'Red'

'Red' Trailer

Above is the link to the trailer for 'Red', one of the greatest action-comedy movies ever made. While the movie was fantastic to watch, the one thing that captured my interest is what occurs in the trailer. From (0:00-0:20), the video opens up to a few camera shots of a mansion with it's fantastic view next to the river and goes into the interior of the mansion, which is equally impressive. The camera is then diverted to the conversation protagonist Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) and his friend Victoria (Helen Mirren) are having where Frank is obviously stupefied as he praises Victoria on her accomplishment to acquire such a luxurious life in her retirement. As all of this occurs, classical music can be heard in the background while Victoria expresses how she loves her new life as she is now interested in baking, flower arrangement, etc. Now, any viewer such as myself--who was, at the time, oblivious to the fact that 'Red' was an action-comedy-- who automatically get the impression that this movie would revolve around the lives of retired people as they sit around and talk about their retirement. However, this delusion is effaced with ease at (0:21), where you see Mirren suddenly on top of a mini-gun turret, shooting at two cars passing by her.

To be frank, this left me speechless. The trailer first had this soothing feeling to it as the music seemed to comfort you while you witnessed the luxurious setting when all of a sudden, you get smacked in the face when you think to yourself, "oh wait, there are a ton of guns in this movie." I, for one, did not see it coming. This experience is not unique for this trailer alone, either. There seems to be a tread of movie commercials that start out with one setting and completely transitions, suddenly or not, into a different atmosphere. This is a quite different to trailers to movies that were made around the time we were born, where we were basically told what the movie was about the moment the trailer began. Just shows how the media, along with most aspects of our lives, tends to evolve along with civilization.

The Three Kindgoms: Book Two (completed)

Now, time to talk about book two of The Three Kingdoms saga. To be truthful, the novel is split into four seperate books due to the fact that the story is about 2500 pages. That's a really long story. Anyhoo, onward with book two!!

So, during book one, Liu Bei and his sworn brothers joined the army and used his cunning tactics to defeat the Yellow Scarves and successfully killed Zhang Jiao and his sworn brothers (apparently, swearing brotherhood with other warriors was a popular trend back in the day). However, with all of the corruption still existing in the Chinese government, Liu Bei had some trouble before he was finally acknowledged as a significant role in the victory of the royal army. While Liu Bei has his troubles, the royal court is in complete chaos. There are a numerous amount of uprisings and bitter rivarlies that come into play but to make a extremely long story short, a general by the name of Dong Zhou manages to capture the throne for himself after he eliminates the young princes that were supposed to inherit the throne from their father. When Dong Zhou is founded to be the mastermind behind the chaos of the court, the roal army general Cao Cao issues an imperial order to all the warlords and governers to rally their armies and stand together against the threat of Dong Zhou. However, due to poor leadership skills, the armies only manage to pester Dong Zhou, at best, and fail to do any significant damage to him. However, he is later killed by his son Lu Bu in a fight for the beautiful maiden Diao Chan. (Apparently, that was also a popular thing to do) After the death of Zhou, Cao Cao frees the princes from their prison cell guarded by Zhou's followers and sets up a new government. Lui Bei, who participated during the war against Dong Zhou, refuses to serve Cao and takes Xi Provinence for himself, which sparks another civil war in the country. After saying all of this, I only got through a eighth of the storyline in this epic struggle in China for power. In addition to those who like historical fiction, I also recommend the book to people interested in the old ways of war and strategies.

The Three Kindgoms: Book One (completed)

I just finished reading the first book of The Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhong. The book was made back during ancient China during the Han dynasty and has been one of the most treasured books in Asian countries such as Taiwan, China, Japan, and Korea. (Well, South Korea, since North Koreans can't even afford to buy a book in the first place, considering how their yearly income is about a hundred dollars). The book begins in during the end of the Han dynasty and there is A LOT of political corruption going on. Thanks to this corruption, the people being a rebellion and form an army under the command of Zhang Jiao, a warrior who uses sorcery to give his army the advantage on the battlefield, such as creating mist to hide the troops or summoning lightning bolts to crush his enemies. Due to the fact that the peasants have such an incredible leader, they being what is known as the Yellow Scarves Rebellion, since they peasant soldiers all wear yellow scarves on their heads as their uniform. This army proves to be incredibly fierce, as they experience victory after victory on the battlefield and spread chaos in the country as the royal army is powerless to defeat them. In order to obtain reinforcements, the army hangs up enlistment posters in local towns. The hero of this story, Lui Bei, who is the nephew of one of the nobles in the Chinese court, sees this poster and wishes to destory the rebellion but due to the lack of resources and men, this is an impossible dream. Acknowledging this, Liu Bei sighs deeply and catches the attention of Zhang Fei, a local swine herder. He askes Liu Bei why he sighed and when Liu Bei replies, Zhang Fei laughs and claims that he can easily raise a small army due to the many connections he has and the two become friends fighting for a common goal. Then, they went into the local bar for a drink when they are greeted by Guan Yu, a warrior from a neighboring city who was exiled when he was caught attacking the hooligans there. After hearing Liu Bei's story, Guan Yu in interested in participating in the war and joins the two men. With three men having the same goal, they agree to form a brotherhood where they will never betray each other and would meet the same fate together and the story goes from there. Actually, what makes the book a masterpiece is that it actually focuses on a extremely wide range of characters and portrays their backstory while at the same time sticking to the main plot of the book. My father wanted me to read this book since it is such a literature masterpiece. At first, I was skeptical but once I got into the next couple of pages, I was enchanted and I couldn't put the book down. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who loves either Chinese history or historical fiction in general.

