The Best Offer

This is a movie about art and love. Virgil Oldman is an art collector and an art auctioneer. He has a secret room in which he keeps portraits of women - an obsession of his. He was never married, can't bear to be touched and always wears gloves. On his birthday, it is a tradition that he takes the first call. The first caller is a young woman. She asks him to evaluate her collection. When he comes to her house, he finds out she has never gone out of a secret room in the villa. He talks to her through the wall.  He wonders why, and discovers she has agoraphobia. One evening, he hides in the room to see her and falls in love with her. When she discovers that he has been hiding, she starts fearing him less. In the meanwhile, he found pieces of clockwork and asks his friend for love advice, and fixing the clockwork. That's what the friend does. The woman, Claire, seems to fall in love with Oldman too. One evening, when he comes to visit her, he is beaten up by a group of boys. She runs to rescue him - and suddenly her agoraphobia is cured. She comes to live with him, and he shows her the secret room. When he leaves for an auction in another country, she steals all of his paintings from the secret room. When he finds out, he goes on a search for her, and finally ends up in the bar across the street from her villa. There, he sees a very small woman, who tells him that her name is Claire, that she owns the house and that she rents it to "the cinema people". He realizes that the Claire that he loved didn't actually love him. He becomes solitary and dies old, heartbroken and alone.


You have to see this movie, because even though there are not many action scenes, you feel as though you are involved in the story, and you can feel all of the feelings that the characters feel, which makes this movie amazing.

Of Mice and Men

I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long! Well, I've read around 5 books since I went on vacation, so I have lots of things to post about!

Well, this post kind of has a story behind it.


On a lazy summer afternoon, I picked up a book that my friends had often spoken about and which has been lying in my bookshelf for over a year. As I had nothing else to read, I decided to take it with me on vacation. It was Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. 

Lennie and George have been walking around the country, finding a job on a ranch. They want to buy a piece of land. Lennie wants to buy rabbits, pet them and feed them alfalfa. When they arrive on the ranch, the trouble starts for Lennie. The owner's son, Curley, is small. He doesn't like big people. Lennie is big, tall, and very simple-minded. When Curley hits him, he doesn't know what to do and crushes his hand. In the meantime, George helps Slim, and important guy on the ranch, and Slim gets puppies. Slim lets Lennie pet a puppy, and kills him. He didn't want to. That's when Curley's wife barges in, and sees that Lennie killed the puppy. He doesn't know how to explain it to her. George got friends with Candy, and older person. Candy wants to go with them at the end of the month, go buy a piece of land. Candy has an old dog. The other people that live on the ranch kill it with a bullet in the back of the neck. Candy is very sad. Lennie tries to stop Curley's wife from yelling, and shakes her so she stops yelling. He kills her, but he doesn't mean to. Lennie runs away, and George finds him. He thinks that the best thing to do is to shoot Lennie in the back of the neck, just like a dog. He doesn't feel anything.

This is a book everyone should read, because it's going to make you feel differently about all those people that you think simple, because they're not.

Hotel Transylvania

Hotel Transylvania is an animation movie. The story is quite simple.

Dracula is a vampire. But not as you know him. He owns a hotel for monsters. Every year, he invites the most famous monsters for his daughter Mavis' birthday. But when a human stumbles upon the hotel, everything falls apart.  Dracula doesn't know what to do with him, so he camouflages Johnny the human into a cousin of Frankenstein. Mavis falls in love with him, not knowing he is human. He falls in love with her, but is scared to stay and soon leaves. In the meantime, Dracula has grown fond of him and brings him back to the hotel. Mavis and Johnny declare their love and - well, that's the end.

There's lots of funny scenes inside, and the animation is really good. You should watch this, because it really makes you laugh.


Here's the trailer:

Roogle

Everyone knows Google. But do you know Roogle? The new tab is our Custom SEARCH ENGINE! It searches only this blog, but that's enough for now. Feel free to use it! It's even better than Google, because it's ours! (Well, maybe not. Too bad.)

A bonus for Cloud Atlas and something about Doctor Who

Update: The Cloud atlas bonus is not working anymore. :-(

Doctor Who. Everyone, well nearly knows that. I used to think it's stupid, but now I'm a fan. Just try it and see! Those Angels are really, really creepy, too. And some of the special effects are not that good. But I, and lots of people all over the world, love it.

