NOVEMBER LIST

I'm still working on these title, so I hope on November, I can post them. Here's the titles

• Baka to Tesuto to Shoukanjuu Vol. 1
• Full Metal Panic Owaru Day by Day
• Vampire Academy
• Vampire Academy Frostbite
• Vampire Academy Shadow Kissed
• Zero no Tsukaima Vol. 1
• Zero no Tsukaima Vol. 2

LITTLE MANHATTAN -- A Sweet Cruel First Love

LITTLE MANHATTAN

Staring Josh Hutcherson, Cynthia Nixon, Charlie Ray

Director Mark Levin

Production house Twentieth Century Fox

Released date August 7, 2005 USA

Duration 90 minutes

Rating PG-13

PG-13 rated movie about a boy first love and its complication. First love is the sweetest and most tormenting moment in normal teenagers life. They say, first love won’t fade away, even there are many couples that ended up marrying their first love after spending some love adventure. They say it was unforgettable happiness and pain altogether. It was a fragile love, immature and won’t last long yet it offers so much wonder and thrill for most teenagers.

Gabriel ‘Gabe’ was just a normal ten years old boy who lives on Brooklyn. He loved to drive his scooter around his ‘territory’. And like any other boy in his age, he hates girl. Her father was a sport counselor and used to spend his spare time practicing football with his son. Gabe’s parents were in the middle of divorce and according to rule, they had to stay in the same roof until the process completed.

One day, Gabe decided to take karate lesson. There he met with Rosemary Telesco. An eleven years girl that used to be go to the same kindergarten with him.

But, somehow during the practice, he noticed Rosemary as a girl and attracted to her. Suddenly, his world wasn’t about himself, Rosemary was. He experienced what he thought of love. Gabe felt happiness that seemed alien to him.

And like a dimwitted boy with their crush, he spent much time riding around Rosemary apartment and spent more time with his karate lesson, so he could be around her, and he even managed to come to her room. He dressed neatly and even started to like everything that Rosemary did.

And then the pain comes.

It started when Rosemary got her yellow belt and assigned with a new sparring partner. One day, she informed him that she would spend 3 weeks in a summer camp and then off to private school. Before that, she had to attend his mother’s sister wedding as a bridesmaid.

He got jealous. He accused her to be selfish and cold, though he kept it to himself. And to top of that, he tried his yellow belt test that drove him straight to the hospital with a fractured bone. In the end, he made a phone call and released his jealously. And in the end, after hated each other, he said his ‘goodbye’.

Broken up, he cried. He hated her for intruding his peaceful mind. His parents tried to help their son, but realized that they also went through the same thing, broke up. Gabe promised that he wouldn’t spare any room for other woman in her heart.

The next day, Gabe and his father went out and asked why love had to come to end. His father then told Gabe a story about he and his mother. They used to love each other. As the time went, a lot of things happened. Little things that left unsaid. So much of it and it started to piled up, like a stack of who-knows-what in the storage room. And as days went on, there was nothing to be said at all.

After a little comment from Gabe, both of them then realized something that they seek. Gabe for one thing, wanted to say a proper goodbye to Rosemary. He went to the wedding party where Rosemary attended as a bridesmaid. There he expressed his love, and got rejected since Rosemary wasn’t ready for that kind of thing, and confessed that he lied when he said that he hated her. They settled their feelings and then danced together. Gabe knew that love is something that had to be spoken instead of hidden. He also realized that love had to end someday, someway, and if that would happen he had to let it go. For Gabe father, he went to solve his problem with his wife and fix his family. The story end with Gabe monologue that stated he would always remember his first love and no one would be able to replace it because it was Rosemary’s.

The basic idea of this story is first love and how a young boy discovers and exploring that feeling? And what he learn after experiencing it, in hard and cruel way?

Gabe, like most of teenagers, was absolutely thrilled by his first love. But, while he was enjoying that precious moment, he had to live with his broken family. Everything always comes to an end, love included. Experiencing the happy beginning and painful end of love is not easy, especially for a first lover.

Imagine about someone build a house. They try to discover how the best way to create a single floor house. Then, they see something, a two stories house. Before they finished the first floor, intrigued by others house, they start to install second floor. That is first love. In the middle of collecting your identity, you cross path with attraction for opposite sex. Naturally, human instinct of curious would force us to explore it. Sometimes, it would drive us to the point of forgetting ourselves, puberty be damned.

All of sudden, our world would be centered on our object of attraction. Foundation be damned, what matter most is the second floor.

