In which Demi doesn't entirely believe in the green light.

I should probably state here, for the record, that The Great Gatsby is one of my favourite books, and I don't believe a cinematic version of the tale will ever truly be able to recreate the subtlety and beauty of Fitzgerald's words. Nick's first person narrative issues aside, I think that such a wordy book will never have a fully successful film adaptation, as what we are delivered on screen will almost never match, or indeed outmatch, our own imaginations, unlimited as they are.

Nevertheless, when I heard that Baz Luhrmann was taking up the novel as his new project, a little thrill of excitement went through me. Surely, if anyone could do a decent job of matching the extravagance of Fitzgerald's 1920's world, it would be Baz.

It was certainly close, but no cigar.

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I monitored all press news, photos from the set and rumours incessantly. The more I saw, the more I liked. The cast seemed perfect, with my only concerns saved for Leonardo Di Caprio. It wasn't that I didn't think he would do a good job, as I think he's an amazing actor. I was simply intrigued as to how he would craft the titular character; the rest of the cast fit smoothly into their roles in my mind, whereas Di Caprio was like a puzzle piece which I knew would fit into the whole... I just hadn't worked out how yet.

When the soundtrack was leaked I was fizzy with excitement. Baz made such a fantastic call by getting Jay Z on board, with the music sounding both fresh and nostalgic; jazz and modern rap or dance seamlessly blending.

 Some of my personal favourites from the soundtrack, but the whole thing is amazing.

When it was announced that the film was going to be delayed so that it could be engineered into 3D, internally I reacted like this:

I hate 3D films. It ruined The Hobbit for me. I hate that when you watch a 3D film in 2D (or even in 3D) how inherently false it looks; you can practically see the green screen behind the actors. It jars with the believability of films, and I just wish the whole trend would go away.

So, with hesitant feet, I made my way to my old local cinema during my last trip back to Nottingham, with two equally trepidatious friends.

And, inevitably, felt my heart sink whenever the shots revealed the unnecessary 3D green-screen effect, which in turn affected the lighting quality of the actors and threw several key scenes off-balance for me.

BUT, 3D-hate aside, I was fairly happy. It seemed to take a long time to get going, but once it did the film fizzed into life like an uncorked bottle of champagne - all bubbles and sparkle and light and airiness. The party scenes in particular were great, but the big show-down in the New York hotel scene was the highlight of the film. With no green-screen, no scene-stealing props or gimmicks, we were graced with terrific performances from all of the actors. Leo did an incredible job, even if his 'old sport' catchphrase was slung onto the end of every sentence - but having re-read the book since, he really does use it that much.

Which brings me onto my joy and delight at seeing how much of the actual text of the novel was quoted. I liked the framing of the narrative, the reasoning behind Nick telling the story. While I could have done without the weird floating words in the sky occasionally, I liked that Luhrman tried to tie the book in as much as he possibly could.

However, there were niggles, and many of them. The green-screen aspect and the unnecessary composite layering. The flashy flashbacks. Some strange camera angles. All of these things kept me from sinking into the film, into wrapping its decadence around me like a fur stole.

Baz gave it a solid effort, one which drew out excellent performances from his actors, and certainly beats the Redford/Farrow version in my opinion. But it is a film which ultimately falls short - and not just for the fact that he was never going to be able to match Fitzgerald's unearthly prose.

Did you catch The Great Gatsby? What did you think? xo.

In which Demi is absent and tries to sort her life out... again.

So I suck at blogging. Again. Do I have an excuse? Not especcially. I got a job (not in PR, unfortunately, but it's enough to tide me over for now), and lazy, and quite frankly my social life has dried up into a small puddle of couple of guy friends who are all at varying stages of uselessness. Gotta love graduate life.

Here's a quick run-down of what's been happening:

I went all nerdy. I played this game for the 7th, perhaps 8th time, through and fell in love with it and the characters all over again. It's such an underrated RPG, even if the graphics are very dated now.

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And as a result of this gaming, I'm re-obsessed with the SSX snowboarding series, because I want to be skiing now.

I made a trip back down to Nottingham a few weeks ago for a friend's birthday. And it was SO much fun. I got to see all my housemates, other friends I hadn't seen in ages, and even my lovely summer boy, which unfortunately didn't work out, but it was still great to see him and catch up.

The 'Nottingham Lean'!