Summertime

Finally summer!  A time for shorts, beaches ice creams and panama hats. That's what summer is all about. Summer vacations, traveling everywhere. Your friends only on Skype and e-mail. Ice cream again. Swimsuits and dresses. It's finally sunny, and summer is there. In June only.

Celebrating this with a new cursor for the blog! It's a green frappuccino. Yes, that too is part of summer. The blog has a new header - again. And now I have more time to post. The exams are already in the past. Summer is exactly what we all need! Hopefully. Well, winter is awesome too because at least you don't get hay fever. That's not awesome. And it comes with summer too. And bees.

This is the only blog that tells you the end.

This is the only blog that tells you the end. They always tell you to build up the suspense. To leave them waiting for the end. For all the lazy person in us that doesn't want to read the book or  see the movie. I tell you the end. And you know it. You're just a click away from that story you never read or that movie you never saw.

Cloud Atlas + Sorry for not posting

Hi Readers! I am  sorry for not posting, and I just wanna say: Well... Here's a new Post.

Basically, it's all really complicated. It starts in 1849 with this person, Adam Ewing, crossing the ocean, and then, it fades into a story where a person writes a piano partition called Cloud Atlas. One of their Very good friends was Rufus Sixsmith, who is then murdered because he didn't like an atomic reactor and was about to reveal everything about it to Luisa Rey, a jounalist. Then, an old editor, Timothy Cavendish, reads a book called Luisa Rey's Detective story. It all fades in to Sonmi 451, a rebelling humanoid robot. Then it's Hawai, and Somni is the goddess of a middle ages type of world. So it's all interconnected very weirdly, and all the characters come up again and again, and the intrigue builds up, and then ta-dah! It's the end.

The movie is a must-watch. It follows the story quite well, and the transititons from one story to the other are very fluid. Some things change, but they don't matter much. The spirit of the book isn't lost, it's actually even more present. If you haven't read the book, you might be lost at first, but then you understand everything, and you're really surprised. And at the end, everything is clear. They all know everything.

And as they say: Everything is connected! The  movie is great but a bit long, but so is the book. You'll love it.

And here's a character map, which might help you or mess everything up in your mind even more.

PS: All the readers, thanks for getting me more than 2000 views. This is what keeps this blog going, and all other blogs too.

The 5 Awesome Joys of Snow + I know this is super late because it's summer now.

I wanted to post this in February. It's really late now. I'm posting it anyways so I don't forget to do it later. I should do a thing like that for summer.

Snow, snow, snow... There is sooooo much STUFF you can do with and in it! Okay, here's a list:

Snow Angel

• Snow angels. They are fun. It's like, you go out into the snow, and you're all clean and stuff, and then you suddenly jump into the snow and do a snow angel, then stand up and with some luck you might see a perfect on like the one on the picture. I never did one like that, and I don't know why. So... yeah. Snow angels are a classical activity for people bored in the snow.

Snow Hill

• Jumping off snow hills and playing King of the Hill on them. You see the snow hill on the picture? You see the guy on the hill? Do you wonder who that is? Well, me too. I've got no idea who that is. Well, about snow hills now. You can run and then jump off the hill - thrilling! In front of my house there is a two meter one, and I just jump, and it's so fun! But then, the bad thing is, when it's spring, when you slide after you land, you land in the mud. Playing King of the hill is fun, but on smaller hills. Then, you just push the other person, the climb up the hill, then fall again - awesome fun.

Snow House

• Snow houses. Well, the snow house on the picture is the one that I built. Thereason there is two Swiss flags in front of it, is that... Well, I think you readers can guess it. It has to have a roof made of, like an old carpet to protect it from the snow, and it's really good when it's under a swing because it's easy to make. The two flags protect the cave under the house, in which you can hide and it's a good protection in snowball fights. And, making a snow house is fun, especially with friends, because you can play hide and seek, and also hide from your parents, and talk while building the cave.

• Rolling down a Snowy Hill.

• Ski

Rain Man

Rain Man.

Note: I think this is like, the second post in a month, which is not a lot, but I promised to myself I'd write at least two posts a month, so - there it is.

This is one of the weirdest, yet best movies I've seen so far. It's about a young man whose father died, and he's surprised to have received only a car and a few rose bushes as an heritage, because his father is a multimillionaire, and the young man, Charlie, wants to find out to who the rest of the heritage went.

