsby, director Baz Luhrmann has had a number of successful movies that have proved that he is good at what he does (one of his works being Moulin Rouge). Regardless, as was seen through the trailer, he has already made many changes to Fitzgerald’s story. I do not deny that the Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation of The Great Gatsby will probably be a good movie, but will it be an adequate representation of Fitzgerald’s work? That I’m not too sure of.
If you haven’t read the book before, I highly recommend reading it before the movie comes out! This way, you can read the novella with an unbiased view on the book itself, and then have the ability to judge Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of the story in terms of its reflection of the original story. Feel free to compare your own opinions and views of the book to the trailer for the upcoming movie which is posted below.
I’m always down for Coraline or the Nightmare Before Christmas, and Up made me cry like a baby (in a good way). But just because big-name movies are easy to locate doesn’t mean they’re the only ones worth seeing!
There are tons of art house, foreign studio, or amateur “scrapster” animations that are not to be missed. Next time you’re looking for something different to watch, try one of these…they’re all at the library.
Whoa! Sita Sings the Blues weaves together the passion of love, the sadness of breakups, a 3,000 year-old Sanskrit epic story called Ramayana (told in graphic novel here), and the 1920′s blues croonings of Annette Hanshaw. If that sounds confusing, don’t worry. Each narrative is told in a different style of animation–which keeps things clear and interesting. This film is a great example of what novice filmmakers can do with a little passion and time – filmmaker Nina Paley had never animated anything longer than a few minutes when she started making this one.
Watch as Alice‘s inanimate world comes to life in this quietly bizarre stop-motion film. If you grew up with Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, it may seem twee in comparison with this darker 1988 adaptation. I shiver every time the White Rabbit chomps his teeth. This version of Alice is really faithful to the classic Lewis Carroll, where the world of Alice that you think you know expands. If you’ve participated in QuickFLIX already this summer, you may find inspiration for your next stop-motion creation here!
Mary and Max is an Australian claymation film set in the 1960s that follows the unlikely friendship of two pen-pals. Mary Dinkle is a lonely, homely kid in Melbourne. Her mom is an alchoholic, and her dad just seems not to care – so picks a name out of a phone book and begins writing to Max, who she learns is an obese New Yorker with Asperger’s Syndrome. Over 20 years (don’t worry – they go fast), the quirky duo follows and changes one another’s lives.
The Secret of Kells is the story of the book that “turns darkness into light.” Brendan lives with monks at a remote outpost, Iona, when a visit from a master artist turns everything upside-down. He confronts evil, hidden in a deeply enchanted forest, and his darkest fears. If you like quest stories, faeries, Ireland, or medieval art, this one’s for you.
The stylings throughout this film are a clear homage to the painstakingly elaborate illuminated manuscripts of medieval Ireland–heck, the Book of Kells is one. For you art history buffs (I know you’re out there!), this is icing on an already delicious cake.
Madame Sousa’s grandson is kidnapped while riding the Tour de France, but she’s not just going to sit and watch it happen. She enlists her pooch, Bruno, and a spinster trio of jazz singers (because hey, why not?) to help her find young Champion. The upbeat retro soundtrack of The Triplets of Belleville is a little bit reminiscent of the music from a high-school classic, Ghost World, and the animation – well…watch it and find out!
These are just a handful of what we’ve got at the library, but what do you think? What’s the best animated film for teens?
The end of the school year…. Ahhhhh…. It’s so close, you can taste it, right? Soon the public pools will open, Extravaganza and Teen Summer Reading will be in full effect, the Pirates will be crushing the competition (well…. hopefully….), and you’ll be homework free for a solid two or three months. When I think back to my school days, I remember those last ones the fondest. The summer held so much anticipation and so much promise! I almost didn’t even mind attending school, because I knew my days there were numbered. The school days were short, the tired teachers showed films instead of- well- teaching, and the only writing we students did was in yearbooks. Turns out many others have found inspiration in those last days of school, so much so that there are entire movies dedicated to those last days of school. Teens of Pittsburgh- you are almost there! Join us at CLP Main- Teen on your last day of school- Wednesday, June 13 at 3 pm- for a screening of a classic of the genre. Until then, you’ll just have to experience the excitement the last daysthrough film. Below are some of the best and they are all available to check out from the library.