My darling Elf has disappeared abroad to Austria and live her daydream (I'd say her dream dream, but I'm not even sure if she knows what that is!) of being a ski instructor. I'm counting down the days until she comes home for a quick pre-Christmas break before her season gets into full swing.

I'm listening to Taylor Swift's new album Red constantly.

I've been reading a fair bit! Finally, something productive! I finished The Hobbit in time for the film's release. I had previously attempted the novel when I was about ten and got so bored with the tedious tale that I gave up just as they got to the bloody mountain and met the dragon. Years later, I'm now a massive fan of the Lord of the Rings films (not so much the books - The Fellowship was fine, but the isolated storylines of The Two Towers drove me mad and I gave up) and can't wait for the film of The Hobbit. So I figured I should give the book another, proper, go.

It's still stupid. I still thought it was tedious. And finding out what happened after I had stopped reading before only made me angry. The dwarves can't bang on about killing the bloody dragon all the way through the book and then it not be killed by them! Some man shot it instead? Great. How handy. And stupid. When I saw the turn towards war at the end of the book I decided to withhold my anger, hoping that a more satisfactory conclusion was coming. Wrong. He glosses over the massive, culminating battle by knocking Bilbo out for most of it. What an ending. Talk about anti-climatic...

I also gave Me Before You a go after being lent it by A. I'd heard good things about it, and knew it had been on Richard and Judy's summer booklist (my mum's favourite way to check if a novel is alright, but not pretentious). Although massively predictable, it was funny and touching. Although I definitely didn't cry, unlike some people *cough* A....

Film-wise, there has been a fair few new ones, such as Crazy, Stupid, Love which I LOVED. Totally did not see the twist coming, and I'm a big fan of Steve Carell, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling (marry me?) Then during my Nottingham trip I watched Midnight in Paris (weird) and The Amazing Spiderman (mixed feelings. Loved the cast and performances, not sure about the plot/script in some places). I caught The Dark Knight Rises in the cinema twice, as I am an unashamed nerd, and thought it was amazing, and even (despite Heath Ledger's incredible performance) better than The Dark Knight. I also got my Bond on with Skyfall, which I thought was absolutely brilliant - Sam Mendes has saved that brand single-handedly as far as I'm concerned, although the performances and script were also fantastic.

Through a swapsie-esque film session with one of the boys, I made him watch The Hunger Games (which maybe wasn't quiiiite as good as I remembered, but still pretty damn good) while he introduced me to Bronson. It's one of his favourite films, and while Tom Hardy does an incredible job, I didn't really get the big deal. Definitely style over substance for me. And I may have slightly spoilt the film for him too.... ooops. And finally, on Wednesday I finally got around to seeing Silver Linings Playbook. I'd been looking forward to seeing it for months, and I was slightly disappointed that most of the best lines had been used in the trailers (I hate it when they do that!) and that Jennifer Lawrence's character was perhaps less developed than I would have liked. But Bradley Cooper, considering I'm not a massive fan of his, really impressed me. And I think the film does a great job of showing how people are struggling with mental illnesses as part of their everyday lives - even when they're not aware of it - but that it doesn't, in any way, have to define you. With two siblings with mental disorders, I found it a pretty interesting representation.

And I've been watching a lot of Grey's Anatomy. From the start, because it's funny to go back to the beginning when you're watching series 8 and 9 and things have changed so much. An episode a night is all I'm allowing myself.

Now I'm going to crawl into bed after a long, busy day at work, with my current read and a cup of tea. By the way, The Lies of Locke Lamora is bloody brilliant if you like Pirates of the Caribbean, fantasy, kick-ass characters, twisty plots - or all of the above.

That's all for now folks. Things should be picking up soon with things to do and people to see, so hopefully my writing mojo will come along for the ride. xo.

In which Demi forgets something very important!

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If you're going to read any book I recommend, please, please make it this one. Magic, romance, intrigue, twists... I absolutely loved this book. I read it on my mum's Kindle, which is why I forgot to post about it yesterday.

I wish I could recapture the feeling of reading this book for the first time. While laid by the pool in Malta, I kept grabbing A.'s arm to exclaim over the twists and language and tension, until she moved away out of reach!

Enjoy! xo.

In which Demi does a book post, finally.

For a (former, *sob*) English student, I've failed pretty miserably at actually posting much about books. Probably because for the last three years I've been skimming through a whole host of books that I didn't particularly enjoy.

