Books and Movies: The Good, the Bad, the Overhyped

So much blogging I want to do, so little time. I have been enjoying so many books and movies lately, I just had to share. Here are my mini-reviews:

Books made into movies:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: the short story is fabulous, the movie is great but too long and really just takes Fitzgerald's general theme and creates a whole new story with it. Worth seeing in the theatre for an amazing naval war scene.

The Reader: Powerful, beautiful and well acted. Be warned, sex scenes and nudity abound. Worth seeing in the theatre.

Doubt: (based on the Pulitzer-prize winning play). An amazing play, an amazing cast, and the playwright-turned-director is fantastic. Bring a friend, you will want to have a discussion when this film is over. Worth seeing in the theatre.

Books:

I finished the last pages of Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, reading through the tears in my eyes. Outdated and lengthy, the core story is timeless and the book is well worth a read.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stied Larsson: I know one person who is enjoying this book ... I know two who gave up. I am the third person to give up. The beginning is wordy, confusing, has many characters and keeps flashing back. I kept getting lost, then I started day dreaming, then I returned it to the Library.

The Lagoon by Lilli Carre: eh. This is a short, beautifully drawn, sci-fi-ish graphic novel. It is worth checking out because the full page pictures are so great and, while the ending was really neat, it didn't really make sense and I kept looking for more pages to turn. A sequel maybe? Or just a short, pretty, weird book.

Beautiful Children by Charles Bock: a first novel, I can't decide if this is fiction, mystery or literary fiction. It is set in Las Vegas and is the story of a missing boy. But not a cute, 4-year-old with rosy cheeks. This is a 12-year-old brat who uses horrible language and is beyond rude to his parents. The author goes into the lives of surrounding characters - his parents, a comic book artist, a stripper, teen runaways. It's weird but I like it.

The Angel Maker by Stefan Brijs: I wasn't quite sure at first, but now I'm loving this creepy mystery. In a small town in Belgium, a geneticist returns after being mysteriously gone for 20 years. He brings with him 3 identical infants that he keeps in his house - no one sees them or hears from them. When Charlotte, a local retired teacher, is hired to take care of the three boys she begins to unravel the mystery of the doctor and his strange sons.