Austenland by Shannon Hale

          

VS

                             


Jane Hayes has a secret. To the world she is a moderately successful graphic designer, she has her fair share of dates, and she lives a content if quiet life. But behind closed doors she is a hopeless addict, and her poison is none other than Jane Austen. Nothing in real life can measure up to Mr. Darcy or the idyllic romance born of the shades of Pemberley. So when she suddenly finds herself in possession of a fully paid trip to a real live Austen themed vacation in England, Jane feels this might be just the thing she was looking for. Here is her chance to finally get over her ridiculous infatuation with her fantasy Austen world. So she dives in to the Regency era, ready to get all the nonsense out of her system and move on with her life. But when the lines between the act and real life begin to blur, Jane realizes she might be getting more than she bargained for.

I'm just going to lay it out first of all that this is going to be a book/movie review. I watched the movie and was absolutely enchanted with it. So when I discovered it was also a book I naturally made it my next goal in life to read it as soon as possible.

Of course as it always happens, film and written versions of a story both give a much different story experience. In this case I loved both of them, though for different reasons each way.

Watching the movie was so much fun. It didn't remotely try to take itself seriously and it seamlessly made fun of Austen fanatics while also paying a sort of homage to them. On top of this it had just the right amount of rom com to leave me with warm fuzzies but not an over-sugary taste in my mouth. To say I was enamored of the movie wouldn't be to far from the truth, and I'm not ashamed to admit that my own Austen fanaticism, lying dormant for some time, crept back and has now taken over my life again, at least until the next thing that tickles my fancy.

The book is a short fast read. I read it in about 6 or 7 hours. I really loved Hale's narration and writing style. though I didn't find the book as comedic as the movie, the voice of Jane Hayes was a hoot. It cought be from the very first page and I found that while book!Jane was pretty different from movie!Jane, they both had their merit.

The book and its Jane were much more serious than the movie. I was actually somewhat surprised. by it, though it didn't by any means diminish how good the story was. Book!Jane is ashamed of Her Austen obsession, and the reader eventually gets the feel that she is ashamed of how she has lead her own life up to this point. The added seriousness in the book gives Jane more depth as a character. The arguments that happen within her were pretty on point and identifiable. Each time Jane has that moment of clarity and pulls her head out of the Austen mist the reader gets the same dose of reality. I feel Hale definitely did this on purpose, making the reader step back and see the uncomfortable reality the same way her character was. Just as Jane can't fully immerse herself in Austenland, the reader is not allowed to forget that they are reading some perfect historical fantasy but an 18th century world awkwardly forced into the 21st.

In the movie however, Jane is much more comfortable with her obsession. Her fanaticism is overemphasized to the point of hilarity. She is awkward fangirl with no shame over her love of everything Jane Austen. This is shown in everything from her house decorated from top to bottom complete with full sized Colin Firth cardboard cut-out, the montage showing her obsession fro adolescence to adulthood, and then the fact that she initiates the vacation herself out of interest rather than it being a gift she reluctantly accepts as was the case in the book. The fact that she dresses up in a homemade regency dress and goes through the airport like that speaks for this. Some can call it weird, but that is a fearless fangirl. As an unabashedly obsessed fangirl myself, I actually connected more with movie!Jane than book!Jane. I saw myself in her silly obsessive self, as well in her brave jump into her favorite fantasy. Because I have to say, fan that I am, I would actually love to do something like what she does in this movie and I am not at all ashamed to admit it.

One thing I really missed that was in the movie but not in the books was the friendship of movie!Charming and movie!Jane. In the movie, Miss Charming as not only a form of comedic relief, but a real representative of a female friendship. The viewer got a sense of camaraderie and a 'we're in this together' feeling that really brought the words from the book to life on screen in a way that the written counterpart just didn't achieve. I really liked this friendship between them, because though this is supposed to be a romantic comedy, it doesn't end up being just about men. There was some very real feelings of friendship and connection between these two women who have been thrown together in this strange world.

You do get this very slightly in the book with Amelia and Jane, but this is only at the very end when the facade is over, and therefore doesn't really count as much in my opinion.

Overall, despite having a few repetitive descriptive mechanisms, I really liked the book and highly recommend it to any Jane Austen fan. I also highly HIGHLY recommend the movie, though I will warn that you might not like it as much if you can't sit back and have a little laugh at yourself. If you can it is great to watch and just have a little fun with

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones – Book to Movie Review

I am going to start this up front with a disclaimer. There has been a lot of hate floating around, and a lot of fans becoming very defensive of the movie and books because of this hate. I am a huge fan of the books, and I did not dislike the movie. I am not here to hate or crush people’s happiness. I am simply going to explain what I liked and disliked about the movie,  as a fan of the book series and book world, as a reader, as a movie lover, and as a writer myself. These are my opinions, and may be very different from other peoples. Anyone and everyone can feel free not to like them. I am certainly not going to be the one to say that I am the queen of all and know more than anyone else about films and books. Please feel free to disagree, though I elect to ignore senseless hate. However I will again iterate, what is to follow is not hate. I do not hate the movie. I am merely going to explain likes and dislikes. I usually don’t have to explain this kind of thing up front, but with trolls rampant and fans getting more than a little upset, I wanted the record to be straight.