He then stumbles upon Raymond, who is his brother, but who is an autist. He lives at the Walbrooke Institute, a place where autists and other people with mental handicaps live. He then tells Raymond they're going for a drive and kidnaps him.

Meanwhile, while Charlie is at Walbrooke, Charlie's car company has to pay back a gigantic debt, and Charlie's girlfriend disapproves of him kidnapping his brother.

This is Raymond.

This is Charlie.

Raymond is having a crisis.

Charlie wants to take Raymond to Los Angeles by plane, except that because Raymond remembers everything, he is scared of the plane because at least once, every company had a plane crash. So Charlie is forced to bring Raymond to LA by road, and by tiny secondary roads, because Raymond is scared of the highway. They stop at a tiny hotel and, when Charlie turns the hot water on, Raymond breaks into a crisis. Charlie asks him why.

Raymond: Raymond burn Charlie!
Charlie: Raymond, calm down. I'm not burnt, see.
                                                                Raymond calms down.
Charlie: Why do you say I'm burnt?
Raymond: I burnt you when you were a baby with hot water.
Charlie: You lived with us? So you're who I called Rain Man and sung me songs so I wasn't scared?
Raymond: Yes.
                                 Charlie is surprised.

When they depart from the hotel, Charlie teaches Raymond to play blackjack and they go to las Vegas. Charlie buys Raymond a new costume, and tells him his old ones are POO. Raymond thinks this is a joke, but agrees.

They play blackjack and win 80'500 dollars. Charlie's girlfriend arrives and gets stuck in an elevator with Raymond. They kiss. She asks him: How was it?
Raymond answers: Wet.

They leave las Vegas and arrive to LA. There, there is a trial because Charlie kidnapped Raymond and Raymond has to go back to Woodbrooke. Charlie promises Raymond to come see him in 2 weeks.

THE END.

BONUS

This elevator scene is also in another movie, The Hangover. And in the Hangover Elevator Scene, the guy with a beard and the grey costume is also kind of an autist.

Happy Womens' and girls' day!

Happy Girls' and Womens' day, on the 8.03.13.I bet that now you can guess that I'm a girl. ;-)

Fahrenheit 451

... For Guy Montag, a firefighter. But not the normal kind of firefighter. In the future Ray Bradbury imagines, firefighters don't save houses from fires anymore, they burn them if anyone in them has books. Guy is one of them. He hates book, lives with a wife he thinks he loves. But his life just flips over when he meets Clarisse, a strange girl that still walks home and looks at the tiny things in life, like the taste of rain when you look up and open your mouth or other people. She's seventeen, and is soon run over by a car. But Guy remembers her for ever. He realizes his wife is actually like a stranger to him and starts to hate her.

He continues to burn books. But one day, when a woman burns herself with her books, he manages to steal one. He reads it and doesn't want to burn them anymore. His wife reads it too. We learn the books is not the first one Guy stole. His wife reports to the firefighters that he has a book. Guy has to burn his own house. Guy kills his boss with the flamethrower he used to burn his own house down and also kills a first mechanical dog that is supposed to kill him with poison. Another 'dog' is sent after him to kill him. The war of his country with another begins.

Guy runs away from the mechanical dog that has to kill him and finds people walking along the railway line, that also love books and remember them. Bombs are dropped on Guy's city and his wife is killed. He's not sad and the war is over.

The book ends with Guy thinking that maybe after the war, books would be okay again...

I just loved this book and hope the world will never be like that - and if it will, I'd have been killed straight away because I love books so much. And you?

I keep on thinking about this book and I think it'll just keep on thinking about it until I read a book that makes me think about the future and books just as much as this book. :-(

I also think that what happens in this book could happen, and easily! Would you like a future like that? I guess not. At 451 degrees Fahrenheit, paper burns...

In that future, all the books have been banned. Some have already been banned now, and I know there are good reasons for it, but still... Here is the link for the list of banned books (not by the whole world, but by some governments; plus, I can't know if it's true because it's Wikipedia) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments
and also, just as an ironic fact, at some point in history, the books Fahrenheit 451 was banned.

Welcome Posts

Just for you to know, this is going to be a post about posts, so it's kind of weird. That's it. You've been warned.

