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Archive for May, 2011

I Went To The Conservatory ~

I Went To The Conservatory ~

Ugh, I’m so bad at updating my personal blog. Awesome at blogging in my book blog (always on top of my posts) but awful on updating this.

Yesterday I went to the Bloedel Floral Conservatory with my boyfriend. We’ve been wanting to go for a while, but it’s Vancouver — always raining on the weekend. In retrospect, the weather didn’t really matter because the conservatory is indoors, but you know, it’s nice to have sunshine shine through the dome, rather than gloomy clouds.

As you can probably tell by the name of the conservatory, it’s mostly a conservatory for plants, although we did see lots and lots of birds.

There were a lot of parrots in the conservatory, all of whom have their wings clipped so they can’t go flying around. I had the pleasure of watching many of them poop (…) Too bad my camera died before I could snap a picture of this African gray parrot (I think that’s what it’s called); the gray parrot was my favourite. I was having an intense staring contest with him, and then he started making these sounds that sounded exactly like a bubble being popped, or like a drop of water falling into a bucket. I was leaning in really, really close to its face because this one was situated on a low tree branch very close to the pathway, trying to make it make more of those sounds (yeah, I was taunting the poor thing). I think the fact that it might fly into my face and claw me or poop on me or something crossed my mind once.

There were tons and tons of flowers and trees in the conservatory from all around the world, all growing in this one enclosed space. Many of them were breathtakingly gorgeous, but my favourite is this ugly little plant. Is it sad that when I first saw it, my immediate thought was that it looked like the Pokemon, Weepinbell?? Except upside down, of course. You know, I think all I need to do is draw some eyes on it and flip it around …

I also found a bunch of these strange things sitting on some rocks. I’m not sure if they are seeds, or fruits of some sort, but I did end up drawing some eyes on this photo, haha. They look cute!

May 30, 2011 0 comments
Movie: Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief

Movie: Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief

Soooo as some of you might know from my book blog, I’ve been devouring the rest of the Percy Jackson book series the past few days. I read the first book, The Lightning Thief, back in September 2010, and really loved how funny and silly the series is. It’s just plain fun. My source for these books are my public library. I don’t ever bother putting my name on waitlists, I just wait for it to show up on the bookshelves. Finally, I saw books 2-4 the other day and yeah, I’ve been reading them. Will probably read book five soon too!

Anyway, all this reading about Percy Jackson had me super curious about the movie that I know came out last year too. Based on the trailer, I could already tell that it would not be true to the book, and … it looked kind of bad. Curiosity got the better of me today, after I finished reading book four, so I decided to watch the movie.

Okay, I will try not to be so negative, but the movie honestly wasn’t that good. In fact … it kind of sucked. I am probably a bit bias because I have read the books, and I adore the books, so if I never had read them beforehand, I think I might have found this movie to be a cute family flick. But … as it is, I think it’s mediocre at best.

The movie is very clearly based off of book one, and I have a feeling they would have liked to continue the series in movie format but I also have a feeling the first movie didn’t do so well. Kind of like The Golden Compass? (Although I thought that was a great movie, personally).

Anyway, the book and the movie are NOT THE SAME. You know how some movies are based off of books, but when you watch it, it just doesn’t seem to follow the plot of the book at all? Yeah, that’s this movie. It was like Ella Enchanted all over again. The books were chock full of children’s humour, they were silly at times, it was cute. The movie tried to be the opposite. It took a light hearted kids’ book and tried to make it serious. It also added a lot of scenes that didn’t exist in the book, took out a lot of scenes that did, completely changed some of the characters (uhh, Grover is sort of a coward in the book and in the movie, he was a complete skirt chaser), and twisted the plot to something that only vaguely resembled what it originally was.

I type all this because whenever I mention I’m reading the Percy Jackson books to a friend or whomever, they give me this weird look that plainly says, “But the movie was so … awful …” Ughh!! The books are nothing like that one movie! I’m actually usually really happy when books get made into movies, regardless if they become great movies or bad, but I hate it when a movie is made that pretty much only borrows the title of the book and its characters, and doesn’t follow the story. This is that.

Last but not least, why is Sean Bean in this movie?? He is such an awesome, amazing actor that is, well, quite frankly, above such movies! He was in Lord of the Rings, Golden Eye, GAME OF THRONES … so why did he agree to be in this kid’s movie? Maybe it was so he can add the role of Zeus to his resume, I don’t know. Actually, I don’t really know his filmography that well, maybe he has good and bad movies on his resume, and I’ve just coincidentally only seen the good ones … Okay, enough about Sean Bean, LOL.

May 5, 2011 1 comment