The Fall of the Templar (completed)

This is the third and final installment to the Brethren trilogy by Robyn Young. At the end of the second book, The Crusades, the city of Acre falls when the Muslim forces conquer the city after a failed attempt by the Christian knights to steal the Black Stone, which was the focus of the Islam religon. In a daring plan to crush the Muslim forces and their faith, it suddenly backfired and served as a rally point which motivated the Muslim empire to finally take the offense in the war and land the crushing blow that ended the Crusades with the defeat of the Christian forces. During all of this chaos, the main protagonist Will Campbell finds his wife dead and later discovers that his daughter is actually the daughter of his best friend who betrayed him in the first book Brethren, Lyon. In rage, Will kills Lyon but not before hearing that King Edward of England was the one who pulled all of the strings, from the near fall of the Anima Templi, to the events that led up to the Crusade and the lost of millions of lives. Will then discovers a new-founded hatred for the king of England and swears that he will make him pay for his crimes. Our hero carries this hatred for ten long years up to the point when The Fall of the Templar begins. Now that the Crusades are over and their headquaters in Acre gone, the Templars have scattered across Europe with a majority of them stationed in Paris, France with Will as their commander. Over the past ten years, Will has tried to restore the power of the Templars and prevent the collapse of the organization but a new predictament comes up that makes this task nearly impossible. King Edward has declared war on the rebel Scots from Scotland, Will's homeland and is requesting the Templars for assisstance. With a choice between his brotherhood and his home nation, Will abondons his post as commander and joins the fight against England.

In my personal opinion, this was the greatest conclusion to any series I've ever read. I love how Will has to do his best to resolve all of the these conflicts whirling inside of him and that he doesn't know what side to pick in this huge battle that could change the path of history. This is a nice change to other endings of series I've read before, such as Harry Potter, where the main character knows what side they fight for and that's it, happy ending, good times, yay. I recommend this book to anyone who loves a good conflicting character and historical fiction as well.

Dragon and Soldier

This may have been a short read, around three hundred pages or so, but it is by my favorite author, Timothy Zahn, so I loved the new story line. Once again, this is a sci-fi original with it's own little universe containing an epic story. It all starts with thirteen year old Jack Morgan, a thief who learned the trade through his uncle, Virge, or at least a virtual representation of him that contains his character and his knowledge due to that fact that he died during a mess up. Jack is just going around on his business of stealing from others in order to survive but then something big interupts his daily life: a valuable cargo has just been stolen and someone has placed all the blame on Jack. To escape from the officials hunting him down, Jack retreats to a desolate planet only to run into more trouble. He discovers a downed space craft and when he suspects that there's no one alive in it and begins raiding it, the pilot of the ship turns out to have survived. With the help of Jack, the survivor recovers and introduces himself as the K'da dragon Dracos, a warrior who have to attact to a person and become 2D on the host's skin in order to survive in a 3D world that they can only stay in for about three hours or else they shrivel up and die. Dracos reveals that his race is in a war of survival as other organizations attempt to wipe them out for the resources on their planet and when Dracos was commisioned to be part of a assault fleet when they were suddenly ambushed by an unknown organization. Now that Dracos is the onyl survivor of the fleet, Jack has made an agreement that in exchange for letting Dracos attact to him, he has to help JAck look for the ones who framed him as well as the ones who attacked Draco's fleet. Now, in the first book, they find the ones who frames Jack but Draco's case was still to be solved. The last thing he remembers during the attack as well as the occasional nightmare which repeats the scene is seeing the words "Djinn 90" on the star fighters that destroyed his ship. Taking this into event, Dracos believes that the attackers not just a band of thugs but a mercenary group with enough power and resources to obtain them. To find out, Jack has to dig a little deeper and joins the Daggers mercenary group in order to sneak into their data base and retrieve the info they need. That, however, is "easier said than done" to the max because while Jack has his goals, another one pops out of nowhere: survive a war. Is this possible for a little kid who only knows how to pick a lock?