You know how blogs tend to write their first post going: Welcome, people blah blah blah...
Well, I kinda forgot to do that. And I realize that it's also kinda late to write one because I have nearly 2000 view already - today 1957 and counting - so I figured out I'd rather write a post about welcome posts instead of writing one for my blog. But if you'd like to read a welcome post for THIS blog, here it is:

Welcome to THE new cool blog: Ragdolls?Maybe. I've got no idea, or only a tiny one of why I chose that title, but let's not think much of that: listen to what's going to be on this blog: book and movie critics, and that's not all: also stuff about my life on live, which is stuff about my life and random things like ideas, messed up plush toys and more stuff like that!

Well, that was random. It should have been the welcome post to this blog, but it wasn't. Let's just say it's a post about this blog or a post celebrating the upcoming 2000 views of this blog. Well, enough of this. The subject: welcome posts. I've read lots of those, and they're not all good. Some of them think too much about the image of the blog, some of them not enough... But the one thing I know and it's awesome and cool about all of them, it's that they're all original in some way or the other.

Well, if you, the reader, ever start a blog, keep this in mind: don't forget to write a welcome post for your blog or might end up writing in the 22nd or anything post!

I know this is super random, but I just felt like writing that and I think that this blog will keep on being written on, and at least I won't have to write a welcome post when I have like A LOT of views.

Yeah. That's it. And I also hope I'll keep on getting lots of views and stuff. But I'd like to get a comment.

 PLEASE COMMENT ON THIS POST!

Firmin - or the Adventures of a Metropolitan lowlife.

Firmin: Is he a human? A rat? Well, if you guessed so by looking at the picture you're right. Firmin is a rat.

But not an ordinary one. He is a Reading Rat. Let me tell you his story, which is also the story of the book. Firmin is the 13th out of 13 siblings, and the weakest because he gets no milk. The only way he can survive is by eating the litter on which they have to pee and poo. But this is no normal litter - it's made of books! Firmin, eating books to survive, ends ups learning how to read. He lives in a library.

His siblings go away when their mum dies, and Firmin is left alone. He then sees the owner of the bookstore, Norman and Firmin kind of falls in love with him. But when Norman sees Firmin for the first time, Firmin's happy days at the store are over. Norman tries to poison Firmin and Firmin realizes at last humans hate rats.

So he runs away from the shop, luckily, to be taken as a pet by a nice author called Jerry that loves him but doesn't understand Firmin can read. So Firmin reads the newspapers with Jerry and reads that the square where they live, and the bookstore is, is going to be destroyed. A theater on the same square burns down. Firmin lives on, being loved by Jerry. He goes to the Rialto cinema and falls in love with a human actress.

One day, when Jerry isn't at home, Firmin dies, thinking he is being hugged by the actress. It's pretty sad for a book. But I really loved it, even though it's not the normal kind of book. It's actually super weird, but when you start reading it, you kind of get pulled in and you can't come out until you're finished reading. So, I actually do advise you to read it, because it might become one of your favorites. Especially if you're someone that loves reading. Like Firmin... Except you're human. Or are you?

I wonder if any rats like Firmin are reading this... No, joking. I don't really think rats can read. Well, you never know.

Premium Rush

Premium Rush

It's a movie about bike coursiers in New York. They exist in real life. And they deliver messages quickly. There's a bit of an article from www.nydailynews.com:“ The faster you go, the more money you make,” says Kevin Bolger, president of the New York Bike Messenger Foundation. “The money is there, but it’s up to you to chase it.”And with the internet taking business away from the courier companies, the riders are racing to bag what jobs they can.“There’s no way you are going to get something from Point A to Point B faster than a bike messenger can do it,” says Heather Muller, who took second place in the women’s division of the Cycle Messenger World Championships in Chicago this month.“We can move through traffic the fastest — but it does get dangerous.”Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/wheel-world-real-life-premium-rush-riders-spin-nyc-bike-messenger-tales-article-1.1140273#ixzz2Kao3qAnI
Now about the movie again. There's a bike coursier called Wyley, and he has to deliver a mysterious envelope to the Chinatown side of NY. But in this envelope is the key to lots of money, and a secret... Because the one that asked him to deliver the envelope needs to make her son pass to the USA from China...Wyley gets pursued by a maniac police officer. But in the end, he does manage to deliver the envelope and the son gets delivered to the USA.

