Lightning Round Reviews: The Notebook, Noah, and Keira Knightley

I meant to write a good post today but then I sort of lost my motivation so instead here comes a lightning round of reviews of media I've consumed recently!

First up ...

The Notebook (audiobook) 
By Nicholas Sparks; read by Barry Bostwick

(warning -- this contains spoilers)

I finally finished listening to the entire Game of Thrones series a couple weeks ago, after listening to it for over a year and a half. That's a year and a half of conspiracies, incest, torture, sex, murder, war, and everything in between.

So in order to decompress a bit, I decided to go for a bit of light romance, and ordered The Notebook. I have never seen the movie, and didn't really know what it was about other than "love story; someone has Alzheimer's."

This book was such trash. I shouldn't even say "was" because I still have like 40 minutes left in the audiobook but I haven't been able to bring myself to turn it back on. 

I don't even know what about it pisses me off the most. I mean, it's a love story about a woman who lies to and cheats on her fiancé like it's no big deal. We aren't supposed to give a shit about the other dude she was engaged to? What the hell did he do to deserve being treated like that?? She was all "oh, we can't have sex til we're married, kind fiancé of mine, because I'm a virgin. I mean I let this other dude stick his dick in me like ten thousand times but what I meant was other than that I'm a virgin. Oh, and right before we're supposed to get married, I'm gonna let him stick his dick in me ten thousand more times even though you've been patient for years. What a romance lol!" Allie, you suck. You are a bad human.

Then when the actual notebook part ends and they're both super old in the nursing home, the story gets so sappy I actually found myself sticking my tongue out and making fart noises aloud while alone in my car. I had just reached a point where I couldn't hold the fart noises in. The framing device where Noah starts re-reading old letters he wrote to Allie? F***ing stupid. Oh, he wrote her letters (while they were physically together, mind you) that tidily summarized key plot elements like how she ended up leaving her fiancé? HOW CONVENIENT. 

(Although I do often write Jesse letters that go like "remember the time when we had that argument about whether it made more sense to rinse Audrey's bottles out immediately or to wait until it was time to wash them? You felt that they should be rinsed right after use, while I felt that was an unnecessary extra step. We compared pros and cons, and in the end I gave in and agreed to rinse them since washing the bottles is your job and I should make it easier, not harder. Umm, anyway, so yeah, I remember that too.")

Eventually, I turned the book off while angrily shouting "SHUT THE F*** UP" at my Audible app. I found myself wishing I had Siri turned on, so I could yell "Siri -- TELL THESE JACKASSES TO SHUT THE F*** UP IMMEDIATELY." Siri would have been like "I don't understand" or "I cannot do that" but still, I would have felt better just getting to say it out loud.

Also, the guy who reads the audiobook sounds like a douche and he whispers a lot and it makes me feel like he's trying to seduce me in a creepy way. Like I feel violated after listening to the book for a while. I'm not going to take my shirt off for you, Barry Bostwick. No means no.

Plus there's all this random music that pipes up sometimes and makes it hard to hear the narration. Why? Who decided to add this??

All in all, it's dogshit. 2/10, would not read again. Probably will not even finish reading, actually.


Next up, we have ...

Noah (the movie starring Russell Crowe)

This movie sucked.



Keira Knightley's performance in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

This was the first time I've ever seen Keira Knightley playing an American. I didn't even realize it until the movie was on, but I have not seen her do an American accent a single time. Even when she is cast alongside Americans, like in Domino and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, they still find a way to make her be British.

I never realized her teeth were so bad until this movie. I guess whenever she does her usual British accent, I ignore her teeth because, well ... you know the stereotypes as well as I do.

But as soon as she started hitting those R's like a Yank, I couldn't ignore her teeth anymore. They were so distracting that I don't even remember most of the movie.

Then, a friend's kid got hold of the remote and turned it off before we could reach the grand conclusion. We had rented it on On Demand and the 24 hour rental was up so we couldn't turn it back on.

But it was pretty bad up til that point, so in a way I think Grady did us a favor.

Plus I hate Kevin Costner.

Ugh.

So, there you go! Hope these reviews help you out. You're welcome.