A Movie of Bones

We watched the City of Bones as a family and I talked so much that mum was seriously contemplating gagging me. Many things were wrong with it, I can barely list them all but here's the first:

1. Valentine should have blonde hair

I saw one of those cute photos of Valentines circle released pre-movie and groaned as I worked out that they already had it all wrong.  You know the stereotypical dark-haired psychopath on the right?  He's supposed to have hair so blonde its silver.

Thus I didn't have high expectations for this movie. I've already seen plenty of examples of beautiful books having their storylines shredded into irretrievable pieces (Eragon) but even the beginning had me riled.

After reading reviews on rotten tomatoes averaging 12% I saw how the opening scene immediately put everyone to sleep. Its so sad considering the book started inside the night club Pandemonium and in the first few pages already invisible people were stabbing a demon which then disappeared into thin air. Whoever wrote this script didn't want to "trust the intelligence of the audience" and instead tried to tell us everything we needed to know about Clary's mundane life in the first five minutes. In my opinion the audience needn't know any more than Clary does.

Hear this movie producers…

…

Its called suspense.

And then she goes to an awful poetry reading for no other apparent purpose but to show that Simon has feelings for her that she doesn't return. As if the audience hasn't already caught onto that… Clary: "He's not my boyfriend" Jace: "Does he know that?" Her mum happens to bring it up as well...

Personally I prefer  the amusing and yet elusive quotes that the book gave us "I was laughing because declarations of love amuse me, especially when unrequited… And because your friend Simon is one of the most mundane mundanes I've ever encountered." As Jace so eloquently puts it.

You see that movie producers… It's called subtlety.

But instead you've chosen here to hit us in the head with your movie like the shovel that Simon inexplicably pulled from behind a gate in your movie.

Well I've raved madly about the beginning now here's the next top ten things that irked me about this movie.

1. It would be nice if people who are supposed to be New Yorkians (Jace and Jocelyn) didn't speak in an english accent: it doesn't make sense. Luckily enough- with my knowledge of the books I rationalised that they merely had the accent of Idris (though Idris is somwhere in the middle of Europe so a Swiss accent may have made more sense){not that I don't appreciate British accents of course but CONTEXT!}

2. Oh yeah and that brings me back to the start of the movie- Clary, who has lived in New York all her life somehow cannot manage to run along a footpath with one person riding a bike on it without running into them. And then she runs into two cars o.O. This girl is supposed to be pure blood shadow hunter (i.e. she has better strength and agility than normal and did I mention she has lived in Brooklyn her entire life?)

3. There is no portal at the institute. For those who care, in the books there are two types of portals: magic users (like Mangus Bane the warlock)can make temporary ones or otherwise you use a fixed portal. There are two of these that we know of: In the witches house underneath Clary's apartment and Valentine's mirror which works as a portal to Idris. In the first book both of these are used but does the institute have a portal? Nuh-uh :\

4. Portals are not made of some substance that you can take out and then stroke or punch people through. Maybe I would have forgiven #3 if they didn't break the rules for no apparent reason.

5. Valentines associates, Blackwell and whatever-his-name-is, turn up way too much and are supposed to be wearing weird robes.

6. The fight scenes were

• Too dark

• Too disjointed with too many characters

• Too long

In the vampire fights scene at Hotel DuMort, for example. (though the entire scene may have been skipped considering their lead up was terrible) Firstly they were running around a hotel full of vampires and all I could see were flashes of light and darkness. That ISN'T suspenseful, its just annoying.

Secondly of course it was too confusing for only Jace and Clary to go in alone (as our original author Ms Clare wrote) so instead we'll send them all in and have a fight scene that flicks through confusing close ups across twenty characters. I suppose it gave the boys in the audience their fight scenes and yet it went on too long. Having read the book I just ended up saying "hurry up and cue werewolves, get me outta this hotel".

7. Demons cannot enter the grounds of the institute. The whole point is that the institutes are built on holy ground- even vampires cannot enter them. Even the characters in the movie state this.

8. Valentine wasn't even supposed to summon any demons- he made Forsaken, humans given shadow hunter runes to drive them crazy. These were supposed to fight the werewolves in the end. Of course I do realise that introducing this new species might be a little too much for this movie, what with vampires, werewolves and demons...

9. The final battle should NOT have been at the institute, thus #7 could be fixed. It was at a mansion on an island in the middle of the river. Also Isabelle and Simon were not present and thus most terrible parts of the fight scenes #6 could have been fixed- eliminating the excess characters from ridiculous plot ties. But you know we've seen this annoying plot simplification in Tomorrow when the war began too.

10. Pure blood shadowhunters(such as Clary because her mum and dad were both shadowhunters) do not need to drink from the mortal cup. The cup turns HUMANS into shadowhunters. If Clary is already a shadowhunter why is Valentine (who is her dad and should know this) trying to make her drink from it?

So there are hundreds of deviations and logic defying details in this movie which infuriate those who have read and understand the books. It feels as though the rules of the world have been broken irreparably and everyone knows that supernatural things need to have rules and limits or it just defies all logic (don't even get me started on the logic of twilight).

But hey, the books DO make sense and I only love them more because I know that they must be perfect the way they are.

    

On the way to the Queen's Land

After feeling so sick the previous day I woke at 4am for some reason to travel to Queensland to wander aimlessly around Universities.  I still don't understand how I managed but at about 8am (NSW time) I wrote this:

To be honest I'm just glad to be travelling.  The bus is surprisingly quiet (mostly everyone's asleep) and it is sorta relaxing.  I have almost slept, that being I pretended to be asleep but couldn't be sure if it actually caught up with me, until Woodburn(two hours north). I'm awaiting the famed (well in my head it is) corner down to the Byron valley (so pretty!)

And this, wondering about the 1 hour time difference between the two states for 6 months of the year:

Who says we haven't invented time machines yet? They're all over the world and their called time zones.  It feels like there should be a shimmering barrier between New  South Wales and Queensland. Perhaps we'll see it when we reach Tweed Heads. 

Perhaps I only survived because of my favourite hill:

The Border Ranges, faint like they're painted upon the sky.  Mount Warning a crooked, watchful figure.  The hills below the darker green of a scrub far, far away .  Like some idyllic pastoral scene the hills roll in green to a single field that pools below the curving highway.  The polka dots upon the mountain's skirts reveal themselves as hamlets, trees and homesteads. 

The colour, the mist, the view!

The land is expansive and enormous and yet it clusters close in this glimpse. The hills gather in a feeling of rising; the meaning of contour is clear.  From the top of the hill, cut into pieces by tree trunks the valleys are sleeping, stretched out beneath you and then in the curve of a parabola the ground floats higher to the edge of the world. 

To the east the sea is a foam mat of blurry turquoise and as the bus glides around the corner the rolling hills reveal another perspective.  Like a carpet it rolls out in front of me, thickening as it draws away. 

It is that corner and the glimpse of field and valley, hill and spur, mountain and ocean that enchants each time I pass it.  Such a snapshot of beauty that every time a new aspect comes to light.  Is it the ancient growl of the mountains in their volcano crater, the sparkling of the bay sides or perhaps just the height and depth of the curve as it pulls you in?