TELL ME A STORY

TELL ME A STORY
"Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation." Joel 1:3

Saturday, August 23, 2014

THE GIVER

Marcia Norwood
America's STORYTELLER
Telling Untold Stories in Photographs, Prose and Public Speaking

http://tellmeastory-marcia.blogspot.com

Have you seen the movie,
THE GIVER ? 

 
I had to see it.  

It has some of my favorite actors:
  
 Jeff Bridges 
as The Giver
and
Meryl Streep
as Chief Elder.
Now I need to read the book.
We are a family of readers.
We read aloud to each other.
Some of us (adults) sit in the same room,
and some listen via the phone.
 
We are reading aloud through  
Insurgent,
the 2012 science fiction young adult novel
by American novelist Veronica Roth.
It's the second book in the Divergent TRILOGY.
   CLICK on the link or COPY & PASTE the link in your browser:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgent_%28novel%29
  

 THE GIVER  
was actually around 
long before  
THE HUNGER GAMES  
and DIVERGENT 

THE GIVER 
is based on the acclaimed 1993 novel by Lois Lowry.  
It won the Newberry Medal.
It has been a staple
in middle-school literature curriculum for 20 years: 
introducing young students 
to sophisticated ethical and moral concepts.

Jeff Bridges has been attached as a producer 
to the film project for almost 20 years,
 


   CLICK on the link or COPY & PASTE the link in your browser:
http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/review-the-giver-349-02
REVIEW: THE GIVER can’t help but feel awfully familiar in the wake of so many dystopian teen sci-fi yarns.  
THE HUNGER GAMES and DIVERGENT are both slicker, sexier takes on essentially the same material, but it probably needs to be remembered that THE GIVER was actually around long before either franchise, with it being based on the acclaimed 1993 novel. 
So really, those films 
(THE HUNGER GAMES and DIVERGENT)
are derivative of this 
rather than the other way around. 
 
Read more at    
http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/review-the-giver-349-02#0aRVP1AyKuUEvDRU.99


        CLICK on the link or COPY & PASTE the link in your browser:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/15/showbiz/movies/the-giver-review-ew/index.html   

  "There is a reason that Lois Lowry's 1993 book won the prestigious Newbery Medal and inspired millions of readers—as well as other dystopian YA best-sellers like The Hunger Games: It features children asking important questions and challenging draconian authority."
By Jeff Labrecque, EW
updated 6:30 PM EDT, Fri August 15, 2014
 


    CLICK on the link or COPY & PASTE the link in your browser:
http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/sgw1196.html



  CLICK on the link or COPY & PASTE the link in your browser:
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-giver-2014


  
20 years ago, Lois Lowry's dystopian YA novel "The Giver" won the Newberry Medal. Creepy and prophetic, told in a kind of flat-affect voice, it has been a staple in middle-school literature curriculum ever since, introducing young students to sophisticated ethical and moral concepts that will help them recognize its precedents when they come to read the works of George Orwell or Aldous Huxley.

Jeff Bridges has been attached as a producer to the film project for almost 20 years, and finally, "The Giver" is here, with Bridges in the title role. 

Directed by Phillip Noyce, with an adaptation of the book by Michael Mitnick, "The Giver" gives us the overall structure of Lowry's original work, adds a couple of understandable details like a sweet little romance and then derails into an action movie in its final sequence, complete with attacks from the air and a hi-tech command center. 

Children have been thrilled by the book for 20 years, and a chase scene still proved irresistible. Despite a truly pained performance from Jeff Bridges and a beautifully imagined, three-dimensional futuristic world, "The Giver," in wanting to connect itself to more recent YA franchises, sacrifices subtlety, inference and power.

...a couple of lines have been added to the famous last paragraph of the book.

 Jeff Bridges as The Giver 
Meryl Streep as Chief Elder 
Alexander SkarsgĂ„rd as Jonas's father 
Katie Holmes as Jonas' mother 
Odeya Rush as Fiona  
Cameron Monaghan as Asher   
Taylor Swift as Rosemary
Director: Phillip Noyce
Writer:Michael Mitnick,  Robert B. Weide
Book:  Lois Lowry
Cinematograph: Ross Emery
Science Fiction
Rated PG-13 for a mature thematic image and some sci-fi action/violence
94 minutes


When I finish reading aloud
Insurgent to my family,
I will read Lois Lowry's book,
THE GIVER

To learn more about Lois Lowry, 
see her website at www.loislowry.com
"I will say that the whole concept of memory is one that interests me a great deal. I'm not sure why that is, but I've always been fascinated by the thought of what memory is and what it does and how it works and what we learn from it. And so I think probably that interest of my own and that particular subject was the origin, one of many, of The Giver."

Lois Lowry


I encourage you to read aloud 
to your family and friends...
to adults as well as children.  

I love it 
when my adult kids say to me:
"READ TO ME."
  
Daughters:  Sarah Zheng-Kang and Faith Fu Ju.  Copyright 2014 Marcia Norwood
   Thanks for stopping by!

Come back often, and invite a friend!


 Marcia Norwood
America's STORYTELLER
Telling Untold Stories in Photographs, Prose and Public Speaking

http://tellmeastory-marcia.blogspot.com








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