(Review) Game of Thrones / S1 You Win or You Die

Being first published in 1996, A Song of Ice and Fire is what this series with numerous awards winning title Game of Thrones is based on. Back in 2011, writer George R. R. Martin is aboard with David Benioff and D. B. Weiss to adapt it into the fantastic HBO mega-hit with raves we all heard again and again it’s impossible to not start watching it already.

The first season, of all things, is special since it injects us with all the ideas that should hooked you up with the series already. That being said, all the events are equally important and impossible to leave out. This review is, fortunately and miraculously spoiler free so rest assured!

There is the opening sequence we remember all too well in a frosty woods where people are dying of a mysterious eerie zombie-like creature. We are about to keep it in our mind for a while, as that not too far away, House Stark of Winterfell is welcoming King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy)’s arrival from The King’s Landing. Robert is there especially to ask his bestfriend Ned Stark (Sean Bean) into fulfilling the king's hand vacant position following the former hand, Jon Arryn’s, sudden death. Whilst reluctant, Ned obeys as a letter from his sister-in-law, Jon's wife, reveals her suspicion over The Queen's family. The King’s strong kinship with the infamously righteous Stark is obviously not in The Queen Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey)’s favor, being also present alongside her twin Jaime and dwarf-brother Tyrion together with a nasty secrets about to be revolved.

With Ned leaving with both of his daughters, Sansa (Sophie Turner) and Arya (Maisie Williams), he leaves the north in the hand of his wife Catelyn (Michelle Fairley) and his eldest son Robb (Richard Madden). Their main concerns, is a terrible accident that happens to Robb's younger brother Brandon (Isaac Hempstead Wright), one Catelyn believes to be no accident at all. That, is going altogether with Ned's bastard son Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) enlisting himself to be a swore member of Night's Watch in the northenmost part of Westerous, which led us to the legend of The White Walker.

Meanwhile, the last heirs of Mad King, brother-sister Viserys (Harry Llyod) and Daenerys Targaryean (Emilia Clark) are seeking back up in faraway land to take back what was once belonged to their great family. For manipulative Viserys, that means everything, including force-marry her sister to a strong leader of the Dothraki warrior tribe, Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa).

Season one is all about the prologue to a much bigger story waiting to be unleashed. In this very season we learn the foundation of all conflicts in the new world we are absorbed into. It serves as a great introduction, and especially major distinctive between Game of Thrones and all the other series with similar theme.  There are a lot of names and not ones that are easy to remember, something that put off a lot of people I know, but each of them in the first season are essential to the main plot we are watching right now so there are basically no other way to present them. I personally think that it is easier because they are interesting to watch, each of the characters with their layers underneath the skin—Game of Thrones is exceptional at that, and people who don't watch are clearly missing out.

The other thing about Game of Thrones is that it tries to be real in terms of wars and politics and the reality we live in. It involves brutal deaths and explicit sex scenes. Nobody is miraculously safe being the good guy and you have to basically trust no one—the very motto they used to emotionally traumatize us again and again. If you are finished watching season one, you’d understand what I mean, and that, is not getting better so make yourself all prepared for ever more trauma. Don’t, just don’t, get attached too much with anyone in Game of Thrones.

x, Michelle

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(REVIEW) Spirited Away / Best Anime I Ever Watched! (2001)

Hang on there! Yes this is about the 2001's Spirited Away. I'm sorry for being so outdated blogger, but well I don't blog back on 2001! I only watched by random recommendation from a friend. There is this picture on 9GAG with caption like, "If you have watched this, you know what happiness is." I was like, what is it I haven't watched it! Aaaand that's how I know about Spirited Away. Sorry for the forever long prologue.

Like always, I do some research first. I hate every minutes I spent on bad movies so better be selective first thing first. Though this time, I really am impressed by the reviews and ratings. Not only all of them are praises and praises, Spirited Away is actually the one and only Japanese anime to win an Academy Award for Best Animated Movie. Geez okay I am missing something!

As soon as I watched it, I gotta say, I get what happiness is. The story goes with ten-year-old Chihiro Ogino and her parents traveling to their new home when her father takes a wrong turn. They unknowingly enter a magical world that Chihiro's father insists on exploring. While Chihiro's parents eat like pigs at an empty restaurant stall, Chihiro finds an exquisite bathhouse and meets a young boy named Haku who warns her to return across the river before sunset. However, Chihiro discovers too late that her parents have turned into actual pigs and she is unable to cross the flooded river, becoming trapped in the spirit world. (Wikipedia)

Well it is not some absurd fantasy tales you're getting from the summary. It's something more. Though yes the plot sounds exactly like that, you will be surprised by what you can find when you're actually watching. To be honest, I have a hard time starting too. Spirited Away is a big yes to all the praises and ratings, but reading the summaries all over the internet kinda not helping me finding my inner motivation. I can't blame them though, me here have spent so many paragraphs without actually telling the biggest strengths of this movie, because well honestly, I decided I can't. Sorry for being so bad reviewer but the best review I can give you about Spirited Away is; guys watch it. Like, seriously.