Yeah, like I said in previous blogs, I have dumb luck when I read the second before the first book in a series. I might just go back to the first and get excited for the third. I recommend this book to, once again, sci-fi fans. I might even throw in military fans, since the book focuses on future warfare as well.

Brethern

Brethren is the first book of the Knight templar trilogy, with the second being Crusades. As I mentioned in my blog about Crusades, I accidentally read the second book before the first one, so I had to backtrack a bit but anyway, on with the review!

So in Brethren, it once again focuses on Will, who is at this time an apprentice of a knight in England. He is hoping to become a templar knight to become a member of the Anima Templi, a secret organization tha defends and fights in the name of God and Christianity as a whole. Things seem to be fine as Will trains with his best friend Lyon as they both fight hard to be accepted into the society and live their daily lives, there are two major incidents occuring elsewhere. In the city of London, there has been an incident where the holy Book of the Grail has been stolen. With the book gone, the templars fear that if one were to have the knowledge to decipher the sacred relic, it would mean to revealing the secrets of the Anima Templi and leaving them vulnerable against their enemy organizations. If that wasn't bad enough, the Islam empire in the Middle East has finally defeated their rival, the Mongols who have been trying to expand their empire from Asia. With the Mongols out of the way, the Muslims try to rebuild their country from the costs of the war but as soon as the old Sultan has been assassinated and the famous general Baybars with his hate towards Christianity takes control, things may not go so smoothly as he sets out for war. Facing problems on both sides, the Anima Templi use all of their resources avaliable to fend off the Muslim invasion of the Christian forts and to retrieve the Book of the Grail, the organization has no choice but to send out young Will to find the book while the older veteran knights move to the Middle East for battle.

The historical fiction masterpiece was a joy to read and it just leaves you waiting for more from Young. I have alrerady read Crusades but I am thrilled to get my hands on the thrid book Requiem soon.

Lost Souls

Lost Souls by Lisa Jackson is another murder mystery novel that I happened to have picked up in the libary and enjoy reading. This story resolves around Kristi Bentz, who is far from your average girl. She's the daughter of Rick Bentz, a detective in New Orleans who is famous for being able to crack some of the most complex cases and brought down murderers that would make anyone cring when they heard their name. In the past, Kristi attempted to follow her father's footsteps by trying to bring in killers of the same caliber as Rick Bentz past achievements. The amazing thing is that she has succeeded in doing so, only that she has nearly gotten killed everytime she decideds to stick her head into dangerous affairs with the killers. Now at the age of twenty-seven, Kristi decides to pursue her true dream of being a crime-writer and goes back to her old college, All Saints university. But to Kristi, this isn't going to be just some education opportunity. The real reason she's going is because she thinks there's a mystery to solve there. Kristi has done some research beforehand about the college and it seems that four girls has suddenly disappeared from the campus and were never seen again. This seems completely reasonable, since all four girls were known to be depressed and have taken drugs, so everyone, including their families, were have thought to just run away from the campus with some random guy they picked up. But to Kristi, this similarity seems like the perfect excuse to simply ignore this issue to cover something big up and once Kristi gets to on the campus, she sees that her suspicions were quite accurate. When Kristi talks to some students, she can actually see that they are going to die very soon due to her special ability, which is seeing death. What I mean is that she can see someone's face and all of a sudden their skin would appear all pale. Then, as the days went on closer to their day of death, their faces would disappear and she would see a pale skull looking at her. This encounter confirms the fact that something fishy is going on in All Saints and she has to findout what. But she can't do this alone: she needs the help of high-school lover and ex-boyfriend Jay Knights, a prosectutor who has been hired as one of her teachers in the university. After settling differences, they finally team up and they discover that these disappearances may not just be from a single killer, but are a result of a whole cult worshipping vampires in the school. From then on, Kristi believes that her past encounters were nothing compared to this new threat.
This book is another rare mystery favorite that I happened to come across. It's so suspenseful, even more so than regular mystery novels because, as mentioned earlier, paranormal powers get involved in the situation and you have no idea whatsoever on what's happening! There are some parts in the book where Jackson refers to her past novels but this only encourages me to go out and buy them. I definitely recommend this book to any mystery fans. If a sci-fi guy like me enjoyed it, I'm pretty sure it will rank high for anyone who enjoys the genre.