And of course, without proper foot, everything would crumble. Including first love. But, being broken and then ripped from our subject of love for the first time and while we are fragile, would enough to wish we could die.

Most teenagers, and human, choose to lock this pain deep in their heart. It’s the nature of human to push away the pain, blocking them from our consciousness. When we deal a trouble the easiest way to finish it is runaway. However, it’s not healthy, suicidal almost. Trouble always come and will always come again. If we choose to lock that up or run away without settle them, eventually we would crack.

And with love, when it breaks, there’s only one-way to settle it. That is gather enough courage to say a proper goodbye, not good bye as in ‘this is it, I don’t want to see you again’ but as in ‘let’s be friend, what we had was important but we won’t love each other the same ways as before, but what about love as friend.’

First love is about courage. Courage to acknowledge it and show it and realize it that it had to be over, to come open without secret between each other and understanding each other. Love is about going through it with all of the pains that stands in our way and hopefully reach the happy end, even if that end is not ‘Romeo Juliet everlasting love’.

Life goes on. Every second in our life is worth of memories full of event. Each moment deserve every bit of our attention. But each second ticked, we have to let go the moment and move on. Everything would end, but sometimes, we need an end to start a new moment. They might not all a happy memories that left, but that memory is our life.

Most of the actors and the actresses don’t have quite name. But they play quite well, especially performing the innocence of teenagers. And with the help of narration that filled half of the play, we could easily ‘feel’ how the protagonist went through. The timeline was clear enough, the director easily creates 2 and a half week time into a good and smooth plot. The set for Brooklyn is nice, not too much crowd control.

About the scene, there are some kissing scenes, but not too gross, since it was a realistic first love story. Rest assured, there are no sexual or violence scene, at least not physically for the later, mentally, well suit yourself about that love review above. Oh, I almost forgot, if you’re not fond of some gross stuffs, there’s scene that shows you vomit.

While the story is indeed sweet, it’s not too unrealistic sweet. You could see clearly that love could bring pain and it indeed is showed in the film. Although it rated for PG-13, I’m not recommending this one for a Disney’s happily ever after love story fan, including some low intelligent and insensitive people. I highly recommend this for some growing up teenagers and want to learn first love the hard way. But my word will be EIGHT out of ten.

Love is an ugly, terrible business practiced by fools

It will trample your heart and leave you bleeding in the floor

And what does it really get you in the end?

Nothing but a few incredible memories that you can’t ever shakes

The truth is, there’s gonna be other girls out there

But I’m never gonna get another first love

That’s one always gonna be her

PS: Not once in my life, puberty included, I never cross with this trivial thing. My position is relatively close to the protagonist of this story, except that I never met someone who could attract me and change my world, and definitely I didn’t have the same ending with him. I read a lot of novels, most of them always have romance theme, and I do studying the word ‘love’ based on some literature. And I’ve gone to extensive manner to find the true meaning of love, only to find a dead end. There’s no way to describe love, so instead, I made a hypothesis by combining all the meaning together. And after comparing my hypothesis and my life so far, well, I’m very sure as hell that I never experience love. Well, not in person, at least. For a bad addicted bookworm, when you’re read a book, you would feel whatever stories inside it as if that was reality. Maybe I was late in my maturing or any other reasons I don’t know yet, whatever.

PSS: This movie was really good, I got carried for a while when I was watching it. For you who want to watch it, it owned by GlobalTV and the last time I watched it on Holiday week, I forgot the date but I’m pretty sure it was pre-semester holiday between 2009 - 2010 school year.

PSSS: This one really eats me out. 3 pages long for a PG-13 movie, God.

AVALON HIGH -- Modern Arthurian Legend

AVALON HIGH

Authored by Meg Cabot

Published by HarperCollins

Published on 27 December 2005

Avalon High is one of magical novel from Meg Cabot. The story is basically about a modernized Arthurian legend. But if you expect some kind of tug-war or round table knight, don’t bother read the book since they won’t appear anyway. Interesting enough, the story did have happy ending, unlike the original where Arthur dead after the Guinevere incident and Mordred treason.

Elaine Harrison, or Ellie, just moved from Minnesota to Annapolis, Maryland due to a year long sabbatical that her parents took to continue their medieval studies. She was an outer crowd (typical Meg Cabot girl), her grades just average save for World Literature since she used to read almost all her parents research and a fast runner. In summary she was a normal girl, at least until she moved to Annapolis, or rather her new school, Avalon High School.