I know this is pretty short, but there's not much of a story in that movie, and most of the scenes are just on top of bikes, doing crazy races. And some fights. So... Action lovers, you should watch this.

Life of Pi - The Movie

I already talked about Life of Pi before, if you remember. But that was the book. Nobody knew it, and suddenly it became very fashion, because there was a movie. I got to watch it twice. And I'm going to tell you what I think about it. If you want the story, there it is, but you can also check out the Life of Pi post. The story: http://ragdollsmaybe.blogspot.ch/2012/08/life-of-pi.html - too lazy to copy and paste it.

Well, what I think about the movie is that it followed the story of the book pretty well. Except I think that Pi should have been a bit more skinny. For all of that, I think that the movie is super well done, with lots of special effects. To learn more, check the website out: lifeofpimovie.com

I really liked the movie and I think you should see it, because it's one of those rare movies that actually follow the story of the book and manage to add stuff in that makes the movie very interesting to watch even to those who have read the book and/or have seen the movie already.

Paranorman

I'm kind of surprised of myself. This is the 3rd post in a day! But when I saw this movie I just had to write a post about it! Basically, if you're scared of zombies you wouldn't be scared of that because it's super funny!

This is Norman.

The movie is about a boy, Norman, who is paranormal. Why? Well, because he can see dead people. He's walking on the street or at his house, and he talks with his dead grandma or a dead person!

His parents don't want to believe him and everyone hates him. But when zombies attack the city, he is the only one to be courageous enough to confront them - and then to become friends with them!

This is now one of my favorite movies!

Check this link out to know more about Paranorman!
paranorman.com

There's also loads of funny and weird scenes like this for example:

No, you're not dreaming. Norman is on a toilet, in a forest, surrounded by zombie toilet paper.

So, are you watching the movie?

I'd like to have Norman's power to talk with dead people! It's super cool.

Norman trying to brush his hair

Norman's sister

Norman Brushing his teeth

A zombie on the windshield

Le Marginal

Finally I have time to write a post! That's cause I'm sick.

Yesterday I stayed up really late watching this old french movie, it's called Le Marginal.

Mecachi

Basically, it's about this police officer who wants to kill a mafiosi that's involved in various drug problems and other illegal things. If you want to know, the mafiosi is called Mecachi and that's him. Belmondo, the police officer, gets into lots of trouble when he drops drugs off a boat into the sea so nobody can get hold of them. Mecachi wants to kill Belmondo. Mecachi's workers two twin-looking brother try to kill Belmondo in his car - but it's bulletproof. So he kills them ! In the end, Belmondo takes another person's gun and kills Mecachi while he is playing billiard. The other police officers ask Belmondo if he knows who killed Mecachi and he says: 'No.' Even though it's him. There's also loads of funny moments and fights. It's a super cool movie!

Skyfall

Skyfall, as I think all of you now it, is the new James Bond movie.  It has a very weird plot.

So, at the beginning, James Bond is shot by another agent and falls from a bridge. He's supposed to be dead. But he's not. Because he's James Bond.

So he comes back to his agence and they give him a new mission. To kill the Agence's ex-best agent. The other 'James Bond'.

On the left, James Bond.
On the right, the ex-James Bond.

He has an island all to himself. James Bond ends up on it. The other James Bond (Silva) gives him a long talk about rats:

Silva: My grandma had a small island. But if was infested with rats. So she had to get rid of them... Did she kill them? No. She put coconuts in a big hole. The rats all fell in the hole and when there was no coconuts they ate the other rats. When there was only two rats left, she let them out. And they didn't eat coconuts, they ate only rats. We are the two rats that are left. Are we going to eat each other? No...

James Bond: ...

James Bond manages to run away, but Silva, who has an overly big intelligence, 

Silva blows up the MI6. James Bond has a plan to kill Silva. James Bond goes to his home,  Skyfall and prepares a trap for Silva. Skyfall was Bond's house when he was young. He puts dynamite in it and while Silva is in it, blows it up. But Silva's still not dead. Bond falls into a frozen lake and has to struggle to get out. In the end, Silva is in a church and pointing his gun at Bond. But Bond kills Silva.

And there's only one rat left. Bond. James Bond.

And Adele made a song for the movie. It's a good song, I think.

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