I'm picky when it comes to books. Really picky. Something that I didn't really anticipate being a problem (stupidly) when I first applied to do English at University. In fact, I kinda block out a whole period of literature. As far as I'm concerned, there is very little worth reading from, say, Shakespeare and Donne until you hit the beginning of the twentieth century.

Sacrilige, I know. I steam-roll straight past Dickens, past Austen, past the Shelleys and Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Wilde, and I intentionally stamp on Hardy as I pass by (Tess of the D'Urburvilles is the single most ridiculous character I've ever had the misfortune of reading about). Jane Eyre got thrown across the room by me after a handful of chapters. Alice in Wonderland was tolerated, but not enjoyed.

Please direct all hate mail to Miss Demi Blogger, I Don't Care Road.

Forgive me for essentially ignoring 300 years of literature, but that's the beauty of personal taste. One man's literary canon is another girl's crap.

I can't relate to it. That's my main gripe. Somehow I can deal with pre-Shakespearean literature, all the way back to Old English, because the world was so foreign compared to our modern world that I can kind of accept the content as something far removed and easily analysed. But the Romantics and Victorians, who believed their world to be the pinncle of human existence, so modern and forward thinking - with their sexism and racism and stupid, stupid rules and morals - drive me up the wall. A woman raising her skirts abover her ankles? Wait, and she was in the presence of a man without supervision?! YAWN.

In fact, my favourite genre of literature transcends even our modern world. I love dystopian and futuristic fiction. I love seeing where our world - however unrealistic it seems at this moment - may go. And since finishing my degree, I've managed to indulge myself in the books I enjoy and wanted to read for months.

I chose some YA dystopic books to take away on holiday with me, something to kick back and relax with that wouldn't tire me out like some of the more literary books on my to-read list. I started off with Delirium by Lauren Oliver.

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They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever. And I’ve always believed them.
Until now.
Now everything has changed. Now, I’d rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.

 I really enjoyed Delirium. I loved the concept of love being a disease, an infection that Lena's society has decided is the main cause of depression, anxiety, madness - and so wiped it out. The result is numbness, a cure that is more of a curse. As a massive romantic, this concept was really sold to me, and while Lena certainly wasn't my favourite heroine ever, there was real character growth as it progressed. I can't wait to read the sequel.

Next up was Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi.

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No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon.

But Juliette has plans of her own.

After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she'd lost forever. 

I had a real love-hate relationship with Shatter Me. I adored the style of it; Mafi writes with the kind of disjointed, hard-hitting style that I've always tried to capture in my own writing. Short, sharp sentences, unusual metaphors, and a real sense of humanity underlies this book. BUT. The insta-love had me rolling my eyes, along with her over-used 'power of three' rule of repetition, and the fact that Adam doesn't seem to be able to start a sentence without saying 'Juliette...' wistfully. It also fell flat at the end, after a good heightening of tension, in order to set up for the next book in the series.

Abandoned half-way was Matched, by Ally Condie. I was so disappointed with this one, I've had it on my to-read list for aaaages, but it was so slow and childishly written that I simply didn't care to find out what happened. So I won't bother saying any more about it!

Then there was Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas.

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When magic has gone from the world, and a vicious king rules from his throne of glass, an assassin comes to the castle. She does not come to kill, but to win her freedom. If she can defeat twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition to find the greatest assassin in the land, she will become the King’s Champion and be released from prison. 

Her name is Celaena Sardothien.

The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her.

And a princess from a foreign land will become the one thing Celaena never thought she’d have again: a friend.

But something evil dwells in the castle–and it’s there to kill. When her competitors start dying, horribly, one by one, Celaena’s fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival–and a desperate quest to root out the source of evil before it destroys her world.

Ahhh, where to begin. This book has such a backstory to it that I could probably write a whole blog post on it. I touched upon the story back in January, in this post. Basically, I'd been waiting five years to read this story again. Five years of reliving scenes in my head, trying to remember snippets of dialogue, of aching to feel the joy and wonder I felt when reading its original form.

And, perhaps inevitably, I was somewhat disappointed.

