A. G. Macdonald

When news of X Men: Days of Future Past came out, a lot of people were understandably apprehensive: The story included all the X Men from pretty much every incarnation. How could they possibly put it together into a cohesive narrative that would work.

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The Lego Movie is a children's movie, and with that comes a certain style of storytelling. While this movie had great characters, funny lines and more celebrity cameos that you could shake a stick at, the pacing was really let down. It jumped from one plot point to the other, never taking a moment to let the story breathe. People might argue that you cannot let the story stop, or else you might lose an audience of children, but we are underestimating kids. The recent release of Frozen showed that kids can definitely sit through a movie with correct pacing.

With the success of films like The Hunger Games, Harry Potter and Divergent, it has become clear that there is a limitless market for YA fiction in Hollywood (which is, of course, great news for us YA readers). In an recent interview with MTV, Pouya Shahbazian, a producer involved with Divergent's big screen adaptation, has mentioned a list of movies that will be coming to a theatre near you:

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While I enjoyed The First Avenger, it was probably my least favourite film of the Avengers first phase (unless you were to include The Incredible Hulk). So, I actually had low expectations coming into this movie. Which means, when I actually got around to seeing the movie, I was blown away at how amazing this movie was.  There is everything: The comedic timing is perfect; the action is amazing; and the plotting is best I've seen in an action movie in a long time. There was never one point where I felt bored or wanted the plot to move along, which has been a growing trend in movies, considering the trend of dragging them out by an hour (like the recent Divergent movie), or the decision to split every final movie into two parts.

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I Thought this news was so amazing, I though I just had to share it. After finishing her Grade 6 studies, Emily Page sat down over the summer holidays and starting writing. She had no intention of getting it published; it was simply for fun. Then, after it was all she finished, she sent it off and thought nothing of it, that is until she received an acceptance letter in the mail. In a recent interview, she said: “I don’t really feel like an author. I feel like a seventh-grader who writes a lot and got really lucky,”

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We have come to a weird place with game of Thrones, caught between catastrophes, we are left with a sag. Don't get me wrong, I am happy that Joffrey bit the dust as anybody (as I am sure everybody else did too). However, after this happened, I had a taste for blood and, knowing that there was more to come (having read the books), it was clear that this season was going to move at a rapid pace.

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For last weekend's Readathon, I managed to finish Stephen King's Under the Dome, and make a start on Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne. I haven't finished it yet, but these are just my thoughts at this stage. Dragon Age and Dragon Age II are different for each person that plays through it; so, every player has a different experience, which is why depending on how the story unfolded for you (if you have actually played it all), your experience with different characters will vary.

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Stephen King is pretty much the most recognisable author of all time (or living, at least). With around sixty books to his name, you would think he'd have run out steam by now, but he always manages to surprise us with something fresh and interesting, if you ignore the fact The Simpsons Movie came out a year before Under the Dome (which I do because King actually started writing it in the 70s). The story revolves around the entire town of Chester's Mill. On an ordinary, sleepy Saturday morning, a mysterious dome comes down over the town: impenetrable and deadly. As time goes on, society starts to devolve, and as anyone who watched the parents of children taking part in a public Easter egg hunt recently, you may have noticed that it doesn't take much for people to forget their humanity.

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According to Amazon.com, the new Cormoran Strike novel, Silkworm, written by J.K. Rowling (as Robert Balbraith), the story is as follows.

"When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days-as he has done before-and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.

But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives-meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced"

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It has been a while since we heard anything on the Dragon Age front, with only a teasrer featuring Morrigan about a year (or possibly longer) ago. Now, we have a gameplay trailer online, and even a release date; but more about that later. The main story seems to revolve around an portal to the fade which seems to be growing larger with every passing second, threatening to destroy Thedas and all who live in it. The visuals look amazing, with some shots of a couple of old favourite characters, including the inquisitor from Dragon Age II and Dawn of the Seeker, and what appears to be Varic Tethras, the surface dwarf.

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The #ThrowbackThursday reviews here on BABBLE are meant to take us back to a different time in storytelling; looking back at movies, books and video games from (for some of us) our childhoods and how they stack up now. There isn't any story that crosses more age groups than Star Wars. This series has crossed so many generations. Kids today still watch this movie, and I don't think you could find any other movie made in the seventies that kids would actively want to watch.

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