Because Thursday is the day before Friday

Because it’s Thursday and not Friday yet, I feel obligated to post this:

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Last week, I got my hands on a new camera so I scavenged around looking for good photo ops and angles and the like, and I ended up taking this picture:

I just like the colors....and the sun. :D

The sky turned into this like 10 min. later-

I realized that I take pictures of clouds...A LOT. But at least I'm not a cloudy person-hahaha!(All right, all right. I'll stop with the punny joking.)

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I JUST got the Girl Who Was on Fire from the library. (You know...it’s that anthology written by a group of YA authors about that one series...er...what was it? The Fire Games? The Hunting Games? The Hungery Games? Oh yeah, THE HUNGER GAMES!!!) I’m super duper excited to read this. I already read some essays that were available online for some time, and they were fantastic. Interesting, in-depth, thought-provoking, well-written, and fun, so I thought I would pick it up. And now it’s here so I can READ the whole thing!! I feel like jumping with happiness.

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Um...what else? Well, there’s the new (and pretty good) trailer for the last part of Harry Potter:



Heh. :P (I mean, I am a Harry Potter fan, so I had to stick the trailer in a post sometime.) And I sort of already watched it like 35 times (hmm...or was it 37?) Analyzation (aka Nonie’s ramblings about it): SNAPE! I’m overjoyed (really) to see Snape so many times (epic Snape apparation scene at 1:18 with some amazing music playing in the back) and a glimpse of the Prince’s Tale. I got depressed when I saw Tonks and Lupin reaching for each other’s hands, but the depression turned into happiness when I heard Ron speaking his one line, and when I saw (I think) Oliver Wood (yay!) flying over the castle. And the Battle at Hogwarts scenes with their brilliant special effects made the trailer even more fabulous than it already was (yay for Professor McGonagall’s army!).

Oh, and I really can’t tell you how much I love how the trailer starts with the original Harry Potter theme sort of. (I LOVED the whole trailer, but Harry Potter trailers are always good, and it’s been a while since I heard the original John Williams theme.) The most randomest/most amusing part was the Harry-grabbing-Voldemort-and-jumping-off-a-roof scene. My first thought about that: UMM...Harry/Daniel Radcliffe did NOT just grab Voldemort and jump of a roof. So I replayed it, and I realized that he did, and now I can’t wait to see what that’s all about on July 15th. :P

(And this is random but I just realized that Voldemort doesn’t wear any shoes and seeing him walk bare-footed threw me off for a min. Er, that’s probably because I never thought about Voldemort’s shoes before...that’s a bit weird...okay, I'll stop now.)

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Recent Book Recommendations:
Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones
A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner
The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen
Smiles To Go by Jerry Spinelli

and

The Girl Who Was on Fire (because I already know that I'm going to think that it's amazing by the end of the read.)

I’ll write some reviews soon and actually put some bookish content here, hopefully as soon as AP testing week is over (in only two weeks...eek!). Right now, I need to go back to studying. :)


Happy Thursday!

Saturday, Um, Friday Five

Even though it’s almost the end of Saturday, let’s pretend it’s Friday, so I can do Paper Hangover’s Friday Five! :D I really was going to do it on Friday, but I umm...got caught up with other things, so I’m doing it today....20 minutes before Saturday ends....

Ahem, so the topic: What five characters would you trade places with for a day?

1. Hermione Granger (of Harry Potter)- This one is a no brainer for me. :D She’s been a role model for me since I was little. Not only is she intelligent, loyal, brave, she gets to hang out with Harry & the gang, and she gets to take the most awesome classes. I would LOVE to take Ancient Runes or Arithmancy, and I think I would find Muggle Studies fascinating too. ;)

2. Cammie Morgan (of Gallagher Girls)- She goes to Gallagher Academy...a school for SPIES! I would be able to finally realize my life-long dream of becoming spy if I went to that school (Yes, I really, really wanted to become a spy when I was younger (and still kind of do...)- I blame you, Spy Kids, Mission Impossible, and James Bond).

3. Deryn Sharp (of Leviathan)- She’s a quick thinker, adventurous, (sharp), determined, and she gets to save the day plenty of times (she’s just EPIC). Also, the extreme fear of heights I have now would be replaced by an undying love of it instead! (I would die if I had to live aboard the Leviathan now. *faint*)

4. Sammy Keyes (of Sammy Keyes series)- Along with Hermione, Sammy was another role model for me. She’s a detective, and one a hilarious one at that too. :D I would eat Gram’s oatmeal for breakfast, sit with Hudson on his porch while drinking lemonade, see what Marissa and Casey are up to later, and see if there’s any mystery to solve in the meanwhile.

Random tangent: When I was in middle school, I bought a pair of converse high-tops because I wanted to be just like Sammy (they’re her signature pair of shoes), and go around and solve mysteries. Then I realized that nothing really happens where I live so the become-a-high-tops-wearing-12-year-old-detective-like-Sammy-Keyes-plan failed epically. *Sigh*

5. Sophie Hatter (of Howl’s Moving Castle)- She’s smart, funny, kind, and umm... lives in a moving castle with Howl *cough* I would also try to make a spell and say hi to Michael. :D

Who would you want to trade lives with for a day? Hope you all are having a nice weekend so far! :)

So the Hunger Games Cast Came Out...

So, I've been somewhere else for a while (and totally skipped writing in March-oops) working on the usual- schoolwork, tennis, final exams, worrying about college, and whatnot, but I had to come back to lay out my thoughts about some important news here:

The Hunger Games movie has been cast (but just the main trio though)...

and it was announced back in March that Jennifer Lawrence will be playing Katniss Everdeen!

