Let’s watch #2: Gone Girl

Other book turned movie, Gone Girl was recently released on October 3^rd, 2014. David Fincher is the director for this movie, so you can trust that it will stay true to the book as much as possible. Other movie that is well known by David Fincher is, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, Zodiac, Se7en and Fight Club. Majority of the movie that I just listed was a book, with the exception of Se7en where an author based his book on the movie.

So we can establish that David Fincher likes to do a movie adaptation from the book, but how did he do with Gone Girl? Good question. I actually read the book before watching the movie, to get the full experience of ‘The book was better than the movie’. Sad to say, I couldn’t say that with this movie.

"let me IMDb this real quick"

This movie and book is very unexpected, it’s not cliché or necessary a good ending, it leaves audiences hanging and anticipate what might happen in the future.

The style that the author uses to narrate the book, and how David narrates the movie is very different from each other. In the book, every chapter or every other chapter, the book tells story from the husband’s (Nick Dunne) point of view or the wife’s (Amy Dunne) point of view. Since the book/movie is about finding potential kidnapped wife, the book alternate between Nick’s current thought process, while Amy give us a look in the past with dairy format. It was hard for me to get use to this writing style, but very interesting nonetheless.

However, half of the movie is through Nick’s point of view before it switches to Amy, and towards the end, combine both points of view (it was interesting to see how they react to each other at the end).

I think the movie have more room for audiences to think how character feels about the situation. The book does give more of their perspective on the situation, and reasons why they do this and not that. Both movie and book will give you different experience on the ending.

Gone Girl is not the only book Gillian Flynn has written. The other books are Dark places and Sharp Objects. Dark Places also got adapted into a movie; it was weird to not see any media talking about this movie at all. You would think that there would be some sort of advertisement by now.

Dark Places will be released in France around April 8th,2015.

Kay’s Art Post #2: Handmade Notebook

The struggle began when I decide to do a handmade notebook. I watch a lot of YouTube tutorials, and not a lot of them were helpful except for this (what I suspected to be) a Russian tutorial. Honestly, it was the most helpful tutorial that I could manage to find.

Other than finding bad YouTube tutorials to abuse myself with, I did a template of the notebook (the cover and the page)in Adobe Illustrator, and print them out. This served as a guide to make pages. It took me about 2-3 hours to cut out the 10 papers (20 pages).

After cutting everything out, I went ahead and start splatting iridescent acrylic colors on the cover. 

I use cason paper and glue them together, to make the cover.

I did a paper cut of the banner that wraps around the cat, and the cat itself. With every pieces of paper ready, I stick it on the cover and let the glue fully dried. Then I use a brush and start inking the words in. 

I watch the tutorial, while attempting to bind them together with a needle and string (I start over at least 5-6 times before I get the hang of it). Once you understand it, it was pretty easy to do.

I did eventually asks my friend who is in bookbinding class, if there’s a ‘right way’ to bind the pages together. Apparently there is no right, or wrong way to bind a book, it is what you prefer.  I did use a washi tape to cover the spine because I need something to tape/glue down the string to the book. 

Bind the pages first, then bind them to the cover

In my opinion, notebooks or books are is bind by strings will tend to last longer, unlike books that use glue to glued down the pages to the cover. This is because, as time pass, glue usually tends to wear off, due to elements (the usual suspect is rapid temperature change). Which is why moleskin notebooks/sketch books last for a long time.

This is how it turns out!

I cut a page that is in the middle into a silhouette of a cat, for pleasant surprise (=0w0=)

Other than that, I have learned a new skill from YouTube!

Let’s watch #1: Hannibal (NBC)

Hannibal has become the iconic archetype for a reptilian-like villain, that cold-hearted killer. Thomas Harris introduced Hannibal to us in the book, Red Dragon. The story of Hannibal did continue in the sequel, Silence of The Lamb and Hannibal (which, both of them got adapted into movies).

The most well known actor who has nailed Hannibal’s characteristic is Anthony Hopkins. Anthony Hopkins played Hannibal with that calm, collected, and controlled chaos air around him.

Now lets move forward to the year of 2013, where the new era of ‘new’ Hannibal has started. NBC have released out a new TV series called ‘Hannibal’ (funnily enough, the company that provided the script, is the same company who made Silence of The Lamb movie).

“It’s not the same as Anthony Hopskins’s Hannibal, he’s the classic”, you say.

True, it’s not the same, and I’m not saying that NBC’s Hannibal is any better than Anthony Hopskin’s Hannibal, I think the new Hannibal let us explore his relationships with other characters. Which was quite minimal with the movie version.

With the TV series, we get to see how all the characters is developed, and react to each other. Even if the main focus is on Will Graham, and Hannibal Lecter’s interaction, you can see how other characters can influences their action too.

Let me warn you, the chemistry between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter is so intense in this show (obviously, the show is about the interactions between these two character, as the books always mentioned that they have had a history together). Bryan Fuller (the creator of the show) is really invested into fleshing the characters out, making them more human and relatable. Even Hannibal seem more human as the show runs on. Did I mentioned that you can follow Bryan Fuller on Twitter?

Season 1 trailer

Of course, this TV show is not for the faint of heart. It’s a lot of blood and meat. However, it can leave you hungry for some meat…or turn you into a vegetarian. The actor that played Hannibal is, Mads Mikkelsen. If you forgot, he was the James Bond’s villain in Royal Casino. Without giving spoilers to people who want to watch this, the first season is more of Hannibal playing everyone to his game.

Season 2 trailer

The cinematography in this TV show is always dramatic, and somewhat chiaroscuro in lighting. Color pallets in Hannibal TV show are always nice and strange combination to look at (especially Hannibal’s suits). The food designs in the second season don’t lose to the first season. In the second season, it’s the game of cat and mouse between Hannibal and Will.

Season 3 trailer

Finally, the season the fans of Hannibal are waiting for, the third season (which will be released in the summer of 2015). A lot of things are being anticipated with this season, and new actors and actresses are being casted (such as Richard Armitage, who played Thorin, in The Hobbit).

Basically the reasons to watch this TV show boils down to this:

1) Cinematography is REALLY nice.

2)   All of the food in this TV show looks appetizing.

3)   You will not be disappointed with Mads’ acting of Hannibal.

4)   Or Hugh Dancy’s acting of Will Graham.

5)   Color pallets are gold in this show.

6)   The dialogs between characters are intense.

7)   Good characters development.

8)   There’s an air of sophisticated with this TV show.

9)   The casts and crews is super nice to fans, you can even tweet to them on twitter.

10)  The Actors are invested in the show as much as the fans.

11) Fans of Hannibal named themselves ‘Fannibals’.

Obviously, I could go on and explain why this show is good. This is the condense version. Hopefully this can convince you to give a try with Hannibal TV show. If you like thriller, psychological and slash films, this is for you.

As they say in the TV show,

Nothing here is vegetarian.