Despite being a new girl, she found herself accepted in her new school. She even made her way to join the school track club. And like any other school in Meg Cabot universe, this school also had inner crowd consisting jocks, cheerleader and other popular peoples and outer crowd that Ellie found herself at first.

There were Will Wagner, the famous quarterback and senior student pres, Jennifer Gold, Will’s girlfriend and the nice blonde cheerleader squad, Lance Reynolds, the dependable lineman and Will most trusted man and later Marco Campbell, the problematic Will stepbrother.

The story started to take higher step when Mr. Morton, Ellie World Literature teacher, gave Ellie who paired with Lance an assignment to review a poetry about Alfred Tennyson, the Lady of Shallot. During this assignment she surprised about the coincidence about the name of character in Arthurian legend and her new environment.

For example, Will middle name is Arthur, Jennifer is the American name for Guinevere, the Queen of Camelot and Arthur wife, Lance can be represented as Lancelot, Arthur best man, and Marco resemble Arthur half brother Mordred, and Ellie herself would be represent Elaine the Lady of Shallot who commit suicide after knowing her unrequited love with Lancelot, except that she found herself in love with Will instead Lance.

After Ellie got to know Will better on his party, she even more surprised that the situation around herself even almost identical with the legend. Jennifer affair with Lance, Marco evil intention to Will driven by jealously, and eventually the discovery about Will parents truth.

Just when Will found out about Jennifer affair, Mr. Morton reveal to him about the truth about his mother and Marco. Will father, Admiral Wagner, actually the man who sent Marco’s father away to battlefield and eventually made him dead. Wagner then marry Jean, Marco’s mother and Will was born as the result. This made Marco resemblance to Mordred more clear.

That night, Will went missing. Marco stole a gun and also went missing. When a heavy storm hit the town and put all electricy down, Ellie started to get more worried about Will. And when she knows about Marco’s little robbery, she decided to found Will.

She eventually found him in a meadow, despite the disaster that she had to go through to get there. There she met with Marco, gun in his hand and aimed to Will. In her attempt to save Will, she threw a sword that actually belong to Richard the Leon Heart, which is his father research subject, to Will. Will evaded the bullet and caught the sword, and the sight of Will holding that sword, magically, scared Marco and cleared the sky.

This event cleared Ellie resemblance as Elaine the Lady of Shallot, since the only one that gave Arthur his sword, Excalibur, was none other than the Lady of the Lake, which took Arthur to Avalon to rest forever after Guinevere left and Mordred treason.

In the end, Will took refuge to Ellie house after being kicked from his house and both of them acknowledge their love together.

One little thing about the story, since Ellie spent her childhood moving from one town to another and one country to another, she barely had a permanent home. But, she stated that ‘home’ is not just a place, it’s people who make home. People that we care and love and care and love us. And at the end of the novel, when Will rang the Harrison house, Ellie was the one who opened it and invited him inside to take shelter. Similar to the Lady of the Lake who brought Arthur after everything was over to his last resting place, his last home, Avalon.

The book comes in 304 pages on its first print of Hardback and twenty-nine chapters long. Each chapter begin with a piece of Tennyson poem which is the center of the story, the Lady of Shallot. Other than that, there’s nothing special about the book’s layout.

Europe old culture always intrigued my interest, including Arthurian legend. Cabot nicely brought that legend into a good modernized plot, even though the story doesn’t share the similar end with the original legend. But, to put it bluntly, it sure brought more interest, since Cabot intent to write the sequel of this book.

Overall, the plot sure is nice, even if it just some kind of modernized old legend and as always, Ellie’s, that serve us with her first person narration, mind always amusing with her little comment here and there. And since there is a sequel, this one won’t be ‘one night stand’. My number will be SEVEN out of ten.

TROUBLE

This is very unfortunately. Review of some books that I've write can't be posted in here. According to the rule of the site that provide the story, that is. So, maybe I've just put a ground line and some small synopsis for that kind of story.

Greetings

This is my first attempt to write a blog where I can share my 'adventure' experience. I'll post every review about mangas, novels, movies and even CG Visual Novels. For the convenient purpose, I prefer to use English based source since my native language isn't to good when come to vocabulary varieties.
I want to freely express my experiences and for that purpose, I'll put this blog in R-Rated content or 17+ Rated. Therefor I wish that you'll understand the meaning of rating in case that you want to avoid any content that you wish to not see and PLEASE don't blame the author or provider for the content of media that already been rated with the reason that mainly roll around 'This is eastern country, that content is too vulgar' or 'This is too much, what if some underage brat see this' etc.
Happy adventuring.

Sleepless Librarian