I’m absolutely thrilled about it because a) She CAN ACT (as seen in Winter’s Bone- Her character is actually very similar to Katniss’s in the movie, and she’s gotten numerous awards/nominations/*Oscar nomination for Best Actress* for the role), b) She went through a grueling audition with Gary Ross, the film’s director, and she passed, so obviously she captured Katniss pretty well, and c) Suzanne Collins thinks she’s awesome.

Yes, I'm very excited to see her as Katniss. :D

Then, just last Monday, castings for Peeta and Gale came out! Peeta will be played by Josh Hutcherson (left), and Gale will be played by Liam Hemsworth:

The good news is that when I read about casting is that I didn’t cry out/scream “What?!!!!” like I did when the Percy Jackson movie casting was released a couple years ago. My first thought was, “Okay, this can work."

And after thinking about it for a while (and seeing fan art), I believe that it actually can.***

I actually don’t know anything about Liam except for the fact that he acted besides Miley Cyrus in the Last Song and I haven’t seen that, so I can’t say anything about his acting, but I think he has the-Gale-look. He’s tall, lean-ish, has a rugged look about him, and I can totally imagine him with black hair, leather-soled boots, hunting gear, and squirrels and rabbits strapped to his belt and around his shoulders, and walking around looking a bit solemn. (And he and Jennifer Lawrence look like cousins! Yay!)

Now about Josh Hutcherson...It’s been amusing, but a little bit more shocking/disturbing to see all the hate he’s been getting (more than the other cast members) because he’s Peeta and not Hunter Parrish or Alex Pettyfer. So I really wanted Hunter to get the role, but for more superficial reasons. (I mean, he LOOKS THE PART already.) But thinking about it now, I'm really happy that Josh got the role, even though he doesn't look like Peeta, who by the way (to non-Hunger Games fans), looks like this:

JH is basically the exact opposite of who Peeta is physically. He’s got brown eyes instead of blue, really dark brown hair instead of blonde, and OMG his hair is definitely not falling in waves over his forehead. But who really looks like Peeta anyway except Hunter Parrish?

The good things about Josh: He's a little more stocky than the others, but that’s what Peeta’s described as right? Stocky not lean. Medium height. Strong enough to haul 100 lb flour bags arond. Soft-looking. Boyish. Not a pretty pretty boy. JH fits each requirement perfectly. All I have to say about his dark hair and brown eyes is that if the LOTR makeup crew transformed dark-brown haired Orlando Bloom into white-blonde haired Legolas convincingly, I have no doubt that the HG makeup crew will be able to do the same.* (There’s nothing a little Hollywood make-up and magic won’t fix!)

About his acting, I’ve seen Josh Hutcherson in almost every movie he’s been in (Zathura, Journey to the Center of the Earth, etc) and he’s a great actor (which is probably why I’m not worried about his casting). He knows about emotions, he knows how to be charismatic, and he’s good with action sequences, so there's no way he won't be able to pull Peeta's role acting-wise. JH beat out Hunter and Pettyfer (and......everyone else who auditioned), so he was much better at being Peeta than everyone else. Gary Ross and Suzanne Collins both said that they knew that he’s perfect for Peeta, that he was their first choice, and that he had great chemistry with Jenn in the screen tests, and I believe them and I have faith in Josh. He wanted this role badly, and he got it, so we should give him a chance and see what he’ll do with the character.**

No director or author wants to purposefully ruin their story, and it sounds like the HG movie team is trying to make the best movie they can. The whole cast (so far) is enthusiastic about their characters and the series (especially Josh :P), they know how big this series is and how much responsibility just landed on their shoulders to get everything right, and since Gary Ross promised to dye each character’s hair their respective hair colors, I don’t think we have anything to worry about. So...thinking optimistically, JH, Jenn, and Liam will of course blow our minds away when we see the movie opening weekend March 2012 of course.***

Meanwhile, we should trust Gary Ross's vision for the movie. He and his crew know more than us about what's going to happen. (Now I'm really excited about the trailer! :D)

Thoughts, complaints, revelations, etc about the Hunger Games movie or something of the sort? Write away below in the comments. :D

*Hey HG Makeup Crew! *Waves* If you guys are reading this somehow, you know I’ve put a lot of expectations on you. Sorry about that, but you will be able to change JH’s hair right? And make sure his hair is falling over his forehead in waves right? Because that’s sort of important to the HG fandom (*cough* and me *cough*). If you don’t change his hair, there’s going to be a lot of angry fans...

** Disclaimer #1: I am NOT JH’s agent who stole Nonie’s Blogger account to put her client in a positive light or a devoted JH fangirl (definitely NOT the latter!). I just think he shouldn’t be judged so quickly and be given a chance. He won over Suzanne Collins (and Peeta’s her character), so who knows? Maybe by the time we see Josh in March, we'll all be saying,"Hunter Who?"

*** If the movie doesn’t turn out so well, and everyone ends up being horrible, then that just means I wasted the whole post (hopefully) boosting everyone's morale about it, but I actually think it’ll turn out well. I think Suzanne Collins being in the movie crew will mean that the movie will go in the right direction and it certainly looks like it is so far. :)

P.S./Disclaimer #2: If the movie doesn't end up being too good, and you've raised your expectations about the movie because of this post, but are disappointed in March, then I am not to be blamed. Personal opinions are opinions of that person alone, and I am just stating mine. Heh.