My current daisy in the field of roses, Spirited Away is so far the best anime I've ever watched that manages to touch right in your soul. You'll soon love Chihiro and every other aspects of the movie. It is beautiful. I love this so much and I think you will love it too. Salute, Mr. Yamazaki! You earned the Oscar.

Spirited Away myself,
Michelle

(REVIEW) About Time/ My Ultimate Kind of Love Story (2013)

I think it is fair to say that About Time is a beautiful movie of a wonderous, tender, and maddeningly sweet love story. You are just bond to feel good about that.

Tim Lake (Domnhall Gleeson) is an ordinary young, quirky lad of Cornwall with not much to brag about, until one day his Father told him a family secret: The men in their family can travel through time. They can't, though, kill Hitler and change the history of mankind. For his much beloved Father, it is about book and book; but for Tim, it is about love. And when it comes to Tim's love-life, it is about Mary (Rachel McAdams). 

As simple as it can be, we are naturally in love with the sincerity the movie offers from the beginning, and true to the message it carries, forgetting the time travel element by the end. Seeing the characters grow as the story goes are a bundle of joy, because we get to see so many form of love that's right in the feeling. It is not all about love, love, love, though; because there are bound to be grief and sadness and pain that comes with love. Richard Curtis is doing just a fit, clean job in capturing every emotions in such a beautiful gesture that made About Time gracefully wonderful.

Tim Lake is such a endearing character that created Domnhall Gleeson a special place in my heart forever. We just love Tim and Mary, period. Because romantic dramas are lately doomed with a heartbreaking tragedy, undeniable hardship, and often someone's dying too early, About Time is lightly a more humble story of a man and a woman with enviable love. True that the pair is getting all the spotlight, but we can't fall for the family's love any less. Growing up in equally enviable family whom rule number one is to dwell on beauty of life, young Tim is having the same insecurities we all seem to have about the future, because he didn't feel good enough. Time travel is one extraordinary thing, but it is not too long, through trials and errors, before he realized that it doesn't help him any good unless he himself does something good. In the end of the day, time travel doesn't win Mary for him. As the story goes, it is just heartwarming to see how much wiser and maturer Tim got. He is madly in love with his Dad, Mum, and adorable sister Kit-Kat just as much as he is madly in love with Mary. Dad is a figure you wish you had in your life--someone you couldn't bare to say goodbye. We learned about how much a big kind love like that can give us, and how much a simplest act of love can give to even a stranger we meet on the street.

To be fair, there are a lot plot-holes in the time travel aspects that left unexplained, even when you are only educated by Back To The Future. Some rules are too easily be broken and the consequences are relatively less scary than those we saw in Ashton Kutcher's Butterfly Effect. But this is a feel-good slice of life story of characters we just can love and love no matter what, and that's why I'm being so forgiving. The writing is beautiful. The casts are stunning. I missed the characters the moment the credits rolled and wished I had known them in my real life. I'd honestly like to thank Richard Curtis, because without trying to be exaggerating, I've learned life.

And in the end I think I've learned the final lesson from my travels in time; and I've even gone one step further than my father did: The truth is I now don't travel back at all, not even for the day, I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life. (Tim Lake)

/The Lord of The Ring/

I know it's an "old" movie but I can't help it. I think I have watched this movie when I was in the primary school. I don't remember it being this cool, thou. I even felt asleep from watching back then.

I. Need. To. Praise. Sir Peter Jackson. For making a masterpiece, and I am sorry because I did fall asleep back then  seriously, I feel so bad for the movie and everyone that dedicating themselves behind it when someone said these are boring, long movies. Well it IS a long movie but thank them for not making it separated into two pieces each just because they want more money from you. Thank them because from almost 4 hours of each movie (I watched the extended edition) they are able to capture everything in the novel so well you almost cry by its epicness.

And I can't believe it is made in 2001. The visual effects are just right, not old, and still cool. Not to mention it's 13 years ago.

I don't think someone my age needs a synopsis for The Lord of The Ring (do you?). But in case, like 2000s kids are reading or something, I googled the first instalation's synopsis for you. Yes, I am a lazy ass.

"Set in the fictional world of Middle-earth, the films follow the hobbit Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) as he and a Fellowship embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring, and thus ensure the destruction of its maker, the Dark Lord Sauron. The Fellowship becomes divided and Frodo continues the quest together with his loyal companion Sam (Sean Astin) and the treacherous Gollum (Andy Serkis). Meanwhile, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), heir in exile to the throne of Gondor, and the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) unite and rally the Free Peoples of Middle-earth in the War of the Ring."

It goes more to Tolkien, and everyone have said it thousands time by now but The Lord of The Ring is amazing. The story, the people in it; men, elves, dwarfs, even the nasty orcs. I don't quite understand about how can a person think about that. I mean, everything about that.

So maybe this is not a review. This is a post dedicated for people in The LOTR, amazing people. Though for me it's all about attitude, and I googled and they said Sir Peter Jackson is good, funny man so yeah I love him. For people who still wonder in doubt ("isn't she overrating it?"), I highly recommend to REWATCH. If the films still stink by then, maybe you just dislike the genre. It's okay, but nah you just miss the best thing in the industry.

Off to The Return of The King then.
Michelle