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.

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.

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

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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Avealice.

King Matt the First

King Matt the First is a book by Janusz Korczak. Yes, I know. He has a weird name. But his original name was Henryk Goldszmit - and that already existed!

Well, about the book now. In the beginning, Matt was not a king. He was a simple child. His parents were the King and Queen. They both died. First the mother, then his father. He cried their death. He was now to be the king. He was then still very young. He thought being a king was fun, and not only work. 

*Well, children now still think that!*

He was controlled by the ministers into signing a war pact. King Matt made himself a friend before the war. Then, he escaped from the palace and fought with his country. Nobody knew until he came back and understood that being a king is not easy. 

He changed the way his country was, made friends with a cannibal king that gave him gold, and became very popular. Because of that, a new war started. This time, he lost. The other kings chose not to kill him, but to exile him on a desert island.

I was so sad that the book ended there! There's another book in the series, "King Matt on the Desert Island", but I can't get it. I can't find it. 

The old man and the Sea

Though it may not seem like it,

It's a must-read. Well why? you'd think. It's not that long. It's easy to read. The story is amazing. It's... artistic! An old sailor goes to fish and finds the biggest fish ever. Then ensues a long fight inbetween man and fish. The man wins, but regrets to have killed the fish, then dies himself when he returns to land. I very suggest you read that book. I loved it!!!

It's not that philosophic!!!

Wonderboy

It's a book. Well, you already know that! It's one of my favorites. I devoured it in 2 days. So simply, Fiona Gibson wrote a wonderful story. It's funny, it's awesome!!
It's about this boy, Tod, his mother is the narrator. The family moves to a little village and first, it's really weird. But then, a lot of funny things happen. Everything is good. Until the mother discovers that her husband, Marcus, cheated on her. And, mostly, while she was pregnant of Tod! The worst thing is, that he had another daughter in that time. So the mother breaks up with her husband and ummm... Everything's back to 'normal'.

A really good book for summer reading. Not a chef d'oeuvre, though.

Life of Pi

It's about a boy that is on a boat. He's on the boat with a lot of animals. *Why, Oh MY GOSH! * you'll be asking. It's cause he owns a zoo, with his parents. But then the boat sinks and he finds himself on a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker. He's also with a tiger, a hyena and an orangutang named Orange Juice, but the tiger kills them all. By some sort of luck, shall I say, he becomes friends with the tiger. The most exciting part of the book is when they end up on an island that is awesome during the day, but that during the night has an acid ground and kills people and meerkats. He flees the island to finally be saved, but nobody believes him.

This IS on my favorite books list. I absolutely love it! You must read it, because it's the most awesome book ever.

I'm not telling a lot; I know. Just read it - and it'll also be in you top 5 list. Maybe even in 1st place!

Remember Me?

It's a book by Sophie Kinsella.

And it's really random. Basically, it's about this girl that goes to a bar, wants to catch a taxi, bangs her head and gets amnesia for three years, until she gets in an accident and starts remembering stuff again. It comes out she has a husband and, like, the whole stuff... plus an affair with a weird architect. Well, he says so. 

It's one of Sophie Kinsella's worst books 'cause it's really really random, at least it's not boring. Well, I actually liked it but it's not worth a lot of writing though.

That Book About Harvard

"That Book About Harvard" (By Eric Kester, if you're interested). It's a really stupidly funny book about *did you guess yet???* *a guy in Harvard? is he a nerd?*

Well, it is is a book about Harvard, and this guy is not a nerd, and by the book it actually seems he's kinda stupid. So he has to survive Harvard... and how he tells it is soooo fun!

I like that book because it doesn't talk about Harvard like we think it would - and that's why it's so cool.

And I think he should have called the book "This book about Harvard", though.