After finally reading the Hunger Games a few weeks ago, I am totally hooked!
With the release of the Hunger Games movie on March 23nd, this blog post is a guide to all the wonderful Hunger Games related titles and upcoming library events!
First, it is not too late to read the book. And don’t forget the Hunger Games is a trilogy!
Have you already read the complete series? Check out the recently released Hunger Games Tribute Guide!
The Hunger Games starring Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen is going to be released at the stroke of midnight on Friday, March 23rd. Have you seen the trailer yet?
Before you head to the theater for the midnight release come to the library for a night of trivia, crafts and a chance to win two free movie tickets! You simply cannot miss A Night in Panem: Movie Anticipation Party at Main Library, March 22nd, 8:30-10:30 PM! Open to teens and adults!
The Teen Kindle Book Club at the Hazelwood Library will be reading and discussing the Hunger Games every Tuesday at 5:00 PM for the rest of March! Open to all middle and high school students!
Last but not least, Carrick and West End Library also have special events planned for March!
As we gear up for the release of the Hunger Gamesmovie at the end of this month, and the final entry in the Twilight series as Breaking Dawn Part II hits theaters later this year, I thought I’d put together a rundown of movies slated to begin production or be released in the next couple of years, all based on popular and classic YA books.
Set AND shot last year in lovely Pittsburgh, PA, Perks of Being a Wallflower is written and directed by the author, and Pittsburgh native, Stephen Chbosky. It’s release is set for the fall of 2012.
The Giver, the rights to this seminal work by Lois Lowry were recently reacquired by Jeff Bridges, who is ready to produce and star. That’s right, get ready for The Dude to give out some cherished memories.
These films and more are in the pipeline, with many more novels being optioned as they are released and even before hand, as in the instance with I am Number Four.
I’m looking forward to see what else Hollywood has in store for us from the YA shelves. Have you guy heard any other buzz?
It’s been out for a few weeks, and I haven’t seen it yet. But I am still excited about seeing the new Muppet movie. For all the teens reading this, it might be before your time (and that makes me feel super old), but the Muppets was one of THE shows during my childhood. My favorite character was Sam the Eagle. I don’t know why I liked him so much, I just thought he was pretty cool.
Sam the Eagle
And of course, the two old men (Statler and Waldorf) who sat up in the balcony and made fun of everyone were pretty awesome too. The Muppets isn’t the only big movie coming out this holiday season. The new Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr. looks good too. What movies are you interested in seeing this month?
Every Autumn Pittsburgh Filmmakers holds The Three Rivers Film Festival, two weeks of amazing movies at three different theaters around the city. From new films from big-time auteur directors like David Cronenberg (“A Dangerous Method” which opened the festival on Friday night) to classics like Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, and brand new independent films from all over the world, the festival has something for everybody. Read more after the jump…
The newest issue of Entertainment Weekly had a great article about the cast of the Hunger Games movie. There was a lot of controversy when Jennifer Lawrence was picked to play Katniss Everdeen. Some people thought she was too blond, too old or too attractive to play Katniss. But it seems that the contoversy has somewhat died down, especially after author Suzanne Collins said she was happy with the pick of Lawrence. Some of the other big names that will appear in the movie are Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy, Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket, and Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark.
What do you think of the casting for the movie? Have you read the Hunger Games series? Are you looking for something to fill the void til the movie comes out? You might want to try reading another book with a strong female protaganist or maybe something for reluctant readers who loved the Hunger Games. Either one will help you while you anticipate the movie’s release next year!