As a book to movie interpretation I give this one a 4 out of 5. Granted, there are a lot of things changed, especially in how the movie handled the end of the story. However, as a reader I cannot say they messed anything up. There was a lot of the same amazing wit from the book, something I loved about the writing.  Many lines were given verbatim, and that is just something great to see when analyzing book adaptations. It really brings the story to life. Also, the things they did change helped move the story along in the film version. There is no way to make an exact replica of a book’s story when transitioning it to film, but the story was, I have to say, very intact. The ending, though different in the setting and the way it was approached (including with some minor changes in scene and happening) stuck with the original story, and there wasn’t really anything important that was left out, torn apart, messed up, deluded, or any of the other numerous horrors that book fans fear when their beloved reads hit theaters. Lovers of the books breathe a sigh of relief, the story was intact!

Also, another sigh of relief, the characterization was spot on and amazing. In my opinion, just about all the characters hit me in just the right way. I was very happy to see that the actors and actresses were their characters. The only character I was massively disappointed in was Magnus. Now, I will say Godfrey Gao looked the part perfectly and he was not a bad actor, especially considering English is his second language. However, I was not sold on his performance of the infamously snarky and flamboyant warlock that the Mortal Instruments readers have come to know and love. There was just something in his lines that lacked that emotion and personality that is Magnus. I hated to say it, but the moments with him felt, to me, very wooden and rehearsed. I do hope that it has something to do with how little screen time he had in this film, and I am hoping it will become better with more in the future films. If I had not read these books, he would have been a pretty forgettable character to me, and Magnus written is anything but forgettable.

On a lesser note, Valentine was another character that I didn’t quite expect to come across as he did. He certainly was the perfect psychopath. However, I’d always seen his character as a cool and collected socio-path, ready to screw maliciously with your mind until you want to die. His truly crazy snap doesn’t really come out until much later story plot in the books, and not until the very last moment. I’m willing to blame this on the actual actor’s diva like performance, than the writing of the script.

And now further into the film:

For this second part I wanted to give a little input on the film itself and how it came across as a narrative. I personally give it a 3.5 out of 5 simply as a film. It was not a bad movie, nor was it amazing. I felt in the middle about it, though I did come away pretty happy.

One of the issues I had with it was that many of the scenes came off as so dramatic, almost to a degree that was unneeded. The fact that I wasn’t a big fan of the music selections for said dramatic parts might not have helped. On the other hand, the Mortal Instruments middle name is drama, and perhaps coming to film emphasized that in a way I noticed much more than when I read the books.

Another major issue that I noticed even more was the “convenience” of exposition and happenings. Exposition is such a hard thing to work out in this kind of situation. It can be the biggest challenge of a book to movie adaptation to give the exposition so that non- readers and newbies to the story world can keep up, but without becoming bored. This film did a pretty good job of explaining things (a fact I can back-up after speaking with a non-reader of the books after he saw the movie). There is enough that the watcher can keep up with the story-line of this film, understand what is going on, and be engaged. However, my problem was less with the content of the exposition and more with delivering of it. The way it came out just didn’t seem natural to some of the characters who were giving it, and even seemed to answer the questions before the “mundane” characters of the story even thought to ask further. I do understand what with a strict time setting and other film concerns, characters have a limited amount of time to deliver story in-between the action, especially in this film. I don’t think this film did a bad job per say. I just walked away feeling that it felt convenient the way it came across, and couldn’t get it out of my head. This especially came across for me in the scene where Isabelle is speaking with Simon, and again when Clary is with Magnus. Neither Isabelle nor Magnus would have naturally given up so much information, Isabelle not to a strange Mundane, and Magnus at least not without being coy, tight lipped, and slightly irritated at the Shadowhunter intrusion.

These nitpicks and critiques are just on the whims I felt personally as I watched the film. Overall I was pleased and I definitely urge fans to see the movie. Certainly it had some critique, but I still liked it, found it immensely entertaining, and was able to be emotionally attached to the film characters. I am also glad I can very safely say, they didn’t mess it up!

-Special love to all the Mortal Instruments fans.

By: Alissa Tsaparikos