I had prepared myself for some of the changes. The book was bought and published as a YA novel, while the original story was more of an adult story, with Celaena older and more accomplished - and perhaps more believeable. Changing the heroine from a young woman of early twenties to a girl in her late teens added, I feel, an unwelcome restraint to Maas' tale. That, and I was confused and disappointed to find about half of the events of the original Book 1 just plain missing. This frustration was resolved when I went back to Maas' blog and remembered that she had turned the trilogy into a quartet, with the rest of Book 1 forming a brand new Book 2 to be out next year. If they're not in there, then I really will be upset.

Don't let my preconceptions put you off though. Celaena is still a fantastic character, as are the two boys, although they've all got so far to go. The world is rich and detailed, but not overly so. Worth a read if you like girly yet kick-ass heroines and old-school fantasy.

This post is getting ridiculously long... hope you enjoyed! Coming soon: current musical loves, Malta mayhem, graduate woes and an insight into the story of the mysterious and rather scary lump, which has made my life difficult since Easter.

Summer's over, and change is in the air. xo.

In which Demi is starting to feel like a new person.

After the heart-break of editing down what I think might be the best essay I've ever written, the stress of realising I had 700 words left for my Arthurian essay when I needed at least 1000, and the tediousness of checking, checking and triple checking, all three essays were handed in on Thursday. At 10% each of my final degree mark, it's little wonder I went a bit cuckoo. But I wasn't expecting the full extent of the stress I'd put myself under, which revealed itself in the following days. I've lost about 6 pounds in those two weeks, from sheer stress, weird sleeping times, and a churny stomach which sent my appetite AWOL. It's slowly returning, but nausea still grips me when I eat lunch, and I'm wracked with dizzy spells and an emerging cold as my adrenaline slowly dissipates, revealing my crippled immune system.

Luckily I'm confident that I'll be in much better shape for my final essays in Easter, even though I'll have more words. It's always the madness of Christmas that distracts me - the family, the films on TV, the food, the friends. With these distractions gone, I have more faith in my ability to get them done to a decent standard and not make myself ill.

It was so lovely to see my housemates and friends down the road, even if it was for less than 24hrs. It's made me want to go back, but I'm glad I took the opportunity to come back home for an extra week, for some R&R, while everyone else finishes up their exams. I've spent a lot of time with my family - watching films, playing on the Wii, visiting my grandparents in their new house. We're making a collective effort to sqeeze every second of family time out of this short period where both Dad and I are not away. I've got shopping tomorrow to look forward to, with my mum and sister, and final friend catch-ups on Tuesday, before I head back down for my final ever term at University. I can't quite believe it yet.

I've been very bad and abandoning my course reading for this term (currently Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which is bizarre to read, as it's set in Nottingham in the 50's. The narrator is casually mentioning roads which I walk up and down all the time, yet are very different - filled with factories and smoggy terraces) in order to indulge my love of fantasy with S.J. Maas's new novella, The Assassin and the Pirate Lord. It's the first of four e-novellas to precede her debut novel Throne of Glass, an epic fantasy loosely based on Cinderella. I read Throne of Glass in its original incarnation (then called Queen of Glass) when I was about 16, on Fictionpress.com, a site for amateur authors.

It was a sensation, pulling in about 3 times as many reviews as the second most popular story. Even now, she has regular readers who have followed her since Fictionpress, like me, on her blog, or her Facebook page, flapping about excitedly at the prospect of reading the real, edited, published version. She's a lovely, lovely girl, who always replies to comments or questions, and to say that I was excited to have a conversation with her on Facebook chat is an understatement. She pretty much single-handedly sparked my interest in fantasy novels, and I am literally counting down the days until the book is released in the summer. I'm only on Chapter Three, but I'm already hooked. 

She's getting published by BLOOMSBURY, which should tell you how awesome she is. Picture Source

I've also been taking full advantage of having Sky Movies here at home, and been catching up on a whole host of films I missed out on seeing for one reason or the other. While Never Let Me Go was a bit of a let-down (as was the book), I loved The Adjustment Bureau with Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. Even if the concept was a bit wacky, I thought the cinematography, score and acting pulled it off.

And to finish off this post, some more Hurts (sorry! Obsessed!). Every time I think I've found a favourite song from the album, I start to fall more in love with another one. But I keep boomeranging back to this one, mostly because Kylie's addition makes my hair stand on end (in a good way). That, and I have a real urge to play this to a handful of boys, to shake them up a bit and make them see sense. After this, no more Hurts promo, I promise. xo.